We cannot despair of reconciliation

A debate with troubling repercussions has recently emerged in sections of South Africa society. Its centrepiece are the merits and demerits of reconciling its historically divided people groups. To emphasise the implications of this debate, it is worth noting that it is really about the endurance of our social order.

After all a choice against reconciliation is to sow powerful seeds towards the ineluctable destruction of our social covenant. Let no one be misled by the time it takes for the fruit of such seeds to ripen.

One would be remiss to disregard those who have come to seriously contemplate such a path because it comes from a place of genuine disappointment. Building a nation is no easy task, more so one as wounded as South Africa.

A social contract that fails to adequately address social justice considerations nevertheless stands on a faulty foundation. Precisely as a unifying and sustainable social consensus requires a choice for the difficult path of continuing to deal with what divides us the most, the lingering remnants of our troubled history. 

This difficult but necessary path can only incrementally eat away at the enormous power the past continues to wield on us, owing to its ubiquitous imprints in our country.  Until we finally triumph over it we are condemned to carry it like a corpse whose putrid odour pervades much of our social, economic and political interactions. 

Contrary to popular opinion, it is precisely the cause of our future that is suffocated by our failure to resolve the lingering issues of our past. Ignoring them is hardly an effective way of handling them.

There are many reasons why the past has become such a divisive topic in South Africa. Not least its penchant for use as a weapon in dealing with a multiplicity of issues. Not all to which it is relevant. Its emotive power, however, makes it an irresistible trump-card that is often mischievously used.  

For others the past regrettably serves as a cheap explanation for failure. Even when poor application is responsible. This goes hand in hand with the false idea that there exists an alternative path to success other than knowledge, careful planning, astuteness, perseverance and good old fashioned hard work.  

These are among the many reasons why South Africans, especially the historical beneficiaries of colonialism and apartheid may sometimes squirm at discussions of the past. 

Among the more sensitive, it understandably evokes troubling memories of aspects of their heritage that elicit uncomfortable feelings of shame. Ubuntu obligates us to thread on these issues with due sensitivity as it serves no useful purpose “rubbing it in”.

Nevertheless, we do the cause of nation building no favours by failing to confront the ubiquitous imprints of the past that continue to bedevil us. Particarly as these pose a greater threat to the survival of our fragile social contract than the risk of stepping on a few toes.

Sadly the impatient eagerness to look forward has tended to morph into denialism among many, even when the evidence is barely disputable. Even so, the joke is on us if we think what we deny ceases to exist by virtue of our denial of it.

Persisting and increasingly unabashed racist attitudes and an economy that bears irrefutable imprints of the past, are constant reminders that the past is still a very real part of us. Those who feel the jarring sting of its realities come to despise being dismissed or lectured in a manner that suggests that the injustice of their present experiences either does not matter or that their personal assessment of them must be subordinated to those whose judgement is supposedly weightier.  

A failure to face up to our past and deal with its legacy head-on empowers it in countless pernicious ways. Not least a penchant to drive us into our respective laagers where resentment and myth deepen, inevitably manifesting in the political arena, where our choices have enormous power to shape the kind of society we become.

This tendency could hardly have been portrayed clearer than the last general elections. Leading up to which, countless South Africans spared no occasion to express their displeasure with how the country was being governed.

The contrasting story told by the results nevertheless confirms the tragic truth: many South Africans would sooner live with what they consider a corrupt, arrogant and incompetent government than risk giving power to those whom they believe take little care for the injustices which affect them so distressingly.

It must be understood that the truth and reconciliation commission was a commendable start, and nothing more. Because many naively or perhaps self-servingly saw its conclusion as a costless catharsis to centuries of injustice, it evidently achieved the logically and historically irreconcilable goal of assigning accountability for apartheid solely on a few National Party leaders.

This view gives the indefensible impression that an entire “democratic” society that was very functional and civilised according to its own perverted logic, that endured for centuries, cannot be justly required to pay some price in the ongoing process of restitutive justice.

That society not only gave birth and nurtured its political leaders, it also gave them the levers of power and ensured their sustainable hold on them. These leaders were not pursuing some obscure personal mission, they were acting according to a popular mandate given to them through the polls and regularly judge by the court of public opinion. This assessement was according to how well they served its collective needs and interests. Naturally at enormous, possibly irrevocable, cost to an entire demographic.

The consequence of the subsequent amnesia has led to interventions such as black economic empowerment and affirmative action, as poorly designed as they are, to be met with the kind of moral outrage that is truly astounding in terms of the extent of wilful ignorance it betrays. 

Those who live with the socio-economic wounds of apartheid, in turn, find this common response indicative of a superficial commitment to the principle of justice and a callous failure to appreciate the depth of the damage caused by the system that accounted for much of the racially tinged socio-economic inequalities.

The failure to come to terms with the historical realities that still explain a big part of the present socio economic travails for many, has done as much harm to the beneficiaries of apartheid as it has to its victims.  While the latter continue to wallow in the grossly disempowering epithet of victimhood and wilt in smouldering anger, the former are condemned to walk about with the unforgiving weight of shame which manifests as the common tendency to find refuge under the specious shade of denialism.

Indeed, we live before the looming shadow of the haunting spectre of the day that history instructs never fails to arrive. The day when the unresolved legacy of societal grievances gives birth to a skilful demagogue adept at manipulating the unfulfilled longing for justice. Usually leading to ruin much greater than the cost of resolving the issues.

This is no way to build an enduringly thriving social order. After all, a society built on a foundation of injustice is inherently unstable.

It is worth distinguishing punitive from restitutive justice. The former seeks to punish the responsible party for their misdeeds. Restitutive justice on the hand is a mutual recognition of the harm done by the actions of the responsible party as well as the agreement to restore the affected party.

Among the reasons Nelson Mandela came to be mentioned among the great men of the 20^th century was his choice for constructive restitutive justice. It promised a propitious platform to begin the work of building a sustainable society.

This is in stark contrast to the path taken by the victorious Allied Powers against Germany at the conclusion of WWI in 1919. The consequence of the punitive terms of the peace of Versailles have become the reference case of how not to pursue international justice.

We can nevertheless learn much from the courage and the presence of mind so honourably displayed by German society following the shameful chapter of Nazi rule, which came about as a result of the failure to heed the lesson of addressing felt societal injustice following the disastrous peace of Versailles.

That society has now become a wonderful model of how to deal with societal baggage. It is streets ahead in its journey of national healing precisely for the difficult but pragmatic choices it took decades ago, among which was to confront its unpleasant past.

It is to the credit of the character of German people that even after so many years, that society continues to handle issues of its dark past with remarkable sensitivity and humility. It is small wonder that various surveys reflect Germany as among the most widely admired countries in the world.

It took Germany two punitive world wars to learn its lessons. What will it take South Africa?

This delicate task of healing the wounds of the past, must be done in the same spirit that a surgeon might. Not out of vengeful or vindictive intent. Instead out of the sober realisation that a wound left unattended, as the past 20 years have amply demonstrated, soon becomes infected and with time, occasions the risk of spreading the infection until the survival of the body can no longer be possible. 

At best, the failure to deal with our past condemns our posterity to more of the same simmering interracial tensions we are becoming used to, which time seems to be accentuating rather than ameliorating. A study of other societies with similarly troubled pasts, instruct that the passage of time alone, rather than heal, hardens and entrenches societal animosities that are not timeously and effectively attended to.

What does this dealing with the past entail? Huge pay-outs of money? Countless teary apologies for apartheid? Hardly. Sure, there is a place for restitution and honourable contrition but the biggest problems South Africans encounter in their interaction with each other are present and not in the past.

I am convinced that the greatest progress we can make in our quest for genuine reconciliation will be through the simple practice of empathetically listening to each other. Listening in order to understand our unique stories. This can develop awareness and sensitivity to occurrences around us that we might otherwise remain oblivious to.

History has consigned us into a narrative many of us wish was differently scripted. But we are who we are and this was shaped by historical forces that cannot be wished away.

Whatever we do now creates its own realities. This journey will surely severely test us as the past twenty years have shown and will continue to do so. The depth of our collective woundedness offers no other alternative. But this is no time to lose heart.

We must continue to ratify the exemplary choice taken by Mandela, who saw mutual hostility for what it is - an untenable dead-end. Let us follow him on the difficult but propitious path of national reconciliation. After all, it's not as though we have the luxury of choice.