Tuesday morning, our last morning in Cape Town, I got up early and headed down to “The Biscuit Factory” to get the boys some chocolate chip muffins for the trip we would begin today along the Garden Route. After a few errands I left Kathy and the boys and drove over to the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation for a meeting with their executive director, Dr. Charles Villa- Vicencio. I had gotten the invitation via my friends from Notre Dame, Peter and Ann Walshe. It was clear when setting up the appointment (with a Victorian e-mail letter of introduction) that it was not his custom to receive such uncelebrated visitors as myself – but out of friendship with Ann and Peter he would meet with me.
Because of his reputation I had prepared five questions to ask him about his work and experience and the work of the Institute. I was really most interested in his work as Bishop Tutu’s right hand man as the managing director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I presented my five questions and he leaned back, and folded his arms over his chest and began to speak. He began – “Mike, the older I have grown the less interested I have become in prosecution.” He talked about how there are war tribunals and courts and all sorts of remedies for the type of horrific activities that happen in human community in general and in apartheid South Africa in particular. While he said that he had little problem with the justice these places meted out – he said that his problem was that they helped very little in the healing that needed to happen. For the next 45 minutes (he had promised me only half an hour) he was very engaged – and only interrupted our time as a result of his next appointment at the door.
As to his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he said it was the worst job he ever held in his life and the best job he had ever held – and he would never want to live his life again and NOT have the experience of it. He said that they had received over 22,000 applications to testify from people who had been tortured, abused, or had family members killed. He said that they had over 7,000 applications for amnesty – some for the most heinous crimes against another human being you could imagine. He talked about how after hearing so much testimony you could begin to grow numb to the atrocities, and then a story would be told that would hit you square between the eyes.
He talked with me about the power of both telling your story and of your story being heard. He said that he thought that this was very important to do verbally, but that he did not discount the tribal indigenous ways of doing this through music, dance and ritual as well (he pointed out that we Christians have our own liturgies, that sometime do not depend upon the written word as well).
He talked about the Zulu word for greeting, which he translated as meaning “I see you.” He described the work of the Commission and his Institute now as helping to make those words real in the lives of people who don’t like each other and are, in fact, great enemies.
It made me think of Broadway and the work of the people of Broadway to listen inside and outside the walls, so that we can say when we meet one another “I see you.”
One of the favorite things he told me was about a joke that circulated among his circles back in the 1980’s when they said that there were two possible solutions to the crisis in South Africa. The first was realistic and the second was miraculous, they would say. The realistic solution was that they would call on God and all his angels to come down and sort out this mess with the people. The miraculous solution is that they would sit down with their enemies and talk.
What a story – what a joke! And the joke is on us. This “joke” has taken front and center in my mind…
Anyway…Charles talked on. He talked about the area of Hout Bay that we had driven through with Father Wim a few days before. He talked about the negotiation going on between the long term (wealthy) residents there and the relative newcomers (and poor). He spoke about the challenge that there is in getting people to go through shouting and expressing anger at each other so that they can turn toward their common problem, shoulder to shoulder, and work together to solve it.
He talked about how verbalization of tragedy and trauma is a step toward healing.
He said that the present President of South Africa (Thabo Mbeki)’s father once said to him that the new South Africa would need to pay attention to two things:
1) Having;
2) Belonging
He said that the black and colored people who had been kept from having – need to be given that which they had not been allowed to have. And that the white folks needed to know that they still belong to the community (because it is easy for them to feel that they don’t have a place at the table anymore).
It was a morning and a conversation that gave me a great deal to think about.
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