For nations moving from authoritarian to civilian rule, debate about whether to forget past human-rights abuses and focus on the future has always been emotive. Freed from prison in 1990 after 27 years, Nelson Mandela presided over South Africa’s attempt to put the atrocities of the apartheid era behind it through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. More recently, Sierra Leone’s truth commission has asked how combatants in the country’s brutal civil war could slice open the wombs of pregnant women and amputate villagers’ limbs in the name of a senseless civil war. Ghana, too, has opted for a National Reconciliation Commission to examine the abuses that took place under the leadership of President Jerry Rawlings.