This article seeks to penetrate past pure ideology to ask whether, in fact, South Africa's story is a wholly successful one, and to question the merit of its development into an international metanarrative. Through a more critical lens with which to view the TRC and truth commissions in general, it becomes possible to properly review the situation of other nations, such as Rwanda, who are attempting to borrow pages from South Africa's now-universalized narrative. Truth commissions may be the cinderella of international law's transitional justice models, but demythologizing the responses to civil conflict and ethnic unrest in Africa requires a look at the political realities that informed each country's choice to move toward restorative or punitive justice.