[First published in “Maryknoll” magazine]

SOUTH AFRICA‘s Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu looked momentarily disturbed at my question: “President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has called you an embittered, evil little bishop. What’s your reaction?”

Then his signature flash of a smile quickly returned. “Oh, I learned in the apartheid days to develop the skin of a rhinoceros,” he said.

We were discussing the turbulently changing scene in his home region of southern Africa, and especially the economic and political disaster overtaking Zimbabwe. Mugabe, when not attacking Tutu for speaking out against injustice there, is working to discredit and enfeeble Zimbabwe’s own Roman Catholic clergy.

State-owned media last August began hounding Archbishop Pius Ncube, an outspoken critic of Mugabe, with accusations of adultery. And the government is pursuing a broad crackdown on the church’s work for human rights.

Tutu – an Anglican – shakes his head these days in sadness more than anger about neighboring Zimbabwe’s calamitous conditions. Time was, Tutu recalled, that the two nations were unified in similar, ultimately successful struggles against white supremacy. Now, 28 years after Mugabe gained power, 76-year-old Tutu feels the former freedom-fighter has turned into a cruel dictator. “He is someone I used to have a very high regard for. And he must be given credit for what he did. But it’s an inexplicable aberration that has taken place – this almost, you’d say, perverse determination to destroy his own country and bring about huge suffering unnecessarily for many of the people.”

The retired Archbishop of Cape Town and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize-winner is no stranger to human aberration. After a lifetime of defying the outrages of apartheid, he was asked by Nelson Mandela, as first president of a majority-ruled South Africa, to chair the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This was the new country’s bold and innovative attempt, starting in 1995, to move on from the brutality of its recent past by facing it squarely and, wherever possible, healing some of its worst effects.

The powerful, heart-rending exercise lasted through three years, and many of the Commission’s sessions were broadcast live on national television. In his chairman’s seat the Archbishop was seen breaking down in tears as he heard testimony from victims and bereaved families about vicious torture and killings. The Commission divided its work into investigating human rights violations, formulating proposals for restitution and – crucially and controversially – assessing whether individuals would be granted immunity from prosecution.

In an approach deliberately designed to avoid the taint of “victor justice” (as, for instance, in the Nuremberg trials after World War II) Mandela’s young government had decided that amnesty could be given to perpetrators of abuses during the apartheid era if their crimes were “politically motivated” and “proportionate,” and as long as the abusers fully disclosed what they had done.

LESSON IN PRAYER-POWER – Read about the strong corrective that Tutu gave me in an earlier exchange (during his country’s dramatic transition of 1994).

Few would claim the TRC finally presented a perfect solution to South Africa’s violent legacy, but it has impressed many across the world with how it helped to reinforce South Africa’s peaceful transition from outright repression to a fairly healthily functioning democracy.

Tutu is naturally pleased by the number of visitors from the world’s varied troubled societies who come to consult him on lessons to be drawn from the TRC, yet he was emphatic when I quoted reports that he viewed it as “a paradigm” for other nations. “No, no, no, no, no,” he said, thumping the table vigorously. “No one should ever make out that we have provided the world with a universal paradigm, that we are saying this is one size that fits all. That would be arrogant in the extreme. In a very real measure, it is something that is ad hoc. It must be specially designed for each country.”

“But,” he added, “there are certain principles that you would say might be of universal application“.

Specifically, Tutu reflected that for him the strongest TRC lesson was an appreciation that “there is an incredible generosity and magnanimity on the part of people. Almost everyone who has suffered is not so much desperate for revenge. More important, they want to know the truth. And most want to be able to tell their story. And when perpetrators admit [their guilt], it’s far more healing.”

I raised the question of war and sectarian violence in Iraq, and the archbishop agreed that this Middle East country’s experience would provide a most daunting test for any TRC-style peacebuilding effort. “They won’t have stability there as long as bombs go off, and as long as there is atrocity and then a reprisal. That will just go on and on and on.”

But even in the unpromising case of Iraq, said Tutu, South Africa’s experience could sometime possibly have some effective application. “Ultimately the only way they are going to have stability is when they sit down together, acknowledging what they have done to one another, and looking for ways of seeing the anguish and the pain.”