There is a saying that to forgive is not to forget.  This is the idea that I keep coming back to when I am reading A Human Being Died That Night by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela.  In this book she talks of her meetings with Eugene de Kock, who was prosecuted for committing the murders of 3 police officers and 1 civilian in South Africa under the apartheid regime which would come to be known as the Motherwell bombing.  In actuality he was the commander of the headquarters for the "dirty war" waged by the apartheid government against its enemies in the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-African Congress (PAC), and their allies (p18).  With this being said he is actually responsible for possibly thousands of murders. 

     Throughout this book Pumla ask many moral questions about the possible forgiveness of de Kock.  Was de Kock deserving of the forgiveness shown him?  Was he too evil --"Prime Evil"-- to be worthy of the forgiveness Mrs. Faku and Mrs. Mgoduka had offered him?  Was evil intrinsic to de Kock, and forgiveness therefore wasted on him? (p15)  To answer these questions I should begin with telling you who Mrs. Faku and Mrs. Mgoduka are.  These are two of the widows of the police officers that de Kock murdered.  After his first testimony in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), de Kock requested a meeting with the victims of the Motherwell bombing.  He wanted to apologize to them but wished to do so privately (p14).  For myself I could not imagine granting his request.  Why give the man who murdered your husbands the chance to even say "I'm sorry"?  It is the description of that encounter thatgivesthe answer to me.  Both women felt that de Kock had communicated to them something he felt deeply and had acknowledged their pain (p14).

      I believe that it is this act of acknowledging their pain that made it possible for the widows to be able to grant any kind of forgiveness to de Kock.  Was de Kock deserving of forgiveness?  We should remember that the act of forgiving is not for the perpetrator but for the victims.  I believe that to hang on to the hatred one feels is very destructive.  It begins to eat away at the goodness in ones own heart.  Although for any kind of forgiveness to take place one needs to feel validated for their feelings.  Without this validation it is very hard to start to forgive. 

     For myself it is this lack of validation that made it hard for me to forgive my father for the horrible things he did in my childhood.  Without his validation I could not believe that he would not repeat past events.  I held onto the anger I felt toward him for years.  Eventually I realized that the anger I was feeling was only hurting myself.  It has taken way to long but I have come to realize that to forgive is not to forget.

Post A Comment