Tortured, traumatized, but not broken: The South African spirit and vision of hope
Laying Ghosts to Rest for an Audacity of Hope
Tortured, traumatised but not broken: the South African spirit and vision of hope
[Ed. Note: This speech by the Rev. Michael Lapsley, SSM was delivered on September 17, 2009 at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. Rev. Lapsley, the founder and director of the Institute for the Healing of Memories in Cape Town, South Africa, will be the keynote speaker at the Fellowship of Reconciliation's luncheon banquet and peace boat cruise on Sunday, October 11, 2009 in New York City. For more information about the Oct. 11 event and to purchase tickets, click here.]
I would like to dedicate my speech to the women and men of Stellenbosch who were slaves and to all who fought against slavery.
I am honored to speak here today especially to speak after one of our living ancestors, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele. I wish to call to mind great men among the alma mater of this university who gave all in pursuit of our common humanity — such as Braam Fischer, Beyers Naude, and Anton Lubowski.
In early July, I received an email written on behalf of Professor Botman requesting me to come and speak at this one-day conference around the tentative theme of laying ghosts to rest for an audacity of hope. I am still not quite sure who the ghosts are.
Furthermore, it was suggested that the title for my speech might be: “Tortured, traumatized, but not broken: the South African spirit and vision of hope.”
The question I ask myself is, what is God's dream for Stellenbosch, God's dream for South Africa? What will enable the realization of that dream?
What is your dream for Stellenbosch? What kind of university would you like your children and grandchildren to come to? For those of you who have made Stellenbosch your home, perhaps for many generations: What is your vision for this town? Are you in danger of despairing or are you full of hope? Or does it vary throughout every day. Are you acting today to make your dreams come true?
What time is it now in South Africa — 15 years after the birth of democracy — 150 years after the birth of this university?
There is plenty to be depressed about — at least if you only eat the diet provided by our media — perhaps even the discourse at some of our dinner tables.
There is a small town called Harnosand in the Northern part of Sweden I visited a few years ago. I was there at 5 minutes to 12 on the fifth of December a few years back. Despite the below-zero temperature, there was a giant multicultural festival, which lasted from midday to midnight.
Some years before that, Harnosand had a reputation as a very racist town. The town had a small refugee community. Because of the xenophobic and racist attitudes that dominated, few people mixed with the refugees. A young woman called Sara Wallin was the exception. She befriended refugees. Very tragically, one of the refugees was psychologically disturbed and murdered Sara. The town was on a knife’s edge. Ready to explode. Even whilst deeply grieving his beloved daughter, Sara's father, Stig, decided to start the 5 to 12 movement. I.e., his conclusion was that time had run out and it was now five minutes to midnight. He decided that he would start a movement in his community. He began by creating informal spaces where the old Swedes and new Swedes could meet each other as people. Once a year they would have a cultural and musical festival to celebrate their diversity.
Stig was not an ostrich, nor was he naïve, He faced reality but said, “However— nevertheless,” and today Harnosand is renowned as a town that is diverse and inclusive of all who live there.
Is that not God's will for Stellenbosch?
There was a very dark day in our country's history when Chris Hani was assassinated. Perhaps we had never been as angry as a people as we were on that day. We teetered on the edge of civil war — even some would say, race war. Nelson Mandela was not yet the president, but it was he who was brought out to speak to the nation. He said that it was true that this beloved leader was killed by white people but However— nevertheless it was a white couple that lead to the arrest of the perpetrators. Instead of all killing each other, an election date was agreed and we moved forward to our first democratic elections.
One of my favorite organizations is a very small one: 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. A group of people who lost their relatives in the horrible events of September 11, 2001 — despite the clamor for war and revenge said, “However— nevertheless we do not believe in revenge. You may not go to war in the name of our loved ones. You can bring perpetrators to justice without causing untold suffering to others.”
In 1992, I returned to South Africa after 16 years living in Lesotho and Zimbabwe. The first thing which struck me on my return to South Africa was that we are a damaged nation — damaged in our humanity — damaged by what we had done, by what had been done to us, by what we failed to do — and all of us with a story to tell — all of us carrying within us deep feelings — some of which are toxic because of what we had experienced.
If we were to become one nation living together in peace and harmony we would have to listen to one another's stories. Some of us began to set up safe and sacred spaces where we could speak and listen with the heart to one another — places where we could vomit out the poison which had filled our hearts.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided us all with an opportunity to listen to each other's pain. Tragically, many white people, especially Afrikaners, felt they were being attacked and looked away. Personally I gave evidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Kimberly Town Hall — with more than a thousand people present but no white people. It was an opportunity lost — it could have been a time when we traveled towards each other. It was like that for a few — perhaps even some of you present today — a facing of what we had done to one another — which changed people for ever. Yes, an evil system but However— Nevertheless each of us is capable of being both perpetrator and victim even at the same time.
One day soon after democracy was born here, I was invited to speak at a seminar in the northern suburbs. I was taken to task for talking about the period between 1948 and 1994. I was reminded that from 1899 to 1902, we were the victims and now we are the victims once more. Please don’t confuse issues and talk about us as perpetrators. In my experience, many of us are very clear about the ways in which we are victims but very hazy about the ways in which we are perpetrators. Whenever I have to face myself as a perpetrator, then I have to deal with guilt and shame — Denial becomes a tempting option.
Do we seek to bury and forget the past or to remember and to heal?
Some have asked the question, would South Africa's history have been different if there had been a TRC at the end of the South African war of 1899-1902 — if we had been able to face the truth not just of what was done to the Afrikaner people but also to countless black people?
Of course that is not far enough back. Have we truly faced what slavery did to us? Some are beginning to look at how communities in the Western Cape have experienced gratuitous violence without interruption down through the centuries. What would it mean for Stellenbosch to truly face that it is a town and an economy built by slaves?
Chief Luthuli once said — those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimizers of others. People give themselves permission to do terrible things to others because of what was dome to them. This is true of individuals, communities, and nations.
Nevertheless, however there is another road open before us — it is the road of victim — survivor — victor. Of traveling beyond what was done to us, beyond being simply survivors to becoming participants in creating a different kind of society.
I know that for myself, God helped me, through the prayers and love of many, many people to realize that if I was filled with anger, hatred, and desire for revenge — that I would be a victim forever — they would have failed to kill the body but they would have killed the soul.
What is it that enables people as individuals, communities, or nations to move away from victimhood?
We need to have both Knowledge and Acknowledgment.
Those who have been victimized need to have public acknowledgment that what was done to them was wrong — that those who did terrible things to others AND those who benefitted are truly sorry.
Often the community of victims holds on to the memory of what happened whilst those who benefitted and even more, their descendants, remain blissfully ignorant of what happened.
In the country of my birth, Aotearoa New Zealand, there was a colonial relationship with Samoa. Growing up there and going to school, I knew nothing about this and about bad things that had happened during that time. Several years ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark went there for Independence celebration and made an unequivocal apology and said on behalf of the nation: “I am sorry.”
Of course it is never enough to simply say we are sorry as much as it maybe a good beginning. If I steal your bicycle, does it help if I say sorry, but don’t return the bicycle? If we want to live together in peace, reparation, and restitution are not optional extras.
Today we are gathered here — several generations gathered in this hall — what will successive generations say about us? Will they curse us because we behaved like ostriches — fighting rearguard battles to preserve the domination of our language and culture?
Some of us fought to the death either to preserve apartheid or to end it. Some of us did nothing — some both suffering and benefiting even if not in equal measure.
What do we say to our children — do we confuse them by our silence — or do we pass on stories which are filled with poison about “them” because we are unwilling to exorcise our own demons?
Several years ago, I was invited to a flower show here in Stellenbosch with the theme of reconciliation which took place in a church in the center of Stellenbosch — it was such a joyful night — so much beauty — coloured and African people filling the church but hardly a white person in sight — invited but very few came.
I pray that this is no longer the case today.
All of us have been shaped by all that happened to our parents and grandparents.
How about those of you — the young people of today — leaders both of today and tomorrow. You have no reason to kill each other in the way that we did — but are you living in psychological ghettos reproducing old prejudices and outmoded traditions based on fear and ignorance? Or are you willing to work at creating new identities — as South Africans, as Southern Africans, as Africans, as human beings — to celebrate and embrace our diversity of races and religions, gender, and sexual orientation, including, without prejudice, those who are intersexed — to celebrate being fully alive.
In 1976 a generation of young people rose up to hasten political liberation.
South Africa needs a new generation of leaders who will use every ounce of their abilities to fight poverty and insist that wealth creation and wealth distribution must go hand in hand — who will be outraged by obscene wealth in the midst of degrading poverty?
Today’s new South Africa encourages greed in us as human beings — many of our latest batch of elected politicians, compete with each other to accumulate as much as possible. The patience of the masses grows thinner by the day.
There will never be peace in South Africa or the world until together we build societies where the gap between the richest and poorest grows thinner every day.
For too long, we South Africans have been a Good Friday people, crucifying one another. God invites us to be an Easter Day people, recognizing and acknowledging the wounds from the past whilst allowing ourselves to be God's instruments to build a just and compassionate society.
If we face the past and acknowledge it, the ghosts will fade away. Then we can embrace the future with the audacity of hope.
The letter bomb I received in 1990 was not supposed to injure me. It was supposed to kill me. Some of us needed to survive to remind all of us of what we did to each other and the consequences that many still live with today. Nevertheless, however, much more importantly I hope and pray that in some small but significant way, I can be a sign to you, that stronger than evil and hatred and death, are the forces, of gentleness, of kindness, of justice, of life, of God.
I thank you.
