No Future Without Forgiveness

by Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, “Yu, u nobuntu”; “Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.” Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” We belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other persons.” It is not, “I think therefore I am.” It says rather: “I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.” A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.

One might go on to say that perhaps justice fails to be done only if the concept we entertain of justice is retributive justice, whose chief goal is to be punitive, so that the wronged party is really the state, something impersonal, which has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense.

How was it possible for normal, decent, and God-fearing people, as white South Africans considered themselves to be, to have turned a blind eye to a system which impoverished, oppressed, and violated so many of those others with whom they shared the beautiful land that was their common motherland? Apartheid could not have survived for a single day had it not been supported by this enfranchised, privileged minority. If they “did not know,” as many claimed, how was it that there were those within the white community who not only knew of the baneful results of official policies but who condemned the vicious policy and worked to end it? And

The newspapers were not averse to self-censorship so as not to rouse the wrath of the government and ostensibly to avoid statutory control. When the apartheid government closed the black newspaper the World, the white papers in the same newspaper company were lukewarm in their protest, suggesting that the World had been playing with fire and had got what had been coming its way. It was not unusual for a white reporter’s copy to be preferred to that of a black reporter even if the latter had firsthand experiences of what he or she was reporting on. When black reporters described the appalling conduct of the security forces against blacks, their copy was normally toned down as perhaps maligning these forces. Now we know, of course, that the black reporters were telling it as it was. The editors would have angrily denied that they were being racist. No, they wanted “objective” writing. They did not care to define from whose perspective “objective” was to be judged because the assumption was that their standards were universal. They

Thus the highest virtue in South Africa came to be conformity, not bucking the system. The highest value was set on unquestioning loyalty to the dictates of the Broederbond. That is perhaps why people did not ask awkward questions. For most, something had to be so because someone in authority had declared it to be so. They found it singularly difficult if not impossible to distinguish between authoritative and authoritarian. In the end even the most bizarre idea could be accepted because the herd instinct was invoked.

They have spent far too much time, in my view, whining, being quick to find fault and gloating shortsightedly at the imagined and real shortcomings of those at the helm nowadays. They are filled with far too much resentment at the fact that they have lost some political power. The trouble is that they have believed that there are only two possible positions in any sociopolitical setup. You are either the top dog or you are the underdog. There is no place in this kind of scenario for participatory, shared power.

Thus it is not at all surprising that those accused of horrendous deeds and the communities they come from, for whom they believed they were committing these atrocities, almost always try to find ways out of even admitting that they were indeed capable of such deeds. They adopt the denial mode, asserting that such-and-such has not happened. When the evidence is incontrovertible they take refuge in feigned ignorance. The Germans claimed they had not known what the Nazis were up to. White South Africans have also tried to find refuge in claims of ignorance. The former apartheid cabinet member Leon Wessels was closer to the mark when he said that they had not wanted to know, for there were those who tried to alert them. For those with eyes to see there were accounts of people dying mysteriously in detention. For those with ears to hear there was much that was disquieting and even chilling. But, like the three monkeys, they chose neither to hear, nor see, nor speak of evil. When some did own up, they passed the blame to others, “We were carrying out orders,” refusing to acknowledge that as morally responsible individuals each person has to take responsibility for carrying out unconscionable orders.