Abstract
Scholarship on transitional justice has oscillated between the pedagogical value of moral magnanimity, shown by victims of past atrocities who choose to forgive their wrongdoers, and the deterrent effect of imposing punishment on the offenders, which includes making restitution to the victims of their wrongful actions. This article examines the views of two African thinkers on this issue, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who argues for forgiveness, and Wole Soyinka who defends restitution as a better way to express respect for the dignity of both the victims and the rule of law. The article contends that while traditional African values play important roles in the perspectives of these thinkers, they do not, in themselves, justify either of the two positions they advance. The article further contrasts the positive role Tutu and Soyinka assign to historical memory and truth-telling with the strategies of social forgetting and public silence embraced in Sierra Leone and Mozambique in their quest for political reconciliation.
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Notes
- 1.
Literally translated as a thoroughly virtuous person, someone whose core character trait consists in respecting the rights of other people.
- 2.
Soyinka does not mean to suggest, by using this term, that it is possible to ritualistically erase the past, but only that the Truth and Reconciliation process has the potential to enable participants get rid of or overcome dangerous emotions.
- 3.
The litany of atrocities committed during the war included amputation, mutilations of all kinds, and summary executions of civilians. In addition, women and girls were subjected to rape and forced marriage, and children and youth of both genders were abducted, conscripted, and often compelled to commit acts of killing, mutilation, rape, and abduction.
- 4.
Honwana (1999, 30–35). In fact, there is an amazing similarity in the structure and purpose of the purification rituals in both societies. For example, Sierra Leone’s “cooling the heart” ritual is also believed to reverse the work of the combatant groups that had made the child into a fighter, by “restoring the child’s relationship with God and the ancestors—and thereby also with the family and community—through prayer, the application of consecrated water, and small offerings.” See Shaw (2007, 194).
- 5.
Tutu (2007). Although Tutu is in company with Bishop Joseph Butler and Jeffrie G. Murphy on the conceptualization of forgiveness as requiring the “forswearing” of resentment, Murphy qualifies his position by offering what seems to be a robust justification of resentment. This is because of a double harm that a willful and wrongful act inflicts on the victim, namely, the injury itself and the implicit statement of superiority that the perpetrator conveys by the conduct. A reactive attitude of resentment by the victim is thus a rejection of this claim of superiority; it is a counter assertion of that person’s self-worth. See Murphy (1988, 14–34).
- 6.
For a helpful discussion of the similarities and differences between these concepts, see Kaufman (2013, 93–112).
- 7.
Quoted in Beresford (1997). https://mg.co.za/article/1997-12-19-fisher-of-men-seeker-of-truth/. Last accessed on 9 March 2021.
- 8.
Interestingly, Soyinka was not alone in requiring a wrongdoer to pay a high moral price as a precondition for forgiveness. Jeffrie G. Murphy similarly argues that the victim of willful wrongdoing may only forgive perpetrator if (1) he repented or had a change of heart; or (2) he meant well (his motives were good; or (3) he has suffered enough; or (4) he has undergone humiliation (perhaps some ritual humiliation, e.g., apology ritual of “I beg forgiveness”); or (5) of old times’ sake (e.g., “He has been a good and loyal friend to me in the past”). See Murphy (1988, 24). Similarly, Alex Boraine, the Vice-Chairman of the TRC, registered his objection to blanket amnesty for South Africa, fearing it would be misconstrued as an enshrinement of impunity whose ills may be worse than the evil the society was trying to correct. According to him, impunity threatens belief in a democratic society; confuses and creates ambiguous social, moral, and psychological limits; institutionalizes and defends lies and denials by the laws of the country; tempts people to take laws into their own hands; invalidates and denies what has happened and thereby limits the possibility of effective communication between fellow citizens; strengthens powerlessness, guilt, and shame; and most significantly, affects belief in the future and may leave a historical “no man’s land” in which there is both an official and unofficial version of events—something that may give rise to historical stagnation, limiting the possibility of moving ahead and creating a common just society. Cited in Ntsebeza (2000, 164–165).
- 9.
This is the term Donald W. Shriver Jr. used to make essentially the same point. See Shriver (1995).
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Ilesanmi, S.O. (2022). Balancing Individual Dignity and Communal Indignation in African Religious Ethics of Forgiveness. In: Lotter, MS., Fischer, S. (eds) Guilt, Forgiveness, and Moral Repair. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84610-7_16
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