"Eternal Justice"?

Comments about the U.S. War with quotations by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Tomás Borge & Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy of Nicaragua.

When President Bush vows "eternal justice" he is speaking only of revenge. But can the United States face the consequences of this approach to "justice"? Those who killed the thousands in the World Trade Center and Pentagon may well have claimed they were seeking "justice" for the 5,000 Iraqi children who die each month because of the U.S. war or the 30,000 children under the age of five who die each day from preventable diseases thanks to world trade.

Instead of thinking about retribution, we should consider the lessons and experiences of South Africa and Nicaragua.

In South Africa the apartheid regime tortured and murdered many. When apartheid was overthrown, the country decided not to simply grant a blanket amnesty nor to hold something like the Nuremberg Trials. Instead, they sponsored the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which required an honest account of the atrocities as a condition for amnesty. Desmond Tutu, retired Archbishop of Cape Town, describes this different effort at "restorative justice" in his book No Future Without Forgiveness:

Retorative Justice & Ubuntu

Let us conclude this chapter by pointing out that ultimately this third way of amnesty was consistent with a central feature of the African Weltsanschauung—what we know in our languages as ubuntu, in the Nguni group of languages, or botho in the Sotho languages. What is it that constrained so many to choose to forgive rather than to demand retribution, to be so magnanimous and ready to forgive rather than wreak revenge?

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, "Yu, u nobuntu"; "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu." Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons." It is not, "I think therefore I am." It says rather: "I am human because I belong. I participate, I share." A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threated that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.

Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonum—the greatest good. Anything that subverts, that undermines this sought-after good, is to be avoided like the plague. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitveness, are corrosive of this good. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.

 

In Nicaragua Somoza's National Guard had also used torture and murder before the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. Tomás Borge was not only tortured; his wife was raped and murdered in his presence. Yet, in Christianity and Revolution* Borge tells,

"After having been brutal tortured as a prisoner, after having a hood placed over my head for nine months, after having been handcuffed for seven months, I remember that when we captured these torturers I told them: 'The hour of my revenge has come: we will not do you even the slightest harm. You did not believe us beforehand; now you will believe us.' That is our philosophy, our way of being."

Together with Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy Borge wrote a song appropriate to these days:

My Personal Revenge

My personal revenge will be the right
of your children to school and to flowers;
My personal revenge will be to offer you
this florid song without fears;
My personal revenge will be to show you
the good there is in the eyes of my people,
always unyielding in combat
and most steadfast and generous in victory.

My personal revenge will be to say to you
good morning, without beggars in the streets,
when instead of jailing you I intend
you shake the sorrow from your eyes;
when you, practitioner of torture,
can no longer so much as lift your gaze,
my personal revenge will be to offer you
these hands you once maltreated
without being able to make them forsake tenderness.

And it was the people who hated you most
when the song was language of violence;
But the people today beneath its skin
of red and black has its heart uplifted.

Christianity and Revolution: Tomas Borge's Theology of Life is out of print but is available from http://www.abe.com/ and from www.half.com