Paper long abstract:

Mauritius is a polyethnic island society situated in the southwest Indian Ocean. It is also a SADC country of approximately 1.2 million people. Thirty percent of this population are of African descent and are categorised as slave descendants. The majority population of Indian descent are viewed as the descendants of indentured labourers. This paper introduces and discusses the Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission (TJC). The TJC is modeled on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission but seeks (unlike the TRC) to achieve a measure of reparations for the descendants of slaves and indentured workers in Mauritius. The discussion presented in the paper asks why a TJC has only now been instituted in Mauritius (nearly 180 years after the abolition of slavery) and what role the TJC might play in the re-imagining of the Mauritian nation.