If, as Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Hell is other people” then spare a thought for all the people in Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet who are going to have to work together to make it possible for all the other people in South Africa to live together.
And if, as in Dante’s inferno, there are different levels of torture in hell then the torture of having people who think differently from you sitting in the opposition benches is going to be heaven compared to the torture of having them sit next to you in government.
When they were “over there”, you could justifiably do what you were meant to do and were paid to do – disagree with them. Along with this you could also snipe, ridicule, jeer and vilify for all you’re worth and get away with it, all to your deep satisfaction, because although that’s not what you’re meant to do, that’s what you like to do with people who disagree with you.
And that marvellous invention called Parliament, the place where people who disagree with each other can legitimately tell each other (or yell at each other) how much they in fact do disagree with each other, gave you the opportunity to indulge in what you could only previously fantasise about – make a very good living out of hurling dishonourable invective against those honourable people on the other side of the House.
But now they are not over there, they’re right here, in your face and by your side. Although it was Ramaphosa who, in his infinite wisdom, decided on your actual position in the downward-spiralling inferno (Hmm, let’s put Siviwe Gwarube here, where it’s really hot – and let Sadtu deal with her!), we are led to believe that it is the People (who are hell, by the way) themselves who put you there, as if, when you voted, you voted for something called the GNU, and not for the ANC, or DA or whatever other party you belonged to.
So here you are with people who you would never choose to be with under any other circumstances, but because you are one of the chosen leaders of a world that we all share, you have to be with them, making decisions upon which the fate of the country depends.
And you carry with you into this new creation called the Government of National Unity all the hopes and fears of the people, most of whom are desperate for change. And you have a very short space of time to fix things that were broken by 50 years of unjust rule followed by 30 years of corrupt and incompetent rule.
So you can’t afford to carry with you into the GNU the kind of attitude that you had when you were on the other side of the House. No time for hard feelings, no time for bad attitudes, no time for resentment. Becoming a part of the GNU is all about starting anew. New goals, new tasks and a new beginning.
The entire conversation around the GNU has focused on how all the parties can be brought together and share power. This in itself is a huge challenge. But there has been very little said about the challenge of having to work with people that you disagree with, besides the fact that it will require “great maturity” – a really scarce commodity if the interactions between members of Parliament as shown on TV are the norm.
So how do you enter into a new relationship with your erstwhile adversaries from “the other side”?
Well perhaps you could start by forgiving them.
When Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the dawn of our new democracy wrote his book No Future Without Forgiveness, he was identifying not only a fundamental theological truth but also a political one. Hannah Arendt, in her seminal book, The Human Condition, published in the aftermath of World War 2, maintained that forgiveness was absolutely necessary in modern democracies.
Using the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as her departure point she argued that forgiveness was the only completely original act that a human being was able to perform, and had to perform, for human society to be able to work. “[T]he act of forgiving,” she said, “is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action. Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven”.
It is impossible to enter a new relationship with someone with whom you have already had a relationship in the past without bringing with it all the baggage of that past. But when the future of the nation is at stake then that baggage has to be put aside, if not forgotten, because a new kind of relationship becomes imperative.
The alternative is simply too ghastly to contemplate, as the war in Gaza, as well as countless other places in the world, so clearly demonstrate.
Truth and reconciliation
Democracy in South Africa has happened because blacks have forgiven whites for the crime that was committed against them. Not that whites asked for forgiveness. On the contrary, as Tutu pointed out in his book, only a handful of the whites that appeared during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission actually acknowledged their culpability. In fact one white member of the commission who represented the apartheid regime refused to accept the findings of the commission and insisted on writing his own report. His name was Wynand Malan and he represented the most “liberal” wing of the National Party.
Tutu personally pleaded with PW Botha to acknowledge, even if in the most perfunctory manner, that apartheid was wrong, but he refused to do so. FW de Klerk, to his dying day, refused to acknowledge that apartheid was a crime.
And there is little evidence, even today, that whites in general accept this. But we know we have been forgiven, at least in the way that Hannah Arendt suggests, because it would have been impossible to come this far in our democracy if we hadn’t been. Our “capacity to act” as Arendt put it “would [have been] confined to one single deed from which we could never recover, we would remain the victims of its consequences for ever”.
The most remarkable, some would say miraculous, thing about the South African democracy is that although about 4.5 million people, or 7.27% of its population, were brought into it kicking and screaming, it continues to be a shining light to the rest of the world as a beacon of hope and possibility. And that’s because the other 92.73% decided to perform the most original and surprising of all actions that human beings are capable of – forgive them.
We were all assisted in the performance of this remarkable act, of course, by the remarkable leadership of two of the most iconic personalities in modern history. But Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu have long since left us and because there has been precious little material change in the lives of the 92.73%, resentment rather than reconciliation has been the operative sentiment and their legacy has been questioned.
The GNU is giving us another opportunity to take a stab at it. And we are going to have to make sure it works this time. There is simply no other way. DM