Forgiveness and Reconciliation as Conflict Resolution

Tülin Levitas

Montgomery College

Rockville, MD

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The Cradle of Humanity

In July 2004, a Fulbright-Hayes grant took me to South Africa for a month. The very first day that I was in South Africa, I was taken to a place at the outskirts of Johannesburg called “The Cradle of Humanity.”

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The South AfricanTruth and Reconciliation Commission

The work that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has done in South Africa enabled that country to establish its democracy and ensure the future of a unified society.

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Apartheid

Starting with South Africa, we need to look at what the system of “apartheid” came to. “Apartheid” literally means apartness, separateness. It was adopted by the National Party in the early 1940s as a system of segregation between different racial groups.

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South Africa

Thus the native Africans became aliens in their own land. Two separate worlds lived side by side: the world of the dominant white Africaners and that of the marginalized and oppressed native black Africans. The “house of apartheid” was built on these foundations. As a reaction to this system of legal segregation and oppression, a resistance movement started to take root in South Africa.5

Opposition Movements

Various movements within South Africa, such as the ANC or PAC were formed in order to oppose and end the apartheid system.

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CONCEPTS ON FORGIVENESS:ACADEMIC TEXTS USED

PEACE & JUSTICE STUDIES COMMUNITYPresented September 25, 2012 John E. Daniel, Student

Montgomery College-Rockville

Faculty Sponsor: Tülin Levitas, Professor, Montgomery College-Rockville

Course Description

Introduce students to the concept of forgiveness as it has been applied by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa; explore the sources of the concept—its Judeo-Christian roots and South African roots of Ubuntu; address whether the Commission’s work did lead to justice; identify necessary and sufficient conditions entailed within different concepts of “justice”; and investigate relationship between concepts of amnesty, justice, and accountability.

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Background Texts from Prior Classes

Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999. 294 pp.

Pumula Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 193 pp.

Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, The Wisdom of Forgiveness. New York: Riverhead Books, 2004. 266 pp.

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Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence

By Martha Minow.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

214 pp. Harvard Law School, Dean J.D., Yale Law School Ed.M, Harvard Grad.

School of Education

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Between Vengeance and Forgiveness

Minow examines process of rebuilding lives and society in the aftermath of atrocity

Scrutinizes social and historic roots of genocide and mass violence

Recognizes any process will be inadequate Silence is not acceptable Challenge is to negotiate path securing

justice for victims and rebuilding a society

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Minow: Truth Commissions

Studies strategies of national experiments in justice and healing

Makes convincing case for restorative power of speaking about trauma

Central task of truth commissions is to write a history of a nation’s troubled past

Obviously favors South African model-TRC Primary focus is restoring dignity to victims Facing past, rather than attempting to forget

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Ubuntu: An Ethic for a New South Africa

By Augustine Shutte.

Pietermaritzburg, South

Africa: Cluster Publications,

2001. 228 pp. University of Cape Town,

Professor of Philosophy M.A., Oxford University

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Bringing South Africa Together

Bring together what apartheid kept apart New ethic mirrors European ideas: freedom,

individual power of free choice Persons exist only in relation to other persons Ubuntu: A person is a person through persons Spirit of Ubuntu helping dissipate the spirit of

apartheid African philosophy: I am because we are Manifested in forgiveness in TRC hearings

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Ubuntu at Montgomery College

In her Inaugural Address on October 29, 2010, President DeRionne Pollard expressed her own version of Ubuntu when she thanked her mentors and family:

– “The best of me is

a reflection of you.”

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Forgiveness: A Philosophical Approach

By Charles L. Griswold.

Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007.

242 pp. Boston University:

Professor of Philosophy Ph.D., Penn. State Univ.

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Forgiveness at Its Best

Ethical response to injury and the injurer Sees a moral demand to forgive Not required to forswear resentment, only to

moderate it and forswear revenge Both parties must satisfy certain conditions to qualify

for paradigm case of dyadic forgiveness – Six criteria:

Offender: 1 - Repudiate one’s prior actions 2 – Express regret

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Forgiveness at Its Best(cont’d)

3 – Commit to be a better person 4 – Understand nature of harm from the injured

party’s perspective 5 – Offer narrative account of how she came to do

the wrong and is now worthy of approbation, and Victim: 6 – Forswear revenge; moderate, and

commit to eventually let go of, resentment altogether; express declaration that forgiveness is granted

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Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law and Politics

By Linda Radzik. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2009.

239 pp. Texas A&M University,

Assoc. Professor of Philosophy Ph.D., and M.A. in

Philosophy, U. of Arizona

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An Ethic for Wrongdoers

Approaches question of atonement from the wrongdoer’s point of view

Wrong sends message that wrongdoer is worth more that the victim

Explores responses that wrongdoers should make to their own misdeeds

Responses can be apology, repentance, reparations, and self-punishment

Offers wrongdoers opportunity to earn redemption within the moral community

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An Ethic for Wrongdoers(cont’d)

Emphasizes rebuilding respect and trust among victims, communities and wrongdoers

Views atonement as repaying a moral debt Unlike Griswold, Radzik argues that should a victim

wrongfully refuse to reconcile after wrongdoer’s thoroughgoing atonement, wrongdoer may consider herself redeemed

Radzik says the victim may need to hold onto resentment out of self-respect or sense of justice

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Conclusion

Wrongdoing and suffering wrong are all too common occurrences today

Society’s needs to face events of genocide, mass violence and forceful conflict raise questions of how we ought to respond to them

Seeking forgiveness, making amends, pursuing redemption are all worthy paths to take

Our authors have given us the conceptual tools to begin to address these complex topics

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