Managing Vulnerability by Marback Richard C.;

Author:Marback, Richard C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

DESMOND TUTU’S EVEN-HANDEDNESS

If the gesture of conciliation—the open hand extended to another—belonged to anyone in the struggle for democracy in South Africa, it was not Nelson Mandela. It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. From 1967 as chaplain at University of Fort Hare, to bishop of Lesotho in 1976, to secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches in 1978, Tutu consistently persisted in his appeal for an end to apartheid and for reconciliation between the apartheid government and its opposition. In 1986 when he became the first African archbishop of the Anglican Church of South Africa, Tutu continued to advocate for reconciliation, all the while denouncing the injustices of apartheid and criticizing the violence of apartheid’s opponents.

As the chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Tutu extended his hand and opened his arms in a public gesture of reconciliation, inviting the participation of all South Africans. Some, however, rejected his gesture. There were the Afrikaners suspicious of Tutu’s gesture of compromise, perceiving him to be nothing more than a functionary of the African National Congress (ANC). They worried that the goal of the TRC was to do no more than blame the previous government and praise the new government. They feared a victor’s vengeance. There were Africans critical of Tutu as well. They believed reconciling with Afrikaners would do nothing but compromise the success of the struggle against the injustices of apartheid. However much he may have compromised, Tutu did not understand the choice between forgiveness and justice as a choice between incompatible options. Instead he saw his role as doing more than promoting forgiveness at the expense of exacting justice. If anything, Tutu’s conciliatory rhetoric aimed at persuading those Afrikaners and Africans suspicious of each other and distrustful of reconciliation that they could come to share a common language of cooperation. With distrust and suspicion close beneath the surface of every decision—the design of the Freedom Monument being only one example—the challenge Tutu faced was how to neutralize the dispositions toward others that hindered communication. Being neutral, being careful to appear dispassionate in one’s words, is certainly a rhetorical strategy for overcoming distrust and suspicion. Tutu, however, decided a rhetoric of neutrality was inadequate to the task of establishing a language of trust and cooperation in South Africa.

In his foreword to the final report of the TRC, Tutu characterizes his gesture of conciliation not as open-handed, not as an unconditional invitation to cooperation, but as even-handed, a gesture balancing his condemnation of apartheid with his willingness to consider the motives of apartheid’s administrators. He puts it this way: “I cannot, however, be asked to be neutral about apartheid. It is an intrinsically evil system. But I am even-handed in that I will let an apartheid supporter tell me what he or she sincerely believed moved him or her, and what his or her insights and perspectives were; and I will take these seriously into account in making my findings” (1: 13). Tutu is clear: even-handedness is not neutrality.

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