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And Zaccheus Remained in the Tree: Reconciliation and Justice and The

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And Zaccheus Remained in the Tree: Reconciliation and Justice and The And Zaccheus remained in the tree: Reconciliation and justice and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission A Boesak (University of Stellenbosch) ABSTRACT And Zaccheus remained in the tree: Reconciliation and Justice and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been praised the world over for its work and its example is being followed by many countries, in Africa especially. In South Africa the TRC has raised hopes and expectations that went beyond the TRC’s functionality within the framework of South Africa’s political settlement and its legal mandate given by Parliament. This contribution argues that there is growing disillusionment with the work of the TRC especially among black communities and that one of the major flaws of the TRC rests in its failure to link reconciliation with justice. Justice here must not be understood within the strict legal terms that some have applied to the work of the TRC but rather from within the expectations created by the TRC itself through its own insistence that its work should be seen as a Christian endeavour. This failure has a direct bearing on the situation South Africa finds itself in today, and the author argues that a return to an understanding of reconciliation that presupposes justice will help address one of the most critical issues in our social, political and theological discourse today. 1 INTRODUCTION The work done by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which Piet Meiring played such a significant part, remains entirely relevant, not just for South Africa, but for many places around the world as one can see from the passionate debates rekindled by the death of Chile’s erstwhile dictator, General Pinochet, and the continuing tragedy in the Middle East as well as the painful search for reconciliation in Rwanda and more recently, Liberia. It is not entirely cynical to say that “reconciliation and forgiveness” has become a growth industry. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work has left a huge legacy, and South Africa and the world is still in the process of evaluating it. I think it is fair to say that its success is AND ZACCHEUS REMAINED IN THE TREE 636 mainly reflected in the fact that we have been able to create a platform to break the silence around all those unspeakable things that happened during the reign of Apartheid, giving some victims to some extent the opportunity to speak out and bare their souls to a nation that by and large was willing to listen. It is true, as some were quick to point out, that in fact very little of the truth about human rights abuses actually did come out (Bell & Ntsebeza 2001), but nonetheless enough of that truth was heard to dispel all illusions about the horrific nature of the beast we were saddled with for so long. Furthermore, it did create a context for the hard work of political accommodation, the breaking down of barriers and the building of pockets of trust which otherwise would have been almost impossible to achieve. Whatever the difficulties we may now face, and these are both legion and profound, the foundations for nation building laid down in the work of the Commission are infinitely better than if the expectations of violence and mayhem would have been fulfilled. Ten years of grappling with these issues have raised a host of theological questions as fundamental as they are unavoidable, and I am not sure just how ready we are to recognise and face them. I raise some of them now not for the purposes of discussion here, but to highlight the complexities we are challenged with: • Just how wise was the link between the legal and political process of truth seeking and the demand for reconciliation? • Is the establishment of the “truth” as required by law written especially for the TRC process, adequate in terms of the truth demanded by reconciliation, and do the discrepancies not create problems the TRC process could not possibly handle? • Is it always necessary to know all the truth for the sake of reconciliation, and once known, will it not jeopardise rather than facilitate reconciliation? • Is a Christian understanding of reconciliation (which in South Africa’s case was perhaps unavoidable) helpful in both the process and its outcomes, especially in light of the ongoing doctrinal debates on the atonement, and the conflicting 637 ISSN 1609-9982 = VERBUM ET ECCLESIA JRG 28(3) 2008 interpretations of the New Testament on this subject within Christian theology? (Wiersinga, 1971). • Furthermore, can, as Archbishop Tutu seems to have done more than once, the idea of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross “for our salvation” be directly applied to our sacrifices in the struggle in order to achieve a greater good, namely the salvation of the nation? • What if the consequences of the discovery that the doctrinal ideas of reconciliation as the satisfaction of a wrathful God’s justice are such a huge impediment to what South Africa desperately needed, that they have to either be discarded, or ignored, or suppressed, or made uniquely applicable only in church. That for society, however, they seem to have no practical value? Can Christians live with a dichotomy of such enormous proportions? • Thirty years ago we insisted that the legitimacy of the African context required of us a fundamental re-reading of both our context and the Scriptures, a new hermeneutic and a different interpretation. The continuing development of the African context is now more consciously linked to the redefinition of an African Christian identity; atonement and reconciliation as an act of sacrificial, transformational love, rather than an act of wrathful justice; the cross not just as locus of what God has done, but understanding that the way of the cross we are called to follow in order to participate in God’s work of reconciliation and redemption in Christ, is what our context calls for. Jesus’ sacrificial servanthood, his willingness to suffer for the sake of others, the inclusiveness of his embrace, this is the way we have come to understand his vicarious sacrifice and the expiation of our sins. This is what has made us respond to God’s merciful forgiveness and God’s reconciling work in Christ. Is that a fundamental departure from, and an invalidation of, our inherited doctrinal traditions? If these few questions have not the value of enlightenment, at least they help us to understand that in this present discussion we are merely scratching the surface. AND ZACCHEUS REMAINED IN THE TREE 638 2 WHY DID ZACCHEUS NOT TESTIFY? It is my distinct impression that South Africans in general have expected more of the process of reconciliation. Everywhere there are signs of uneasy discontent. We know that we know more about the truth that still lies buried than the “truth” that has been allowed to be heard. F W De Klerk’s successful court action to block publication of certain documents and his offensive “let-bygones-be-bygones” rhetoric, the angry response of the ANC to certain aspects of the TRC process, the baleful resistance of a Mangosuthu Buthelezi or a P W Botha who has gone to his grave unrepentant and unreconciled with most of the country, the failure of the TRC to bring to book those who should have taken political responsibility for Apartheid: the political leaders, the generals, big business. There is deep anger at the government’s inability to bring some dignity to the process of compensation of victims and at the fact that too many “got away with it”. Mamphela Ramphele’s sober (and disillusioned?) assessment speaks for a growing number of South Africans when she speaks of “the miracle that never was” (Ramphele 2008:46-69). In the daily battles with high levels of crime, poverty, corruption and HIV/AIDS, the deep-seated evils of racism, and a waning trust in government’s commitment to the basic tenets of democracy, faith in reconciliation and that anything would come of it, is whittled away. There is cynicism also at the world’s persistence that South Africa is a “model of reconciliation”. South Africans know better even though we continue to speak hopefully, if sometimes naively, of the “rainbow nation”. Nonetheless, the hard questions are being asked. “Was truth and justice sacrificed to reconciliation?” ask Bell and Nstebeza (2001:1), and further, “One is entitled to ask how long South Africa’s ‘political miracle’ will last”. (Bell and Nstebeza 2001:3) Archbishop Tutu himself put it more graphically than anyone else when he spoke of people’s frustration and anger at an incomplete reconciliation process “ten years after freedom”, but still living in squalor while others “mostly white”, live in “palatial homes”. “I don’t know”, Tutu exclaimed, “why those people don’t just say, ‘To hell with peace. To hell with Tutu and the Truth Commission” (Ramphele 2008:66). In other words, in the matter of reconciliation, Desmond Tutu is echoing the suspicion of many that 639 ISSN 1609-9982 = VERBUM ET ECCLESIA JRG 28(3) 2008 this time, Zaccheus was ignored. Jesus may have seen him, but the TRC did not. I point to the story of Zaccheus in Luke 19:1-10 because this wonderful, multi-layered story has such radical consequences for reconciliation. The story is about the town’s rich, infamous tax collector whose wealth had been built through his clever but corrupt manipulation of the tax system and the exploitation of both opportunities and people that went with it. It is logical that it might have been the rich who resented him most, but it is the poor that suffered most from the corrupt and ruthless practices of Zaccheus and his subcontractors.
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