Reflection Process After reading this issue, we invite you to reflect on this excerpt from an interview with Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu on his experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. [We had a] hearing about an event that had happened in Bisho in Ciskei, where 28 people had been killed by soldiers of the Ciskeian Defense Force (CDF) who opened fire on an African National Congress…. The hall was packed to the rafters, and many who attended had either themselves been injured on that occasion or had lost loved ones. So you could imagine the tension in that hall. The first person to speak was the former head of the CDF, who riled virtually everybody by talking in a tone that came across as arrogant and cynical. So the tension rose even further. Then the next group of witnesses consisted of four officers in this defense force. Their spokesperson said, “Yes, we gave the orders for the soldiers to open fire.” You could just feel the audience become really hostile and angry. But then this soldier turned to the audience and made an extraordinary appeal: “Please forgive us, please. The burden of the Bisho massacre will be on our shoulders for the rest of our lives.” He was white and the three other soldiers were black, and he went on to plead with the audience: “Would you please receive my colleagues back into the community?” It was unbelievable, unexpected. You could sense the presence of grace right there, because that audience, angry as they had been, almost immediately turned around and broke out in incredible applause. Here were people who were limping, who were shot, some had lost children or other loved ones, and they could applaud. You couldn’t have choreographed it. It was just spontaneous. The people could quite as easily have booed him. It was the many victims whom the system had for so long consigned to 14
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Tutu at the COP17 “We Have Faith: Act Now for Climate Justice Rally” in Durban, November 2011 © Kristen Opalinski - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
“My humanity is caught up in your humanity, and when your humanity is enhanced—whether I like it or not—mine is enhanced as well. Likewise, when you are dehumanized, inexorably I am dehumanized as well.” anonymity and facelessness—people who had been carrying for 10, 20, 50 years a very heavy burden of anguish—who became the heroes of this process… We have to keep reminding people that we are the beneficiaries of a lot of praying. I think Christians are strange creatures, because it seems we pray for miracles, but then we’re surprised when the miracles do happen. The other part is rooted in what we refer to as ubuntu, the African view that a person is a person through other persons. My humanity is caught up in your humanity, and when your humanity is enhanced—whether I like it or not— mine is enhanced as well. Likewise, when you are dehumanized, inexorably I am dehumanized as well. So there is a deep yearning in African society for communal peace and harmony. It is for us the summum bonum, the greatest good. For in it, we find the sustenance that enables us to be truly human. Anything that erodes this central good is inimical to all, and nothing is more destructive than resentment and anger and revenge. In a way, therefore, to forgive is the best form of self-interest, because I’m also releasing myself from the bonds
that hold me captive, and it is important that I do all I can to restore relationship. Because without relationship, I am nothing, I will shrivel. That is also a very biblical understanding: God is community, God is relationship, God is Trinity. God can’t exist in isolation. Excerpted from “No forgiveness, no future: An interview with Desmond Tutu,” which originally appeared in the August 2000 issue of U.S. Catholic (https://uscatholic.org/ articles/200910/no-forgiveness-no-futurean-interview-with-archbishop-desmundtutu/).
nnWhat did you find most challenging in this issue?
nnWhere in your life do you see the
need for reconciliation? What would restorative justice mean in this context?
nnWhat does the Christian call to
forgive your enemies look like within the context of crime and victimization?
nnAre there any specific ways you
can get involved in transformative justice, either as an individual or in community with others?