Truth and Reconciliation Committee
What is justice? What is mercy? How do they relate to one another?
The concepts of mercy and justice are fascinating in their own right, however when the dynamic interaction between these two seemingly contrary values is examined, the intensity and beauty of their essence, value, and purpose is displayed in a remarkable way. Some have tried to separate these two virtues saying that mercy is the absence of justice, or that justice is not merciful, however this is not the case. In fact, the relationship between these two epical entities is one of matrimony: “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed†(Psalms 85:10, NKJV). For truth entails justice—a recognition of correct moral placement within the whole; justice is truth applied from a position of power. While justice is in its own right a complex subject, I think that mercy is something even harder to understand. Mercy is many things. It is a benevolent mindset, an attitude, an act (sometimes a bitter act done for complex reasons), and yet for absolute mercy to be had, as for absolute justice, full authority must be possessed by the granter. One of the benefits of mercy in a legal or institutional setting is its redeeming power over a particular area of justice that seems to fall short at times: Due to the nature of trespasses, corrective justice can only attempt to set things right and enact punishment or retribution to somehow compensate for damage suffered due to the trespass. Despite of the retributive attempts of justice, the historic event can never be fully wiped away—some sort of residual affect will always remain. Justice may relieve and fix some damage, but justice is, in some sense, an exacerbation.
A particular conversation several days ago poignantly brought these questions back to the fore of my mind, in a very sharp light.
First it is necessary to look slightly further into the past than last week; not too far of course, but though you may have been alive at the time of this important event I would be rather surprised if you know anything about it. And if that is the case such a fact doesn’t reflect badly on your knowledge, culture, or intellect, rather it uncovers a painful truth about western society in general and it also poses questions regarding the all-encompassing “distant†nature of humankind.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee was created in 1995 at the end of Apartheid (1960-1994) as a strategy to bring about a sort of national catharsis. Victims of violence were able to give voice to their suffering, to purge their grief-stricken silence without the fear of retaliation. In addition to the “safe space†created for victims the Committee also existed as a mechanism of Amnesty. Thousands of people were guilty of terrible crimes, heart-crushing in their cruelty. One such “punishment” was the widely used racially-motivated “necklacing:†a form of murder in which the victim was burnt to death with gasoline-soaked tires places around the neck.
Perpetrators were given opportunity to gain amnesty through the Committee, provided that two important criteria were met. Firstly, the crime had to be politically motivated, and secondly the entire and whole truth had to be confessed by the person seeking amnesty. Often times family members and/or friends of the victim, or even the victim himself, would be face to face with the perpetrator in front of the committee. Every painfully graphic detail had to be gone over, a verbal reenactment of the situation forced out through tears, screams, shouts, and soul-shattering groans. ( view technical details here)
In the end, if the two conditions were judged to be fully satisfied the Perpetrator was granted Amnesty, and of course, the victims were granted the opportunity to bestow full epic forgiveness. It wasn’t just one person forgiving another, it was a nation trying to wrestle with the relationship between justice and mercy in the scale of thousands of men and women and children, it was an entire country trying to ease the puss out of its wound through monumental institutional acts of forgiveness.
And yet, can an institution really have the power to grant mercy? Does a collective authority have the right to forgive atrocities committed against individuals? Presumably a victim can bestow mercy on the perpetrator, but institutional mercy is merely a form of Equity, which may prove cathartic or exacerbative, depending upon the victim’s response. To this day I am not sure how I feel regarding the ethics of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee—it seems to me that the wounds of Apartheid are so deep that retributive justice must be served and that an institutional act of mercy is all the more damning on victims who are not ready or willing to forgive.
It is the intense pain and the suffering on the faces of the victims and their families of Apartheid that my recent conversation brought to mind. My glimpse into the Committee and its participants came only through a documentary; vivid, to be sure, but still far removed.
The locus of the conversation centered upon a woman whose fiancé had been murdered in her sight by an ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend had then attempted to kill the woman, but only managed to wound her. Recently the murderer’s conviction was overturned by a State Supreme Court and he is going back to the original town, where the woman still lives, to be retried. I know that the case is not one of mercy and justice; rather I am sure that it is all about proceedings and paperwork, and yet justice still cries out. My favorite definition for justice (and my personal motto) is Everything in its right place. Sometimes, I think, even mechanisms for justice itself find themselves askew, and the virtues of mercy and procedural institutional justice seem to strike a false note in the face of dreadfully real injury. There is something hollow about institutional grace; but I suppose to be honest the same may be said about institutional justice. The trouble with distance is that it hinders relationship, and I have a feeling that relationship is where the answer lies.
I am not sure that I have said very much of significant meaning here; but I have been feeling the tug to wrestle with these questions, this tension for the last few days. How does your mind fit around these questions?
Feb 7th 2006
I agree that institutional mercy is not always best for the individuals in question, and thus never results in true mercy. For that to happen, you’d have to have both the perpetrator and the victim willing to submit; the perpetrator honestly admitting his deeds and the victim granting full amnesty. And even then full mercy does not exist. Bad memories can plague all those involved, and what was once a benevolent or contrite heart can again turn cold.
In human terms, the closest we can get to true mercy requires full participation from both involved parties; not just in the act of mercy itself, but a continuous relationship afterward. This is a very rare thing. I have never seen it, and I doubt I will.
Governments cannot achieve such mercy or justice, and I don’t The Committee of which you speak attempted such a thing. I believe they attempted to open an honest dialogue between both sides in order to avoid, as much as possible, harboring hatred and discontent within the respective groups. They looked at what happened in the United States after the Civil War, where many former slaves achieved relatively little social advancement in their emancipation. They looked at how the world viewed Germany after The first World War and the inevitable destruction that came as a result in short order.
Their justice and mercy was not for the individuals who lived through such aggression, but for future generations in order that they might see both the attrocities in full and the means to attain some snese of peace, and thus avoid making the same mistakes.
Hopefully they will succeed.