A rchive Date
[ 29-05-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[Out of South Africa: A solution to impasse in Mideast
By MARK MATHABANE
May 3, 2002, 4:53Pm
I'm convinced that, to find a way out of the present impasse, the Israelis and Palestinians must embrace the concept that helped bring a peaceful end to apartheid in my homeland of South Africa: ubuntu.
That Zulu concept, which maintains that there can be no reconciliation without acknowledgment of each other's humanity, provided the framework for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would challenge Palestinians and Israelis to empathize with each other's suffering instead of caring only about their own.
I described ubuntu to Palestinians and Jews during a trip I made to Israel in 1993 with other writers, spiritual leaders and political thinkers, as part of an Aspen Institute conference. I talked about how the African National Congress and the National Party, erstwhile bitter enemies, reached a historic power-sharing accord under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. After 27 years of being unjustly imprisoned for fighting for the freedom of the black majority, Mandela spoke not of revenge but of reconciliation.
Like Abraham Lincoln, whose magnanimous Second Inaugural Address -- "with malice for none, with charity for all" -- helped heal a nation deeply divided by the Civil War, Mandela reached out to those against whom he'd fought. He publicly spoke of his understanding of how the Afrikaners' painful memories of their own suffering at the hands of the British during the Boer War -- where 28,000 of their women and children died in the world's first concentration camps -- had led them, in the name of survival, to create a racist political system that oppressed and dehumanized others.
The embittered black majority heeded Mandela's plea in part because he was speaking not as a black man but as a human being, and was appealing to blacks to put themselves in the shoes of Afrikaners and recognize their humanity even though Afrikaners had wantonly trampled on the humanity of others.
Imagine if Yasser Arafat were to acknowledge Jewish suffering and the dehumanizing atrocities of half a century ago; or if Ariel Sharon were to acknowledge the pain of being driven, as worthless refugees, from one's homeland as so many Palestinians have been.
As a Jew victimized by suicide bombers, Sharon can only speak the language of retaliation and revenge; and as a Palestinian victimized by Israeli occupation, Arafat can only speak the language of resistance and defiance. But as human beings, mindful of the terrible cost in innocent lives of the violence they are provoking, Sharon and Arafat or more open-minded successors should be able to speak the language of their common humanity, as the children of Abraham who shared an inextricable destiny.
Mathabane, author of Kaffir Boy, writes and lectures on human rights and education.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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