Truth & Reconciliation
By Heather Entrekin, Churchnet Board Member
Des Peres Associate Professor of Congregational Health & Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Central Baptist Theological Seminary
I cannot stop thinking about the focus sessions I attended titled “Learning from the South African Truth & Reconciliation Model.” For twenty years, South Africa has been engaged in this courageous work of recovery from the brutality of apartheid. I wondered what it could teach Americans reeling from effects of racism erupting in Ferguson, Baltimore, Cincinnati and, just weeks before, Charleston, South Carolina?
In designing the Truth & Reconciliation Model, participants considered both the Nuremburg Trial and total amnesty options but decided to find a third way more responsive to South Africa’s unique needs and circumstances. It emphasized restorative justice over a retributive approach, realizing that both victims and victimizers somehow would have to go forward together. The painful process of story-telling gave victims an opportunity to be heard and validated and, perhaps, find a measure of healing. Truth-telling by oppressors provided a pathway to amnesty and, for some, healing.
But the process was far from perfect.
Its monumental three-part goal, to
address gross human rights violations,
reparations and rehabilitation, and
amnesty, was essentially impossible
to achieve. Grounded in the conviction
that every participant in apartheid was
a victim needing to be liberated,
including whites, tensions were never
resolved around issues of reparations
for many who had suffered unspeakable
trauma and loss. One of the panelists
spoke of the severe depression he
experienced after a police officer, who
had ordered him poisoned, confessed
and went home exonerated.
Black church leaders asked hard
questions. Citing ongoing racial
educational and economic disparities, a South African pastor wanted to know, “Did we give too much?” A black American seminary professor, referring to Ferguson, Missouri asked, “How do we de-center whiteness?”
Frank Chikane, an
anti-apartheid activist, speaking during the Baptist World Congress about South Africa's
Truth & Reconciliation Commission.