No Future Without Forgiveness

by Desmond Tutu

These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimization. In order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction, amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions and offences associated with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past.

Thus the process in fact encourages accountability rather than the opposite. It assists in the cultivation of the new culture of respect for human rights and the acknowledgment of responsibility and accountability by which the new democracy wishes to be characterized.

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.

Once amnesty is granted, and this has to happen immediately all the conditions laid down in the act have been met, then the criminal and civil liability of the erstwhile perpetrator, and of the state in the case of its servants, are expunged.

This means that the victim loses the right to sue for civil damages in compensation from the perpetrator, and if it is a former state official, then the state will have been indemnified against liability for damages.

this: those who negotiated the reasonably peaceful transition included in their delegations on the liberation movements’ side those who were themselves victims of the viciousness of apartheid.

In a memorable turn of phrase used by one of my teachers at King’s College, London—demonstrating the wonderful allergy of the academic to dogmatism—it would not be unreasonable to assert that those who had negotiated and who produced the TRC law did in fact have the credentials to speak on behalf of the victims and have been heartily endorsed in so doing.

The solution arrived at was not perfect but it was the best that could be had in the circumstances—the truth in exchange for the freedom of the perpetrators.

Most Hutu would feel that they had been found guilty not because they were guilty but because they were Hutu and they would wait for the day when they would be able to take revenge. Then they would pay back the Tutsi for the horrendous prison conditions in which they had been held.

the cycle of reprisal and counterreprisal that had characterized their national history had to be broken and that the only

way to do this was to go beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, to move on to forgiveness, because...

devastate their common motherland. Instead there was this remarkable Truth and Reconciliation Commission to which people told their heartrending stories, victims expressing their willingness to forgive and perpetrators telling their stories of sordid atrocities while also asking for forgiveness from those they had wronged so grievously.

South Africans managed an extraordinary, reasonably peaceful transition from the awfulness of repression to the relative stability of democracy. They confounded everyone by their novel manner of dealing with a horrendous past.

In 1998, I went to Dublin and to Belfast. In both these cities audiences warmed to the message that our South African experience showed that almost no situation could be said to be devoid of hope.

In Belfast, I was deeply impressed by the many dedicated individuals working away in strife-torn communities, building bridges between alienated and traumatized people, being extraordinary agents of peace and reconciliation.

A prayed-in church is qualitatively different from one that has the atmosphere of a concert hall. So I told those dedicated workers for peace and reconciliation that they should not be tempted to give up on their crucial work because of the frustrations

It is and has always been God’s intention that we should live in friendship and harmony.

This story is the Bible’s way of telling a profound existential truth in the form of highly imaginative poetry.

Alienation and disharmony, conflict and turmoil, enmity and hatred characterize so much of life. Ours has been the bloodiest century known to human history. There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused.

Now and again we catch a glimpse of the better thing for which we are meant—for example, when we work together to counter the effects of natural disasters and the world is galvanized by a spirit of compassion and an amazing outpouring of generosity; when for a little while we are bound together by bonds of a caring humanity, a universal

sense of ubuntu, when victorious powers set up a Marshall Plan to help in the reconstruction of their devastated former adversaries; when we establish a United Nations Organization where the peoples of the earth can parley as they endeavor to avoid war; when we sign charters on the rights of children and of women; when we seek to ban the use of antipersonnel land mines; when we agree as one to outlaw torture and racism.

Then we experience fleetingly that we are made for togetherness, for friendship, for community, for family, that we are created to live in...

ultimately goodness and laughter and peace and compassion and gentleness and forgiveness and reconciliation will have the last word and prevail over their ghastly counterparts. The victory over apartheid was proof positive of the truth of this seemingly utopian dream.

we had learned in South Africa that true security would never be won through the barrel of a gun. True security would come when all the inhabitants of the Middle East, that region so revered by so many, believed that their human rights and dignity were respected and upheld, when true justice prevailed.

We happened to have been blessed with leaders who were ready to take risks—when you embark on the business of asking for and granting forgiveness, you are taking a risk.

Our leaders were ready in South Africa to say they were willing to walk the path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation with all the hazards that lay along the way. And it seems their gamble might be paying off, since our land has not been overwhelmed by the catastrophe that had seemed so inevitable.

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.

We do not usually rush to expose our vulnerability and our sinfulness. But if the process of forgiveness and healing is to succeed, ultimately acknowledgment by the culprit is indispensable—not completely so but nearly so.

One day there will be an awful eruption and they will realize that they had tried to obtain reconciliation on the cheap. True reconciliation is not cheap. It cost God the death of His only begotten Son.

True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end dealing with the real situation helps to bring real healing. Spurious reconciliation can bring only spurious healing.

As I have already tried to show, we were constantly amazed in the commission at the extraordinary magnanimity that so many of the victims exhibited.

it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done.

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.

Forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim.

Reconciliation is going to have to be the concern of every South African. It has to be a national project to which all earnestly strive to make their particular contribution—by learning the language and culture of others; by being willing to make amends; by refusing to deal in stereotypes by making racial or other jokes that ridicule a particular group; by contributing to a culture of respect for human rights, and seeking to enhance tolerance—with

with zero tolerance for intolerance; by working for a more inclusive society where most, if not all, can feel they belong—that

Nelson Mandela had been released earlier that year and there was a genuine striving for a negotiated settlement to help the delicate transition from repression to democracy.

If we are going to move on and build a new kind of world community there must be a way in which we can deal with a sordid past.

The most effective way would be for the perpetrators or their descendants to acknowledge the awfulness of what happened and the descendants of the victims to respond by granting forgiveness, providing something can be done, even symbolically, to compensate for the anguish experienced, whose consequences are still being lived through today.

It may be, for instance, that race relations in the United States will not improve significantly until Native Americans and African Americans get the opportunity to tell their stories and reveal the pain that sits in the pit of th...

We saw in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how the act of telling one’s story has a...

True forgiveness deals with the past, all of the past, to make the future possible.

It was a gesture that helped to humanize his adversary where before much had conspired to demonize him. A small handshake can make the unthinkable, the improbable—peace, friendship, harmony, and tolerance—not quite so remote.

Peace is possible, especially if today’s adversaries were to imagine themselves becoming friends and begin acting in ways that would promote such a friendship developing in reality.

A readiness to make concessions is a sign of strength, not weakness.

I have said ours was a flawed commission. Despite that, I do want to assert as eloquently and as passionately as I can that it was, in an imperfect world, the best possible instrument so far devised to deal with the kind of situation that confronted us

People in the different places that I have visited and where I have spoken about the Truth and Reconciliation process see in this flawed attempt

beacon of hope,

a possible paradigm for dealing with situations where violence, conflict, turmoil, and sectional strife have seemed endemic, conflicts that mostly take place not betwe...

Our experiment is going to succeed