Reconciliation
and the Reconstruction of Humanity
Archbishop
Hurley memorial Lecture 2000
Stuart
C Bate
9th
Nov 2000
(2001
“Reconciliation& the reconstruction of humanity”. Trefoil:
The Southern African Catholic Quarterly. Summer/Autumn, 262: 3-5; 46-47.)
1
We are building a new building at Cedara. To do it we had to knock down
some old buildings, clear the land, hire an architect and a building
constructor decide what materials were required, buy them and hire workers to
do the job. Its a tough and complicated job. The buying list of things
required is so complicated that special people called quantity surveyors just
do that.
2
A building is made of bricks and mortar and that’s complicated
enough, but when it comes to reconstructing the humanity of a nation almost
mortally wounded by the ravages of colonialism and apartheid we are faced with
an infinitely more complex task. The shopping list itself encompasses
everything of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs from the most basic physical
ones for air, food and water to the highest ones of self actualisation and
personal and social transcendence.
3
Fortunately our topic today concerns only one aspect of this vast
undertaking of reconstruction: the role of reconciliation in the
reconstruction of humanity. But even just this one aspect raises complex and
thorny problems and so today I will reduce it even further by addressing just
one small, though fundamental, and,
I would claim, often overlooked, aspect of the reconciliation process. But
first to the meaning of
Reconciliation itself.
a
The Dictionary provides us with a number of definitions of this term.
Reconciliation means:
i
Making friendships after estrangement or:
ii
Purifying after
desecration
iii
Healing what is sick
iv
Harmonising what is conflicted and distorted
4
This seems to be something that everyone would want to happen. It seems
to be such a good thing to strive for. So why does it not seem to be
happening? Why do we seem to fail to do these things in our society today? Why
is their so much conflict rather than harmony, unwellness rather than healing,
abuse rather than purification and hostility rather than friendship
around the question of reconciliation
in our society today? What is the real problem?
a
Is it because our people are just bad?
Well some are but I think that’s not it. Most people are basically
good
b
Is it because we really do hate one another? Well there are some people
who hate those different to themselves but this is a neurotic condition and I
think that’s not it either. In fact most people just want to get along with
others and have a happy life.
c
Is it because we as a people are actually just stupid in that we
haven’t the intelligence to understand one another? Well I guess some people
are stupid. But again I don’t think that’s it. Most have sufficient brain
power to make sense out of the world around them.
d
So is it because we actually cant see things properly? Are we in fact
just blind and in our blindness we are just stumbling about banging ourselves
against one another? I think that here we are closer to a
real problem. We are in fact not completely blind but we are a nation
of peoples who are only partially sighted . One of the main obstacles to
reconciliation lies here. As the people of this nation we do not in fact SEE
reality in the same way and so we are blind to one another’s views. And it
is this blindness and the stumbling it causes which leads to more injury and
more confusion. We need new eyes to see one another more clearly.
e
The ability to see is in fact a great gift. The bible teaches us that
we are actually all somewhat blind and the great gift
Jesus offers is the gift of sight to the blind.
f
We do not reconcile because we do not see our human society in the same
way. And so when we talk to one another we are talking about the things we
see: different things. And then we make the false assumption that other people
are seeing what we see and in fact they are not.
5
The science of cultural anthropology teaches us that people of
different cultural backgrounds perceive reality differently. Our perceptions
of what is in the world, how it is constructed and how it works are not the
same and so we are indeed often blind to the reality of one another’s
priorities and problems. The structure of perception exists within us and the
categories of perception are conditioned by our culture.
a
A simple example from the culture of sport teaches us this basic truth.
Any disputed penalty in a pirates/chiefs match or a Sharks/province final
shows that perceptions are governed by factors different to our eyes. This is
the reality of the influence of culture over perception. The problem of
reconciliation begins with this difference in perception and the selective
vision it leads to. What one group sees is not what another sees and it is
this difference which leads to dispute, animosity and division.
b
Indeed, perception is a cultural issue and it is on the level of
culture that we need to recognise our diversity. Culture is not only the
rituals, traditions and customs of a social grouping but also the structure of
that group’s belief system, value system and categories of thought. In this
way culture informs the very way we perceive the world, reflect about and make
our judgements about it.
c
Two examples will illustrate
i
The example of the old man and the lift.
People
today, both black and white, know what a lift is. But is was not always so.
The story is told of the old Zulu man who came to Pietermaritzburg from the
rural area for the first time in the 1950's. He went into a tall building and
saw an old woman go into this machine which appeared to be an enclosed box.
And he wondered why a person would walk into a box like that. Then the doors
closed and he heard a funny noise and
then they opened again and a young woman came out. At this he was very
startled and he enquired of the person next to him where he could get a
machine like this to take home as his wife was very old and he would also like
to make her young and beautiful again.
ii
The priest and the isigege/isibamba
The
other story concerns a young white priest who was working with the Zulus and
wanted to make the mass more African. One day, in a curio shop, he saw some
beautiful long beadwork decorations. He bought them and used them as the stole
for the mass the next week. When he came in for the mass the people were
horrified but out of respect kept quiet. Then the next week he did the same
and so they discussed amongst themselves and asked one of the men to explain
to Father that what he was wearing was isibamba around his neck together with
isigege hanging down his back. Both of these are intimate articles of clothing
worn by women and it was as if he had gone into a western church using a bra
and girdle for his stole and vestment.
6
Seeing and believing as a cultural act
a
All of us tend to think that other people see the world the way we do.
But the fact is that they do not
b
We all tend to think that our values, beliefs and priorities are the
beliefs values and priorities of other people. But in fact they are not
c
We tend to think that what is common sense to us is common sense to
others but once more this is not the case. Common sense is the sense of a
community: it too is cultural.
d
It is only when we go right back to this fundamental principle that we
can begin to lay the groundwork for a deeper level of reconciliation for all
the people in our society. Of course the apartheid solution to this problem
was to keep people apart and to allow the different world views to operate
separately within different social and geographical contexts. It was an
unworkable alternative. It denies the factuality of our common humanity and
that we share a common land, a common world and many economic and social ties.
Indeed to the extent that we are in social communication we also share a
common culture. Apartheid can only work when people do not know of one
another’s existence and have no social relations at all.
e
In the new south Africa, as in the Global village the problem of
cultural difference has not disappeared as some would have us believe. It is
part of our human condition our society and we have to face it. The mistake
that is being made today is the assumption that difference does not exist and
that because we are now on liberated nation we are in fact all the same and
all see the priorities for our new nation in the same way. This is another
unworkable alternative.
f
So what to do? The first step is a consciousness moment. We have to
begin to recognise that different groupings of people in our society are
perceiving our new society in different ways. This means moving out of our own
world to encounter the other. We are quite poor at this because of our
apartheid past. As we move out of our world to encounter the other we need to
ask one another how do people see things today. We have to ask the others what
is important and what is less so. We have to ask about their values and their
beliefs: their aspirations for our new society. And what are the priorities.
g
Asking these questions will lead to many different answers and it is
coming to hear and understand what those different to us are perceiving that
we can enrich one another, create relationship, recognise commonalities and
respect differences. In other words, begin to be reconciled.
h
What reconciliation is not is making people see and believe what I and
my group see and believe and rejecting as irrelevant what we don’t perceive.
That is ethnocentrism at best and easily degenerates to colonialism and
racism. It is currently endemic throughout our society.
7
What then is the way forward
I
would like to ptopose that to rid outrselves of this blindness we have to do
four tasks:
C first recognise that there are different world-views or cultures operating in our society.
C second, affirm and disseminate to all peoples the principal values in each of these so that we can learn good from one another;
C third recognise the status of the current relationship between these world views in our society and
C fourth, recognise that healing requires mutual affirmation and up building in order to create a base for dialogue and then reconstruction by recognising how we have destroyed one another and what is required to rebuild us anew as a nation.
a
Recognise that there are different world views operating in our society
i
Xolile Keteyi in his book Inculturation as a strategy for liberation”
identified four principal cultural paradigms, or world-views, existing in our
society today. These arer: “ethnic group”, dominant heritage, The
“Anglo-Boer/Black” cultural paradigm and “the emergent democratic
culture”. In a response to this work, I have suggested that this could be
increased to eight separate cultural paradigms. Whatever the number it is
clear that we live in a culturally complex society. For the sake of simplicity
here I would like to focus on two principal ones: the Modern Western
world-view and the African Traditional world-view.
ii
One of the roles of world view is to provide us with an explanation for
our experiences. The world is very complex and so our world view searches for
ways to make sense out of this complexity. Without this explanatory function
of world view we would be unable to make sense out of events such as a
lightening strike on one house rather than another; sickness affecting some
people but not others; the fact that some people have fortune in life whilst
others don’t and so on.
iii
The world view searches for ways to find unity underlying apparent
diversity, simplicity underlying apparent complexity, order underlying
apparent disorder and regularity underlying apparent anomaly.
iv
Every culture tries to find a set of basic entities or forces which are
in fact operating within or behind our world of experience and a set of laws
which explain the behaviour of these entities. In this way the world view
allows us to refer to the entities and the laws in order to explain the world
of our experience. It is these entities and laws around which the principal
myths of the culture emerge. Note that myths are always true for the people of
the culture. Only other peoples myths are false.
v
In this regard Modern Western culture and African culture could not be
further apart and it is only in the recognition of this difference by BOTH
groups that the process of communication
can begin let alone reconciliation.
vi
In modern Western Culture these basic entities are impersonal,
material, concrete and particular in the sense that they are particles. They
are photons or atoms or molecules or cells or organs. The laws are scientific
(verifiable repeatable) like the atomic theory of matter and the cell theory
of life and the germ theory of disease. These laws are developmental or
evolutionary because reality and experience emerges from the aggregation and
complexification of the constituent parts.
vii
In African Traditional Culture these basic entities are personal,
spiritual, intangible and relational. They are ancestors, other people,
communities and spirits. That is the very opposite of the Western model in
each category. Small wonder then that we misunderstand one another. The laws
are based on customs regarding correct interpersonal and communal conduct
based on values such as respect, status and social responsibility particularly
to the family. These laws are based on reality
emerging as a result of change within the interpersonal and communal
relational field and so this gives rise to understandings of human experience
based on social harmony and its distortion or rupture.
viii
When there are problems or difficulties in the community, Westerners
will ask the question “what is the problem” and search for the scientific
reason behind the issue. Traditional Africans will ask “who is to blame?”
and examine the interpersonal relational breakdown in the social fabric.
ix
When people get sick Westerners get confined to the organic issues
whereas Traditional Africans will look for an interpersonal cause: social
disharmony resulting from interpersonal jealousy, bad relationships with the
ancestors or evil expressed in witchcraft? Much of the HIV-AIDS conflict is
around this kind of difference of perspective. The ethnocentric person only
sees his own view as correct and cannot understand the stupidity of people
with a different view.
x
Human Social life in the Western model is about development and
progress. It is about setting up efficient scientific systems of social
function.
xi
Human social life in the African model is about maintaining harmony and
fulfilling ones duties to one’s family both the living and the living-dead
(ancestors).
xii
This leads to all kinds of conflicts. Someone who has accumulated lots
of wealth and property is adjudged successful and effective in the western
model whereas such a person would be looked on as somewhat strange in the
African model where sharing amongst the community is a primary value. The
question would be asked as to how this person got so wealthy when everyone
else is so poor. And the problem would be compounded if such a person did not
share his wealth particularly with his kin ie his immediate family and all
those he is related to. Sharing one’s wealth with one’s kin is something
that usually only happens at death in the Western model.
xiii
This is why issues of racism today and restitution for crimes of the
past are so important in the African mind set. The whole social fabric is
compromised when such evil, witchcraft, sorcery is not removed from the
society and when the culprits have not been identified and performed the
social rituals required to restore the harmony and balance in the Nation. Only
then can the spears be washed and the nation be healed.
xiv
Yet for Westerners this is a waste of time and precious resources.
There is so much to do to develop and progress that our time and resources
should be spent on setting up infrastructure and growing/developing our
economy to bring material concrete wealth to the nation.
xv
Is one group wrong and the other group right? It is precisely when we
rush to make judgements of this nature that we rupture the possibility of real
reconciliation between one another.
b
Having recognised the profundity of our difference. What is the next
step? It is to move towards one another in an attempt to discover the values
in one another’s views values and priorities. It is to open our eyes wider
so that we can embrace that in another’s vision which also speaks to our own
humanity.
i
Unfortunately this has not happened very much. What we have seen with
many of our leaders and the people in the communities they lead is a
degeneration into squabbling and mutual recrimination. One group
cries “fight back” but
this is heard as “fight black” as though the war must continue! Another
leader refuses even to communicate with “the White politician” as men are
supposed to in “indaba”, “lekotla” or “bosberaad”: an value which
has entered into many of our cultural communities as the three languages used
suggest. In another context the African value of unity in the community is
abused to prevent those from other political groupings to live in a particular
isigodi by intimidation and the burning of houses.
ii
Attitudes like these are a return to the apartheid past and leaders and
groups who use them for political purposes fail to lead the people into a post
apartheid reconciled community. They display an astonishing blindness in their
stumbling about.
iii
Many of our leaders today have abrogated their responsibility on all
sides to transcend the limitations of each approach and look for ways to
reconcile. Reconciliation implies the recognition of our common destiny and
our common humanity within the reality of our difference.
iv
The greatness of some men and women of our day has been the ability to
transcend their own background and recognise the value in the other.
Affirmation of the good in our diverse expressions of humanity is indeed the
way forward today.
v
Nelson Mandela’s greatness has been his ability to stand for that and
to be seen to affirm the value of the many cultural backgrounds and world
views of our peoples is that he
has the ability to do this by affirming the values in both. Other leaders like
John Dube, Gandhi, Tutu, Luthuli
and Biko had the same gift.
vi
It is perhaps been more difficult for Westerners. Since they belong to
the dominant culture and mainly avoided being socialised into Traditional
African culture in the way that most Africans have been somewhat Westernised.
Yet there have been some like Beyers Naude, Alan Paton and Helen Suzman and
amongst them we could clearly include our own Archbishop Hurley whom we
remember today. These are the heros who point to the way forward as a
reconciled society which recognises the values coming from all of its cultural
roots.
vii
This Western difficulty highlights a further aspect of the cultural
problematic in South Africa which is blocking reconciliation. This is the
relationship between culutres in South Africa. This relationship mirrors the
traditional social relationships between social groups in this culture. It is
one of domination and subjugation. The Western world view is considered to be
superior, more civilised and more evolved that the traditional African one.
This brings us to our third task
c
Reconciling the relationship between cultures
i
When African Traditional culture and Modern western culture interact in
our nation. They do not do so as equals and it is very important to recognise
that the relationship between them is one of domination and subjugation. This
relationship itself is a cultural one since it comprises a set of beliefs and
values regarding the superiority of Western culture over primitive African
culture.
ii
Reconciliation must then be concerned with the deconstruction of this
relationship since their cannot be a common humanity between masters and
slaves. For Africans this is a consciousness moment where people affirm their
own beliefs values and perceptions. The black consciousness movement
recognised this as an essential step in liberation. For Westerners and in
particular for South Africa Whites this means the deconstruction of the what a
white student of mine called the “experienced texture of superiority”.
This is a most difficult task and almost nothing has been done here mainly
because we as Whites are so blind to it.
iii
Melissa Steyn in her important article “white identity in context”
compares “Whiteness in South Africa” to what she experiences in the USA.
There she sees it is “an optimistic construction of America as the land of
limitless opportunity” whereas here it is one of superiority driven by fear
and pessimism. For us she suggests Africans were the “primitive of
primitives”, the restless majority to be controlled by whatever means
possible so that the whites, relatively isolated from the rest of their tribe
could survive. Sanctions and the Anti-apartheid campaign brought a sense of
being “abandoned by our kind”as the savages burned, necklaced and spread
violence.
iv
Adding to this I would add that the emergence of the New South Africa
has provided this fear with a new expression as a hidden sense of guilt for
how we have treated people is gradually exposed. This expression is a further
attempt to hide it behind the continued affirmation of the superiority of our
civilisation and lifestyle.
v
I would suggest that the deconstruction and clearing away of the
negative aspects of White culture in South Africa remains one of the most
difficult challenges to reconciliation and yet it is a theme which remains
almost universally untreated. This too is blindness.
d
And so to our final task. The mutual affirmation of our humanity as
expressed in our cultures.
i
How can we open our eyes to one another?
The first step here is to recognise that both Western culture and
African Traditional culture have something to offer to our new society and all
our people need to discover, affirm and embrace the principal values and views
of each as the basis of a new emerging South African society. A society rooted
in the good of all its cultures.
ii
What then do these two cultures offer to the reconstruction of a new
humanity in our society today? Let us attempt to indicate some of them.
1
Western culture brings the values of efficiency, pragmatism, hard work;
individual human rights, tolerance of difference, freedom, equality,
democracy, the scientific
approach to solving problems, technological progress, financial
accountability, infrastructure and many others. These are values upon which
our nation can stand and walk bravely into the global future
2
African culture brings values such as the following:
i
inhlonipho means respect for
others; This respect begins in the family and
the family is yet another value which tells us that we do not live in
this world just as individuals but come from families and it is here that we
learn responsibility for others.
ii
But such responsibility also transcends the family in the notion of ubuntu
which expresses that human beings are important and precious and called to
a mutual solidarity as a people.
iii
From this we see the African value: ukuphila:
poorly translated as life. Life which is the fullness of relationship: a
morality of the interconnectedness of human beings in society (umuntu
ungumuntu ngabantu).
iv
And so society is called to be a harmony and all are called to fight
social evil in order to restoring harmony in social relationships
(ukwanda kwaliwa umthakathi).
v
And finally a notion of time which is not only a commodity that is
consumed but the place is which our humanity can be celebrated and recognised.
vi
These too are values which all the peoples of our country whatever
their background could profit from and indeed many of them resonate with
values of all people.
iii
We destroy one another when we refuse to recognise our mutual
giftedness and also when we recognise how we have failed to live up to our own
values. The first requires openness to be freed from our blindness to see the
other and the second requires contrition to recognise our failures
8
Conclusion
a
The journey to reconciliation in our nation is a long one. All
reconstruction and transformation processes have three dimensions to them The
first entails physical transformation. This is relatively easy if you have the
financial and skills resources since physical change just requires people to
carry out instructions. The second level of change is structural change. This
is a much slower process. We have still not completed the outlines of our
transformed political structures in South Africa. The local elections will be
complete the process of setting up legislative structures. But we are still
struggling to develop new educational, judicial and financial structures in
our society. Structural change takes years. But even more difficult than that
is cultural change. Beliefs and attitudes are communicated from generation to
generation and so culture change is a change that occurs over units of at
least tens of years, from generation to generation.
b
This means that we should not lose heart bu rather press on with the
challenge of reconciliation. Change will come because our society is made up
of men and women of good heart and already we have accomplished a lot. My
purpose today was to uncover some somewhat hidden aspects of the cultural
problematic in reconciliation and to realise that it has its own time scale
which should enjoin on us patience
c
In 1970 Archbishop Hurley wrote (prophesied) that Apartheid would
collapse within ten years. At that time I was asked as a young Christian to
write my response to his words. That article appeared in the Sunday Tribune
under the title. Why I agree with Archbishop Hurley”. In fact we were out by
15 years and perhaps even more because it continues to exert its influence on
our society as i have pointed out today.
d I am happy to be here today honouring him in the new South Africa a young society with so much promise and hope. It will take time but we will be reconciled