Its that time again - End of Year Message from Institute for Healing of Memories

Dear Friends

Personally I enjoy the messages people send at the end of the year including the ones that update what has been happening to friends and family.

As last year, I am writing to you from Bali in Indonesia.

Yesterday with my colleague from Kwa Zulu Natal, Mpendulo Nyembe, we arrived from Timor Leste. We offered a healing of memories workshop and took the first step of training facilitators.

Timor Leste is also the home of one of our Patrons, Kirsty Sword Gusmão who became the first, First Lady of Timor Leste when it joined the community of nations in 2002. Kirsty founded the Alola Foundation to better the lives of the women of Timor Leste Today Kirsty is Goodwill Ambassador for Education with a particular passion relating to vernacular teaching in primary schools of Tetum and other indigenous languages. Spending time with her was one of the highlights of the visit to Timor.

In Timor Leste, I was struck by the relevance of the idea of "popular" and "unpopular" victims and of the shifting sands of how and who should be regarded as victims. No one disputes that political prisoners who were tortured should be regarded as victims. But what about those whose fathers were Indonesian soldiers and mothers, Timorese women. Today these young people struggle to get their identity documents as well as with their own identity.

As I travel the world I am often moved by the stories I hear but there are a few that imprint on my soul. Bishop Marc Andrus invited us to begin to work with the Diocese of California in addressing old and recent wounds. including those among same gender loving people. We were told a story of how at the height of the AIDS pandemic a dying man called an interfaith response to AIDS. He told them that when he realised he was dying he called his parents who arrived on the next flight. They knelt at the end of his bed and prayed that he would die quickly so that evil would leave this world. We in the faith community carry heavy responsibility for the pain we cause.

On a more positive note, as our workshop began today, two Papuan women who are learning to be facilitators spoke of the enduring and transforming effect of the workshop they attended a year ago. "I was dead and now I am alive."

In 2011 providing we have adequate funding we will complete the extensions to our new house which will give us a large meeting room and more office space.

15 years into our new democracy, accelerated by the world economic crisis, and ironically even by our hugely successful world cup, traditional donors are one by one ending their support for the NGO community. South Africa has now overtaken Brazil as having the most skewed income distribution in the world.

We too in IHOM are being told by very old friends that their support is coming to an end. At the same time we have gained some new friends.

Requests for healing of memories, in South Africa, in Southern Africa and across the world continues to grow. To survive, we will regretfully not be renewing the contract of our COO, Mr Charles Obol. We thank him for his sterling contribution and wish him every success in the future.

In 2011 we will seek to market ourselves to government and the private sector to offset our work with refuges, those with AIDS and prisoners where we need to find funding.

However to survive beyond 2011 we need help from all our friends.

Please consider giving the Institute a gift this Christmas which incidentally is tax deductible.

I pray that a number of you will also help us through a monthly stop order.

Thank you for believing in us and for your contribution. We are grateful..

Pleas see account details below

For the Institute the highlight of 2010 was the Southern African Conference we partnered with the World Council of Churches, AACC and LWF where we focussed on ancient, old and recent wounds and how we are called to respond. We have laid the groundwork for greater work throughout Southern Africa in 2011.

The highlight of 2010 for me personally came on May 1 when so many of you participated physically, electronically or spiritually in the Mass of Thanksgiving on the 20th anniversary of my bombing with prayers for all victims of violence and torture.


I am grateful to each of you for all you do to reverence the image of God in others and in yourself and to care for the created order.

As we like to say: All people have a story to tell and every story needs a listener.


As those of us who are Christian, celebrate the birth of the Christ child, of Emmanuel - God with us, we are all reminded of the fragility and vulnerability of the human family and indeed of Mother earth.

I join with all my colleagues in wishing you a restful and peaceful time. May we all return with strength and vigour to make a better world in 2011.

with deep respect and gratitude

Michael Lapsley,SSM
--
Institute for Healing of Memories
Director: Father. Michael Lapsley SSM
5 Eastry Rd,
Claremont, 7708
Cape Town
Republic of South Africa

Tel: +27-21-683 6231
Mobile: +27-(0)82-416-2766

Office email: info@healingofmemories.co.za
Website www.healingofmemories.co.za

Payment may be made as follows:
Bank: Standard Bank
Branch: Mowbray
Branch code: 02-49-09
Name of Account: Institute for Healing of Memories
Type of Account: Current
Account Number: 071341455
Swift Code: SBZAZAJJ
Please identify your payment clearly – thank you
Please also fax/email copy of your deposit slip to:
021-683 5747; email: avra@healingofmemories.co.za

Beginning Healing of Memories in the Diocese of California

On the frontline between North and South Korea.in the days preceding the G20.

On our way to the airport to begin the journey to Seoul we were told
that there had been shooting across the border between north and south
which had been reciprocated. At the same time there was a resumption of family
reunions who had been separated for sixty years since the end of the Korean war.
Flying on Korean airlines a week later I saw footage of a second round of reunions
with some of the family members in their nineties. Somehow both the reunions and
the shooting framed the visit for me.

I had been invited by Youngnak Presbyterian Church founded by the Revd
Kyung Chik Han together with refugees from the North. It was 10 years since his death..
100 of us from 50 countries came together to reflect on the life and teaching of the Revd Han and speak about the challenges of building communities of reconciliation. The church had partnered with York St John University in the UK to organise the conference

I have to say that the scale of generosity and hospitality of Youngnak Presbyterian Church
knew no bounds. They had spent years preparing for our arrival and showered us
with love and kindness

On our second day there, with my colleague Madoda Gcwadi, we attended
the life profession of two Franciscan brothers in the Anglican Cathedral
I learnt that the Revd Kyung Chik Han himself and his church had a very extensive social and pastoral ministry and that although leader of a church which had in excess of 50,000 members, he had died without a personal bank account and almost no personal possessions.
It lead me to assert that indeed the Revd Kyung Chik Han was the St Francis of Assisi for
Korea.

A living relic of the “cold war”

We were taken to the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea and took
part in a prayer service close to the border. I experienced the service as a lament -
the pain was palpable as the South Korean urged us to join them in their cri de coeur
for reunification. We were told by the soldiers at the border that we should not even lift our arms
or wave lest the North Koreans take it that it was a provocation. Not sure that
I was completely convinced. What was it that the visitors on the other
side of the border were being told.

I wondered what militarisation had already done and was still doing to successive
generations of young people in the North as well as the South. Many in the South have totally demonised the North with no critique of their own society and the presence of many thousands of US troops.

Each evening there was a service with a couple of thousand congregants. On the third evening
I was asked to speak. I shared with them my reflections on the trip to the demilitarised zone and wondered what the many decades of oppression, pain and division had done to the Korean psyche. I asked them what they thought God's dream was for the Korean peninsula and how could they cooperate with God's dream. I suggested that God had not finished his work with Youngnak Church or indeed with the Korean people and that the last 60 years was preparation for what God had in mind for them which may not be quite what they had imagined.


Could they imagine a united society where there young men on neither side of the
border were no longer militarised, where there were no foreign troops and a united Korea had become famous for its peacemaking?

In a piece about forgiveness during my address, I spoke about bicycle theology – I steal your bike – I come back to say sorry but I don't return the bike!.

After the service a young Japanese journalist came up to speak to me:
“We Japanese have many bicycles to return to Korea”.

The war between “Us”and “them”

On our very last morning in Korea we sat at breakfast with a Baptist minister from Kenya. He told us a story about the post election violence.
in his country. When the violence broke out he was driving back to his village
with his two teenage sons in the back. Because he is light in complexion and
not recognised by his own tribesmen as one of them in spite of speaking the language, he was stopped at a road block and taken to a makeshift place of torture and killing. When he got there he saw his own father among the killers which saved his life and that of his children. His father's response to almost witnessing the murder of his son and grandchildren was to pick up his
belongings and return home.

I left Korea inspired by the faithfulness and prayerfulness of the people of God, conscious of the pain so many carry and the vocation of all of us to become wounded healers

Redeeming the past - Facing the contradictions and not blinking. “Our national hero was a Nazi and a traitor”

Before I went to Hamarøy I looked it up on wikipedia.There was reference to a Norwegian writer – Knut Hamsun who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920.


I had never heard of him unlike the famous Norwegian playwright Ibsen and his great work “The Doll's House”


What brought me and my colleague, Themba Lonzi to Hamarøy was aninvitation from the mayor, Rolf Steffensen, himself a Lutheran pastor. We were invited for the opening of an International centre.The core business of the centre is caring for unaccompanied minors who have received asylum in Norway. They have fled war, poverty and oppression seeking a safe haven in Hamarøy – and this tiny community of less than 1800 people situated within the arctic circle.has embraced them.. We met young people from Aghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka


Rolf has visited Cape Town a couple of times. It was in his encounters with coloured communities in Atlantis outside cape town and with Themba's youth development program that he learnt the stories of the Khoi and San peoples. This learning confronted him with his own relationship with the Sami people – the indigenous people of his country with their own experience of racism and discrimination. Our visit toHamarøy began with a visit to The Arran Lule Sami Centre which provides a focus for educating and demythologising the Sami and passing on their endangered language.


The first night we were treated to a passionate presentation with searing images from places of war but most especially from the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza. by Dr Mads Gilbert..with a clarion call for solidarity with the Palestinians and a boycott against Israel, not even shying away from the complicity of the Norwegian arms industry.


The second night was one of celebration with food from the different countries from which the young people originated.During the cultural performances Themba was invited to make music with the Sami leader Lars Magne Andreassen.


We participated in the 3 day celebration for the opening of theInternational Centre. For the last 10 years before ths centre openedthe town has been in loco parentis to children from countries characterised by war, poverty and oppression.


On the final day of our visit we had the opportunity to offer an introductory healing of the memories workshop to a combination of the staff of the centre and a number of the young asylum seekers who had already spent a year or two in Hamarøy


The sharing of feelings and memories between the young people from war ravaged countries and older Norwegians gave an experience of a commo humaniry. It was the sharing of pain which united us. At the end of the workshop, when it was time to say farewell, Themba felt overcome by all the pain and began to cry. Oneof thr Norwegians commented that in Norway it is unusual for men to express their emotions.I commented that I have long wanted to make a poster which says, "Real men cry".


On the last morning just before the workshop began Rolf took us to visit the recently built Hamsun centre.What for me is extraordinary about the centre is that it lauds his literary work for which he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920,exposes his racist views about the Sami and talks about he was tried for betraying his country.



Hamsun hated the British but had unquestioning support for Hitler's desire to rule the world.


How do you celebrate your national hero who just happens to be a Nazias well as a racist?


However for me the most telling was how the museum depicted and how Rolf described Hamsun's childhood:Knut Hamsun was born in 1859. His family - parents, two grandparents, borthers and sisters arrived in Hamarøy in 1862 from one of the great valleys of the south. The family had then lost all their property and belongings because of his uncles gambling or perhaps just bad judgement. Another uncle who had already left the south in favour of the north, was at the time a lot better of. He welcomed the family to Hamarøy.


The early years of Knut Hamsun was greatly affected by this loss of family pride and dignity. His mother has been described as mentally ill. At one point Hamsun himself remembered his mother as a person sometimes walking along the roads screaming, but always without words. There is a remaining letter from this period written by his father to the local school board asking for permission to keep the older kids home from school because they are needed at home because of the illness of the mother. The family was of course extremely poor.


At one point the mother and father decided to leave two of their children to stay with the one uncle who was already in Hamarøy when the family arrived. These two kids were Sofie and Knut! At that time Knut was nine years old. Knut Hamsun has described these next few years as the most painful years of his life. He was even tortured by his uncle! Once he ran away from his brutal uncle in the middle of the winter, with little clothes and no shoes on. As he finally reached his mothers and fathers house, 6-7 km away, he was once again abandoned. Actually he was sent back to his uncle immediately... Actually, I think I can see traces of this sad and brutal childhood through his whole life. And one interesting observation from his books, there are hardly any mothers in his books. And the mothers you find, and women in general, are often very complex...often, someone not trustworthy.


Three centres in one small town - The literary hero who is a racist and a traitor, the centre for the Sami and the International centre.


Could the Hamsun centre become an important place of pilgrimage in the future for the growing far right neo-Nazis across Europe? Or is it just a reminder to all of us that a creative genius can be blind and even a collaborator with evil. We like to say in our Institute that all human beings are capable of being both perpetrators and victims - even at the sametime.


Rolf's response to my musing's is instructive:


“I`m wondering, isn`t all this, the human capasity of being a perpetrator and a victim at the same time, also about knowledge and acknowledgment? Yes, Knut Hamsun was definitely both. He was also a litterary hero to our nation. It is contradictory, but all of it is true, and none of it can be denied. I believe that the Hamsun centre, as well as the Sami centre and the International centre, is unique and that it adds value to our healing work.


To me personally, as for many others, the history of Hamsun has been a very painful one. Perhaps we would have been better of if we just left him behind somewhere in our history, as someone to blame and to turn our backs to. To me, at some point, that was not an option.


It all changed when I discovered and realized that he was not a demon after all, but a victimized human being. When I realized this I understood I had to stand up against injustice, violation and abuse, especially against vulnerable children. Children should not be victimized, but be respected, cared for and loved”Can the International Centre do for the children of war and poverty what was never done for Knut Hamsun?


I could not imagine a museum like the Hamsun one being built in South Africa. Could you?


We are dreaming and planning for a collaboration between Hamarøy andthe Institute in Cape Town.


We have gifts for one another

ALL PICS BY Øyvind Olsen

Acceptance Speech for Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters at Liverpool Hope University July 15 2010

The Chancellor, Baroness Cox, the Vice Chancellor Prof Gerald Pillay, Your Grace, Canon Anthony O'Brien, Members of the Academic Community, Fellow Graduands, Friends

I had thought of beginning my address by playing the vuvuzela but was persuaded otherwise.

May I take this opportunity to congratulate all my fellow graduands on their achievements which we celebrate today together with their families and all whose sacrifices and support made this day possible.

I am delighted that my own sister, Irene, husband Mike and friend Joan are here today together with my religious brother from the Society of the Sacred Mission, Fr Jonathan Ewer. I am especially pleased that my Zimbabwean godson Tigere, is here and my English godson Alan, with other members of their families.
I am happy that Fr Teddy Lennon OFM is here from Namibia.

I am deeply honoured that this great university has chosen to confer an honorary doctorate of humane letters on me today.

There are a number of reasons I rejoice in receiving a doctorate from Liverpool Hope university.

In another lifetime, I was chaplain to your Vice Chancellor Professor Gerald Pillay when he was a student in South Africa during the dark years of apartheid.

Interestingly Professor Pillay later moved to my original homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand from whence I had come to South Africa. There is much in common between the mission of Hope University which Professor Pillay so ably leads with its commitment to preparing students not just for the world of work but also for the work of the world; .and my own work within the Institute for Healing of Memories based in Cape Town. We seek to contribute to the healing journey of individuals, communities and nations

Personally I am excited to be now permanently linked with Europe's only ecumenical university and the vision shared by past and present Roman Catholic and Anglican Bishops of this city. Some would say that at least in the past, it was easier for the Catholic and Anglican Bishops to work together than for Evaton and Liverpool supporters to have a pint together.

(By the way – I am sorry about that goal which England was wrongly denied)

How wonderful for all of us to be graduating in this world famous Cathedral church.

However, as committed as I am to trying to follow Jesus I have long been convinced that the future of humanity is an interfaith future. If we want the human family to live in peace, we need to learn not just to tolerate but to reverence and respect all the great faith traditions. I like the way Hope speaks proudly of its Anglican and Catholic heritage whilst welcoming and seeking to be inclusive to people of other faiths as well as those with no religious beliefs.

Tragically a greater number of conflicts than ever before have a religious component – where religious belief is exploited for violent ends.
As we survey the globe we have good reasons to be worried about Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist and secular fundamentalisms.

On a lighter note, as a teenager in the 60s the Beatles were part of my regular diet. What pleasure the boys of Merseyside brought to my generation.

Only a few years ago, when I first visited Liverpool did I learn that Liverpool's history was profoundly enmeshed with slavery and the slave trade. It is sobering to have to face that there maybe wealthy companies, families and institutions, which endure till today which were built on slavery.

Visitors to Liverpool as well as local citizens and especially young people have the opportunity to be exposed to the reality of slavery when experiencing the relatively new International slavery museum

How do we see this legacy? How do we engage with it?

This reality is something which Liverpool and Liverpudlians share with Cape town and Capetonians. There is a suggestion that some of our communities in Cape Town have known enduring social violence without a break since the days when the majority of people who lived in Cape Town were slaves, till today.

In South Africa we had apartheid which was called modern day slavery. I am sure that there are those among you here today especially the older members of the academic community who at some time in your life were involved in supporting the anti apartheid, liberation struggle. In a university with its Catholic and Anglican parentage we are right to be thankful that we had our share of heroes with such giants as Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Archbishop Dennis Hurley and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Thank you to each of you who acted to help bring our freedom.

After centuries of war and oppression, democracy finally came to South Africa in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the President.. We had a momentous task to meet the basic needs of our people for water, electricity, jobs, education, shelter and healthcare

We also faced another giant question – how would we deal with the past? Nuremburg or amnesia? Forgiving and forgetting.? In the end we took the route of seeking to remember and to heal.. Our leaders showed us that revenge could not build a just and peaceful society however justified it may be.

In my own work of healing of memories, I have come to realise just how important both “knowledge” and “acknowledgment” is. It is good that visitors to Liverpool can hear the stories of slaves to gain knowledge about what the museum seeks to acknowledge. So often the victims and their descendants carry within their very souls the memory of what was done to them while the perpetrators and their beneficiaries remain oblivious if not in denial about what has happened.

For the last month I was staying in New York city. A couple of weeks ago I tuned in to get my daily fix of BBC World News. I watched Prime Minister David Cameron responding to Lord Saville's Bloody Sunday Inquiry. His unequivocal description of the killings that happened that fateful day in Derry as “unjustified” and “unjustifiable”has reverberated across the world but particulary in the hearts of the loved ones of the victims who have waited 38 years to hear the British Prime Minister speak so plainly. By also describing how victims were shot in the back and killed while already dying, Prime Minister David Cameron gave both knowledge and acknowledgment to the British people.

The night after watching David Cameron speak in the Commons, I was dining in an Irish pub in the
Big Apple with strong Republican links. Immediately I was asked if I had seen the newscast the night before. The consensus that night over a pint or two was that the speech by David Cameron was as good as it gets. For the relatives of the victims it was validation that there loved ones were unarmed civilians killed in cold blood. In the words of the Prime Minster there was a restoration of
the moral order with bad being called bad.

Some have suggested that the events of that terrible day helped recruit a generation of young people into violence.

It is interesting to note that David Cameron was just six years old when Bloody Sunday happened. Here he was on behalf of the nation taking responsibility and making public apology. I have no doubt that a significant step was taken to begin to heal old wounds within these islands.

I have a dream that the day will not be far distant when a leader of the UK will make a wider apology to the Irish people for past injustices and oppression.

It is a myth that time alone will heal old wounds. Conflicts in many parts of the world traverse generations as grandparents tell their grandchildren stories with poison embedded in the story.

Our generation is characterised by old conflicts which have come back to bite us. All of us can play our part in healing the wounds of history. - but the journey is long – we have to be willing to hear the pain of those at the bottom – to gain the knowledge by listening to the stories – to say sorry
AND to advocate for meaningful reparation.

Within the faith communities, we continue to tear ourselves apart over the issue of sexual orientation.not least in Mother Africa. In this regard secular societies are often much better champions of human rights for all than we who see ourselves as part of the household of God

Another of my dreams is that I will live to see a public apology by the leaders of all the great faith traditions to the LGBTI community for our part in their oppression. I dont know about this campus
but often communities of young people are more accepting of sexual difference than their parents or the temple, mosque or church.

Today South Africa has eclipsed Brazil to be the country with the most skewed income distribution in the world. We are a microcosm of the world. Attending to this disparity is, together with caring for the environment, are the greatest challenges we all face if our grandchildren are to flourish and live in peace..

But let me return to my story, my journey.

This year was the twentieth anniversary of the letter bomb sent by the apartheid state to kill me.
After the attack people of faith and good will from across the globe accompanied me on my journey of healing. through their prayers, and love and support. My story was acknowledged, reverenced and recognised. I was enabled to travel a journey from becoming a victim, to becoming a survivor and more, to becoming a victor.

Now for the last twenty years, I have travelled the world listening to the pain of the human family, seeking to gain knowledge and acknowledge the wrong done to others.
Supporting people to break the chain that turns victims into victimisers - offering safe and sacred spaces where victims can let go of poison to also become victors.

My dear friends, dear fellow graduands, on this day allow me to leave you with a couple of questions

What is God's dream for the human family and for mother earth.

What is my dream for myself.

Am I willing to play my part in realising God's dream

Many years ago, I am told that the friendship between two men – the Catholic Archbishop and the Anglican Bishop was the inspiration which gave birth to this university which continues to be a sign of hope.

During our long struggle for freedom, we learnt to analyse and constantly seek to understand what we were fighting against. However it was because of the hope which we shared that we were willing to sacrifice and lay down our lives to be free.

I have often asked myself, why did I survive a bomb that was supposed to kill. In my physical brokenness, I am a reminder of the results of evil, racism, prejudice and hatred.

However, a thousand times more importantly, I pray that in a small way, I too, am a sign that stronger than evil and hatred and death are love, faith and hope.

May all of us be, and increasingly become, signs of hope.

I thank you.

Old and Fresh Wounds in Bosnia - Hercegovina

How little I knew about Bosnia before I went there was very scary.

I had heard that 200,000 people had died during the wars of the 1990s just as democracy was finally coming to South Africa. This was to be my second exposure to the Balkans having visited Kosovo a few years back.

I visited Bosnia - Herzegovina from the 9th April for 9 days accompanied by Victor Cervati. I was invited by Svetlana Broz, a courageous and outspoken woman and granddaughter of Tito of Yugoslavia. I had met her eight years before in Cambridge, MA, USA. Svetlana heads an NGO called Gariwo which promotes what she calls “civil courage”. She wrote a book called “Good People in an Evil Time” about those who during the ethnic conflicts acted with humanity and compassion towards the “other”.

Gariwo had arranged the translation of my biography (sponsored by Norwegian embassy) into the Bosnian language (the only language other than the original English that it has been translated into) by Zeljka Vojinovic herself a remarkable person and a widow from the Bosnian war. We were assisted with transport by the OSCE, sponsored by the Dutch embassy and hosted by Mayors of Sarajevo, Tuzla and Bihac.
We travelled across Bosnia and Herzegovina after the first days in Sarajevo visiting Tuzla, Mostar, Srebrenica and Bihac with a very well organised and delightful team from Gariwo. There was massive media coverage of the visit, public launches of the book which were given away free, and lectures to university students. I arrived a nonentity only to become a celebrity a couple of days later. Several staff members of Gariwo had spent 3-4 months preparing for the visit. Virtually, everybody we met had lost relatives in the conflict. Many experiences during the visit will stay with me forever – graveyards, genocide sites and personal encounters. I am sure there will be future opportunities to do healing of memories work in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The day after our arrival we were taken to see the tunnel which was the only lifeline during the siege of Sarajevo in the early nineties - a few short years after it hosted the Olympic games. It is not easy to get your head around what it was like to live in a besieged city in modern times especially during a bleak European winter with little food and without heating or electricity and daily shelling and sniper firing.

We went to Mostar famous for the beautiful Old Bridge Through international financial aid (notably from Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands and France) managed by the World Bank, UNESCO established an International Committee of Experts to reconstruct the old bridge and the old town of Mostar. Work on the foundations has started in June 2001, and work on the reconstruction, in line with 16th century building methods, was finalized in 2002.” ) destroyed in the war and now rebuilt. It was accepted at a meeting in Durban, South Africa, as a world heritage site. Tragically whilst the bridge has been built the town is characterised by an “apartheid” reality where people live apart and children go to separate schools.
Tuzla is a town which is lead by a remarkable Mayor Mr. Jasmin Imamovic, who has a high level of popularity and a moral vision for the town, indeed for the country. During the war young people gathered in a local square on the day that Tito's birthday is celebrated as the Day of youth on May 25 1995. The square was shelled and scores of young people, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25 were killed. Each gravestone included photos of the dead – many of them teenagers with most of their lives still unlived.

From Tuzla we travelled to Srebrenica a place that is known throughout the world because of the act of genocide that took place under the noses of Dutch UN troops although the place had been declared a safe haven by the Security Council. Our visit was filled with tension. The mayor told us that everything was fine and that former residents were returning. A few minutes later the local leader of another political party told us the exact opposite of everything the mayor had said – indicating that people were leaving the town and that there was widespread despondency.
We visited the genocide site at Srebrenica and were shown around by Hassan, himself a survivor of the act of genocide which took place there. Both his twin brother and his father were killed there. He told us that working as a guide there and telling the story was something he could do for his brother and father. To conceal the genocide victims were buried in hidden graves and later dug up and reburied. This has lead to a huge challenge to verify the identities of remains which have been uncovered.

At the launch of the book in Srebrenica, I said that this is place renowned throughout the world as a place of great pain as well as shame for the whole world as WE ALL failed to protect the Bosnian Moslems who had fled here for protection. Shortly after I started speaking a group of young men walked out and continued walking up and down outside the venue in an agitated manner. They were overheard saying that if they had something they would throw it. At the end of the meeting we were asked to make a rapid exit from the town.

I was struck by the emotional reaction of those who feel indicted by simple statements of truth and who respond with great anger. However even here there were signs of hope. I had asked the audience what kind of society they dreamed for their children and grandchildren One young student said that she was not waiting for the future, she was already living her dream every day.

The last town we visited was Bihac, a beautiful town close to the pristine waters of the river Una. It was here that we met the liveliest and most responsive group of students at a technical college – some subsequently inviting me to be their friends on Facebook.

In the National Theatre in Tuzla a woman stood up and spoke about her son who had been murdered and how her life had become meaningless with her husband also dying shortly afterwards. It was as if there was no-one else present just the two of us having an intimate conversation. I asked her, as I had asked another woman many years previously: What kind of life would your son have wished for you.
Other people whispered their private stories into my ears or shared them quietly at dinner tables.

One woman told me a story that continues to haunt me. Her son who is half Serb was disabled as a consequence of an accident. During the war he was assisting with a medical team in defense of Bosnia. A badly injured Serb soldier was brought in and refused a blood transfusion of blood coming from a Bosniak (Moslem) nurse. The young man offered his own blood to save the soldiers life. The soldier refused saying that this would be twice as bad coming from someone with a mixed ethnic identity and he died. Today the young man has begun to hate that part of himself which is Serbian. What an urgent and deep need there is for healing.

During our final weekend in Sarajevo retired General Braco Fazlic of the Bosnian army, a leader of the partisans defending the city during the siege gave us an enthralling firsthand account of the siege including the graveyard partly carved out of tennis courts and now the last resting place of all the city's residents who were killed during the war.
The Dutch embassy hosted a seminar on our final morning on the lessons of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This meeting confirmed the assertion made by many others about the lack of visionary leadership at national level from either political or religious leaders. It seems that the picture is not as bleak at municipal level where there are leaders who act in the interest of all citizens.
The convergence of the narrowest forms of ethnic nationalism with brands of Christianity – Orthodox and Catholic in contradistinction to each other and to Moslems is as poisonous and as violent in the former Yugoslavia as ever it was under Christian Nationalism in apartheid South Africa.
There is an urgent need for forms of acknowledgment of the past, a process of mechanisms to detoxify the hearts and minds of people – to break the cycle that turns victims into victimisers.

I am looking forward to my next visit.

Father Michael Lapsley SSM
April 2010.

My remarks at Mass of Thanksgiving for my survival on May 1, 2010 - on the 20th anniversary of my bombing

Remarks by Fr Michael Lapsley,SSM

Dear Friends

Thank you to each of you for being here today. from so many different countries and walks of life.- beloved friends and representatives of different organisations Thank you Archbishop Thabo. Thank you Archbishop Tutu. I am honoured by the presence of Former First Lady Mrs Zanele Mbeki and my old friend Tito Mboweni. We invited people from all over the world. The only ones I expected to come were some of you who live in Cape Town. Imagine my delight when Steve Karakashian said he was coming from the United States and Sven Erik Fjellstrom from Sweden and Fr Chris Chivers from the UK. I am happy to see so many members of the consular corps. I greatly appreciate that High Commisioner Geoff Randall from my birth place of Aotearoa New Zealand and Mr. Eddy Machado, Counsellor of the Cuban Embassy in Pretoria is here. Thank you to leaders of political parties who are here. I appreciate the support of my two brothers, Fr Tanki Mofana and Fr Mosia Sello from Lesotho and my brother priests from Cape Town together with members of the Cathedral congregation. Thank you to each of you who participated in the service in whatever way especially the Pro cantu choir, their director Leon Starker and the organist David Orr, not forgetting our servers, Greg Coetsee and Luke Wildschut.. I have promised our Precentor Fr Bruce Jenneker caviar every day for a year for his many hours of work preparing this service. Also many thanks to my PA, Eleanor Kuhn for all the behind the scenes work and the support and assistance of my colleagues at the Institute and our extended IHOM family... Thank you to Fatima Swartz and my comrades from the Friends of Cuba Society for their part in the catering of the reception we are about to enjoy.

It is not accidental that we began with an Islamic and a Buddhist.prayer.. I have long believed that the future of humanity is an interfaith future in which we need to reverence and learn from each other's faith traditions including traditional beliefs but I also have the deepest respect for my atheist, agnostic, and communist friends.

When I was in Australia a few weeks ago, some friends asked me what I was going to do to mark the anniversary of the attempt on my life 20 years ago.

I decided to begin by asking my two favourite archbishops, Desmond Tutu and Thabo Makgoba if they were available. When both said, yes, today's Mass was on

In the last while, I have thought a great deal about these last twenty years, as well as the events of that fateful night of April 28, 1990 and the years preceding it.

During my years in the liberation struggle and as a chaplain of the ANC, I had become used to death. Time and again I was asked to lead and speak at funerals and memorial services of fallen comrades. As years passed, I also thought about the possibility of my own death. What I had not imagined was permanent major physical disability.

Some of you who have heard me tell my story before, will know that a key element in the bombing was my own sense that God was with me. I also felt that Mary who watched her son being crucified
understood what I was going through.

Shortly, after the bombing, I apologised to a friend that I had survived unlike her son who had been assassinated.

When I was bombed, it was the prayers and love and support of people across the globe, some of whom are here today and others who are with us in spirit, that enabled me to make my bombing redemptive – to bring life out of death, good out of evil,

It was the paintings done by many children especially those from Canada Australia and the UK, on the walls of my hospital room, that helped me through my darkest moments.

Despite the fact that I had nearly driven him mad when he was Bishop of Lesotho, it was Desmond Tutu who, as Archbishop of Cape Town, invited me to come and work here in Cape Town.

In 1993 I started to work at the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture. Whilst there, some of us created a workshop model called the healing of memories. In 1998, the Institute for healing of memories was created – seeking to contribute to the healing journey of individuals, communities and nations. With my colleagues and many volunteers, healing of memories has provided a vehicle to accompany many, many people on their journey of healing just as I was accompanied on my own journey.

Whilst it is true that I will always grieve for the hands that I have lost, I am not sorry that I have received many more hugs than I would if I still had hands. . There are a few people who to my surprise, insist on shaking my metal hooks At the same time, I know that I have much to be thankful for. More, I know that I have gained immeasurably through the journey I have travelled.

Travelling the world has taught me that we are one human family capable of the most horrendous deeds. Just a few days ago I visited the genocide site in Srebenica in Bosnia. At the same time we are all capable and called to tenderness, kindness, generosity and compassion.

Often through the years I have asked myself why I survived a bomb that was supposed to kill me when so many others died, who also deserved to live. I guess that some of us had to survive to be living reminders of what we in this country did to each other. But a thousand time more importantly, I hope I can be a small sign that stronger than evil, and hatred and death, is goodness, compassion, love and life – indeed of God

Dear friends, thank you for joining me today in thanking God for my survival and for praying for all victims of violence and torture.

In the life that is left to me, I hope that I will help make the world a better place.

I pray that we will all leave this Mass with new strength and courage to care more resolutely for Mother earth and play our part in making South Africa, Africa and this world a home for all people.

One step towards healing - Overview of the process used in a two and half days healing of memories workshop

"I have been Humiliated all my" - Haiti November 2009

Haitian Workshop
“ I have been humiliated all my life” .

The words seared my flesh and entered my soul. It was said by one of the mothers who participated in a Healing of Memories workshop held in “Matthew 25”, a small church facility in Port au Prince.
from November 20 to November 22, 2009

About half of the 21 participants had their adult sons shot and killed during a 2006 massacre at Grand Ravin.  Some of the victims were shot at a football match while others were murdered  in their  homes with loved ones present One of the women had witnessed 4 of her sons being shot  and then was shot at herself, surviving only by “playing dead”. In further attacks some had lost everything when their homes were burnt down.  The mothers were accompanied by  Mr. Evel Fanfan, a fearless human rights lawyer who has championed the cause of justice for the relatives of the victims.

Other participants were young  people with a commitment to justice and human rights brought  from Jacmel by Fr Rony  Fabien  who participated and helped with translation .
It was the first visit to Haiti for both Madoda Gcwadi and myself. Haiti is often described as the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere less than four hours flying time from New York.  We went with Georgette Delinois, President of the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East (HSNNE) a New Jersey based organisation (that works in solidarity with the poor people in Haiti) and  Judith Raymond, also a  Haitian American.

For Georgette,herself one of our trained facilitators,  and for me too, this was the fulfilment of a dream: to offer such a workshop to “her people”.

The pain in the workshop was palpable. On the first night some of the participants did a skit about the massacre.   During the story telling, several of the women showed us photos of their dead sons.
Those who were killed were in many cases the breadwinners  bringing their families face to face with starvation. Some said they felt guilty eating the food at the workshop whilst those at home were hungry.

What makes it much harder for the wounds to heal is that a number of perpetrators including police officers were arrested and then arbitrarily released without facing trial.

Our presence as willing,  respectful and compassionate listeners coming from the US and South Africa was nevertheless balm to their wounds, albeit in a small, but hopefully significant, way.

A sign of appreciation happened when I was waiting for breakfast on the second day and one by one the mothers shyly stepped forward and kissed me.



We did everything in our power to indicate that we had heard their pain, knew that they had all been horribly wronged and deeply respected each of them as people.

One of the most important conversations we had was about forgiveness.  None of us find it easy.
Sometimes we increase the burdens,no matter how well meaning we are, by telling hurting people, that they should forgive, whilst their  cry is that we should hear their pain.  For some, eventually, the journey and choice of forgiveness maybe the key to their healing.

Even our final celebration was permeated by the intense grief and  paralysis of the mothers of the dead sons.

At our workshop we promise participants one step on the road to healing, be it a tiny or a giant step.
Our last question to each of the participants was: How was this workshop for you? The responses were

Very welcoming, given strength and respect, extraordinary, proud of herself , life changing, enriched, very good, change of heart, I am so happy – I cannot find words, forgot the pain whilst she was here, rejoiced and partyed, a catalyst, unloading, constructive experience, building eternity, learned to love and forgive, was loaded, now I am empty
I am happy and relaxed, humble, special grace.
Madoda said it was painful and humbling.  We both expressed admiration for the participants and their dignity.   I said again that I was sorry for the terrible wrongs that have been done to many of the participants

“I respect each of you and will remember you each time I look at the Haitian flag on my desk when I am back in Cape Town”

As well as exploring other possibilities, Georgette is going to assist in setting up a support group among the mothers during a visit in March.

Writing back in New York my heart and body ache with the pain imprinted on me and I pray that we will be able to develop an ongoing healing of memories program in Haiti.

ends

Tortured, traumatised but not broken: the South African spirit and vision of hope:.

Laying Ghosts to rest for an audacity of hope

Heritage Day Celebration
Stellenbosch University, 17 September 2009

I would like to dedicate my speech to the women and men of Stellenbosch who were slaves and to all who fought against slavery.

I am honoured to speak here today especially to speak after one of our living ancestors, Dr Mamphela Ramphele. I wish to call to mind great men among the alma mater of this university who gave all in pursuit of our common humanity – such as Braam Fischer, Beyers Naude and Anton Lubowski

In early July I received an email written on behalf of Professor Botman requesting me to come and speak at this day conference around the tentative theme of laying ghosts to rest for an audacity of hope. I am still not quite sure who the ghosts are.

Furthermore it was suggested that the title for my speech might be:
Tortured, traumatised but not broken: the South African spirit and vision of hope:

The question I ask myself is what is God's dream for Stellenbosch, God's dream for South Africa? What will enable the realisation of that dream?

What is your dream for Stellenbosch? What kind of university would you like your children and grandchildren to come to . For those of you who have made Stellenbosch your home, perhaps for many generations – what is your vision for this town – Are you in danger of despairing or are you full of hope? Or does it vary throughout every day. Are you acting today to make your dreams come true?

What time is it now in South Africa 15 years after the birth of democracy 150 years after the birth of this university.

There is plenty to be depressed about – at least if you only eat the diet provided by our media – perhaps even the discourse at some of our dinner tables..

There is a small town called Harnosand in the Northern part of Sweden I visited a few years ago. I was there at 5 minutes to 12 on the fifth of December a few years back.
Despite the below zero temperature there was a giant multicultural festival which lasted from midday to midnight.

Some years before that Harnosand had a reputation as a very racist town. The town had a small refugee community. Because of the xenophobic and racist attitudes that dominated, few people mixed with the refugees. A young woman called Sara Wallin was the exception. She befriended refugees. Very tragically, one of the refugees was psychiatrically disturbed and murdered Sara.
The town was on a knife edge. Ready to explode. Even whilst deeply grieving his beloved daughter, Sara's father, Stig, decided to start the 5 to 12 movement .i.e. His conclusion was that time had run out and it was now five minutes to midnight. He decided that he would start a movement in his community. He began by creating informal spaces where the old Swedes and new Swedes could meet each other as people.. Once a year they would have a cultural and musical festival to celebrate their diversity.
Stig was not an ostrich, nor was he naïve, He faced reality but said However.... nevertheless
and today Harnosand is reknowned as a town that is diverse and inclusive of all who live there..

Is that not God's will for Stellenbosch?

There was a very dark day in our country's history when Chris Hani was assassinated. Perhaps we had never been as angry as a people as we were on that day. We teetered on the edge of civil war - even some would say, race war. Nelson Mandela was not yet the president, but it was he who was brought out to speak to the nation. He said that it was true that this beloved leader was killed by white people but However....nevertheless it was a white couple that lead to the arrest of the perpetrators. Instead of all killing each other, an election date was agreed and we moved forward to our first democratic elections.

One of my favourite organisations is a very small one. - 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. A group of people who lost their relatives in the horrible events of September 11, 2001 – despite the clamour for war and revenge said However ….nevertheless we do not believe in revenge. You may not go to war in the name of our loved ones.- you can bring perpetrators to justice without causing untold suffering to others.

In 1992 I returned to South Africa after 16 years living in Lesotho and Zimbabwe. The first thing which struck me on my return to South Africa was that we are a damaged nation – damaged in our humanity – damaged by what we had done, by what had been done to us, by what we failed to do – and all of us with a story to tell – all of us carrying within us deep feelings – some of which are toxic because of what we had experienced..


If we were to become one nation living together in peace and harmony we would have to listen to one another's stories. Some of us began to set up safe and sacred spaces where we could speak and listen with the heart to one another – places where we could vomit out the poison which had filled our hearts.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided us all with an opportunity to listen to each other's pain. Tragically, many white people, especially Afrikaaners, felt they were being attacked and looked away.. Personally I gave evidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Kimberly Town Hall – with more than a thousand people present but no white people. It was an opportunity lost – it could have been a time when we travelled towards each other.- it was like that for a few – perhaps even some of you present today – a facing of what we had done to one another .- which changed people for ever.- yes an evil system but However ... Nevertheless each of us is capable of being both perpetrator and victim even at the same time.

One day soon after democracy was born here, I was invited to speak at a seminar in the northern suburbs. I was taken to task for talking about the period between 1948 and 1994. I was reminded that from 1899 to 1902, we were the victims and now we are the victims once more. Please dont confuse issues and talk about us as perpetrators. In my experience, many of us are very clear about the ways in which we are victims but very hazy about the ways in which we are perpetrators. Whenever I have to face myself as a perpetrator, then I have to deal with guilt and shame – Denial becomes a tempting option.

Do we seek to bury and forget the past or to remember and to heal?

Some have asked the question, would South Africa's history have been different if there had been a TRC at the end of the South African war of 1899 – 1902 – if we had been able to face the truth not just of what was done to the Afrikaaner people but also to countless black people.

Of course that is not far enough back.. Have we truly faced what slavery did to us. Some are beginning to look at how communities in the Western Cape have experienced gratuitous violence without interruption down through the centuries. What would it mean for Stellenbosch to truly face that it is a town and an economy built by slaves?


Chief Lutuli once said – those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimisers of others.. People give themselves permission to do terrible things to others because of what was dome to them. This is true of individuals, communities and nations.

Nevertheless, however there is another road open before us – it is the road of victim – survivor – victor. Of travelling beyond what was done to us, beyond being simply survivors to becoming participants in creating a different kind of society.

I know that for myself, God helped me, through the prayers and love of many, many people to realise that if I was filled with anger, hatred and desire for revenge – that I would be a victim for ever – they would have failed to kill the body but they would have killed the soul

What is it that enables people as individuals, communities or nations to move away from victimhood?.

We need to have both Knowledge and Acknowledgment

Those who have been victimised need to have public acknowledgment that what was done to them was wrong – that those who did terrible things to others AND those who benefitted are truly sorry.

Often the community of victims holds on to the memory of what happened whilst those who benefitted and even more, their descendants, remain blissfully ignorant of what happened

In the country of my birth, Aotearoa New Zealand there was a colonial relationship with Samoa. Growing up there and going to school, I knew nothing about this and about bad things that had happened.during that time. Several years ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark went there for Independence celebration and made an unequivocal apology and said on behalf of the nation: “I am sorry.”

Of course it is never enough to simply say we are sorry as much as it maybe a good beginning.
If I steal your bicycle, does it help if I say sorry but dont return the bicycle. If we want to live together in peace, reparation and restitution are not optional extras..

Today we are gathered here – several generations gathered in this hall – what will successive generations say about us? Will they curse us because we behaved like ostriches – fighting rearguard battles to preserve the domination of our language and culture?

Some of us fought to the death either to preserve apartheid or to end it. Some of us did nothing – some both suffering and benefitting even if not in equal measure.

What do we say to our children – do we confuse them by our silence – or do we pass on stories which are filled with poison about “them” because we are unwilling to exorcise our own demons?.

Several years ago, I was invited to a flower show here in Stellenbosch with the theme of reconciliarion which took place in a church in the centre of Stellenbosch – it was such a joyful night – so much beauty – coloured and african people filling the church but hardly a white person in sight – invited but very few came.
I pray that this is no longer the case today.

All of us have been shaped by all that happened to our parents and grandparents.

How about those of you – the young people of today – leaders both of today and tomorrow..
You have no reason to kill each other in the way that we did – but are you living in psychological ghettoes reproducing old prejudices and outmoded traditions based on fear and ignorance? Or are you willing to work at creating new identities – as South Africans, as Southern Africans, as Africans, as human beings. - to celebrate and embrace our diversity of races and religions, gender, and sexual orientation including, without prejudice, those who are intersexed. - to celebrate being fully alive.

In 1976 a generation of young people rose up to hasten political liberation.

South Africa needs a new generation of leaders who will use every ounce of their abilities to fight poverty and insist that wealth creation and wealth distribution must go hand in hand – who will be outraged by obscene wealth in the midst of degrading poverty.

Todays new South Africa encourages greed in us as human beings – many of our latest batch of elected politicians, compete with each other to accumulate as much as possible. The patience of the masses grows thinner by the day.

There will never be peace in South Africa or the world until together we build societies where the gap between the richest and poorest grows thinner every day..

For too lomg, we South Africans have been a Good Friday people, crucifying one another.
God invites us to be an Easter Day people, recognising and acknowledging the wounds from the past whilst allowing ourselves to be God's instruments to build a just and compassionate society.

If we face the past and acknowledge it, the ghosts will fade away. Then we can embrace the future with the audacity of hope.

The letter bomb I received in 1990 was not supposed to injure me. It was supposed to kill me. Some of us needed to survive to remind all of us of what we did to each other and the consequences that many still live with today. Nevertheless, however, much more importantly I hope and pray that in some small but significant way, I can be a sign to you, that stronger than evil and hatred and death, are the forces, of gentleness, of kindness, of justice, of life, of God.

I thank you.

September 11 - Peaceful Tomorrows

Dearly beloved Members of 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

On behalf of all of us at the Institute for Healing of Memories we want you to know that today
we all paused to remember each of you and your loved ones who died on that fateful day.

In the dark days, following September 11, your voices were those which remained a sign of hope in the midst of the clamour for war and revenge regardless of who were actually responsible.

We continue to be inspired by your resolute example of peacemaking.

Please accept our loving embrace

Michael Lapsley ssm

Romania

What about the elephant in the room - Romania?

RELIGION – HISTORY – CULTURE – SOCIETY

The influence of religion and ethnical identity on the development of values in culture and society

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue and conference in the region

of historical Scythia Minor

Muzeul De Istorie Natională Şi Arhelogie Constanţa



International Panel : Comparing the international experiences

of Reconciliation and Healing of Memories to experiences

in region with interreligious experiences over centuries



FR MICHAEL LAPSLEY,SSM

What about the elephant in the room?

Thank you very much, Thank you very much in deed. A few preliminary comments. Firstly to say it that it was an enormous privilege and honor for me to be here on my first visit to Romania. I want to appreciate the generosity and kindness from every Romanian that I have met in the time we have been here and also with my colleagues that we traveled with from different parts of the world. It is almost like a love affair that we have had together for these few days and it has been a wonderful love affair that i has been extremely rich and beneficial.

Now we had called this session and comparing International experience and the work of reconciliation and healing of memories. So presumably we are comparing of what we heard from the Romanians in these last couple of days as well as some of us when we were in the Monastery Sămbata the other day.

I have a feeling that we have only had glimpses of the elephant which is in the room. I have a feeling that we have not spoken about the elephant in the room directly. I suppose what I had hoped is that we would hear what are the historical wounds of this nation and how are they being healed. We heard in the first part of our visit from some of the monks historical stories that go back through the centuries and connected to those stories is great pain. But also an enormous depth of feeling.

We went to the Synagogue a couple of days ago and we heard that only in the last three and a half years has a conversation began in Romania about the holocaust. We have only heard about it from Jewish speakers. We haven’t heard it from anybody else. So it seems to me that it must be part of the elephant in the room.

I understand that there was a fundamental ideological change in 1989. The world heard about it and we understood that you lived under a particular ideology that had profound effects for the faith community but there has been no mention of it.

I have the privilege of working all over the world and I listen to the pain of the human family. One of the most significant things for me in every country that I go to is not what is spoken but what can’t be spoken about. So, for me one of the most memorable things I would take from my visit to Romania is what people are not yet ready to speak about. Is it because the wounds are too fresh? Is it because they are too painful?

I was deeply impressed by the depth of scholarship we heard from academics in this country yesterday - learned professors and doctors at the universities and in the seminaries. I have a question for my academic friends. And that is what is your role in healing these historic wounds? What is your role? It seems to me that we have to begin to speak about not just what people think about the past, ancient wounds, recent wounds but how people feel about them.

Martha spoke in the previous session about how in Europe there is growing Xenophobia, growing racism. My brother from Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation Bucharest and Sofia says his kids play together quite happily. The problem is not the kids, the problem is the parents. So what we talking about is how poison is passed from generation to generation. So we have to begin to speak about that poison. We have to begin talk about what the past has done to us.

One of the great lessons of history is that the past doesn’t go away. You can choose to bury and forget it or you can choose to face it and then to begin to heal it.

Now although born in New Zealand, today I am a South African citizen and I want to suggest to you that there is something very particular that South Africa brings to the world community. Something which has captured the imagination of the world. At the end of apartheid we had a couple of choices. Apartheid began legally in 1948 but had a history that stretched back through the centuries. We had a history of war, racism and dispossesion, a history in which the Christian faith played a wonderful and a very terrible role. Because of course it was in our name and in the name of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the crimes against humanity were carried out.

There was another role where Christians stood out and struggled for the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So in our context the Christian faith was one of the arenas of the struggle. What captured the imagination of the world was this.

(….But the world believed that we were going to have a bloodbath in South Africa when we had our first democratic elections. My learned academic friends had predicted for decades war, war, war - you are just going to kill each other and instead as people we decided to make peace.)

….We decided that we could live together, that we could create a society of sisters and brothers which of course will take us the next hundred years to do. We also realized that we could not create a new society unless we face our past. So South Africa more than any other country in human history looked into the face of what we had done to each other. That was through out Truth and Reconciliation Commission - a commission that was not perfect, a commission that had its own faults and weaknesses. For nearly five years every single day on television on radio in newspapers we gave space to the stories of what we have done to each other. We heard every side of the conflict. We didn’t just say these were the good guys and these were the bad guys. We listen and heard the stories. We cried together as a people. We grieved as people. As South Africans we have challenged the human family because one of the characteristics of our age is that the unfinished business of the past is coming back to haunt us.



If I want to give you a gift, my dear sisters and brothers from Romania it is this, please, please, please face the past. Don’t seek to bury it and forget it. Touch each others wounds, talk about the choices you made that you are proud of, talk about the choices you made of which you are guilty and ashamed. Tell the beautiful stories, tell the horrible stories because only in doing that, can we begin to lay a true basis of truth on which truly reconciliation will happen. It won’t help us if we simply tell the facts but we don’t speak about the pain and the poison connected to the memories.

I am sorry if I have spoken without European subtlety but with a tradition in South Africa of speaking the truth. I offer what I offer with love to this national and deep respect for all you endured, with all you have experienced, and all that in the future, you have to give to the world.



Thank you very much.

Responses to questions

Response from Fr Michael

We went through several years of negotiations after the release of Nelson Mandela and our negotiations reached a crisis because the apartheid generals said unless there was amnesty these negotiations are going nowhere. Now the South African army was the strongest army on the continent of Africa with nuclear capability. That was on one side. On the other side there was the will of the people to be free and a preparedness to die if necessary in our millions. So, our leaders looked at the spectre of an escalating civil war and they said there shall be amnesty.

Now what the apartheid generals expected and wanted was blanket general amnesty in private. What they got was individual amnesty in public. In order to get it they had to say what they had done and they had to prove that what they have done was in a political framework and also that there actions were proportionate. 7700 people asked for amnesty of whom slightly less than 10% got amnesty. Some of the families said our right to justice has been denied. They took the commission to the constitutional court . The constitutional court said yes it is true that if people get amnesty they cannot be civilly or criminally prosecuted. Therefore the right of victims to retributive justice was denied. However, because there would be reparations, there would be a form of restorative justice.

Amnesty is there in many places. I have just been working in the last two weeks in Northern Uganda. Many people there who suffered under the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) say that the head of the LRA, Joseph Kony should be forgiven. Why? Because they see no other way of stopping the war. And that for them is the bottom line.

In Latin Americans it is always an extremely controversial issue.



Now with the coming of the International Criminal Court means that there are some crimes for which there is no local jurisdiction. In fact it is not possible to give amnesty for some offences including crimes against humanity.

Even some of our own amnesties would not be valid in terms of the International Criminal Courts.

Thank you.

Fr Michael responding to questions

Our Institute is based in Cape Town, South Africa and our primary is in South Africa. We are just 11 years old and when we started we said we would work in other parts of the world by invitation. Some time when horrible things happen in societies there is a kind of rush of humanitarian organizations and people get traumatised by those who come to help them. We said we would only work where we were specifically invited. At the moment we are working in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Northern Uganda and the United States. We have also worked in Sri Lanka, Fiji, Burundi, Eritrea and other places.

The only thing that worries me a bit is that people don’t invite me to place where there is complete peace. I am still looking for those invitations.

The US needs healing - Big Time!

Reflections on a short visit visit to the US

The USA is in desperate need of healing - Big time!

The Institute is on the way to opening an office in New York

For the last 10 days, Madoda Gcwadi and I have been in New York

At "the castle", we did an introductory healing of memories workshop with those who have been
incarcerated for up to 45 years including former political prisoners from Puerto Rico

We met a group of native women from Maine with whom we are exploring a partnership involving
healing of memories. They spoke inter alia about internalised oppression and the major role
in their oppression caused by the Catholic church to this day.

One evenng we met a retired General of the US military court, Jim Cullen who lead the
campaign within the military against the use of torture.

Intersections - a program out of Marble Collegiate invited us to join them
as they explore the possibilities of working with war vets especially from Afghanistan
and Iraq. How do you heal wounds that are still being created in wars that have not ended?

War veterans often feel that their experience is unique and yet war touches
every one: families and friends are often affected dramatically by the ones
who return from war changed for ever.

...And what about the other ... those we fought against.

Many Vietnam vets returned to Vietnam, to say sorry, to do penance and acts of restoratve
justice.

Larry Winter, a vietnam vet and now a drama therapist spoke of the intimate relationship
with those you have killed. "The war continues but noone is speaking about it"

Ed Tick said he went to North Vietnam and there was an absence of PTSD. Isit because the
Vietnamese saw themselves as fighting a just cause while US soldiers have not been able to convince
themselves?



Two days ago we came to the Minnesota.
The night we arrived in Minneapolis we went to speak with homeless vets at a veterans
hospital.

When I finished my spiel an African Amercan vet spoke about his experience of feeling
not second class but rather as a third class citizen - of being third class in the
military and how even returning home he was rejected by his family.
As a soldier he wasnt supposed to express his emotions -
now he cries alone.

Another said that if he was an Iraqi he too would support the insurgency.

Two days later a staff person came to a meeting and presented me with a special coin given
to those who support vets, the gift given to me at the request of the vets.

I am reading a photographic account by Riley and Monica about Riley's experience as a
nurse in Abu Ghraib prison
"..Earlier that day We treated several of the men who killed the marines...it is a
heavy burden to carry, deciding what treatment to give those who killed your brothers. When asked about
this experience, folks who have not experienced this dilemna in person frequently
respond one of two ways:

1. Of course you must treat the marines and the insurgents equally.
They are both human and deserve equal treatment.

2. Of course you dont treat them the same. It is war and they are the enemy.
Next time you had better kill them the first time.

Fr Michael SSM with Bishop Nelson Onono Onweng of Northern Uganda