Forgiveness
in the Polis: Seeking Reconciliation
In Post-Apartheid
South Africa
William H.
LeMaire
Theology
Operating from 1995 to 1998, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) of
Truth
commissions are increasingly applied as an instrument for promoting political
and social reconciliation following civil strife. Of special interest to this paper, however,
is that the South African TRC, a secular, government institution charged with
an essentially political outcome, came to be characterized by a narrative of
forgiveness, a narrative that was expressed in Christian symbols, values, and
idiom. In doing so, says Rodney L.
Petersen of the Boston Theological Institute, the TRC projected forgiveness, a
quality long absent from public and foreign policy and often consigned to
personal relations or the church confessional, to the center of the reconciliation
discourse in
During the
TRC’s hearings for victims of human rights violations, a significant number of
those testifying extended forgiveness to their former tormentors, typically
evoking a scriptural or theological formulation of forgiveness. Commission members, especially TRC Chairman
Desmond Tutu, then an Anglican archbishop, further framed victim testimony
within a master narrative in which forgiveness is not only constitutive of
interpersonal reconciliation but is also the motive force for social and
political reconciliation. For some, framing
the truth-telling of the TRC within a larger theme of forgiveness was too
anemic a response for a nation still deeply scarred by apartheid’s violence;
specifically, it seemed to make no adequate provision for justice. This paper, however, will argue that the
quality of forgiveness may offer a more positive, long-lasting, and robust
response to post-conflict reconciliation than the retributive models of justice
embodied in tribunals and war crimes trials.
As a corollary, it will also assert that, in the understanding of Tutu
and the TRC, forgiveness did not exclude or dispense with repentance and
restitution. Rather, forgiveness was
posited as a force that both actuates and propels a continuum that leads to reconciliation;
along that continuum, repentance and redress may occur.
The
“Truth” About Truth Commissions
Truth
commissions are temporary bodies charged, in the wake of a period of severe
internal national conflict, with ascertaining and investigating the
authenticity of human rights violations, typically by eliciting the stories of
both victims and perpetrators.
Perpetrators are often offered amnesty for their testimony. The proposition is that by ascertaining the
truth of what occurred during a contentious period in the nation’s life a new
and hopefully shared recollection of the past will emerge. This could, in turn, provide the starting
point for the healing and the eventual transcending of deep social divisions
produced by conflict. Indeed, truth
commissions are a popular resource in the international peace and conflict
arena. In the twenty-year span between
1974 and 1994 fifteen truth commissions were initiated internationally, charged
with investigating the details behind human rights violations following periods
of political oppression and violence.[4]
In the next seven years, however,
between 1995 and 2002, an additional twelve commissions commenced operation.[5]
Truth
commissions, however, are seldom as cathartic as might be supposed. They rarely culminate in victims successfully
purging their memories of emotional trauma and perpetrators releasing their
burdens through contrition and repentance.
For many past commissions, the “fix” was in from the beginning as the
commissions themselves were the outcome of protracted negotiation between
political forces.[6] Often, to even establish a commission, the
former political power structure extracted a general amnesty for its
leadership. Too often truth commissions
have been a tool for governments to assure the international community that
some level of justice has been attained and, in turn, confer legitimacy on the
new power structure. In the majority of
cases, truth commissions have been conducted with little or no transparency. Since each of the twenty-seven commissions
established between 1974 and 2002 was engineered around unique circumstances,
it is difficult to categorize their outcome.
The chief benefit of truth commissions is that they provide a
prescription for ending violence while also sidestepping the difficulties in
tribunals and trials. If, as in a number
of cases, the commission reports were either rejected by the government, or its
contents edited or not made available to the public in totality, then some feel
they have been victimized a second time.
Truth commissions, it seems, seldom produce “truth” in absolute terms.
The
TRC of South Africa was established after the official end of apartheid (literally “apartness” in
Afrikaans and Dutch), a compulsory system of racial segregation that was
officially the law of the land from 1948 to 1994 but which, less officially and
less starkly, had been the practice within this nation from its earliest roots
in British Colonialism in the nineteenth century. Under apartheid, people were classified, by
law, into a variety of racial groups: whites, blacks, and those of mixed racial
origin. Blacks, in particular, were
forcibly relocated into “homelands,” the euphemistic label for what was similar
to a “reservation” of the type created in the
After
decades of escalating international pressure, the new South African government
headed by F.W. de Klerk announced its intention in 1989 to end apartheid and
enter into negotiations with the African National Congress, the leading black
opposition party in 1990. It aimed to
draft a new constitution based on the principle of “one person, one vote.” In April 1994, following the nation’s first
universal suffrage elections, Nelson Mandela, head of the African National
Congress, was elected President of South Africa.[9]
The
authority for the TRC was provided by the Promotion of National Unity and
Reconciliation Act, No 34 of 1995, and the new body based its operations in
On October 28, 1998, the
Commission presented its final report.
While there was considerable divergence in opinion in those early days
as to the value of the TRC along racial lines, most South Africans, by the
close of the Commission’s work in 1998, had judged the Commission worthwhile. Fifty-seven percent of South Africans rated
the TRC either a “very good thing” or a “good thing” for the country.[12] Measured along racial cleavages, however,
seventy-two percent of African respondents were positive about the
TRC compared to just fifteen percent of whites.[13] As time moves on, however, there is a growing
convergence in views. In more recent
data, published in 2006, the work of the TRC seems to have contributed to a
growing perception, even among whites, that apartheid was indeed a “crime
against humanity.” A strong majority of
87.7% of South Africans concurs with that statement, while 76.3% of whites
agree.[14]
Mandela
and Tutu, the TRC’s Secular and Sacred Faces
A
substantial portion of whatever success is credited to
While
equally committed to a peaceful resistance to oppression, Mandela and Tutu
differed considerably in religious perspective.
In her book, Truth &
Reconciliation in South Africa,
Lyn Graybill calls Nelson Mandela the “pragmatic reconciler” whose very life
has been an example of suffering and perseverance in pursuit of black
liberation. Mandela, she adds, saw his
mission as “one of preaching reconciliation, of binding the wounds of the
country, of engendering trust and confidence.”
Mandela’s extraordinary efforts at political forgiveness (he invited, for
example, the prosecutor who sought the death penalty for him to lunch following
his election to president in 1994) and reconciliation was applauded
worldwide. According to Graybill,
however, analysts sought, in vain, for some personality trait or secret that
would explain this extraordinary commitment to peace and reconciliation. While many expect to find its locus in
religious conviction, Mandela claims that he is “not particularly religious or
spiritual,” although he says he admires what the faith communities did to
oppose apartheid. Recognizing their
role, he states: “When others inside the country were gagged and could not
speak and could not travel and others were thrown in jail, it was the Church
that kept the fire burning and kept the ideas for which they were suffering
alive.”[15]
While there is no question that Mandela’s astonishing
generosity of spirit was a driving factor behind the country’s efforts at
reconciliation and amnesty for human rights offenders, it must also be
acknowledged that in
The
engine that drove Nelson Mandela, says Graybill, was not religion but rather
the strength of his commitment to a non-racial democracy. “The key,” according to Graybill, “is that
Mandela never doubted that one day he would be a free man and eventually
president. He simply did not have the
luxury of succumbing to hate and revenge.
Overcoming white fears of a nonracial democracy was crucial, and earning
the trust and confidence of whites made the political settlement possible.”[17] It was by sheer personal example and
commitment that Mandela was able to show a new path forward grounded by
reconciliation rather than retribution.
This simple but profound act of human will moved Robin Petersen, senior
lecturer in Christian studies at the University of the
While
Mandela provided the secular “jump-start” to national reconciliation, the
activity of the TRC, a secular apparatus, was nonetheless strikingly imbued
with religious language and ritual, qualities that were strategically inserted
by Desmond Tutu, the TRC’s chair, as well as deputy chair,
Alex Boraine, President of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Consider Tutu’s earliest efforts, in his own
words, in bringing his TRC team together and bringing their mission into focus.
Despite
our diversity, the commissioners agreed to my proposal at the first meeting
that we should go on a retreat, where we sought to enhance our spiritual
resources and sharpen our sensitivities.
We sat at the feet of a spiritual guru, who happened to be my own
spiritual counselor, while we kept silence for a day, seeking to open ourselves
to the movement and guidance of the transcendent Spirit.[19]
It
is rare that a description or historical analysis of the TRC does not remark
upon the religious character of the proceedings. The first hearing, in particular, stamped the
process with a religious tone when Tutu opened the meeting with a prayer and
Commissioner Bongani Finca sang a hymn of African Christian origin, “The
Forgiveness of Sins Makes a Person Whole.”
Throughout the TRC process, observes Graybill in her account of the hearings,
Tutu clearly operated as a religious figure during the proceedings, wearing a
purple cassock and reverently lighting candles as if he were officiating at a
sacred service. Such demeanor prompted
one observer to comment on the liturgical character of the hearings.
Each
hearing is opened with a prayer – sometimes Christian, sometimes Muslim,
sometimes Jewish – and a large, white candle representing truth is solemnly
lit. The audience is then asked to rise
out of respect for the victims and their families while they file in… The seven
commissioners in attendance then came down from their white linen-clad tables
to welcome the victims – by shaking hands, embracing, kissing. Many of the victims were already sobbing,
overcome by the mere fact that an official government representative was
showing them respect.[20]
Standing on Holy Ground
The
very solemnity and liturgical atmosphere of the TRC assemblies may have played
a role in moving people to extraordinary acts of both repentance and
forgiveness. Tutu relates one especially
tense scene in which members of a militia, accused of a particularly brutal
massacre of anti-apartheid demonstrators, stood before a packed house of
victims and relatives of victims. Tutu
describes the situation in the hearing room as “combustible” until one of the
officers, acting as a spokesman, begged for forgiveness: “Please, forgive
us. Please accept my colleagues back
into the community.”[21] Tutu relates what happened next:
And
do you know what that audience, that angry audience, did? It broke out into deafening applause. And afterwards I said, “Please let us keep
quiet because we are in the presence of something holy… Really, the only
appropriate response is for us to take off our shoes, because we are standing
on holy ground.[22]
Almost
certainly
The
previous hearing, in East London, as well as numerous TRC ceremonies of the
previous weeks… were far too ‘religious’ for (the Commissioners) taste. The many prayers, the hymn singing before and
during the hearings and the religious wrappings of the process were out of
place. The TRC process was a legal
process and should be conducted in a juridical style.[24]
Indeed Tutu, as an internationally
recognized and charismatic personality, was the human face of the TRC and, in
this role, he often spoke in a religious idiom.
Bishop Peter Storey, a retired Methodist bishop and member of the TRC
has said of Tutu: “He has wept with the victims and marked every moment of
repentance and forgiveness with awe.
Where a jurist would have been logical, he has not hesitated to be
theological. He has sensed when to lead
an audience in a hymn to help a victim recover composure, and when to call them
all to prayer.”[25] There can be little question that it was this
uniquely compassionate and open vulnerability that also drew the attention (and
cameras) of the world’s media to
Very
few people objected to the heavy spiritual and indeed Christian emphasis of the
commission. When I was challenged on it
by journalists I told them I was a religious leader and had been chosen as who
I was. I could not pretend I was someone
else… It meant that theological and religious insights and perspectives would
inform much of what we did and how we did it.[26]
It is apparent, from this comment, that learning more
about Tutu’s theological perspectives is fundamental to understanding the
religious framework that informed the TRC’s work. Tutu’s open religiosity struck some as
inappropriate at best for the TRC’s proceedings and perhaps bizarre for
others. On the other hand, when reading
the transcripts of the TRC hearings it becomes clear that an affinity for
religious language and scriptural references was not driven by overzealous
commissioners. A religious idiom seemed
to flow easily and voluntarily from many of those giving testimony. Indeed, eighty-seven percent of South
Africans indicated in a 2002/2003 survey[27]
that they had some form of religious affiliation, while seventy percent of
respondents to a 2001 survey claimed to attend a religious service at least
once a month.[28] Considering, then, the pervasive influence of
religion in
Tutu’s Ubuntu Theology
Something other than
Christian religious formulations permeated the TRC and is remarked upon by
nearly all major analyses of the TRC; it emanates from the African tribal
heritage and is commonly referred to as ubuntu. While pre-Christian in origin, ubuntu is
easily incorporated into Christian formulations. Like many idiomatic words, Africans typically
preface its interpretation with the caveat that it may not translate perfectly
into English. “Tutu is from the Xhosa
people,” Michael Battle, a former Tutu aide, categorizes Tutu’s appropriation
of ubuntu into his theology, “and his sense of ubuntu derives from the
proverbial Xhosa expression ubuntu
ungamntu ngabanye abantu which, translated roughly, means ‘each
individual’s humanity is ideally expressed in relationship to others’ or a
‘person depends on other people to be a person’.”[29] Tutu himself explains it this way: “My
humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.”[30]
It
was the incorporation of this ubuntu perspective into the TRC that may explain
why many black South Africans were moved to publicly forgive those who
oppressed or physically abused them. It
is within this worldview that many in the black community approached the
commission’s work and thus equated the forgiveness of others, even oppressors,
with the healing and restoration of society.
If the spirit of ubuntu already frames the thinking of the victims, it
provides powerful leverage for a commission to promote its goal of reconciliation.
Ubuntu,
in theory at least, is a model not only for helping victims regain their
humanity, but also for their oppressors to do the same. The idea behind ubuntu is to restore the
oppressor’s humanity by enabling the oppressed to see their oppressors as their
peers under God. The relationship of
oppressor and oppressed, shattered by apartheid, is restored through the spirit
of ubuntu. When formulated into Tutu’s
theology, ubuntu finds its genesis in the account of God’s creation, in which human
identity is defined in the image of God.
Created by God, but becoming finite through sin, humans are nonetheless
destined for reconciliation with God through God’s plan for redemption and
salvation. Accordingly, observes
A Theology of Forgiveness
An important component of ubuntu, as a facilitator of reconciliation, is
the act of forgiving others for transgressions.
Forgiveness is also deeply constitutive of Christianity. Indeed, writes Christian intellectual and
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, forgiveness is the “crown of Christian ethics,”
and is the “most difficult of moral achievements,” as its foundation is love of
the other, while recognizing and acknowledging sin in the self. In the Judaeo-Christian traditions, the aim
of human forgiveness is reconciliation, the healing of broken relationships.[33]
Principal among the
Christian ideals characterizing the work of the TRC was its employment of what
Rodney Petersen has called a Christian theology
of forgiveness in which forgiveness is construed as the free gift of a
loving God in which Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross and His resurrection are
both the personification of God’s grace and a model for human forgiveness.[34] For Christians, a new law
and a new prescription for forgiveness emerged through the narrative of the
cross where Jesus’ death and resurrection is seen as embodying divine love and
universal atonement for human sins. His
life and final sacrifice created a new paradigm of unqualified grace, a model
which Christians are urged to follow by offering unlimited and unconditional
forgiveness to wrongdoers.[35] In this paradigm,
forgiveness is offered antecedent to, or in absence of, contrition or a secular
form of justice
This
understanding of the relationship between God and humankind, as well as in
human relations, represents, in the view of Hannah Arendt, the political
theorist and intellectual, a radical and historical change. She credits Jesus of Nazareth as being the
“discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs.” It was Jesus’ radical assertion of His power
to forgive, even more than His miracles, says Arendt, that generated responses
ranging from intrigue to cries of blasphemy.
Importantly, she observes, Jesus maintained that the power to forgive
was not exclusive to God or even that this power derives from God, “…as though
God, not men, would forgive through the medium of human beings.”[36]
This Christian
understanding of cross and resurrection narratives as the theological
foundation for forgiveness is reflected in the TRC hearings and in the comments
of Tutu, especially when he addresses the question of whether repentance must
precede forgiveness:
Does the victim depend
on the culprit’s contrition and confession as the precondition for being able
to forgive? There is no question that,
of course, such a confession is a very great help to the one who wants to
forgive, but it is not absolutely indispensable. Jesus did not wait until those who were
nailing him to the cross had asked for forgiveness. He was ready, as they drove in the nails, to
pray to his Father to forgive them and he even provided an excuse for what they
were doing. If the victim could forgive
only when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into the
culprit’s whim, locked into victimhood, whatever her own attitude or
intention. That would be palpably
unjust.[37]
At the same time, in the
understanding of Tutu and the TRC, this theological foundation of forgiveness
did not exclude or dispense with repentance and restitution. Rather, forgiveness was posited as a force
that both actuates and propels a continuum that leads to reconciliation; along
that continuum, repentance and redress may occur. Retributive justice models may also produce a
forbearance of violence and political stability. Without forgiveness, however, reconciliation
in the sense of a fully restored, harmonious relationship and society will not
occur, thus the sense behind the title of Tutu’s memoir of the TRC, No Future Without Forgiveness. For Tutu, truth-telling alone, unalloyed by
forgiveness, lacks orientation. By
exposing the horror and injustice of past acts, truth-telling may just as
easily fuel revenge or violence.
Alternatively, truth-telling, when framed in a disposition of
forgiveness and a restoration of personal relationships, provides the energy
that feeds the process that leads to social and political reconciliation.
Can Reconciliation Occur Where There is Imperfect
Justice?
While
the TRC was grounded in secular purpose (achieving a peaceful transition of
governments), its execution, as has been shown, was often shaded by theological
perspective, language, and symbols. The
religious ambiance of the hearings combined with the amazing grace being
demonstrated by Mandela, Tutu, and many of apartheid’s victims, seemed to
reflect a stunning act of national salvation and reconciliation. However, this was not the case at all. All was not, as the African hymn of unity
proclaims, kumbaya.
The
TRC struggled mightily, not only with secular critics of its religious
overtones but from within ecclesial circles as well. “The popular view, in the
Another criticism directed against
the TRC was that victims may have felt pressured to forgive their enemies,
especially when highly public appeals were made to follow Christ’s model of
self-renunciation and forgiveness of transgressors. That led some observers to complain that the
outward public displays of forgiveness were more attributable to Archbishop
Tutu’s powerful and charismatic presence than a genuine response of
forgiveness.
In
stark contrast to a sense of coaxed forgiveness in the victim hearings, Audrey
Chapman writes that those presiding over the amnesty hearings did not share the
same intensity in soliciting acknowledgements and contrition from
perpetrators. Indeed, the law’s
requirements for amnesty did not include repentance. This, Chapman observes, left many viewing the
process as unbalanced and one-sided.[40] To be sure, the amnesty hearings produced a
number of acknowledgements of stark brutality accompanied by moving, tearful
contrition and requests for forgiveness.
Others appearing before the amnesty board, however, acknowledged their
deeds but did so under the protective umbrella of “following orders.” Some (who knows how many) said one thing to
the amnesty board in public, another in private. Graybill recounts one Captain Jacques
Hechter, a security policeman, expressing contrition for dozens of murders
saying he had committed the acts “in the interest of the
Ach,
I’m not fuckin’ sorry for what I did.
Look—I fought for my country, I believed in what I did, and I did a good
job. They were my enemy at the time.[42]
As
indicated earlier, amnesty was not granted in all cases. Indeed, less than twelve percent of those who
made application were actually granted full amnesty. On the other hand, if the amnesty applicant
made a full disclosure, amnesty could be granted on the spot. By contrast, victims requesting reparations
or some form of rehabilitation had to make application and then wait for the
reparations process to begin which, in fact, could not proceed until the
Commission had closed and issued its final report in 1998. Even then, the cash-strapped South African
government fell far short of the TRC’s recommendations.[43] No wonder, then, that many looked upon the
TRC as justice not only delayed but also either unfulfilled or unbalanced.
These
imperfections in the TRC process, however, were not the creation of the
commissioners – they were merely working with an instrument that was the result
of a political negotiation, the residue of bringing the white South African
government to the point where it was willing to relinquish or share power. Tutu, in his memoir of the TRC, recognizes
the inherent limitations of the commission and in that context tries to look
beyond these imperfections to a bigger picture, one centered on ubuntu:
…the
amnesty provision is an ad hoc arrangement meant for this specific purpose
[restoring society following the long nightmare of apartheid]. This is not how justice is to be administered
in
Tutu,
perhaps more than anyone else, recognized that as a result of the TRC’s
structural flaws – which he concedes were negotiated by black as well as white
politicians – “our freedom has been bought at a very great price.”[45] Perhaps it was this recognition of its own
imperfection that drove the commission to demonstrate a great deal of
compassion and respect for the victims that had been so conspicuously denied
them in the past.
The TRC: Reconciling the Religious and the Secular
While reconciling intra-church interpretations for forgiveness and
reconciliation generated plenty of debate, perhaps even more challenging for
the TRC was its attempt to reconcile religious and secular perspectives. This hurdle was all the higher for some
because of the presence of Christian language and symbols – prayers, hymns, lit
candles. Use of religious frames and
idioms within a secular commission was considered inappropriate by some observers. Interestingly, that view was shared by some
Christian clergy. In one of the best
assessments of the fruits of the TRC, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) began a multidisciplinary study of the influence
of religion on the TRC’s work shortly after the close of the TRC in 1998. Published in 2002, the core of the study
features thirty interviews with leading religious figures, mostly Christian,
working within
One of the more striking themes
woven through these interviews with leading religious figures is that many were
themselves uncomfortable or even critical of the TRC’s conflating national
reconciliation with interpersonal forgiveness.
While there was agreement that forgiveness is especially characteristic
of the Christian approach to personal reconciliation, there was concern that
this formulation was not easily transferable to the secular arena where
codified procedure and process dominate and where a more final judgment and
reparation is fundamental. Recognizing
this, the majority of the interviewees also seemed to make their own
distinction between forgiveness as an individual and religious option and
criminal, social, or economic justice as the appropriate concern of secular
society.
Reading through the interviews, one
hears echoes of the proposition that true reconciliation must be accompanied by
some tangible measure of justice, especially justice attained through a
restructuring of disordered social and economic models. This sentiment is reflected in the comments
of Bishop Kevin Dowling, bishop of Rustenburg and Chair of the Justice and
Peace Department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
But
in the end real reconciliation, I believe, in our country is only going to
happen when people experience economic transformation, economic justice. The radical redistribution of the resources
of the country so that the degrading poverty and misery in which so many of our
people lived and so many still live is going to change.[46]
The bishop’s sentiments resonate
with those of Fr. Sean O’Leary, acting director of the Pastoral Institute of
the Catholic Bishops Conference, who believes that while forgiveness may apply
to individual cases, it does not translate easily, if at all, to a broader
social or national application. O’Leary
observes that secular society views the rule of law as correcting deviant
behavior and does not have a formula for incorporating forgiveness or
reconciliation. The problem, then,
O’Leary says is that ‘reconciliation’ is so susceptible to being misunderstood
or interpreted differently. The TRC, he
says, reflected these contrasting and often conflicting definitions: The first was to ‘forgive and forget’, as if
you could wipe out the collective memory of a nation. This approach would have negated and
sabotaged the whole task of the Truth Commission, which was to acknowledge and
record the past in such a way it would form the foundation for building a
unified society. The second was building
bridges across the divisions in society, without seriously wanting to change
the structures that maintained these divides.[47]
For his part, Tutu and others on the
TRC did not view their application of forgiveness as a matter of forgetting or
eschewing justice:
In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember,
so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what had
been done. It means taking what happened
seriously and not minimizing it; drawing out the sting in the memory that
threatens to poison our entire existence.
It involves trying to understand the perpetrators and so have empathy,
to try to stand in their shoes and appreciate the sort of pressures and
influences that might have conditioned them.[48]
Read closely, Tutu’s understanding reflects a more pragmatic notion of
forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation than might be ordinarily
credited. It is not “forgiveness at all
costs” nor is it “forgive-and-forget”; rather, it seeks, as the TRC did, to use
the selfless act of forgiveness to create a new narrative that transforms the
behavior of individuals who will, it is anticipated or hoped, shape broader
social and cultural values and positively impact future conflicts. This understanding is echoed by Miroslav Volf
who does not separate forgiveness from the struggle for justice. “Forgiveness,” writes Volf, “does not stand
outside justice.” While the will to
“embrace” (Volf’s metaphor for forgiveness) is unconditional it also
encompasses, he contends, the will to name a wrong as a wrong and it also
includes the will to rectify the wrongs that have been done. So forgiveness also entails an assigning of
blame, and its acceptance is a reception of blame. For Volf, forgiveness requires “attending to
justice” but does not link itself to a final or adjudicated justice in the
secular sense. Indeed, Volf argues that
waiting for a strict and final justice is not a fruitful approach for the very
reason that no strict justice is possible.
“Within the overarching framework of strict justice, enough justice
never gets done because more justice is always possible than in fact gets
done.” For Volf a more constructive view
of forgiveness is to frame it as a constituitive element, what might be termed
a “kick-start” for a process or
continuum that leads to reconciliation, a continuum that will include
repentance on the part of offenders, justice for both victims and offenders,
and restitution for victims. In this
continuum, however, forgiveness is both the starting point and the essential
medium that propels this continuum.[49]
Coming to Grips With Apartheid
An often cited criticism of the
TRC’s work was its imbalance of racial participation with a relatively large
number of black victims, prepared to bear witness and offer forgiveness,
compared to a relatively small number of white perpetrators, prepared to
confess, to offer repentance, and to request forgiveness. Some of the interviewees concluded that the
white community, for the greater part, continued to deny its moral complicity
with the apartheid system and that it had benefited disproportionately from the
TRC process. This inability of the TRC
to bring whites, in numbers, to ask for forgiveness was blamed on the absence
of a strong, collective voice pleading for the white community to ask for
forgiveness. In other words, there was
no ‘white Tutu.’ Another reason cited
for the lack of acceptance of the TRC’s work in the white community was that
the proceedings were the object of negative reporting by the Afrikaans media
and that the churches overall, especially the conservative Dutch Reformed
Church, failed in bringing its members to accept the process as genuine and of
value. Ironically, it was the pathos of
the hearings, which might have impressed others for its naked vulnerability and
humanity, that struck the more stoic and constrained Afrikaners as staged and theatrical.[50]
For some, the primary difficulty
facing the TRC was congenital. Fr.
O’Leary seized on this as one of the central issues of the TRC. “For me the tragedy of the TRC is that it was
the child of political compromise.”[51] Specifically, he targets the government’s
interim constitution in which the ruling white-dominated Nationalist Party
insisted on amnesty as a key provision in its negotiations with the
black-dominated political groups:
It was only afterward,
when people began to ask how it was possible to give amnesty and do nothing for
those who are victims, that we got the compromise that became the TRC. So I think the starting point for the TRC was
not a good starting point. One of the
major defects of the amnesty process was that people do not have to say they
are sorry. You cannot force forgiveness,
but you can force restitution, and I think we lost an avenue of real progress
there.[52]
Another indictment of the work of the TRC is that one of
its primary objectives – seeking “truth” – was compromised by its efforts to
promote individual healing. The TRC,
argues Chapman, was “not a very effective mechanism to establish ‘historical
truth.’” The commission’s focus on
personal experiences and morality, Chapman avers, diverted attention away from
social reconstruction and community development.[53] As these comments demonstrate, the TRC had a
difficult, perhaps even an impossible mission and no lack of critics. So, did anything positive result from
injecting a religious component, especially religious values such as
forgiveness and compassion, into the TRC hearings?
“The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually”
Central to the challenge facing both the TRC and
In the longer term, then, the real
value of the TRC and its strategies for reconciliation may prove to have been
germinal, a beginning rather than an ending.
A Dutch observer of the TRC’s proceedings saw this quality in the event
as well when she reminded Tutu of a line from an Emily Dickinson poem: “The
truth must dazzle gradually… or all the world be blind.”[55]
While substantial numbers of whites
may not have been physically present at the victim hearings, it is impossible
to assess how this televised and widely discussed event may have impacted the
hearts and minds of listeners and viewers.
Chapman concludes, for instance, that the public hearings of the TRC had
managed to communicate to a great extent the suffering endured by
Of course, hearing the truth and
acknowledging that truth are different matters as are knowing the truth and
acting on the truth. As Fr. O’ Leary
observed, there are many definitions of reconciliation, but reconciliation of
both individuals and societies must begin somewhere. It may be little more than a mustard seed,
but the truth, teamed with forgiveness is at least a seed. Hopefully, it finds fertile soil.
Forgiveness and the Process
of Reconciliation
There is some empirical support for
the assertion that the trajectory of
In
an earlier survey, in 2000, also conducted by IJR and seen here as Exhibit 1,
forgiveness was ranked by South Africans as the most important component in
achieving national reconciliation.[58]
Exhibit 1. What is Necessary for Reconciliation?
|
|
All South Africans % |
Black % |
White % |
Coloured % |
|
National reconciliation requires South
Africans understand one another
better |
75 |
77 |
63 |
78 |
|
National reconciliation requires material compensation for apartheid
victims |
60 |
70 |
20 |
48 |
|
National reconciliation requires people to forgive one another |
78 |
81 |
64 |
83 |
|
National reconciliation requires forgetting the past |
65 |
|