Healing The Past Through Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

By Njonjo Mue

History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.— Maya Angelou

The bloodletting following the contested and so far discredited presidential election is a symptom of failing to face up to history.

Historical injustices, perceived and real, especially the question of land and resource allocation and other gross violations of human rights, provided the fuel for the fire that threatens to consume us. The election merely struck the match. Kenya urgently needs a process of accounting for the past.

From South Africa to Liberia to Chile to Argentina, people are refusing to allow history to be silenced. Succeeding generations refuse impunity and demand moral accountability for past injustices. Kenya will be no different, and the longer we leave our issues unresolved, the more complicated they would become.

There are those who caution us not to reopen old wounds. But we must open them up if they did not heal properly to let the puss out.

For, as philosopher George Santayana cautions us, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Our country is badly in need of reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation without forgiveness, and there can be no forgiveness without truth.

Truth in the context of reconciliation expresses itself in acknowledgement of injustices committed during violent conflict or oppression. It includes full disclosure of misdeeds; publication of accounts of formerly hidden injustices and violence; and storytelling by victims in the context of therapy.

Truth telling is also important to establish an accurate record of a country’s past, and lift the lid of silence on particular periods or incidents that we are ashamed to confront. It is also important in ensuring the reform of structures that facilitated such abuses. This is the only way that the truth will lead to the transformation of society.

"Forgive and forget," is the famous mantra of the morally lazy. We must forgive and remember because the process of reconciliation depends a great deal on how we remember the past. As our recent experience has shown, memories can return with a vengeance unless they are redeemed and become a way of transforming the future.

But we should not go excavating the past for the purpose of inflicting revenge upon our fellow citizens. There is a healing way that can bring hope for the future along with our sorrow for the past. This more excellent way involves forgiveness. This is at the core of reconciliation.

Look for a ‘third way’

Forgiveness is the most difficult part. Revenge is the most natural reaction of a human being when unjustly treated. The trouble with revenge, however, is that it enslaves the victim and the perpetrator. What to one is a justified act of vengeance is to the other an unwarranted injustice that calls for counter-revenge. This dynamic has led to some societies being caught up in vicious violence.

Forgiveness breaks the power of the remembered past and transcends the claims of the affirmed justice and so makes the spiral of revenge grind to a halt. But it must not be cheap forgiveness that does not acknowledge the hurt visited upon the victims. True reconciliation, according to Desmond Tutu, "exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the degradation, the truth…. Spurious reconciliation can bring only spurious healing."

It is important to avoid the two extremes of dealing with the past — impunity and retributive punishment — and find a ‘third way’ that deals with the past in a manner that will promote a new political culture and a shared vision for the future.

This ‘third way’ should balance the requirements of truth, forgiveness, accountability and the restoration of justice leading to national healing and reconciliation.

The concept that comes closest to expressing the complex and multifaceted reality of reconciliation is one, which brings about wholeness resting on a balance between Truth and Mercy, Justice and Peace.

This concept incorporates contrition, confession and forgiveness; peace in the land through the improvement of people’s social and economic conditions; justice through the prosecution of perpetrators and the establishment of a culture of democracy and human rights; and public acknowledgement of crimes through a truth-telling. Reconciliation should integrate all these elements.

The crimes committed in the past against the people of Kenya by the State and by one another cannot be simply forgotten. We have to build a culture of respect for human rights and democracy. There has to be a genuine commitment to break with the past, to heal the wounds, and to forgive but remember in redemptive ways to avoid repeating past mistakes. This way, we can build a shared vision of the future – a vision of a great nation at peace with itself.

—The writer works for the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.