Reconciliation Lessons from Africa
AFRICA, 3 May 2010
Africa does many things badly, but one thing especially well. It has perhaps unparalleled ability to reconcile and overcome painful divisions in the aftermath of conflict.
I was reminded of this last week, in Belgrade, of all places, when I interviewed Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, for the Talk to Al Jazeera programme. He wanted to talk about the recent resolution passed by the Serbian parliament, which condemned the 1995 massacre of Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica, carried out by Serbs.
President Tadic said he was proud of his parliament, arguing that it had shown how Serbia distanced itself from the crimes of the 1990s and “shared Western European values”.
The reference to European values is no coincidence; President Tadic hopes the passing of the resolution will help take Serbia into the EU.
But the heated debate in parliament, and the reaction to it across the former Yugoslavia, was another reminder of history’s poisonous legacy in the Balkans.
The resolution, which passed with a tiny majority, was praised by European leaders, but has not impressed many people in the region.
Serbian nationalists are enraged, their sense of victimhood responsive to any suggestion that Serbs were the principle aggressors of the Bosnian War.
Meanwhile Bosniaks, who remain suspicious of Serb motives, are furious that the resolution did not refer to Srebrenica as an act of genocide.
Which brings me back to Africa, where I spent 15 years as a BBC reporter before joining Al Jazeera.
Poor leadership in Africa has resulted in wars, poverty and famines. Africa’s past certainly exerts a malign influence; the colonial legacy is one of arbitrary borders, ethnic divisions and lack of education.
But what Africa seems uniquely good at is forgiveness and reconciliation. When it comes to moving on from bouts of terrible bloodshed and conflict, and not allowing bitter memories to derail the struggle for progress, Africa has much to teach other continents.
Take Nigeria for example. In many ways, it is a colossal failure, corrupt and violent. Ethnic and religious tensions regularly boil over, with terrible results.
But outsiders often forget that Nigeria has experienced a far greater conflict. The Biafran war, in the late 1960s, resulted in some one million deaths (ten times more than the Bosnian war). Today, it seems of little political relevance, which perhaps explains why it is often overlooked.
Of course, Nigerians, and especially the Igbo people who suffered the most in the war, have not forgotten Biafra. But, if anything, the lesson they take from that tragic episode is that the price of disunity is too high to pay.
About one million people are also thought to have died in the genocide in Rwanda, in 1994.
Any society would struggle to recover from such a calamity, but Rwanda’s task was made all the more difficult because of the extraordinary mass participation in the killing; hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the blood-letting.
The government, attempting to administer justice and promote reconciliation in the aftermath of the genocide, established gacaca courts, (meaning “justice on the grass”), based on a traditional system of confession and forgiveness.
Gacaca courts have had mixed results. Critics say the attempt to blend customary practices with a criminal justice system is simply too ambitious, and has even led to an upsurge in attacks on witnesses.
But Rwanda today is a peaceful, and apparently stable country, and the government argues that the gacaca courts have contributed to that stability.
Elsewhere in Africa, from Mozambique, to Angola, to Sierra Leone, rebel and government forces that fought on opposite sides in brutal civil wars, marred by atrocities and massacres, are now united in national armies, and apparently oblivious to recent divisions.
In the Balkans, or in Northern Ireland, battles fought many centuries ago are still used to mobilise ethnic or religious hatred.
In Africa, it’s inconceivable that people would be fixated by the outcome of a 14th or 17th century battle.
Perhaps this is because in parts of the continent, there simply is less recorded history. Africa also has a younger population. In Europe, the events of the Second World War are remembered by the elderly, and in some regions are still the cause of great bitterness. In sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, only a small minority can recall even the 1960s.
Poverty, paradoxically, may also help Africa to wear its history more lightly. In the Balkans, schools are often used to entrench divisions between ethnic groups, and the past is taught in a distinctly partisan way. In many parts of Africa, education systems are struggling to impart even basic knowledge. And extreme poverty may also produce pragmatism; dwelling on the past is a luxury that people who are struggling to feed their families don’t have time for.
Of course, there are many Africans who are shaped, even embittered, by past injustices. Robert Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, is one, although it’s questionable to what extent his countrymen share his animosity towards the former colonial power, Britain, and the white settler population.
In fact, such is Africa’s skill in reconciliation that it’s even produced a model, since copied, with varying degrees of success, around the world.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a forum intended to allow the victims and perpetrators of apartheid crimes to come to terms with the past, without retribution.
It didn’t always work perfectly, but its chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, believed it represented a peculiarly African approach to justice. In his words, “to forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest”.
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