HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2021

Practitioners of Black liberation theology often reflect on the emergence of this theological expression by means of a nostalgic launch into the past, seeking ways to address some of today’s most pressing concerns. In this sense, much of what is known about Black liberation theology, including its identity, is premised on how we engage with nostalgia. However, the problem with the rendering of history through a nostalgic lens is our propensity to populate this reality with half-truths; in the process, we present an idealised version of events, sometimes ignoring the objective facts at our disposal. This is most evident in the tendency to look back at the ‘best’ of the past whilst comparing it with the ‘worst’ of the present.Contribution: The purpose of this contribution is not to focus narrowly on what Black liberation theology (or its practitioners) has done well because this has limited value. Instead, a more productive undertaking necessarily includes what the late Vuyani Vellem ...

Memory plays an important role in peace building efforts and reconciliation processes. In the modern world, memory is a contesting battleground, where the winner has the merit to write down the story. However, the advancement of technology of memory, and the rise of postmodern philosophy that addresses the importance of alternative memories have contributed to the complexity of the web of memories of the past. How do we deal with contesting memories, and more importantly, how do we heal them? This paper will explore the possibility of a Christian theology of remembrance that serves as a basis of peace-building and reconciliation. Christian worship and theology are based directly on the order to remember. The act of remembering Christ that is being celebrated in the liturgy of the Eucharist is a demanding remembrance. It has a threefold demand: First, we are asked to remember the suffering as memoria passionis [memory of the suffering of Christ] – as our responsibility towards others; second, we are asked to love our neighbors who come to the table as a consequence of God's command to love; and third, we ask God to remember us, because every time we remember Christ, we are demanding that God remember the Parousia [the coming] as the fulfilment of God's promise. Through these consequences of the remembrance of the past, we are offered a chance of changing the meaning of our painful memories, and instead to remember them peacefully.

Acta Theologica

In the eyes of many, chairing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the crowning contribution of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to his country, and to the world at large. Against the backdrop of his role leading the TRC, chairing the many victims' hearings and guiding the amnesty proceedings, the article focuses on Tutu's views on forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice. The TRC operated within the mandates given to it by the South African parliament, but Tutu with his theological background, strong views, and dynamic personality put his own stamp on the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa. The role of religion in establishing truth and working towards justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation was controversial, but for the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, it was inconceivable to embark on the journey of reconciliation without faith in Jesus Christ, the ultimate Reconciler.

In this discussion paper I raise questions about the role of Black mental health professionals and other healers in the political struggle for reparations for Africans in the United States. I present ideas about how therapists may play a part in healing memory and repairing the harm done by centuries of enslavement, Jim Crow and white supremacist violence on occupied Black communities.

2020

The aim of this study is to critique ‘post-apartheid’ constitutionalism as a paradigm which fundamentally obscures historical injustice in all of its many dimensions – economic, epistemic, political, and cultural. The starting point of my critique on postapartheid constitutionalism rests on three signifiers of democratisation that I have identified. These three signifiers are reconciliation, reparation, and rights. I trace the continuance of the historical roots of injustice through the period of envisioned ‘transition’ as founded in the interim constitution of 1993 into the era of envisioned constitutional ‘transformation’ as founded in the constitution of 1996. I focus on critical responses to South Africa’s period of transition to interrogate how the emphasis on reconciliation obscured the exigency of historical justice, in that it preserved epistemic, political, economic, and cultural spheres of conquest. I draw on literature on reparations and reconciliation to explore what the concept of ‘reparations’ for historical injustice would entail, and I measure this against what the TRC’s project of reparation had delivered. I explore the limits of rights discourse, and in particular the limits of socio-economic rights discourse and consider whether, given the faulty ideological inheritance from our transitional period, socio-economic rights and the constitution can address historical conditions of oppression. What I set out to highlight in this study are that the three signifiers of ‘post-apartheid’ and the discourse which surround them fundamentally ignore beneficiaries of oppression and their legacy and culminate into an ideology which continues to shape South Africa as a product of conquest. These three signifiers amount to inadequate attempts at conceptualising a response to the many dimensions of historical injustice that exist and persist in ‘post’-apartheid South Africa.

Religions, 2020

Scholarship on transitional justice has oscillated between the pedagogical value of moral magnanimity, shown by victims of past atrocities who choose to forgive their wrongdoers, and the deterrent effect of imposing punishment on the offenders, which includes making restitution to the victims of their wrongful actions. This article examines the views of two African thinkers on this issue, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who argues for forgiveness, and Wole Soyinka who defends restitution as a better way to express respect for the dignity of both the victims and the rule of law. The article contends that while traditional African values play important roles in the perspectives of these thinkers, they do not, in themselves, justify either of the two positions they advance. The article further contrasts the positive role Tutu and Soyinka assign to historical memory and truth-telling with the strategies of social forgetting and public silence embraced in Sierra Leone and Mozambique in their que...

Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2021

In this article, we show how pathways to justice and reconciliation pertaining to the transatlantic slavery should begin with collective healing processes. To illustrate this conclusion, we first employ a four-fold conceptual framework for understanding collective healing that consists in: (1) acknowledging historical dehumanizing acts; (2) addressing the harmful effects of dehumanisation; (3) embracing relational rapprochement; and (4) co-imagining and co-creating conditions for systemic justice. Based on this framework, we then examine existing collective healing practices in different contexts that are aimed at addressing legacies of transatlantic slavery. In doing so, we further identify challenges and pose critical questions concerning such practices. While globally there are, and have been, many different kinds of racism and slavery, and even though transatlantic slavery has many features specific to it, nevertheless, we hope that this exploration of collective healing will be...

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2020

This contribution is derived from a more extensive 2018 PhD study in which the contested nature of the discourses on reconciliation is explored. It provides a conceptual analysis of how reconciliation is understood in the Kairos Document (1985). Regarded as an outstanding example of a theological response to the problem of apartheid, what is often overlooked is the tension implicit in its approach which, in turn, has serious implications for how matters of social justice are understood and acted upon. Here, the need for political, economic and cultural liberation is emphasised. It is assumed that social justice can only follow upon liberation, and that reconciliation is only possible on the basis of following justice. In this contribution, I contend that those who take this approach are confronted with the danger of self-secularisation, of reducing the Christian confession to nothing more than an example of religious affiliation that may be tolerated as long as its particular claims...