We need to address the misconceptions and misunderstandings about forgiveness, especially in a society where forgiveness played such a crucial role, writes Nico Koopman.
Former President Nelson Mandela has paved the way for our continuous work for restitutive and healing justice in our country. Like Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, he emphasised the importance of forgiveness for building a new South Africa characterised by peace and justice.
Since Madiba was an icon of forgiveness, this year’s Nelson Mandela International Day (18 July) is an opportune moment to reflect on this key issue in democratic South Africa.
Forgiveness is often misunderstood.
Many people see forgiveness as the end of the road. The guilty party must confess their wrong, ask for forgiveness, receive forgiveness and live happily ever after.
Forgiveness is, on the contrary, the beginning of the journey. Forgiveness is an act of hospitality. It is an invitation to guilty parties to practices of contrition and confession, remorse and repentance, reconciliation and restoration, reparation, redress and restitution. Forgiveness that is not the beginning of the journey is cheap and distorted forgiveness; it is forgiveness betrayed.
We must address misconceptions and misunderstandings about forgiveness, especially in a society where forgiveness played such a crucial role in our political life.
During the transition to democracy, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in broader public life, so much forgiveness was shown.
Impetus
These great and heroic acts of forgiveness should not be viewed as the end of the road, but as a major impetus for jointly and urgently journeying towards a life of dignity and justice for all. Where acts of forgiveness are not met with restitution, those who offer forgiveness are pained and wronged once again.
The journey of forgiveness has restitutive justice, healing justice, as destination. This isn’t a journey of anxiety, fear and fright.
It is not one where I need to fear humiliation and rejection, stigmatisation and demonisation, vengeance and destruction, manipulation and submissiveness for the rest of my life. It is one where I know I have been liberated from my guilt. I have been forgiven. I have been set free for seeking justice for all.
I now have a space where I can, free from fear, express my contrition and repentance. Repentance, remorse and contrition is mourning about the inherent wrongness of my conceptions, decisions and actions. It is not to have only regret and sadness about the consequences of the wrong – as if the motive was good.
It is to say, about Apartheid for instance, it was inherently wrong in its conception, nature and essence. Not only its consequences were wrong.
Apartheid was a deliberate model of racist prejudices that guided the intentional development of racist structures; both the conscious and subconscious prejudices and its accompanying structures were justified by sophisticated, racist world views.
This contrition, repentance and mourning about the inherent wrongness and tragedy of Apartheid leads to confession.
To confess is to name and own what went wrong. It is to take responsibility for being an active wrongdoer, a passive and silent bystander who did not pay attention and who benefitted long after the wrong was committed.
We find the courage and the strength to confess and take responsibility in the company of forgiveness. Those who confess because they hear the implicit invitation and plea forthcoming from forgiving hearts, receive the strength to deal with the shame and stain of their wrongs.
Confessions
But where we confess, we experience more.
We experience that people want to embrace us and journey with us in seeking approximate, and not complete, embodiments of restoration, of recompense, of restoration, of reparation, of restitution.
We know absolute reparation is mostly not possible. Nothing can compensate for a human life lost. Nothing can fully compensate for property, family life and social cohesion lost through forced removals. Nothing can fully compensate for the fact that so many were bereft from opportunities to fulfil their potential.
But remorse and confession about wrongs, and taking ownership of wrongs, can and should be accompanied by a life of commitment to dignity, to healing, to justice, to freedom and to equality – as expressed in the Bill of Rights of the South African Constitution. And remorse can also be expressed in our journey with specific persons and groups of persons who were wronged, and our joint search with them for specific forms of redress in specific contexts.
So, restitutive and healing justice can be served by individual and communal practices of remorse and contrition, repentance and confession.
It can, secondly, be served by a communal commitment to the implementation of the life that the Bill of Rights envisages for all people, especially for the most vulnerable. In this respect, the fulfilment of especially socio-economic rights should enjoy priority. And it can, thirdly, address specific situations of redress in specific contexts.
Partnerships of our governmental and corporate sectors, academic institutions, the media and civil society – including religious organisations – are crucial for this journey.
As we celebrate Madiba’s life and honour his legacy, we should learn from each other on this journey in local, continental and global contexts to bring about real restitutive and healing justice.
– Prof Nico Koopman is Vice-Rector for Social Impact, Transformation and Personnel at Stellenbosch University.
