Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [103]
Christensen and Jacobson were speaking of two individuals in conflict. But their analysis, in our view, applies to group conflicts as well, where the third way is not merely the best way; it is the only way. In South Africa, the end of apartheid could easily have left a legacy of self-justifying rage on the part of the whites who supported the status quo and the privileges it conferred on them, and of self-justified fury on the part of the blacks who had been its victims. It took the courage of a white man, Frederik de Klerk, and a black man, Nelson Mandela, to avert the bloodbath that has followed in the wake of most revolutions, and to create the conditions that made it possible for their country to move forward as a democracy.
De Klerk, who had been elected president in 1989, knew that a violent revolution was all but inevitable. The fight against apartheid was escalating; sanctions imposed by other countries were having a significant impact on the nation’s economy; supporters of the banned African National Congress were becoming increasingly violent, killing and torturing people whom they believed were collaborating with the white regime. De Klerk could have tightened the noose by instituting even more repressive policies in the desperate hope of preserving white power. Instead, he revoked the ban on the ANC and freed Mandela from the prison in which he had spent twenty-seven years. For his part, Mandela could have allowed his anger to consume him; he could have emerged from that prison with a determination to take revenge that many would have found entirely legitimate. Instead, he relinquished anger for the sake of the goal to which he had devoted his life. “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy,” said Mandela. “Then he becomes your partner.” In 1993, both men shared the Nobel Peace Prize, and the following year Mandela was elected president of South Africa.
Virtually the first act of the new democracy was the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. (Three other commissions, on human rights violations, amnesty, and reparation and rehabilitation, were also created.) The goal of the TRC was to give victims of brutality a forum where their accounts would be heard and vindicated, where their dignity and sense of justice would be restored, and where they could express their grievances in front of the perpetrators themselves. In exchange for amnesty, the perpetrators had to drop their denials, evasions, and self-justifications and admit the harm they had done, including torture and murder. The commission emphasized the “need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu [humanity toward others] but not for victimization.”
The goals of the TRC were inspiring, if not entirely honored in practice. The commission produced grumbling, mockery, protests, and anger. Many black victims of apartheid, such as the family of activist Stephen Biko, who had been murdered in prison, were furious at the provisions of amnesty to the perpetrators. Many white perpetrators did not apologize with anything remotely like true feelings of remorse, and