Those who fostered crimes under apartheid in South Africa didn’t get off easy by simply confessing their deeds, Bishop Desmond Tutu said during a visit to a college campus, local media reported.
”The stigma of such public shame and humiliation is a heavy price to pay,” Tutu said on Thursday to 2 400 people at Guilford College.
”We discovered real peace never comes from the barrel of a gun.”
Tutu also said South Africa set an example by inspiring reconciliation as a method for handling other conflicts.
He said he admired the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission that has held hearings into the 1979 shootings that killed five communists during an anti-Klan rally in the southern city. The commission is a grass-roots effort modeled on similar commissions in South Africa and Peru.
”I’m looking on with admiration. … I believe it is important for people to confront the truth,” Tutu said.
”Letting bygones be bygones … returns to haunt you.” – Sapa-AP