Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Reconciliation An Interview by Kerry O’Brien 25/11/1999 Font: www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories KERRY O'BRIEN: There are many remarkable stories about the emergence of South Africa from the awful yoke of apartheid to democracy -- a struggling democracy, but democracy nevertheless. The most remarkable story is, of course, that of Nelson Mandela, who walked from prison after 28 years, forgiving his captors and becoming a powerful symbol for healing in a bitterly divided nation. Another powerful chapter in South Africa's transition from repression to healing was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which offered amnesties as a carrot to anyone prepared to tell the truth about the country's brutal past. What followed was an extraordinary chronicle of man's inhumanity to man, but also of man's wonderful capacity to forgive. Archbishop Tutu is in Australia to receive the Sydney Peace Prize and I spoke to him about our own struggles with reconciliation. Desmond Tutu, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you rejected a focus of conventional justice on instead finding the truth, without the automatic threat of punishment. To what extent did that work? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU, 1984 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE: Oh, it's worked wonderfully. We've got a country that has remarkable stability when you consider, for instance, Russia, which made the transition at about the same time as we did from repression to democracy. But even more importantly, the fact of the matter is that we were able to unearth very considerable truth that had been hidden under official lies, cover-ups, where Cabinet ministers and high officials were prepared to perjure themselves. We now know, for instance, who bombed the headquarters of the Southern Council of Churches. At the time it happened, the Government claimed it was ANC, and now a former cabinet minister came forward to tell us. And I believe too that whilst reconciliation is a long process, we have had some extraordinary examples in the course of the commission's work which must be very, very potent examples for everyone in our country. KERRY O'BRIEN: What stands out in your mind as some of the most potent examples that you witnessed? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: The daughter of one of the ANC activists who had been abducted by the police and was gruesomely murdered, mutilated in a burnt-out car. When her family came to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and they told their story, we hadn't, at the time, got all the details about what had happened because the amnesty applications hadn't come through, but we knew more or less what had happened, and I asked her whether she would be ready to forgive people who had done this kind of thing to her father when she was a teenager. The hall was jam-packed, but you could hear the proverbial pin drop as she said, "Yes, we would like to forgive, but we'd like to know whom to forgive." And you have an incredible sense of the privilege of being in the presence of this extraordinary exchange, and often, I could say to the audience, "Let us keep quiet, because we are in the presence of something holy." KERRY O'BRIEN: Do you any better understand, as a result of this process, the depth of man's inhumanity and the capacity for man's inhumanity to man? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: You are often devastated by what you've got to hear of the things that we were capable of doing -- all of us. All of us have an incredible capacity, in fact, for evil because the people who were the perpetrators of these atrocities don't have horns, they don't have tails. They are like you and me. They are men, mainly, who kiss their wives, ordinary human beings, and you said what an extraordinary depth of depravity -- yes, yes, yes. That is so. But the extraordinary thing is the paradox that in the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the end result for me has been something that I was not expecting -- that I would be exhilarated so much by the example, the evidence of our remarkable capacity for good. KERRY O'BRIEN: Having seen the worst of this kind of ingrained and senseless conflict, tribal conflict in Africa, the institutionalised bitterness of apartheid, of northern Ireland -- you've seen that at first-hand too -- what practical advice, having seen all of this and no doubt thought about it deeply, what practical advice do you offer Australia as we struggle with our own reconciliation process? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Yes. I have a stock answer. The first thing I say is one of the things we really found most annoying was to have people come from outside and come and pontificate about how we should solve our problems. Having said that -- (Both laugh uproariously) KERRY O'BRIEN: You're not going to let sentence that stop you? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: No. What I would say to you here is that we did find it very, very potent for people to tell their story, to let the pain that is sitting in the pit of their tummies find expression. Let them tell their story and let's not have people be the know-alls. Let them articulate for you what it is that bugs them. And I think that you are a remarkable people. You helped us fight the awfulness of apartheid and for that, we want to say a very big thank you. You are a wonderful people, you are champions in all kinds of sport. I get very upset that you defeated us in cricket and rugby. KERRY O'BRIEN: (Laughs) I'm not. ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: But I believe too that you could become champions in giving moral leadership. I think that you have a wonderful opportunity of being able to say that, you know, "We are connected with the generations that have gone before as we are connected with the generations that come. "We are connected in the things in which we glory while connected in the things of which we are ashamed and we can't pretend there is not that connection. "We may deny it until we're blue in the face -- we have those connections." And it will be wonderful to be able to say, "For those parts of our history where things didn't go as they should have, we're sorry." KERRY O'BRIEN: We've got terribly hung up on this in this country over whether the Government, in particular, on behalf of all Australians should actually say to Indigenous Australians those simple words, and particularly the stolen generation, "We're sorry". The expressions of deep regret have been used and a motion has been passed in the Parliament of deep regret, but those words "we're sorry" somehow seem to be going one step too far. Do you understand that? ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Do you know how George Bush, when he was President of the US, got up and said to Japanese Americans, "We are sorry for how you were treated during the war"? Do you remember that a German President went and knelt in a Jewish concentration camp and said "On behalf of the German nation, we are sorry"? And Chancellor Schroeder, walking with PM Barak very recently, went together to a concentration camp site and they carried out a kind of ritual. Those tiny words are some of the most potent words. They have an incredible capacity for changing the dynamics, and we have found it is not the weak who are able to say sorry -- it is the strong. KERRY O'BRIEN: Desmond Tutu, thanks for talking with us. A very eloquent man who's seen the best and the worst in all of us. 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