Product Description

The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past.  But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation "looks the beast in the eye." Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24651 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-17
• Released on: 2000-10-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
Archbishop Desmond Tutu stands alongside Nelson Mandela as one of the most iconic figures of the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. As archbishop of Cape Town throughout the 1980s, Tutu came to symbolize dignified, rational opposition to the iniquities of the apartheid regime, a faithful irreverence for unjust authority that led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. In 1995 he took up his greatest challenge, as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the remarkable yet harrowing attempt by South Africans to come to terms with the gross violations of human rights committed throughout the apartheid era by offering amnesty and forgiveness rather than punishment and dismissal.

No Future Without Forgiveness is Tutu's remarkable personal memoir of his time as chair of the commission. It records his insistence of the need to discover a "third way" in the healing of the national psyche and his powerful belief that "we can indeed transcend the conflicts of the past, we can hold hands as we realize our common humanity." Tutu's characteristic humor, resilience, and compassion are evoked in a way that demonstrates how essential they have been to his unique political style--and his ability to get results where all others failed. He recalls the darkest days of apartheid's "vicious awfulness" when, preaching about God's authority, he was "frequently tempted to whisper in God's ear, 'For goodness sake, why don't You make it more obvious that You are in charge?"'

No Future Without Forgiveness could be profitably read alongside Antjie Krog's equally compelling Country of My Skull, as it considers the emotional toll that such a process of national soul-searching has had upon its participants. As Tutu himself points out, "It is a costly business to try to heal a wounded and traumatized people, and those engaging in that crucial task will perhaps bear the brunt themselves ... we were, in Henri Nouwen's celebrated phrase, 'wounded healers.'" --Rachel Holmes, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
This insightful book about South Africa's healing process is no simple feel-good tale. In 1995, Tutu was looking forward to a well-earned retirement from his role as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. He had given his life to the antiapartheid struggle and had spoken the truth to those in power so many times that, in 1984, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Still, in 1996, President Mandela and others prevailed upon him to postpone retirement's pleasures to give South Africa one more thing: his leadership as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu speaks frankly of this call, of the struggle that preceded it and of the betrayals and jubilations of this unique commission. The TRC's work was unprecedented not only in its emphasis on restorative over retributive justice but in the spirituality that permeated its work, the bulk of which constituted hearings from the "victims" and "perpetrators" of apartheid. Ubuntu, Tutu explains, is the African expression that was at the heart of the TRC's labors. Meaning something like "a person is a person through other people," ubuntu sums up Tutu's philosophical framework for addressing apartheid's hard truths and beginning the reconciliation process necessary to move beyond apartheid's legacy. Despite the occasional factual inconsistency and some clich?s (the book seems hastily written), Tutu's wisdom and experience come through. Human rights, he affirms, cannot stand without ubuntu's deeper foundation; the future cannot be without forgiveness.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, retired as Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, in 1998. Here, he reflects on the wisdom he gained as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a group formed to expose crimes committed under apartheid and to achieve reconciliation with South Africa's former oppressors.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

There really is No Future Without Forgiveness
This spiritual/religious based book is presented differently than Gandhi, Tolstoy, and other philosophers that I have read. This book is more rooted in the events of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, a board that Desmond Tutu headed after apartheid ended. The goal of this board was to grant amnesty to individuals and to learn of the travesties that occurred during apartheid. Tutu spends time to talk about the reasons and purpose of the board while lending several chapters to discuss several of the eye-witness reports and events described while heading the committee.

After he sets up the purpose and ideals behind the board along with some of the testimony from individuals, he then begins to dive into his dialogue about what these events mean and how they relate to his overall conclusion of "No Future Without Forgiveness." This book did two great things for me: First, it introduced me to apartheid, something I have not read too much about. Tutu described the conditions not only pre-apartheid, but after Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa and other related events. Second, I was able to see him unfold his spiritual plan of how the country was to move forward after so many years of people being dehumanized and a huge social structure changing.

It was the combination of the historical and philosophical elements that made this book special to me. I highly recommend it.

Restorative Justice Trumps Retributive Justice
This book is a remarkable insider's account of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) by a truly amazing individual. The book is much more than a summary of the historic event. Desmond Tutu deftly defends the argument that forgiveness and restorative justice are better strategies than retributive justice and offers the hope of similar applications to other historical and current conflicts.

The two primary benefits of restorative justice are: (1) the truth will be drawn out by the possibility of amnesty which will provide closure for victims and transparency to ensure we are not condemned to repeat it, and (2) forgoing retributive justice will break the chain of blows and promote reconciliation between the parties that have to continue living with each other. There are also multiple practical concerns. The restorative justice process allows the TRC to shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the amnesty applicant drastically reducing the cost, time, and resources required by the government. Finally, having come to power through a negotiated political process as opposed to a military victory it would be more difficult for the government to impose a Nuremberg style retributive process.

To prevent the moral hazard of bad precedents, Desmond Tutu categorically states that this is an ad-hoc process (a one-time deal) and multiple stringent conditions must be met to grant amnesty, (1) the offense had to be politically motivated and occur during a specified time frame, and (2) the applicant had to be found to be completely open and honest and demonstrate full accountability for his or her actions. Ethically, some critics may contest the commission's right to speak for the victims in providing amnesty. The author counters this by highlighting the fact that the commission members had been directly involved and lived through the struggles. He also states his belief that victims (whether alive or not) are never freed from the captivity of grief and anger until they are able to forgive and reconcile their perpetrators.

This book is nice and concise as well as clear. It could have benefited from additional historical information surrounding Apartheid to provide additional context. Nelson Mandela's autobiography (Long Walk to Freedom) is a fantastic in that regard and is well worth the read and provides a great background for this text.

Somewhat Dissappointing
Per ad hype, I anticipated something similar to the writings of Gahndi or Tolstoy on comparable topics. However, this is more a biopic overview of the remarkable work of Mandela with 'notes and commentary' by Tutu. While the Mandela process of forgiveness, in the face of unimaginable atrocities, is very much worth one's study and incorporation, that's not why I bought the book. Desmond does not believe forgiveness is possible w/o perpetrator public confession and request for forgiveness. What happens to a victim's future when the perpetrator[s] is dead, unavailable or unwilling? The relevance of this treatise for us garden-variety souls in a benign democracy is missing.