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| Photo taken during South African Apartheid http://goo.gl/roXcm |
Give
a brief account of one of the conceptual problems that arise in relation
to attempts to deal with the past and show how you think these conceptual
problems might be navigated. Your assignment should concentrate on the
tension between politics and theology.
Introduction
Political reconciliation has been described as ‘one
of the most important challenges for societies … following periods of
repressive rule.’[1]
This essay will address the confronting issues which face post-conflict
societies and how they should be navigated. The South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will be the primary case study used to draw out
the tension between politics and theology. In the second section, the tension
between religion and the state will be discussed, and in the third section the
tension between legal-political justice and religious redemptive justice will
be analysed.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The South African TRC represents one of the most
interesting case studies surrounding the concept of political reconciliation. Rather
than replicating the Nuremburg trials or accepting national amnesia, Chair of
the TRC Desmond Tutu writes ‘our country’s negotiators rejected the two
extremes and opted for a third way.’[2]
There are two pragmatic questions that will be considered in regard to the TRC
in order to draw out conceptual distinctions: (i) was the TRC helpful and (ii)
whose ideas did it use and are those ideas universally accepted?
Too often in post-conflict situations the default
response by authorities is to opt for national amnesia. As Brewer and Hayes
points out, ‘forgetting is not a real option in post-conflict societies’, and it
often leads to ‘repressed memories’ which ‘intensify the harm experienced by
victims.’[3]
For South Africa to avoid national amnesia they had to choose between either
reconciliation or retribution. In a pragmatic sense, legal-political
retribution would not have been financially viable due to the sheer scale of
the apartheid and the ‘already strained’ judicial system.[4]
However, in the aftermath of one of the greatest human rights atrocities of the
twentieth century it is legitimate to question whether the TRC was helpful and
whether it denied victims a sense of justice.
Shore and Kline point to this criticism arguing that
while the TRC ‘authorised … legitimate truth telling discourses’, it has also
‘contributed to delays in social and economic justice for victims and
survivors.’[5] In
this analysis the authors seek to distinguish legal-political justice from a
religious-redemptive conception of justice. Justice, in the legal-political
sense cannot be achieved unless there is reparation and retribution.[6]
In post-conflict South Africa, ‘Offenders who received amnesty were immediately
set free while victims who testified about their suffering and loss received
nothing.’[7]
Understandably, from this perception of justice, transition seems unlikely.
Pragmatically, it seems ambiguous as to whether the TRC was the most effective
manner of dealing with the post-conflict situation. The conceptual analysis
in the later part of this essay will shed more light on the benefits and shortcomings
of restorative and retributive justice.
Church and State
The second question relates to the practical issue
of whose ideas the TRC used and the conceptual question whether such a
commission with its grounding in religious narratives is in contradiction with
liberal, democratic, and secular ideals. Philpott points out that ‘the
reconciliation paradigm is heavily influenced by the Abrahamic religious
traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.’[8]
It is important, however, to note the role that religion played in South Africa.
Shore and Kline suggest that ‘religion in South Africa was never a private
institution solely concerned with the wellbeing of individuals.’[9]
In the context of South Africa, it would have seemed ‘illiberal’ to ‘restrict
religious rationales’ given that religion did not play a major role in the
causation of the conflict and that in the post-conflict setting, it had
something valuable to offer.[10]
It is quite clear that in the TRC there was an ‘overt
use of Christian language’, and not just in a civil religion or ceremonial
manner[11].
Tutu described the post-conflict situation in South Africa as a ‘miracle’,
resembling ‘God’s mercy’, and he sincerely meant it.[12]
It is interesting that Tutu noticed the lack of clear boundaries between the
church and state, wondering why an Archbishop was appointed as the Chairperson
for the Commission rather than a judge in consideration that the TRC was ‘to
some extent a quasi-judicial body.’[13]
While the TRC had limited power in relation to coercive matters, it acted as
the main body in dealing with the post-conflict situation in South Africa. It
is understandable that the particular model of reconciliation that South
Africa used would not be appropriate in all post-conflict settings.
Justice and Forgiveness
The final part of the discussion focuses on the
conceptual tension between politics and theology more broadly. In this section the
ways in which restorative justice and retributive justice achieve
transformation for the perpetrator and victim will be discussed.
Retributive justice ensures that oppressors receive
their dues, while victims may receive compensation and a sense of restoration
through the idea of ‘justice being served.’ Justice of this kind is much easier
to administrate under a properly functioning government. This is partially
because identifying the victims and the perpetrators is much less problematic.
In situations where crimes were committed on a mass scale and the people who
carried out the bulk of the criminal actions did so on the basis of lies or
coercion, the distinction between the victim and perpetrator becomes blurry.
Retributive justice in the transitional justice setting may also reinforce the
adversarial nature of the conflict, recreating the very thing it set out to
destroy.[14]
In addition, it seems very difficult to understand
reparation of mass human rights violations when any amount of compensation
would be arbitrary as the loss that the victims and survivors face in most
cases would be incommensurable. Reparation in itself is not necessary or
sufficient in facilitating of fulfilling reconciliation. Reparation is also
not entirely retributive. Thomas Pogge, in his work on the moral responsibility
for global poverty suggests that because of historical injustices such as colonialism
and the unfavourable setup of global institutions such as the World Bank,
citizens of wealthy states who have benefited from and been complicit in the
current global institutional order owe a duty to the world’s poor.[15]
This is in some ways non-retributive reparation, or perhaps, reconciliatory
reparation.
In regard to restorative justice approaches, truth
commissions ensure that perpetrators suffer the penalty of public humiliation.
For some perpetrators, this could be worse than incarceration or other
state-based retributive acts. Restorative justice paves the way for healing for
both the perpetrator and the victim.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is an inevitable tension
between politics and theology in the realm of transitional justice.[16]
As the discussion has shown, religious-redemptive understandings of
reconciliation are important, especially in post-conflict states where the demos
shares a particular narrative. Restorative justice can be more effective as a
transitioning mechanism than retributive justice in post-conflict societies.
Bibliography
Amstutz, Mark R. The Healing of
Nations : the Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.
Brewer, John, and Bernadette C. Hayes. “Post-conflict Societies and the
Social Sciences: a Review.” Contemporary Social Science 6, no. 1 (2011):
5–18.
Department of Justice and Constitutional
Development South Africa. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report
Volume 1. South Africa, 1998. http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/index.htm.
Edelstein, Jillian. Truth &
Lies : Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
New York: New Press, 2002.
Hazan, Pierre. Judging War, Judging
History : Behind Truth and Reconciliation. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2010.
Murphy, Colleen. A Moral Theory of
Political Reconciliation. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press,
2010. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10421513.
Philpott, Daniel. “What Religion Brings
to the Politics of Transitional Justice.” Journal of International Affairs.
61, no. 1 (2007): 93.
Pogge, Thomas. “Real World Justice.” The
Journal of Ethics 9, no. 2 (2005): 29–53.
Shore, Megan, and Scott Kilne. “The
Ambiguous Role of Religion in the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.” Peace & Change 31, no. 3 (2006).
Tolstoy, Leo; Garnett, Constance Black. The
Kingdom of God Is Within You. October 13, 2011, 1894.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without
Forgiveness. New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, 2000.
[1] Murphy, A Moral Theory of
Political Reconciliation, 1.
[2] Tutu, No Future Without
Forgiveness, 30.
[3] Brewer and Hayes, “Post-conflict
Societies and the Social Sciences,” 12.
[4] Tutu, No Future Without
Forgiveness, 22.
[5] Shore and Kilne, “The Ambiguous
Role of Religion in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
309, 313.
[6] See: Tolstoy, Leo; Garnett, The
Kingdom of God Is Within You. Tolstoy explains how states require coercion
to exist.
[7] Amstutz, The Healing of
Nations, 196.
[8] Philpott, “What Religion Brings
to the Politics of Transitional Justice,” 95.
[9] Shore and Kilne, “The Ambiguous
Role of Religion in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
310.
[10] Philpott, “What Religion Brings
to the Politics of Transitional Justice,” 100.
[11] Shore and Kilne, “The Ambiguous
Role of Religion in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
315.
[12] Tutu, No Future Without
Forgiveness, 21.
[13] Shore and Kilne, “The Ambiguous
Role of Religion in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
312.
[14] Ibid., 20.
[15] Pogge, “Real World Justice.”
[16] See Desmond Tutu’s responses to
the critics of TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report Volume
1, 17.
