And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 17:14:05 EDT
Subject: Truth in South Africa
Due to travel, we were unable to send out the May 21 & May 28 column in a
timely mannner. Our apologies. RR & PG
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FROM UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
FOR RELEASE: WEEK OF MAY 28, 1999
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS by Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez
TRUTH IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA
(This week's column is a first-person account by Patrisia Gonzales.)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Just for a moment, I stood locked inside the jail
cell of Nelson Mandela, the place where he spent many of his 27 imprisoned
years. I experienced the same screech of the lock, the same cold in the thick
walls, the same weight of the door, and just for a moment, the truth of a
place.
No matter what his tormentors did to his body, they could not capture his
spirit
nor imprison truth.
I was part of a delegation that explored the building of a new South Africa.
I did a lot of praying in Mandela's cell and along the rocks and shells of
Robben Island. I faced the ocean and prayed never to fear and never to walk
away
from change because the conditions for change do not yet exist. I prayed for
young people fighting injustice and for suffering people as they search for
the
truth of their lives.
In the new South Africa, ex-political prisoners give tours of the island.
They have changed the meaning of this place and of their suffering. It's a
place
where they prevailed. The bus driver, an ex-political prisoner, tells of how
comrades were tortured with rape and sodomy. It's truth-telling. His voice
trembles, shaking out the honesty of the moment. "This will never happen
again,"
says an African-American civil rights elder as we all silently watched the
island disappear into the wash of the sunset.
I wanted to understand the role of truth in restoring a country, where the
call to heal the nation is written into the constitution. The Truth and
Reconciliation Commission has accomplished more than any other around the
world,
despite an unrealistic mandate. How can reconciliation of hundreds of years of
colonialism and 30 years of brutal apartheid be accomplished with limited time
and resources? There were transformative moments where survivors forgave so
that perpetrators might become human again, and others where people could not
be
legislated to forgive, heal or speak truth. And yet just to know what happened
is healing, said one white South African we met, who experienced repression
because he supported the black majority during apartheid.
And what of injustice by omission, acts not taken that helped sustain
apartheid? Where does one confess that? Needed is a deeper healing, a deeper
knowing of the hurt that touched everyone's lives. "People are used to taking
a
lot of pain. What apartheid did, what colonialism did, was take away our
belief
that we were human," said Simanga Sithebe, who works in trauma healing.
And there is the ongoing tension between peace-making and justice.
"We compromised justice to achieve truth and on the basis of truth hope to
rebuild South Africa," said Hugo van der Merwe at the Center for the Study of
Violence and Reconciliation. Some mediators believe South Africa wasted the
opportunity for reconciliation among blacks and whites. Others, such as Thabo
Mbeki, who will likely be elected as the country's president on June 2, say
real
reconciliation cannot occur until there is democracy and economic justice.
Laurie Nathan, at the Center for Conflict Resolution, spoke of truth and
recognition: "The TRC managed not collective healing, but collective
recognition
of the past." And a former South African exile noted, "What matters now is
what
is done with the truth."
People must be part of the process of truth to understand their country,
writes Antjie Krog in "Country of My Skull" (Times Books, $27.50) -- something
the United States has yet to experience in such an intentional way. Many
believe
truth-telling can construct a shared moral narrative to rebuild a country. It
is
a process in which victims, the survivors, write history. In keeping with the
idea of "ubuntu" -- a communal humanism that says people are formed by their
community and in relationship to others -- let's hope that South Africa, in
its
monumental task of rebuilding democracy, does not neglect the spiritual
foundation of healing from structural violence.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls Robben Island a place of reconciliation.
There, I understood the reconciliation with myself that occurs before any
reconciliation outside me. Some of us were so struck by Mandela's ability to
forgive his jailers, to befriend them, to not dehumanize them as they had he,
that we wrote letters of forgiveness. We offered them to the ocean, which
swept
them out to sea. More than forgiveness, I understood the power of releasing,
the
freedom in releasing my spirit from oppression's grip while still believing in
the potential humanity of those who commit such wrongs. I understood that
someday we can face truth together.
COPYRIGHT 1999 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Gonzales & Rodriguez can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194,
505-242-7282 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gonzales can be reached diectly at
505-248-0092 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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