I came to Cape Town to think about forgiveness, to see how South Africans think about forgiveness, and to follow a hunch that it is far more complicated than a trip to Robben Island and books by Desmond Tutu might suggest. I have found an unsettling train of thought among many people here who are working with NGOs or other organizations for social justice and restoration. Forgiveness in this context is guilt-induced, reckless, and rampant, it seems. I came here to work with Ginn's foundation, and I had the mistaken and simplistic understanding that her partner, the man who murdered her daughter, had applied for and received amnesty through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This is not the case.
I learned that there are a number of former combatants who refused to go before the TRC, refused to acknowledge their crimes as crimes, and now live in a post-TRC limbo in which the threat of prosecution hangs over them. It is unlikely that they will ever be prosecuted, though, due to the backlog in the criminal justice system and the lack of resources to undertake so many cases. These are the people that Ginn is committed to working for, helping them reintegrate into society, gain job skills, and cope with post-traumatic stress, addiction, unemployment, and other issues.
I don't think I believe in this work. Here is why. The TRC was this extraordinary spark of light on the surface of the earth, the first time in human history that a truth and reconciliation commission actually supplanted criminal justice, gave perpetrators the opportunity to receive amnesty instead of punishment, and victims the possibility to tell their stories and be heard. It was an incredible thing. It was flawed, as any human undertaking is flawed, but it was like nothing that ever came before it. It was the chance to do things differently. For anyone to turn his or her back on such an exceptional thing is unbelievable. To turn one's back on the TRC, and then expect - or even demand - help from social justice organizations, seems wrong to me. The bargain that was the TRC stated that those who did not come before the amnesty committee would be prosecuted for their crimes. With every year that passes that former combatants - both of the freedom fight and of the apartheid state - are not prosecuted, the strength of the TRC is weakened. The legitimacy of the process goes to dust as the bargain is not upheld, and this is a tragedy in my eyes.
There seems to be a sense among many who are working on behalf of these former combatants that their actions were justified and understandable. At one of the conferences a few weeks ago, I overheard Ginn in conversation with some of her colleagues. I believe they were talking about the surge of xenophobic violence that was sweeping Johannesburg at the time. Ginn said, "I can understand. If I had to scrounge for food in trash bins, I would become violent, too."
Earlier on, I had asked Ginn what she thought about the fact that the man who killed her daughter did not ask for amnesty. I do not claim to know the intricacies of this situation, or Ginn's experience, but what I came away with by way of explanation was that the situation was very complicated, and this man was also a victim. I would never stoop to tell Ginn or anyone how to deal with such a trauma and such a loss, just as I do not need anyone to tell me how to deal with my own trauma and loss on a dark Atlanta night nine years ago. Still, I can't understand this work. I can't understand this forgiveness. Being a victim does not justify violence. Being a victim does not justify anything.
Another friend was telling me that if only I read this man's autobiography, I would understand. But I doubt it. There is nothing in a thousand pages of autobiography that could ever make sense out of walking into a tavern on New Year's Eve in 1993 and shooting up a group of young people. Nothing in anyone's life story will render understandable the fact that a man shot Ginn's young daughter in the back and left her dead on the ground. I will never accept this as any kind of act of war. All my senses rise against it.
It is entirely possible that the man who attacked me in Atlanta had been abused his whole life, was suffering in some kind of poverty or mental illness, was on drugs that night, had just been attacked and raped himself the day before. Anything is possible about him. None of it would justify or mitigate the fact that he broke into my apartment to rape and kill me, and nearly beat me to death on the sidewalk when I tried to escape. If I knew who he was, I might be able to forgive him if he asked. I will never know. But that forgiveness, and any gruesome details about his past, would never make what he did to me that night okay, or understandable, or justifiable. When we try to make sense of acts of violence, we wash away the plain truth that this is not okay. Under any circumstances, this is not okay.
To my mind, much of this sentiment here seems to be motivated by guilt among white South Africans for the legacy of apartheid and the circumstances that led up to the violence of the freedom fight. When Ginn traveled to the man's hometown for his homecoming ceremony, she gave a speech and issued an apology on behalf of her ancestors. I would say that this apology was not hers to give, and not theirs to accept. There is such a thing as collective responsibility, but from what I've seen here, it has been taken too far. What white South Africans perpetrated on black and coloured people during apartheid was reprehensible. Neither should those responsible escape prosecution. But what they did does not make the violent response worth of a victory celebration. A young girl was shot in the back. This is not an act of war. Forgiveness is all well and good, and it's Ginn's to decide, but justice is another thing entirely. Forgiveness does not erase responsibility. Forgiveness does not mean that shooting a girl in the back is an acceptable act. It is not. Not then, not now, not ever.
What I have learned here is that forgiveness is not the point. Change is the point. Eleven years after the close of the TRC, things have not changed. More than one million people still live in unbelievable poverty in the Khayelitsha township alone. When the xenophobic attacks broke out in Johannesburg and Cape Town last month, President Thabo Mbeki didn't even interrupt his overseas trip to come back and speak to such a grave national crisis. Desmond Tutu was off in the Gaza Strip, and he did not return. I had only been here a week, and even to my foreign eyes that was astounding. Look at what is happening here! Look at this new and fragile, free and equal country, just fourteen years old, and what is happening? The violence was committed by South Africans against Africans from other nations. A new apartheid is emerging, driven by poverty and unemployment and continued suffering, but not justified by those things. How can this be happening here? How can Mbeki not say anything? We talk about the "New South Africa," but the New South Africa will fall to pieces if we don't take the lessons of the past and pay them forward. If we say that violence was justified in the past, then that opens the way for new justifications for new violence. The point is not forgiveness. The point is to stop. The point is to do something different, finally, extraordinarily, hopefully, and with all the "triumph of the human spirit" we hear about at Robben Island but do not demand of ourselves elsewhere.
The point is that every single person in this troubled country, including myself, must work and work to change. Violence must not be justified; it must be stopped. When I woke up from a coma in an Atlanta hospital room, I heard a haze of male voices: the doctor telling me I may not walk again, my father vowing to kill the man who attacked me, other friends with other violent fantasies of retribution. They spoke of "the attacker." I had vague memories: locking eyes with the man in my bedroom, the feel of his skin, his smell, his voice shouting up against my ear, shut up shut up. The first day I could hold a pen and scrawl something in my journal, I wrote that I hoped they never found him, because even he was human, and even he should not be attacked in such a way. It's not like I've never been angry about it. And it's not like he was the only person who really wanted me to shut up about it over nine years. But I will not wish violent havoc on another human being, and I will not stop telling the story, because these things happen, in America and in South Africa, and the point is not to grapple with interpersonal forgiveness, the point is to stop. doing. these. things. How, I don't know. If I could solve this problem, I would be too busy writing my Nobel Peace Prize address to write anything on this website. But I know that part of stopping violence is stopping the excessive forgiveness and justification of those who commit acts of violence for seemingly "just" causes. Part of it is holding people responsible as best we can, be it through amnesty committees or criminal justice or restorative justice or whatever. We have to say: this is not okay.
I work for this because I want to live in a world where no young woman will ever be attacked in her bed again. I want a world where it is in no way justifiable to shoot a young woman in the back and call it an act of war. Nothing will diminish my hope for this.
On the night I was attacked, my neighbors woke up to my screams and called for help. After the man who attacked me ran off into the city, and before the police and paramedics arrived, one of my neighbors came outside and spread a blanket over my naked and bleeding body on the cold sidewalk. This blanket is my hope. It is my whole hope. In the wake of such an ugly and inhuman attack, a stranger came to me with a blanket. In that moment, she restored my humanity, and in her fear, she affirmed her own. The truth of my attack is not in the violent blows of my forehead against the concrete. The truth is in the blanket.
For nine years, I have waged a battle with the Atlanta police to have my own copies of the crime scene photos and the pictures of my body at the hospital. For various reasons over the years, they would not release the pictures to me. They would let me see them, but I couldn't have them. But it is my story, and it is my body lying there, and over time it became more and more important to me to have those pictures for myself. Last April, they finally gave them to me.
I wanted this one so badly. I had seen it, but I wanted to have it, and now I do. It is the reason I do everything. It is the reason I keep hoping. There on the sidewalk and the grass are pools of my blood. There are evidence markers lying there under the dark early morning rising sun. And there, crumpled where I had lain, is the blanket. There, on the sidewalk, is a stranger's gift of humanity to me in my darkest moment. The blanket is hope. The blanket is life.
1154 Briarcliff Road, Atlanta, Georgia
March 28, 1999
1 comment:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being who you are.
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