2 Responses to “Grenada: Nadia Bishop’s Appeal for Forgiveness and Reconciliation”

• Mervyn Claxton (21 october 2009) on October 21st, 2009 at 8:10 am

  Whether she knew it or not, Nadia Bishop’s call for unconditional forgiveness and reconciliation appealed to deeply-entrenched values in at least two of our ancestral cultures. Traditional, and to some extent modern, societies in Africa and India accord(ed) great importance to such values, which are regarded as absolutely essential for maintaining social harmony and promoting solidarity in their multicultural societies. We in the Caribbean arguably still possess such values in our cultural genes, values that can be resuscitated when the need arises, as it apparently has in present-day Grenada. Our ancestral values of forgiveness and reconciliation evolved within societies that were constructed on fundamental community values of integration, solidarity, and togetherness. Those estimable values have been so overlaid by the adversarial, confrontational, individualistic, devil-take-the hindmost, selfish “values” of the West and the North, which were initially imposed on, and subsequently adopted most willingly by, Caricom societies that many of us might consider Nadia Bishop’s appeal “unnatural” and/or unachievable. It is anything but. Moreover, it is an appeal that concerned persons in other Caricom countries would do well to adopt, advocate, and apply to their own societies.

  Because of constraints of space, I shall limit my illustration of the desirability and the achievableness of Nadia Bishop’s appeal to African cultures. There is a great deal of literature on the importance, in African tradition and African customary law, of confession and contrition on the part of the offender and the subsequent forgiveness of the crime or offense committed by the latter, on the part of the injured party. Indeed, that was the raison d’être of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which was based on the traditional principles of ubuntu, the southern African form of giri. Public confession of illegal acts committed under the apartheid regime was followed by forgiveness (by both the law and the victims) of those acts, with the objective of purging feelings of hatred and vengeance and restoring social harmony. Confession followed by forgiveness effected a tabula rasa that permitted a fresh start, unencumbered, respectively, by the burden of past sins or that of embittered feelings.

  Those traditional values of confession, repentance, and forgiveness appear to be genuinely pan-African, not just confined to southern Africa. Richard Sklar perceived a genuine similarity between the TRC’s confessional procedure and the episodes of public repentance on the part of African officials who participated in the National Conferences, which were convened in the mid-1990s in Francophone Africa in efforts to bring about national reconciliation. (African Politics: The Next Generation, 1999 (book chapter). In African tradition, the oucome of a process of forgiveness and reconciliation is often sealed with a symbolic act. At the end of the National Conference in Congo, one of several held in Francophone Africa in the period 1990-1991 to promote peaceful democratic transitions and bring about a reconciliation between the ruled and their rulers, each of the 1,500 delegates solemnly took turns to dip their hands in the reflecting pool outside the Assembly hall. It was a purification rite intended to symbolize the washing away of the acrimonious feelings revealed at the conference and to seal the national reconciliation which it helped bring about.

  Traditional African reconciliation mechanisms were developed to resolve conflicts in a manner that would heal deep social wounds and prevent the perpetuation of underlying animosities. The Oromo people of Eastern Africa developed elaborate methods to resolve conflict, based on reconciliation processes in which forgiveness played an important part. If prevention failed and social conflict did indeed occur, mechanisms were put in place to keep the conflict from escalating and to resolve it through a reconciliation of the disputing parties. An important stage in the elaborate reconciliation process of the Oromo is a religious service, in which not only the disputing parties but also the entire community participates. The ceremony is intended to purge away the anger and ill feelings of everyone involved in the conflict. The Oromo process of forgiving, forgetting, and reconciling, in which that ceremony plays a key role, is a method of ensuring that family and clan members would not inherit any of the bitterness or animosity that may have been generated by the conflict.

  In settling disputes between groups and individuals, or in arriving at decisions on contested issues, the requirement of social harmony led African societies to adopt policies that place great emphasis on compromise and reconciliation. That approach, which is still largely operative, applies across the board in African societies, informing not only social policies but also political and legal policies. An emphasis on compromise and conciliation was characteristic of politics in traditional Africa. Compromise is an important feature of the political culture of Mauritius, which has recognized how essential it is to the maintenance of peace and stability in its multi-ethnic society. “The rules of the political game [in Africa] put a premium on compromise.” (Naomi Chazan, Democratic Fragments: Africa’s Quest for Democracy, 1992 (book chapter).

  Because of the great importance that African societies traditionally place on compromise and reconciliation, they generally tried to avoid designating winners or losers in a dispute, or of treating political conflict as a zero-sum game. The frequent recourse to, and encouragement of, reconciliation between disputing parties gave a certain importance to the role of mediator or “go-between” in traditional society. Thus, the main function of the various African indigenous judicial processes and institutions was not so much to decide who was right and who was wrong as to reconcile contenders in the interest of communal solidarity. (Immaculate N. Kizza, Africa’s Indigenous Institutions in Nation Building: Uganda, 1999).

  The need to preserve interpersonal relationships and to maintain social harmony in Africa’s multicultural societies favoured the development of dispute-resolution procedures that would avoid litigation which, by its very nature, is contentious and confrontational. The customary Lozi court (Zambia) tends to seek conciliation. It strives to effect a compormise acceptable to, and accepted by, all the parties. For the Oromo people of eastern Africa the ultimate goal of their conflict resolution processes is to restore harmony (nagara) through a reconciliation of the disputing parties and, for the same reason, most cases in Buganda were settled before they reached the courts. African traditional judicial systems seek to redress injuries and reconcile disputing parties rather than identify which party is in the right and which in the wrong. Their essential function is to bring about an amicable settlement between the disputing parties, one that is based on mutual agreement, rather than seek to render each party his “due”. (Hamada Tuso, Indigenous Processes of Conflict Resolution in Oromo Society, 2000 (book chapter).

  Traditional Shona courts (Zimbabwe) consider customary law as providing no more than a broad, flexible basis for negotiating a settlement, one that would permit a reconciliation of the disputing parties and the restoration of harmonious relationships. The supreme value the Barotse (Zambia) accord to social unity and harmony requires their judicial process to end in a reconciliation. Similarly, in Ibo society (Nigeria), reconciliation is the paramount goal, not punishment. Even when fault is attributed by a traditional court, the punishment meted out is aimed at social reintegration of the offending party.

  The Mozambique civil war (1977-1992), a bitterly waged 15-year long conflict between the FRELIMO and RENAMO political factions that began only two years after the country had won its independence from Portugal by force of arms, was a traumatizing national experience which caused one million deaths in a total population of some fifteen million people, making a further five million people internal refugees. Traditional reconciliation mechanisms were brought into play immediately after the cessation of hostilities. They were so effective that the deep social wounds caused by the sanguinary internecine civil war were healed to such an extent, and within only a very few years (no more than five), that it rendered unimportant which community or which individual had fought on which side of the war. Such an extraordinarily rapid and incredibly successful process of national reconciliation can be contrasted with the length of time it has generally taken to heal the deep social wounds caused by most civil wars in modern times e.g the American and Spanish civil wars. Notwithstanding the proven effectiveness of African traditional methods of reconciliation, the international community still urges upon Africa its culturally inapropriate Western methods of coflict resolution - methods that have proven most ineffective in achieving sustainable peace in Africa. African leaders and elites, like those in most of the South (including our own region) appear to be guided by an unspoken, unwritten slogan: “What is best lies in the North and the West”.

  Because its office in Mozambique was a privileged eye-witness to Mozambique’s successful post-conflict reconciliation process, UNDP is the only member of the internatinal community to have perceived its great value as a model for settling communal conflicts: “Reconciliation is thus an intrinsic part of conflict resolution in the African socio-cultural universe……This traditional conflict resolution process through dialogue, sanctions, purification rituals, and celebration is a model that is almost ideal for dealing with conflict at the community level. It is a functional series of principles for solving problems for the group.” (National Human Development Report, Mozambique (1998).

  Our Caricom societies need to urgently discard their adopted Northern individualistic values which not only disdain social solidarity but also encourage us to distance ourselves from our less economically and socially fortunate fellow citizens. We need to replace those socially-divisive Northern values with our ancestral ones that accord(ed) great importance to such inclusive values as sharing, solidarity, and togetherness, buttressed as they are by values of forgiveness and reconciliation, and which demonstrate the humanity, empathy, and understanding which all human beings deserve, especially members of our own society. I do not know whether any systematic studies have been conducted on the beneficial effect on those in our societies, who have been summarilly deemed asocial, anti-social, or a menace to the middle class and upper class, when they are treated with consideration and humanity by the latter. However, there is a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence that confirms the reality of such benefits.

  Moreover, the values mentioned above are those which Christ himself preached. Gandhi, who practised forgiveness and reconciliation all his life, expressed great disappointment that Christians in the West did not practise what Christ preached and taught: “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.” It is a challenge to Caricom citizens, who are Christians, not to be seduced by those right wing Evangelist preachers in the North who claim to preach the word of God but instead preach hate and rejection of those who are different from, or think differently from, them. Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizonia, told his congregation that he prays for the death of President Obama. “I’m not going to pray for his good, I’m going to pray he dies and goes to hell.” Rev. Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, also told his congregation that he was praying for the president’s death. Most unfortunately, unless I am seriously mistaken, evangelism from the North (though not necessarily the extremist kind espoused by those two so-called “Christian” pastors) appears to be gaining ground in the Caribbean.

  Mervyn

• Julia Bishop on April 24th, 2010 at 9:50 pm

  I total agree with Nadia Bishop and with god all things are possible.