Pan-African Postcard

Living forward, understanding backwards

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

2006-04-27, Issue 252

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/33846

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“How nice it would be if whites were to say ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘thank you’ to the vast majority of people in this country who have been so forgiving about the past.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu. April 27 is Freedom Day in South Africa. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem tackles the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the country’s racist past.


Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, is a global figure recognised as a symbol of peace and racial tolerance, probably only taking second place Nelson Mandela, Madiba. Post-Apartheid Tutu, in his wonderful humour and sober combination of theological pacifism with advocacy for social justice and political change, continues to be a voice for the underprivileged not only in his home country but also across the world. He is one of the few individuals around the world without even the political power of a ward councilor, but who wield enormous influence through the moral leadership they offer built on personal integrity and consistency in their commitment to social justice. Tutu has continued to judiciously use that power to speak truth to power inside and outside of South Africa.

He will be remembered for his role as the Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. The Commission was a bold move by the post-apartheid democratic government to help the millions of individual and group victims and perpetrators of the apartheid state and its crimes to come to terms with the past through full disclosure, demonstration of remorse, willingness to atone through personal forgiveness and in some cases administrative and judicial justice and other compensation.

It was a controversial step for a nation whose past atrocities and the consequences were only too painfully glaring, practically in every aspect of life. There were many people who felt then that the main liberation movement, the African National Congress, had already given away too much to the old racist power bloc and that the TRC absolved it further. Not a few people felt that the requirement of remorse was too subjective to be meaningful. Who is to say merely saying sorry meant that the person saying it meant it?

The procedures of the TRC transfixed many across the world with details of the gross violation of people's rights that competed with well-documented Nazi atrocities.

As the TRC continued its proceedings, one could not escape the conclusion that apartheid atrocities orchestrated by the state and its functionaries in a deliberate way for several decades were being put on the same basis as excesses (though condemnable and should not be condoned) by the various anti apartheid organisations especially the armed wings of Umkonto We Sizwe , Azanian Peoples Liberation Army and others. The trial of leading icons of the struggle like Winnie Mandela received mixed reactions. This was not because people supported the crimes for which she was tried but suspected that a woman so badly treated by the apartheid state was also being judicially persecuted by a government she helped bring about because of her controversial relationship with it. The disclosures of human rights violations of the liberation movements somehow made some of the racists feel a kind of dubious vindication in that the Blacks were as bad as them.

Over the months, the TRC became not so much a centre for engineering a new social contract between South Africans in this wonderful and romantically brand new RAINBOW nation (coined by Tutu and seized upon by everyone caught up in the optimism of the times, even though the rainbow has every colour in it except Black!).

Perhaps that symbol of a rainbow nation symbolically represented the balance of power in a post apartheid South Africa where Blacks formed government but essentially are still not in power in many ways. Real economic, social and political power still resides among whites. It is not the classic neo-colonial state as we know in the rest of Africa but rather a power structure that is still very much racialised with a small new Black elite happily acting as overseers. In the face of Tutu's Commission many former leaders of the apartheid state including former President P.W. Botha were defiant and saw no reason to apologise for their crimes. People like the Afrikaner Resistance leader, Eugene TerreBlanche and his types became a symbol of the worst of the racists, determined to resist any change.

No doubt there were many white people who genuinely supported the struggle and suffered many indignities including torture and death, but the majority of apartheid's victims remain black South Africans. Also, whether a white person supported or did not support the apartheid state, they were beneficiaries of its misrule. Does that mean that all whites should feel guilty forever for the crimes of apartheid? It cannot mean that, but they should also not rob Blacks of their painful memories by attacking anybody who suggests that the past should be remembered and atoned for as a racist or someone not interested in 'moving on'.

The pacifist Tutu himself was at the receiving end of both the liberal and conservative backlash last week for saying in an interview during a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the TRC and organised by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation: “How nice it would be if whites were to say 'I'm sorry' and 'thank you' to the vast majority of people in this country who have been so forgiving about the past.” The reactions of many white south Africans including bleeding heart liberals to this statement that I have been following on the pages of the newspapers just goes to show how the past continues to weigh heavily on the present and has implications for the future. Every time historical debt is mentioned Whites tend to feel defensive and reel out their numerous contributions to the struggle. But the truth of racialised economic power in South Africa is that Whites as a group continue to be on top during and after apartheid. The fact that it is only Tutu's critique of their attitude that gets all the attention and not his frequent critique of the government for leaving behind the poor of South Africa (who are mostly Black) is itself proof if any is still needed of who is the privileged group in the new South Africa.

The voice of people like Tutu needs to be heard and acted upon. A philosopher, not frequently quoted these days, once formulated that while “...life must be lived forward it must be understood backwards”. That understanding is still very much in dispute among South Africans, even though they have made a lot of progress that many did not think possible only 15 years ago.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

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