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Thoughts on Reconciliation and Reality
In the course of a public discussion on reconciliation held in South Africa, Reverend Mxolisi Mpambani told a story: Peter and John are friends. But Peter stole John’s bicycle. Three weeks later Peter said to John, ‘Let’s talk about reconciliation.’ John told him, ‘We can’t discuss reconciliation until you give my bicycle back.’ Peter responded, ‘Forget about the bicycle. Reconciliation is the important point.’ John refused to have anything to do with him © By Colleen Scott
Reverend Mpambani pointed out that returning something material was one form of the problem. But those who were murdered can not be returned: the survivors’ aching emotional loss is something they must endure as long as they live. And the trauma of physical and emotional abuse, of torture and rape, cannot be erased in any material way.
In the same discussion, Heidi Grunebaum-Ralph, a doctoral student, noted that when speaking of reconciliation there is a danger of forgetting who was wronged and of encouraging a kind of amnesia which devalues the experience of those who have suffered.
Victims and survivors do not forget what has happened to them. If their experiences remain unaddressed and are allowed to fester they will have catastrophic consequences in the future. Attempts to evade the reality of those who have suffered hideously in the past set the stage for those memories to boil over in violent response to the immediate present; even worse, the memory of these grotesque realities are passed on to succeeding generations and become a mythology which will support equally hideous reaction in the future. Unless they are faced as a part of a complete reality, sooner or later memories are acted upon.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate and Chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has said: ‘You can only be human in a human society. If you live with hate and revenge, you dehumanize not only yourself, but also your community. You must forgive to make your community whole.’ But Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who is known for having tracked down more than 1000 Nazi war criminals, tells us that, ‘Forgiveness is a personal matter, and I am not authorized to forgive on behalf of others.’
Thabo Mbeki, Deputy President of South Africa has observed that, ‘Real reconciliation cannot be achieved without a thorough transformation and democratization process. True reconciliation can only take place if we succeed in our objective of social transformation.’ Charles Villa-Vicencio, former Research Director of the TRC, doesn’t speak of reconciliation. He talks about achieving ‘peaceful coexistence’.
The Archbishop is completely correct in his references to a dehumanized community, and Wiesenthal’s point that forgiveness is a personal matter must persist alongside the truth the Archbishop makes clear. Certainly the ideal of reconciliation is easily -and frequently- misused, as Grunebaum-Ralph points out. When a nation adopts reconciliation as a focus it all too easily happens that victims and survivors are faced with an impatient demand that of course they must reconcile, and they must do so immediately.
Mbeki and Villa-Vicencio identify the central practical problem of reconciliation. Achieving reconciliation requires -and requires absolutely- some basic elements.
Reconciliation needs truth. People must know what happened, and why it happened to them. They need to know where their deceased lie; they must know if those who simply disappeared are alive somewhere, or are long dead. Truth is painful, but this pain must be endured if there is to be any hope of reconciliation.
Hasan Nuhanovic was an interpreter for the UN Military Observers and for the Dutchbat team guarding the demilitarized enclave of Srebrenica. She was an eyewitness of the events of mid-July 1995 when she lost her brother, father and mother. ‘The Dutch, like the French, British and US governments, are trying to forget the Srebrenica massacre. They are doing nothing to help us, the families of the missing, to find out the truth about what happened to our loved ones.’
If there is to be any hope of reconciliation in the wake of the Srebrenica massacres, people like Hasan Nuhanovic must learn the truth of what happened to their loved ones.
Reconciliation requires that victims and survivors are heard. Their stories, their emotional and factual truths must be fully acknowledged. But the perpetrators must be heard too. Putting all these stories together creates a reality which is resistant to mass mythology constructed from the worn fabric of ancient grievances. An old Italian proverb tells us that noble vengeance is the daughter of deep silence. Avoiding that ‘noble vengeance’ is a matter of gently cultivating an openness to full reality when silence has been either harshly imposed, or is clung to.
In their creation, Truth Commissions focus on reconstructing memory. This requires that both the factual and the emotional truth is made clear. To quote the Guatemalan Accord for the United Nations sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification, it’s purpose is ‘To clarify with all objectivity, equity and impartiality the human rights violations that have caused the Guatemalan population to suffer, connected with the armed conflict.’
In her classic comparative study of fifteen Truth Commissions published by the Human Rights Quarterly in 1994, Priscilla B. Hayner notes that the El Salvadorian Truth Commission report had, in the end, confirmed what many people have long accepted as true. But official acknowledgement of widespread abuses was important in itself. This observation applies to many of the Truth Commissions which have been convened in the last 25 years.
The question following the work of a Truth Commission is whether or not the parties running the government will build on the facts which have been uncovered. Governments and citizens may attempt to ignore what has been brought to light. But memory is almost impossible to wipe out.
Restitution and rehabilitation are essential to reconciliation: Mpambani’s story is a simple explanation of one of the cardinal challenges facing those who would work for reconciliation. Restitution is another form of justice, and may well be a form which will much mean more to victims and survivors than will prison sentences for perpetrators.
Donald Shriver, author of ‘An Ethic for Enemies’ also notes: ‘Apologies set the record straight; restitution sets out to make a new record...’ But when large groups of people suffer intense and ongoing human rights violations, what is stolen is far more difficult to return than a bicycle. As one black South African put it when describing what had happened during apartheid: ‘They stole the laughter of our children.’
Rehabilitation and restitution open the possibility of bringing the laughter back to the next generations.
Reconciliation is not a goal. It is a process. When thinking about reconciliation, we must remember the fact that today’s perpetrators were yesterday’s victims. Let us consider some common misconceptions and misunderstandings of what reconciliation is.
1 Equating forgiveness with reconciliation is an error. Both are effective in different ways, but they are very, very different actions. It simply may not be humanly possible for a person to forgive. But even when that’s true, it’s still possible for that person to choose to reconcile. A person may choose to follow the path of reconciliation for their own good, or for the greater (social) good, or for both reasons... and still not be able to forgive. And an individual may choose to forgive the perpetrator, but not what that perpetrator did, which will have consequences for the reconciliation process.
2 Acknowledgement can be almost as effective as apology, especially when forgiveness is not expected and reconciliation is sought. But equating acknowledgement with apology is a mistake. Simply admitting that you’ve done something that’s caused great hurt or harm is a very different action from an apology on the basis of real remorse, especially with the intention to rectify the harm that’s been done. It may be possible to reconcile when the truth is known. But forgiveness requires repentance which is also expressed by personal efforts to heal the damage and its consequences.
3 Another problem has to do with the assumption that there’s one all encompassing truth which is humanly knowable. When a person has been tortured, or a loved one has been murdered, and the perpetrators of these acts disclose what they’ve done as fully as they are able, their honesty may still not be the truth that the victims, or the survivors of atrocity desperately need to hear. There’s an enormous gap between the factual truth, and the reality which encompasses both factual truth and the emotional truth. To re-create the reality which existed before, the factual truth must be known. But room must also be made for the emotional truth of the victims, the survivors, and the perpetrators. Reconciliation requires the painful acceptance of this reality, as imperfect as it will unquestionably be.
4 Unconsidered, unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible expectations make reconciliation very, very difficult. If you commit atrocities, are a victim of atrocities, or are exposed to atrocity, it is not possible to return to a time before violations took place. The past can not be erased or changed. No one can be returned to a time of innocence before hideous acts are committed. Reconciliation can not restore the dead to life, or wipe out hideous memories. Neither can vengeance or revenge accomplish this - either of which will tend to perpetuate the cycle of action-reaction and cause and effect. Even punishment, as dictated by due process under rule of law, will not wipe away past suffering.
It is also true that a person may honestly believe that the act of telling their story will be enough, or that hearing a perpetrator’s story will be enough, and that either or both together will create reconciliation. This may happen, and the presence of an outside agency which is devoted to the ideal of reconciliation will strengthen this possibility. But frequently a great deal more is needed.
5 There is also the problem of coping with atrocity. What is to be done with a person who confesses to having deliberately tortured and/or murdered thirty, forty, fifty people under orders from his superiors whose current ‘wisdom’ and long-range goals he believed in completely? In ‘The Human Condition’, Hannah Arendt argues that it is impossible to punish radical evil: ‘...men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish, and they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable. This is the true hallmark of those offenses which, since Kant, we call ‘radical evil’, and about whose nature so little is known, even to us who have been exposed [to them]...’
Youk Chang is a survivor and archivist of the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia. When reflecting on what should be done with the Khmer Rouge leaders now, he notes that it is impossible to truly punish them. ‘How would they pay back two million lives? Should they die two million times? Live in hell for two million years?... The crimes they committed are so grave that I don’t know what punishment would be fair.’
6 Lack of attention to the fruits of history and their relationship to individual and group motivation causes terrible problems. This is not a question of justification, but of comprehension which can lead to both the understanding, and the compassion needed -on both sides- for reconciliation to be realized. Jose Zalaquett is a Chilean activist and lawyer who served on his country’s Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. He wrote, ‘Memory is identity. Identities consisting of false or half memories easily commit atrocities.’
History is a chain of human action and reaction: the present, and the future, are constructed in the past. No matter how hard we may try, what we can know about what has happened before -the history to which we react- is inescapably formed by what we are able to perceive. It is quite easy to say that there is no such thing as truth. It is much harder to admit that we all have limits of perception; that we all have false and incomplete memories.
7 Then there’s the problem of scape-goating and community versus individual responsibility. It is tempting in the extreme to blame one’s individual actions -or lack of action- on the ethos of the time. It’s human to say to oneself: ‘They did it. I didn’t. I could never do anything like that. And I’d never support it, if I knew about it.’
But the problem is more complex than that. In 1946, when reflecting on German guilt for the atrocities of World War II, Karl Jaspers suggested that there are four levels of guilt, all of which must be addressed. First, there is criminal guilt, relating to the physical perpetrators of aggression. Next is political guilt, something that only active resisters were exempt from. Thirdly there is moral guilt, which involves anyone who closed their eyes to events, or who allowed themselves to be bought off by personal advantage, or by intoxication by events, or who obeyed from fear. Finally, there is metaphysical, or corporate guilt. This is a guilt we all share in by virtue of our common humanity. Jaspers tells us that only by recognizing the potential for evil in all humanity is it possible to create a new source of active life.
8 The belief that justice can only be defined as punishment of perpetrators of human rights violations creates a barrier to reconciliation. Donald Shriver observes that the development of thought from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and John Stuart Mill has been centred on the idea that justice is for the conferring of good, as well as the upholding of right. He writes that ‘justice is a search, as well as a single event.’
In his introduction to ‘Radical Evil on Trial’, a first-hand analysis of developments in Argentina during the 1980s when an inhumanly brutal military dictatorship gave way to a democratic government, Carlos Santiago Nino observes that, ‘...it is questionable whether punishment of radical evil can effectively prevent such evil from recurring.’ He later suggests that a preventionist theory of punishment may fare better. This must include the question of allocation of financial resources.
Shriver writes, ‘Cherishing hope for revenge is one way sufferers of atrocity cope with their memories. But there is another way: facing still-raw past evils with regard for the truth of what actually happened; with resistance to the lures of revenge; with empathy -and no excusing- for all agents and sufferers of the evil; and with real intent on the part of the sufferers to resume life alongside the evildoers or their political successors...’
Justice must include some form of punishment of the guilty. But this is not the only definition of the word; and it may not even be the most crucial -or valuable- interpretation to use when seeking to promote the most fundamental social good in a country riven by war and oppression.
9 Time is a problem. Anyone who believes that a national focus on reconciliation can, or should, solve all problems quickly and simply is a fool. Reconciliation, and rebuilding a shattered society takes decades and generations of slow and steady work. As South African President Nelson Mandela points out, ‘patterns of thought which have been there for more than three centuries can’t be changed in four years.’ The process of reconciliation very often takes more time than people may understand that they must be willing to give it.
Marie Smyth is the co-ordinator of an investigation on the experiences and effects of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ on that population, and professor at Smith College in the United States. At a conference sponsored by INCORE (Initiative on Conflict Resolution & Ethnicity) on coping with transition, she said, ‘From research done in other countries... one of the concepts they came across was that of Positive Revenge. Positive Revenge is when, recognizing the harm that has been done to you, you refuse to allow that harm to determine the rest of your life. You become determined to lead a positive life, to make a positive contribution, and not to let the perpetrator win... [Instead you] resist the damaging effects and triumph over them.’ She goes on to note that some people who have had multiple bereavements or have themselves been terribly injured have managed to overcome their own situation and become active community workers for reconciliation.
What Ms. Smyth speaks of can indeed happen spontaneously and without any outside assistance, sometimes. But if we are serious about breaking the chains of cause and effect and inspiring reconciliation on a broad scale, then we must assist victims and survivors in their efforts to reach this point of personal reconciliation.
As was observed in a recent LatinoLink report on the publication of the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission Report, ‘No one can today insure that the immense challenge of reconciliation through truth can be met with success. In order to do so, the historic facts must be recognized and assimilated in each individual consciousness and the collective consciousness. The country’s future depends in great part on the response of the state and society to the tragedies suffered in flesh and blood by the immense majority of Guatemalan families.’
Or, and as the Final Report of the South African TRC points out, ‘Reconciliation is a process which is never-ending, costly, and often painful. For the process to develop, it is imperative that democracy and a human rights culture be consolidated. Reconciliation is centred on the call for a more decent, more caring, and more just society. It is up to each individual to respond by committing ourselves to concrete ways of easing the burden of the oppressed and empowering the poor to play their rightful part in society.’
An Ethic for Enemies - Forgiveness in Politics, Donald Shriver. London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1995
Building Peace - Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, John Paul Lederach. United States of Peace Press, Washington DC, 1977
Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog. Johannesburg, Random House, 1998
Exploring Forgiveness, Robert D. Enright and Joanna North (eds.). Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1998
Past Imperfect - Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition, Brandon Hamber (ed.). Derry/Londonderry, Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity, United Nations University, 1998. Online copy available: www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/publications/research/dwtp/index.html
Peace by Peacefull Means - Peace and Conflict Development and Civilization, Johan Galtung. Prio Sage, London, 1996
Promoting Justice and Peace through Reconciliation and Coexistence Alternatives, Mohammed Abu Nimer (ed.), American University, Washington, forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, Volumes One through Five. Capetown, Juta, 1998.
The Forgiveness Factor - Stories of Hope in a World of Conflict, Michael Henderson. Grosvenor Books, Salem, 1996
Ways Out - The Book of Changes for Peace, Gene Knudsen-Hofmann (ed.). John Daniel & Company, Santa Barbara, 1988
Feedback please to
j.verhoeven@euconflict.org