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health services, and much more. The task undertaken by James Jarvis in
Ndotsheni needs to be undertaken on a national scale, and that process
remains incomplete in both India and South Africa. Nation- building also
requires careful thought about how to structure legal institutions so that
they correct power imbalances. Generosity does not reform the corrupt jus-
tice system that executed Absalom Kumalo. But non- anger infuses these
deliberations with a productive spirit, and the impressive achievements of
the South African Constitutional Court owe much to its beginnings.
V. No Future without Forgiveness?
The spirit of the new South Africa, then, was the spirit of James Jarvis
and Stephen Kumalo: one of forward- looking and generous friendship. It
involved, however, another famous element: the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which by now has become a model for dozens of similar
commissions in other countries. Its story has been told by one of its chief
architects, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his influential book No Future
without Forgiveness.42 Because Tutu frames the work of the commission in terms of Christian ideas of confession, contrition, and forgiveness, we
must ask whether these ideas fit what the commission actually did, and
whether, if so, it contravened the generous spirit of Mandela.
The topic of truth and reconciliation commissions has by now gener-
ated a vast literature, and I do not intend to survey it.43 Instead, I offer
some general directions for thought that emerge from the cases I have
considered. Each situation calls for sensitive contextual thinking, and
I believe that no blanket prescription would be appropriate, given the
diversity of histories and cultures, except at the most abstract level.
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My argument so far suggests that two things are necessary in a revo-
lutionary transition: acknowledgment of wrongdoing and its seriousness,
and a forward- looking effort of reconciliation. A further helpful element
suggested by prior chapters (and by the practice of Mandela) is the culti-
vation of empathy, the ability to see how the world looks from the other
party’s perspective.44 The apparatus of abasement, confession, contrition,
and eventual forgiveness, by contrast, often impedes reconciliation by
producing humiliation rather than mutual respect, and it frequently acts
as a covert form of punishment, discharging a hidden (or, often, not so
hidden) resentment.
Acknowledgment of the truth of what happened is essential, because
one cannot go forward into a regime of justice, establishing trust, without
insisting on the seriousness of the human interests that were damaged in
the prior time: that insistence is a way of dignifying those interests and
committing the nation to not repeating the wrongs. It gives weight and
reality to fundamental political principles. Thus both Gandhi and King
were unsparing in their truthful description of the wrongs of the raj and
of white racism; although no formal inquiry took place, they made sure
that truth was out there for all to see. In the case of King, formal judi-
cial proceedings against the wrongdoers accompanied and continued
the narratives of wrongdoing produced by King and other civil rights
leaders.
Trials are the normal means of establishing a public truth. In a nation
with a legal system that commands public trust, they are, as Aeschylus
saw, a preferable means. By allowing trials to go ahead, and by insist-
ing that they be fairly conducted, a working democracy takes its stand
against continued injustice. In the case of Gandhi, what was needed was
a new constitutional order following the departure of the British. Because
they were gone, they could not be tried, but they were certainly tried in
the court of public opinion, and had long since been convicted. Gandhi’s
canny relationship with international journalism was his way of conduct-
ing a truth commission, and it proved remarkably effective.
Where truth has been for the most part concealed, one can see that
trust is severely threatened, even after a prolonged effort at reconcilia-
tion. Northern Ireland has made great strides toward reconciliation,
both between Ulster’s Protestants and Catholics and between both and
Britain. The Queen’s willingness to visit Belfast wearing green in 2013,
and, later, to shake the hands of both Gerry Adams and former terrorist
Martin McGuinness, all gave reconciliation a large boost. I happened to
be on the first British Airways flight from London to Belfast in June 2013,
and the joyful spirit, as we were greeted planeside by green cupcakes,
was a heartening sign. And yet, by the spring of 2014 the ongoing debate
about the “secret” transcripts of interviews with former IRA members
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239
being held at Boston College had led to the (brief) arrest of Gerry Adams
in connection apropos of the 1972 abduction, execution, and secret burial
of Jean McConville. This episode shows the fragility of the future, when
truth about the past has been deliberately concealed (and yet is on record
in an archive that people can’t see).45 In conversation with a leader of an
NGO dedicated to the peace process,46 I have heard that many people
just won’t trust Gerry Adams because it is thought that a lot of his real
conduct has been concealed. (Interestingly McGuinness is thought more
trustworthy by some on the grounds that the truth of his murderous
activities is known.) Whether Northern Ireland could have had or can
still have a truth and reconciliation commission is beyond me to judge.
What is evident is that the absence of truth jeopardizes reconciliation,
even after forty years.
Returning now to the three leaders we have been considering, all of
whom promoted the emergence of truth in their own different ways: the
question of reconciliation also took different forms in the three cases.
King, like Lincoln, had to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” and he did
so with his prophetic vision of a transfigured America in which free-
dom and equality would produce genuine brotherhood. From that time
onward, reconciliation was promoted by energetic use of the existing
legal system, as well as through social and educational strategies. The
effort of reconciliation is ongoing, since race- based abuses in police
practice and in the criminal justice system more generally must be cor-
rected if trust is to be established. Terrible events around the nation
in 2015, at least many showing extremely bad behavior by police to
African- Americans, have at least made the nation take notice and make
some efforts at both truth and reconciliation. Achievements are likely to
be piecemeal, gradual, and regionally specific, but one can at least hope
that determination to achieve justice will make progress. Especially
heartening has been the use of King’s methods of nonviolent protest
in many of the affected cities. Although no doubt in many cases the
protests were not free from retributive anger, they typically at least
expressed Dr. King’s spirit and emulated his firm and uncompromising
demand for justice.
Gandhi’s challenge was different. Since the British were, eventually,
gone, reconciliation became an issue of foreign policy, and the nation’s
careful policy of nonalignment during the early years of the republic
buttressed independence and promoted respect for sovereignty, without
rancor or hostility. Meanwhile, Gandhi’s movement, self- consciously
based upon Indian rather than British symbols and phrases, helped
provide the new and highly diverse nation with a common language of
nationhood that has lasted against all odds, producing a stable democ-
racy, albeit one with ongoing tensions and profound economic and
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religious problems. (Needless to say, producing India’s democracy was
the job of many, and both Jawaharlal Nehru and constitutional lawyer
B. R. Ambedkar, both of whom disagreed with Gandhi on some impor-
tant matters, played central roles. Gandhi was an inspirational leader
rather than a legal or institutional thinker, and these other minds made
a crucial contribution.)
The South African case had unique complexity. For there was
in a sense a working legal system, but it had been captured by white
supremacy, and it therefore did not command public trust. The new
nation required, and received, a new constitution. But it also needed a
mechanism by which to acknowledge the wrongs of the past, restoring
public trust in government and creating a shared public sense of right
and wrong. In short, it had aspects of the U.S. and aspects of the Indian
experience.
Could those who committed crimes be tried by some ad hoc tribunal,
as at Nuremberg? Tutu and other leading South Africans posed this ques-
tion. They quickly rejected that alternative. First, in the circumstances,
they worried that a lengthy series of trials would deepen the rift between
white and black, intensifying black resentment and white fear. Trials
would prove a mechanism of ongoing revenge, and would undermine
agreement on and good will toward the new constitution.47 Second, tri-
als would be very expensive, and waste the scarce resources of the state.
Third, they would likely result in less truth, because the accused would
have access to high- powered lawyers, who would instruct them to admit
nothing.48
On the other hand, an immediate general amnesty would also under-
mine public trust going forward, because it would fail to say that outra-
geous deeds had occurred, which seemed necessary for future trust in
the nation and the constitution.49 Tutu suggests that this silence would
revictimize the victims, by failing to acknowledge their suffering.50
Accordingly, leaders converged on a process then innovative, though
since much imitated: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In effect,
the structure of this Commission is that of what I have called Transition-
Anger: a statement of outrage, followed by generous forward- looking
thoughts.
The idea of the TRC was that people would be summoned to tes-
tify, and the reward for acknowledgment would be amnesty. As Tutu
makes clear, this combination was very controversial: for many thought
acknowledgment no use without punishment. And many doubted that
truth would emerge, even in the absence of punishment. But, given the
presence of so many victims as witnesses, there was a strong incen-
tive for perpetrators not to contest the truth, given the fact that the
usual most powerful incentive, fear of punishment, was lacking. And
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241
even the incentive of social standing was ambivalent, since in the new
nation it was already clear that one could no longer take pride in claim-
ing that wrong was right or in other ways resisting the demand for
acknowledgment. Moreover, the Commission made a point of inves-
tigating wrongdoing by ANC members and other revolutionaries, as
well as whites: it was in this way that the actions of Winnie Mandela
came to light. This even- handedness helped in no small measure to
inspire trust.
I have said that Mandela was careful to show respect for his former
oppressors and never to humiliate them. Did the Commission follow his
lead, or did it humiliate? This is a very difficult and, to some degree,
an individual question. But the procedures were dignified, and showed
respect; and the future amnesty, a palpable presence throughout, assured
those who testified that they would subsequently be received as equal
citizens in a new nation, rather than being stigmatized as criminals.
Telling what one has done need not humiliate, if it is framed as a precon-
dition for a future of trust and equal respect. Perhaps the most troubling
feature of the testimony is that it often involved telling not only what one
had done oneself but also what friends and associates had done. That sort
of “ratting” can be seen as deeply humiliating and emasculating.51 On the
other hand, given the amnesty, to tell was not to deliver one’s buddies to
a despised and stigmatized fate, but simply to state a fact, which would
be followed by a future of equal respect. So in principle, if not always in
practice, it seems to me that the design of the Commission was shrewd,
emphasizing exactly the two things that the welfare of the new nation
required: truth about the past, creating public trust and respect for right
and wrong;52 and reconciliation, in the form of the amnesty, which pro-
vided a new start.
This is the picture one gets if one reads Tutu’s detailed narrative of
what the Commission actually did. But his framing of it in at least some
of his subsequent speeches, from which he quotes in the book’s conclu-
sion, is a different matter. For here he introduces the full transactional
version of the Christian account of confession, contrition, apology, and
conditional forgiveness that I have said we should regard with skep-
ticism, as punitive and often a covert form of anger. It is significant
that those close to Mandela regard this sort of confessional language
with skepticism as well.53 According to Tutu, reconciliation is part of a
divinely ordained cosmic process that moves human beings gradually
toward unity in Christ. This is essentially an extra- human process, “the
process at the heart of the universe.”54 Individual human beings can
either join in or obstruct. In order to join in, they have to “walk the path
of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.”55 This path requires of
wrongdoers that they confess the truth, apologize, express “remorse, or
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at least some contrition and sorrow,” and “ask for forgiveness.”56 When
these conditions have been met, wronged parties should let go of their
resentful feelings. Tutu adds that they may occasionally be able to for-
give without the confession, but that in this case the “root of the breach”
will not be exposed, and the whole process may remain incomplete. So
it is i
ncumbent upon the wrongdoer to initiate the process by exposing
himself, confessing, assuming “a fair measure of humility,”57 and asking
contritely for forgiveness. The victim then ought to accept the apology
with an “act of faith”— which Jesus tells us to repeat as many times
as the wrongdoer offers a confession.58 He continues with much more
about Christ’s forgiveness and the metaphysical teleology it suggests
to him.
Here we see the transactional and conditional strand of the Christian
picture: not the behavior of the father of the prodigal son, but the behavior of penitent and confessor. Clearly Tutu believes deeply in these religious
concepts and believes that they are what make the process of reconcili-
ation work. More recently, he has spoken of the roots of these ideas in
his own experience of anger at seeing his father abuse his mother.59 Such
concepts clearly are meaningful to many. On the other hand, if we try
to imagine the conversation of Mandela with the rugby team in these
terms, its limits become clear. The demand to repent would have been
like a gust of that cold wind in his parable, and would surely have inten-
sified resistance. Mandela had no taste for this type of religious tele-
ology, nor for the extraction of apology and remorse from others. He
believed that only open- hearted generosity enabled him and the team to
move forward to mutual respect and friendship. Indeed, the prominent
role of lightheartedness, kindliness, and humor in his dealings with all
former oppressors was remarkable. Nor does Tutu misrepresent him: he
describes Mandela as “a man regal in dignity, bubbling over with mag-
nanimity and a desire to dedicate himself to the reconciliation of those
whom apartheid and the injustice and pain of racism had alienated from
one another.”60
So Tutu has painted his own picture, and it is significantly differ-
ent, as he himself shows, from the process that Mandela enacted, and
different, too, from the process that, by his own account, the Commission
enacted. Not surprisingly, given the modern hold of Christian ideas,
Mandela’s legacy is often described in Tutu’s terms, as one of forgive-
ness. But in reading his published writings I find no use of that word or
those ideas. Nor does Albie Sachs recall any such use of the ideas of con-