/ 7 February 1997

The parable of the bicycle

What is reconciliation? Who does it benefit?Antjie Krog probes differing views on the concept

THERE was Tom and there was John. Tom lived opposite John. One day, Tom stole John’s bicycle and every day John saw Tom cycling to school on his bicycle. A year later, Tom walked up to John. He stretched out his hand. “Let’s reconcile and put the past behind us.” John looked at Tom’s hand. “And what about the bicycle?” “No,” said Tom, “I’m not talking about the bicycle. I’m talking about reconciliation.”

This story was told by Father Mxolisi Mpambani during a panel discussion on reconciliation at the University of Cape Town organised jointly by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and UCT’s department of African Studies.

Dirk Coetzee turns to the family in the front row. “I ask your forgiveness. I am sorry for what I did …”

The legal representative of Charity Kondile reads her statement to Coetzee: “You said that you would like to meet Mrs Kondile and look her in the eye. She asked me to tell you that she feels it is an honour … you do not deserve. If you are really sorry, you would stand trial for the deeds you did …”

A long uncomfortable silence fills the hall. The judges, the legal representatives, the audience … everybody looks distraught – the only movement is the Adam’s apple of Dirk Coetzee as he swallows slowly.

In an interview afterwards, Kondile says: “It is easy for [Nelson] Mandela and [Desmond] Tutu to forgive … they lead vindicated lives. In my life nothing, not a single thing, has changed since my son was burnt by barbarians … nothing. Therefore I cannot forgive.”

Notable was the way the story was presented in the press. Coetzee asks forgiveness (“white” press); Kondile refuses to forgive (“black” press). The latter with a definite tone of pride in the refusal.

But the word “reconciliation” is most often used by Afrikaner politicians. Although one would think they use it to hide their fear that they alone will be held responsible for the country’s shameful past, they mostly prefer to use “reconciliation” as a threat: give us what we want, or we won’t reconcile with a black government.

The dictionary definitions of reconciliation have an underlayer of restoration: of re-establishing things, returning them to their original state. The Oxford says: “to make friendly after estrangement; make resigned; harmonise; make compatible – able to co-exist”. The Afrikaans dictionary says: “weer tot vriendskap bring; accept; not resist”.

Tutu’s reconciliation theology ties in with this classical definition of reconciliation. Academics say reconciliation has formed an integral part of his theological thinking since 1979. But Tutu has “Africanised” the concept of reconciliation so that it shows up the usual Western Christian motive for reconciling as sometimes being too far removed to be of value.

The church says: “You must forgive, because God has forgiven you for killing his son.” Tutu says: “You can only be human in a human society. If you live with hate and revenge, you dehumanise not only yourself, but your community. You must forgive to make your community whole.”

Yet it is interesting to see the contrast with the views of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, on reconciliation and forgiveness.

Late last year, the University of Natal presented Mbeki with an honorary doctorate at the its “Reconciliation Graduation Ceremony”. Initially Mbeki seemed a somewhat odd choice to honour for reconciliation – a theme he seldom publicly dwells on.

It also seemed – after the motivation and the Mbeki curriculum vitae were presented – that the university itself was not familiar with possible reconciliatory actions its honoured candidate might have undertaken. The mere bestowing of an honorary degree on an African National Congress leader by a former “English liberal institution” was perhaps the University of Natal’s version of reconciliation.

No one mentioned the major personal role Mkebi has played in the recent peace achievements in that violent and revenge-racked province. ANC sources say that Mbeki spent weeks and weeks in the province, consulting and paving the way for reconciliation.

Before the ceremony, Mbeki’s speech was distributed to the media. But instead of the reconciliation speech, Mbeki took out a totally different set of notes about his European visit, never delivering his reconciliation speech. The distributed speech contains three illuminating paragraphs. Where reconciliation for Tutu is the beginning of a transformative process, for Mbeki reconciliation comes after total transformation has taken place.

“Real reconciliation cannot be achieved without a thorough transformation and democratisation process,” says Mbeki. And, later:”True reconciliation can only take place if we succeed in our objective of social transformation. Reconciliation and transformation should be viewed as an interdependent part of one unique process of building a new society.”

Mbeki is clear on what he regards as transformation. He quotes Chief Albert Luthuli: “There remains before us the building of a new land … a synthesis of the rich cultural strains which we have inherited … It will not necessarily be all black, but it will be African.”

Is there a contradiction between what Mbeki and what Tutu are saying? Tutu believes black people have access to an almost superior humanity, which enables them to do that which surpasses cold material logic. When a woman at the truth commission hearings said she forgave the killers of her son, Tutu told her: “You make me so proud, mama, to be a black person like you.” What the world lacks, black people have. The main thrust of his reconciliation is between people of all colours – the rainbow image.

Mbeki, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily care what the world lacks. He spelt it out in Durban. He wants Africans to work together to transform the country and the continent. He talks about an African renaissance. He wants to show the world that African people can run a country and a continent successfully. For him reconciliation should take place among Africans to make transformation possible. And whether Mbeki means black when he says African is unclear.

Most of the views at the UCT panel discussion varied between these two positions.

Professor Pamela Reynolds from the anthropology department underscored Tutu’s vision that, in a wonderful way, people are already busy forgiving and reconciling. The fact that no revenge attacks take place means that people in their everyday lives have already weighed up the costs of reconciliation and revenge.

For Abner Mofokeng, reconciliation walks hand in hand with survival. As the human resources manager at Southern Life, his analysis is practical: “The South African experience has taught us that reconciled co-existence is essential for survival. Personal survival is inextricably linked to the survival of others.”

Reconciliation for Nozipho January Bardill will only take place the day whites also feel offended by racism, instead of feeling sorry for blacks. (To “feel sorry for blacks” has become the ultimate crime – committed by those called, in the newspeak, bleeding-heart liberals.)

Shirley Gunn brought the audience back to some basic questions. Who should reconcile? Who will gain what from reconciliation? Who will be the beneficiaries? She ties it in with delivery and echoes the words of Charity Kondile. It is easy for Mandela to forgive – his life has changed; but for the woman in the shack, it is not possible.

Mofokeng confronted Gunn: “It is simply not true that Mandela is not conscious of the woman in the shack. But Mandela keeps the bigger purpose, the fuller picture, in mind and because of that, in the end her children or grandchildren will benefit.”

A professor from America conjured up an unexpected picture of reconciliation. “True reconciliation in America was visible when we saw on television how whites and blacks together looted a furniture shop … you cannot carry furniture alone and they simply worked together in self-interest.”

At the back of the audience a young, tall student got up and addressed the issue carefully skirted during the lunch-hour panel discussion: “I would like to say something about the issue of racism now surrounding the commissioners themselves. If there is one thing that irritates me, it is when the new black elite whines about racism – while in actual fact, all they want is the power and the positions of the whites so that they could exercise those very same values.”

Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes. Professor Mahmood Mamdani from Uganda – currently in the AC Jordan professorship at UCT – was asked to conclude the discussion. “Five years ago, if someone mentioned to me a new democracy and a genocide, I am not sure I would have fitted South Africa and Rwanda in the correct slots,”he said. “What I still ask myself is whether it is not easier to live with perpetrators than with beneficiaries?”

Mamdani says that in Rwanda there are a lot of perpetrators and few people who benefited: in South Africa there are few perpetrators, but lots and lots of beneficiaries. And should reconciliation take place between victims and perpetrators, or between victims and beneficiaries?

Mamdani warns that there could be resentment if the majority, who expected to gain from reconciliation, is excluded.

Reviewing the book by Kader Asmal et al, Reconciliation Through Truth, Mamdani elaborates: “It becomes a problem when the history of resistance is seen as synonymous with the history of the ANC … then apartheid becomes reduced to a terror machine and resistance to the armed struggle.”

Mamdani uses the 1992 whites-only referendum as an example of how complex the issue of resistance is. It was regarded by a lot of South Africans as nothing more than a moment of narrow self-interest. Mamdani says it was a milestone, a shift signifying an historic moment of the first white settler minority on this continent reaching out for a settlement with the majority – “Without this moment any talk of reconciliation would have been wishful thinking,” he says.

Mamdani asks whether the basis for reconciliation after the Anglo-Boer War was not redistribution to Afrikaners rather than punishment of the English: “Were the English and Afrikaners partners in a common crime [apartheid] against humanity or was apartheid a programme for massive redistribution, reparation, of today’s loot in favour of yesterday’s victims?”

This upsetting analogy leads to the question of whether the truth commission is then the equivalent of the symbolic Ossewa Trek of 1938 – a tool to create a particular nationalism and not a new South African identity?

The story goes that Alan Paton participated in the symbolic trek because he believed that it was the beginning of an authentic new South Africanism – after listening to the speeches at the laying of the foundation stone of the Voortrekker monument, Paton went back home, shaved off his boer beard and said: there was no space there for me.

But Mamdani’s analysis perhaps makes space for both the seemingly contradictory reconciliation views of Tutu and Mbeki. Mamdani says durable reconciliation will only be built if its basis straddles both race and ethnicity. Race was meant to be the identity of the privileged, ethnicity the identity of the oppressed; race was urban, ethnicity rural.

So if Tutu deals with racial reconciliation and Mbeki with ethnic reconciliation, they can complement each other. And if some evil is embraced, may it be the lesser of the two – the bicycle.