The lessons of South Africa (Desmond Tutu)

[struggle4progress]

... The wider world has still not fully appreciated South Africa's reasonably peaceful transition from repression to democracy. They and we remember the first days of that transfer of power to the black majority, when most people believed we would be overwhelmed by a ghastly racial bloodbath ...

There were many occasions when South Africa's fate appeared touch and go. But catastrophe was avoided. Instead, the world marveled - indeed, was awed - by the spectacle of long lines of South Africans of every race snaking their way slowly to polling booths on April 27, 1994 ...

The lesson of South Africa's transition is that no divided country has a future if it insists on going forward without truth and forgiveness. Russia's transition to democracy began at almost the same time as ours. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. Nelson Mandela was released in February 1990. But what is happening in Russia today - rampant organized crime, the conflict with Chechnya, and carnage like the theater hostage disaster and the Beslan school catastrophe - makes South Africa's transition to democracy look like a Sunday school picnic. By avoiding the truth of the Soviet past, Russians have stored up trouble for the future.

A crime can never be buried. Political crimes never fade. We have not forgotten what was done to ordinary black people in the name of apartheid. Indeed, by launching the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we know far more about the full horrors of that era than we would had we sought to prosecute people, or tried simply to move on. Literally, the truth has set us free to be at peace with ourselves. Remembrance and forgiveness have allowed our remembered nightmares to be consigned to the past. It is my deepest hope that Iraqis and other peoples haunted by the past can find a way to live in peace with peace of mind.

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2007/01/19/200701190038.asp

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[tabatha]

2. Thanks for posting that. n/t

[mazzarro]

3. Unfortunately the Iraqi government and b*shCo never looked to South Africa

The fact that punishment and revenge rather than 'truth and reconciliation' of the Iraqi people was uppermost in the minds of the controllers of Iraq has probably doomed the country to an unending cycle of violence that will be hard to stop. And when the situation is coupled with the fact that the war was initiated on lies and deceptions, I fear that the blunder of kangaroo courts and vengeful hangings will not do much to mitigate the problems of the country. South Africa has indeed shown the world that it is possible a people to suffer immensely and still find the peace of mind and the fortitude to forgive your enemies in order to bring peace closer to the world - if the have leaders that are truly out for the people and country. But the neocons - the big and powerful rulers of the globe, will always want to prove themselves by wars and by killings and by summary judgments which unfortunately tend to leave people with bad taste and pains and cries for revenge.