93The concept of truth is in itself a contentious notion. One interesting approach
in the context of post-conflict situations is the one proposed by Albie Sachs, a for-
mer South African Constitutional Court justice. He articulated four categories of
truth which he presented on the occasion of the inaugural National Archives Lec-
ture in London in 2005. The first category, “microscopic truth” entails the narrow-
ing of a problem or a field to a certain frame from which all variables can be ex-
cluded. Lawyers do this on a daily basis in court, where a legal question is posed
and then answered with respect to a defined field (for instance: “did the accused
possess the necessary criminal capacity at the time of the commission of the of-
fence”). The question is about the capacity of a person to distinguish between right
and wrong (psychological responsibility); the defined field is the general princi-
ples of criminal law, and more particularly the principles relating to criminal ca-
pacity, which can be answered with reference to well-established principles of law
and psychology.
The second category of truth, according to Sachs, is “logical truth”. Again, this
is something that lawyers do on a daily basis: conclusions reached by deductive
and inferential processes. Language is employed to reflect what is typical in nature
and as experienced by humanity. Indeed, legal reasoning to a large extent can be
described as an attempt to find connections between microscopic truth and logi-
cal truth. The third category is described by Sachs as “experiential truth”, a concept
that Sachs encountered in the works of Mahatma Gandhi. Experiential truth (or
“lived truth”) is, essentially, storytelling. It is also reflective, in the sense that one
needs to analyse one’s experience of a phenomenon in which one has participated.
Whether we realise it or not, this category of truth is what guides us in our lives:
“We act on our experience of life and we infer things from that.”
Finally, the fourth category, “dialogical truth”, can best be described as amor-
phous. It does not end. There is no final outcome or final answer. It is a mix of
evidential, testimonial, and experiential truths; the truths of many people being
interpreted in many ways. This latter category seems to be especially valuable in
cases when harder edges of objective truth need to be softened. Dialogical truth
is particularly helpful in transitional contexts.
The notion of justice, in turn, refers to different forms of punishment and rep-
arations. Both can induce tensions and paradoxes in societies attempting to settle
large-scale armed conflicts. Jus post bellum strategies can, and sometimes should,
include criminal prosecutions of individuals responsible for serious human rights
violations. However, an important principle of transitional justice is that the crimi-
nal justice response to atrocities, violence and strife, should really be the last resort.
The question of sequencing concerns the temporal element of post-conflict
justice. This aspect refers to the best or most suitable moment to implement a
Is it too early to speak about justice in Donbas?, Gerhard Kemp and Igor Lyubashenko Opinion & Analysis