Session 6b: Repentance and Reconciliation
Chair: Christina Tomacic-Niaros

Declarations of Repentance and Forgiveness in Politics: Between Morality and Politics
Karolina Wigura
Institute of Sociology, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland

With long ceremonies, solemn messes and shooting flash-lamps, political declarations of forgiveness and repentance have become utterly globalized nowadays. It is, however, a striking phenomenon, that two most essential attributes of these declarations are at conflict with the idea of liberal state – in which they gained their most significant popularity.
Politicians before the World War II used to declare repentance and forgiveness only in their own name, while after they started to stress their representation of a community, as well as a shared responsibility for the evil of the past. Along with this premise of collective responsibility, there also appeared a premise of continuity of a nation (or other community). An individual, declaring repentance or forgiveness does it today in the name of not only all the living, but also the perpetrators or victims who have already passed away.
These two features are the reason for which political declarations of repentance and forgiveness which appeared after the World War II are a new, modern political invention, differing from all the former cases. It is difficult to accept these two attributes in a regime founded on John Stuart Mill’s idea of individual freedom, though. Furthermore, two questions should be posed: how collective responsibility and continuity of a community are to be justified and who should represent a community.
Despite all complicatedness, declarations of forgiveness seem to be an indispensable means of overcoming the difficult memory of XX century. Their philosophical nature may be defined as a combination of morality (closely connected to religious heritage) and politics (understood as realizing state ratio as well as diplomacy). This is why perhaps the declarations should be seen not as a contradiction, but as an essential supplement to liberalism.

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Ginn Fourie and Letlapa Mphahlele - two remarkable South Africans on a journey of forgiveness: A view through a Transpersonal Lens.
David Lipschitz
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, California, USA

In 1993, during the last throes of Apartheid in South Africa, three cadres attacked a tavern in Cape Town. Armed with AK47s, the cadres killed four people, among them 23-year old Lyndi Fourie – Ginn Fourie’s daughter. The Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, claimed responsibility for this attack, as well as for others they in the Cape Town area. The perpetrators were caught and jailed for murder, but later applied for, and were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which offered people the opportunity to apply for amnesty for politically motivated crimes committed during the Apartheid era. Fourie met the three prior to the hearing, and she did not oppose their application - they replied that would take her message of forgiveness to their communities and to their graves. 
Not long after that, Letlapa Mphahlele, the mastermind behind many attacks in Cape Town, including the one that left Lindi Fourie dead, had written about his experiences, and was launching his book. He did not apply for amnesty from the TRC, and so with a sense of anger, Fourie attended the book launch and demanded to know why he was trivializing the TRC process, and had not sought amnesty. From that encounter, both Fourie and Mphahlele have experienced a remarkable journey of personal transformation and forgiveness, and have bridged a seemingly insurmountable chasm between people. Together, they have established the Lindi Fourie Foundation, which works together to build bridges between communities in South Africa that were previously separated by Apartheid.
This paper views the journey of forgiveness of these two (extra) ordinary South Africans, through a transpersonal psychology lens to illustrate how, despite all our apparent difference, we are able to achieve the almost impossible, but acknowledging our interconnectedness.

Download Draft Conference Paper -

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Forgiveness in the Post-conflict Environment: Liberation or Imprisonment?
Máiréad Collins
School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queens University, Belfast, Ireland

The model of forgiveness suggested by many commentators on the subject, particularly those working from a Christian perspective, is that forgiveness sets the individual free. And in doing so, can set society as a whole free from the burden of past grievances, divides and hatred. Archbishop Tutu’s assertion, that ‘there’s no future without forgiveness’ is the quintessential example of this. Such a model however has not been universally embraced. Many have found the idea that forgiveness be, as it were, institutionalised within a reconciliation program to be offensive, indicating the personal nature of the act of forgiveness which, they feel, should remain private and entirely separate from reconciliation processes as a whole.
My paper will likewise critique the role of forgiveness but will move away from the criticism of forgiveness needing to be primarily a private act. My own research looks particularly at the role of narrative in post-conflict environments, especially within the context of truth commission type processes. From this starting point I will look at how forgiveness might be considered to imprison the past narrative and those who it flows through, rather than setting the individual and their story free. I will look approach this critique by discussing how forgiveness can be used as a tool of repression rather than liberation. I will suggest that even when the term forgiveness is not expressly used (perhaps because of the criticisms indicated above), the same associated notions of ‘letting go’ of the past are insinuated and this route of ‘moving on’ emphasised.
My argument will focus on two main effects of such forgiveness-related programs:
Firstly how, particularly perpetrators (from paramilitaries to state bodies), can use it to curtail the desire for truth to be explored and maintained in the public eye. And secondly, and to a lesser extent, how the associated element of shame regarding forgiveness can inhibit individuals and groups from taking part in post-conflict narrative programs because of the effect shame can have on a group/individual’s conception of their own cultural/group narrative.