Timeo Sabri et Dona Ferentes
In Post-Apartheid South Africa, the new Mandela government established Truth and Reconciliation Committees – executors of a complicated, oft painful process that had people of the black, coloured, and otherwise-discriminated-against communities describe and share the harms and pains they suffered individually and as communities; and people of communities that apartheid favoured (to be clear and explicit, white South Africans) explained the ways in which they benefitted, how they felt about Apartheid, and their fears for the future. It was important that, whilst it was clear one group of people was far more harmed than the other; there was an understanding that the underlyingly unjust system of Apartheid had caused a great deal of social and ethical harm, both to its victims as well as to its perpetrators. Whilst individuals no doubt had their hands dirtied – and bloodied – with complicity, the problem was bigger than any one individual had the power to change. You had might as well h