What happens when Christian ideals come up against a situation of deep personal and political hurt? This book tells the story of one such encounter.

To quote from the front flap on the dust jacket, 'The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international experiment, with a potentially far-reaching effect on the way we all deal with conflict. Normally, when countries move through the difficult transition from oppression to democracy, they deal with the past in one of two ways: either the leaders of the old order are put on trial or dealt with summarily, or previous events are swept under the carpet and the suffering of those subjected to violence is ignored.

'South Africa followed a unique third way when it ended apartheid. To those who had committed gross violations of human rights, it offered amnesty in exchange for public disclosure of the truth about their crimes — and to the victims, it gave an unusual opportunity to be heard, as well as hope for reparations.

'No Future Without Forgiveness is Archbishop Tutu's personal memoir of chairing the Commission.'

There were several reasons why South Africa chose not to follow the route taken at the end of the second world war, when the guilty were put on trial at Nuremberg. Unlike the situation in Europe in 1945, the new order in South Africa arose out of peaceful negotiation: there was no victor with total power to impose conditions on the vanquished. Furthermore, a Nuremberg-type trial would have placed a strain on the judicial system, and the adversarial nature of the legal process would have acted against the spirit of cooperation that the government wished to foster among the 'rainbow people of God', to use a favourite expression of Tutu's to describe the people of South Africa. Another reason was that in many cases the evidence would have been inadequate for a court of law (if the only surviving witness was the perpetrator, for example), and significant events from the past would thus have gone unacknowledged.

The 'let bygones be bygones' route was also rejected. If the truth about the past is not acknowledged openly, the memories will continue to fester and hurt. Instead, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a forum for victims and perpetrators to tell their stories. This public discloure of the truth about past events was a necessary step towards healing. It helped those involved to come to terms with the past and move on.

There are stories in this book that show the depths of cruelty, heartlessness and depravity to which human beings can sink. There are also amazing and humbling examples of the heights of forgiveness, generosity and reconciliation to which humans can rise.

At one point the author writes, 'As I grow older I am pleasantly surprised at how relevant theology has become, as I see it, to the whole of life'. The book is a testimony to this. At one level, it deals with the stuff of politics: the Commission operated in the political arena and dealt with politically motivated cruelty that took place during the period 1960–1994. At another level, the stories it heard, told by victims and perpetrators, told of terrible pain, suffering and cruelty experienced in the lives of individual people, where the human spirit was tested to its limit. At both levels, the book shows the value of truth, openness, forgiveness and reconciliation and their relevance to inner peace as well as to peace between neighbours and communities.

Theology 'was particularly important', Tutu writes, 'in the Commission's encounter with the perpetrators of some of the most horrendous atrocities . . . We were quite appalled at the depth of depravity to which human beings could sink and we would, most of us, say that those who committed such deeds were monsters because the deeds were monstrous. But theology prevents us from doing this. Theology reminded me that however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon.' 

As he listened to the stories, Tutu 'realised how each of us has this capacity for the most awful evil — all of us. None of us could predict that if we had been subjected to the same influences, the same conditioning, we would not have turned out as these perpetrators. This is not to condone or excuse what they did. It is to be filled more and more with the compassion of God, looking on and weeping that one of His beloved had come to such a sad pass. We have to say to ourselves with deep feeling, not with a cheap pietism, "There but for the grace of God go I".

'And, mercifully and wonderfully, as I listened to the stories of victims I marvelled at their magnanimity, that after so much suffering instead of lusting for revenge they had this extraordinary willingness to forgive. Then I thanked God that all of us, even I, have this remarkable capacity for good, for generosity, for magnanimity.

'Theology helped us in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to recognise that we inhabit a moral universe, that good and evil are real and that they matter.'

A remarkable book, by one of the outstanding Christians of our time.

Reproduced by permission from The Lantern, the parish magazine of Keyworth and Stanton on the Wolds, February 2000.

© Keyworth Parochial Church Council