At a time when the unfolding story of the 21st century is a pursuit for vengeance through ruthless murder and bloody massacres, violent wars conducted with weapons of mass destruction, peace deals between former enemies collapsing into cycles of bloody conflict, where heads of states are not afraid to publicly declare their desire to target other leaders and to ‘eliminate’ them, one feels proud to be a South African.
South Africa today serves as a reminder of how political leaders can transcend hatred and embody the shared goals of the spirit of national unity. It helps to take a look back and see just how far we have come. The fight for freedom from oppressive laws and for basic human rights, and the government’s severe measures to suppress opposition, ushered in a ferocious struggle between government on the one hand and the liberation movement and the majority of South Africans on the other, which led to a venomous style of engagement that left many dead. The government deemed all who fought for freedom ‘terrorists’ who had to be eliminated.
That is not too long ago, which is why it is remarkable that today the enemies who sought to destroy one another sit on the same side in parliament sharing power as compatriots, and that South Africa is a more tolerant and inclusive society. That South Africa is the miracle that the world sees it to be is largely due to the millions of survivors of apartheid oppression who have chosen not to stoop to the vengeful patterns of history. Some call it reconciliation, others a generosity of spirit and an ability to forgive. But I think it is all these, plus the ‘soft vengeance’ of voting power.
The United States today is a reminder of what South Africa was, and how those in power can breed hatred that produces cycles of violence that go on, and on, and on. When I was in New York, the news was dominated by questions to the Bush administration about the detention without trial of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and the infringements of American citizens’ rights in the wake of the ‘war against terror’. Today, America has to face the consequences of choosing the path of making its enemies suffer; America has become that which it loathes. It is a small step from fighting evil to becoming evil.
The wish to inflict suffering means that one has to get into the skin of the perpetrator, become like him, and often exceed the brutality of what is being avenged. American soldiers jubilantly displayed in front of TV cameras the dead bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons, and we have watched in the news the shocking pictures of decapitated Iraqi children and dead women – casualties of the war, collateral damage they call them. If we accept these excesses in what the Bush administration calls the fight against terrorism, will our intellectual sensibilities allow us to condemn the Iraqis who paraded the charred and mutilated corpses of four Americans in the streets of Fallujah? Can we in all honesty join Senator McCain and other leaders in the US administration in calling the horrific beheading of an American citizen to avenge the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib ‘barbaric’, without condemning the very act that unleashed this cycle of vengeance?
In the ‘War on Terror’, the tables have turned, and the victim has moved from victor to perpetrator. There is no surprise in the torture by American prison guards at Abu Ghraib. The language of hatred, the lexicon of dehumanisation and torture has been part and parcel of this war. The prison guards felt, rightly, that there could be nothing wrong with abusing Iraqi prisoners, ‘enemies of freedom’, in front of cameras. They have taken the cue from their leaders. President Bush wants the world to believe that the Abu Ghraib images represent actions that are un-American, that the torture is the work of a few bad apples. Well then, it is time to seek alternatives to this destructive war in order to prevent future perverse acts.
America has become our past. We in South Africa are familiar with leaders who encouraged foot soldiers to make the state’s enemies suffer, and then when the moment of reckoning came, told the world that the barbaric acts were aberrant, committed by a few individuals who were inspired not by the noble goals of the government, but by their own potential for evil. This is a good time for the Bush administration to reflect on the escalating bloody violence of this war, and to change course. Revenge – making one’s enemies suffer – is not the right path. Choosing to respond to violence by engaging one’s enemy in dialogue is a risk, but as we know in South Africa, it is one worth taking. That is the lesson South Africa offers the world.
5. We must restore the human spirit
ThisDay, June 2004
Early in 2003, as part of my American lecture tour about my book A Human Being Died That Night, I addressed a gathering in the Los Angeles Public Library.4 An extraordinary encounter with a fellow South African later prompted me to write this article.
THE WOMAN IN the audience raised her hand and waved it frantically. It was early 2003, and I had just given a lecture at the Los Angeles public library during my American book tour. The reporter from the LA Weekly who was chairing the event announced that she was going to take the last question, and I pointed at the woman who seemed desperate for a chance to speak.
‘I am an Afrikaner,’ she said. ‘I read your book last night, and feel an incredible need to speak right now.’ She went on to explain that she had come to the United States to pursue postgraduate studies in international relations; she had been burdened with guilt for having benefited from apartheid, and reading the book had stirred her deeply. Her voice trembled as she continued: ‘When I complete my degree, I want to return home to South Africa and pay back in whatever way I can. More than anything,’ she said, now weeping visibly, ‘I want to ask for forgiveness for having benefited from a system that destroyed so many lives.’
The woman was crying and trying to speak, and she cast a lonely figure; she had exposed herself and made herself vulnerable. She had told her deepest truth in public. I took a few steps forward and extended my hand to reach out to her from the edge of the stage. She came towards me, still sobbing. There was stillness in the packed auditorium. You could have heard a pin drop. As we embraced, the audience applauded.
Listening to the long applause, and remembering the deep silence in the large hall when she spoke earlier, it was clear to me that the applause was not simply a response of approval. The spontaneous gesture between us had stirred something in the mainly white American audience. Two people from different sides of history in a country that had almost descended into civil war, coming together in a spontaneous embrace after this ‘conversation’ about the past. It was a story that resonated with the audience longing for a resolution of their own past, not least the as-yet-unacknowledged trauma of slavery that continues to haunt both white and black Americans.
Not all Afrikaners, or white South Africans for that matter, are willing or able to engage privately or publicly in the way this woman did. Seeds of hatred continue to fester among many whites, who feel that the new democracy in South Africa and the freedoms enjoyed by blacks have robbed them of their heritage. Some whites feel marginalised by the end of the legalised oppression of blacks with the fall of the apartheid government. They resent the power that the democratic changes have bestowed on a black-led government and their own perceived loss of power. A far-right group of Afrikaners has even lashed out in vengeance in the past through bombing sprees.
Discontent among whites has sometimes been seen as evidence of continuing racism, and this might be the case. But we also must consider the bitter memories that have been unleashed by the transfer of power to the democratic government. Some Afrikaners carry with them the awareness of how the volk (the Afrikaner people) had to fight to maintain the spirit of survival; they had to protect themselves from the ‘other’ that threatened their wellbeing. Notably, they suffered serious loss and humiliation in their war with the British.
Many Afrikaners were brought up to believe that fighting for their survival was the very essence of their identity. Former president FW de Klerk, speaking about reconciliation in 1997, referred to the loss of power the Afrikaners experienced as a result of their war with the British. ‘It deprived us of our hard-won right to rule ourselves,’ he said. ‘But somehow or other, we have succeeded in