Friday, June 7th 2013 By Barrack MulukaWhat is the purchase of your apology if you are not convinced you wronged the person you are apologising to?
Contrition is the child of conviction. Only the truly repentant
ask for forgiveness. The rest say sorry only because it is convenient
to do so. This is what Ignatius Sancho said in 1779. Sancho was an
African slave in England, in the 18th century. He was born on a slave
ship in 1729. He lost both parents early. His father committed suicide.
He was unhappy to continue living as a slave.
Sancho educated
himself at home, availing himself of his masters’ home libraries. In the
proper order of time, he distinguished himself as an abolitionist and a
literary virtuoso. He is famous for his numerous letters. These were
posthumously published as The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an
African.He wrote in the letter to a Mr G, “The very manner in which you have apologised for your late lapse of behaviour does you credit. Contrition, the child of conviction, serves to prove the goodness of your heart. The man of levity often errs, but it is the man of sense alone who can gracefully acknowledge it. I accept your apology.”
Four things stand out. First is that everybody makes mistakes. Secondly, only the person of sense will gracefully accept that he wronged another. Third, you only apologise because you are convinced that you have wronged someone. Finally, this whole process does you credit. It proves the goodness of your heart. We can forgive you and forget the past.
In this season when people are apologising to others all over the place, do we see these attributes in their conduct? Does their conduct show contrition and conviction? This week the British “deeply regretted” and “condemned” the torture of Kenyans during the British imposed State of Emergency (1952 – 1960). They went on to offer monetary compensation to those who suffered the in the atrocious events of the emergency. However, Foreign Secretary William Hague was quick to point out, “This does not amount to admission of liability.”
We must ask, what does it amount to, if there is no admission of liability? Does it demonstrate absence of conviction and contrition? What is the purchase of your apology if you are not convinced that you wronged the person you are apologising to? How sincere is your apology? Is Mr Hague’s apology suspect when he qualifies it with the rider, “This does not amount to admission of liability”? While Mau Mau veterans have received the “apology” with mixed feelings, is it in order to read mischief in this qualified apology? Hague and his vague apology aside, we have local matters of apology and goodness of heart to grapple with. There have been allegations that powerful forces have bowdlerized the Bethwell Kiplagat -led Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC)’s report. TJRCs have emerged in the new world as a form of healing in post-conflict dispensations.
In 2010, George Wachira and Prisca Kamungi doubted the wider relevance of TJRCs as instruments of transitional justice in post accord situations. In a paper titled “Noble Intentions, Nagging Dilemmas,” Wachira and Kamungi suggested that TJRCs are rarely useful to victims. They said that perpetrators of atrocities rarely turn up before these commissions. They, therefore, make the findings of the commissions heavily victim dominated. But even when perpetrators are forced to appear before the commissions, they only come to deny allegations against them. There is also the fact that victim-friendly recommendations are often ignored. This arises out of the fact that violators will, in the main, be in charge of powerful institutions and instruments. They, therefore, use their offices to frustrate the TJRC findings and recommendations.
Beyond this is the question of contested “truths.” Whose “truth” are we talking about? “Witness narratives are typically contested by those portrayed as villains, thus rendering the final report a contested rather than agreed official account of the past,” said Wachira and Kamungi. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been one of the most successful efforts in Africa. Yet there were many who went to court to contest narratives that had been published as “the truth” against them.
In the end, Wachira and Kamungi suggested, TJRCs are only useful if they seek to address limited and specific goals. The goals do well to focus on a very clear transitional justice agenda. They may not be very useful in the context of a wide and nebulous agenda such as we gave Kiplagat and his team. As things stand, we have not quite seen anything that we could call “the truth” in what we have read of this report.
The joke of it is that a process that set out to investigate the truth is full of recommendations that various people “should be investigated” to establish “the truth.” So what was the commission about?Matters only get worse if it should turn out that some powerful forces expunged some information from the report. Have we rendered useless an exercise that was weak even before it began? The commission recommended that the President should, within three months, “apologise” to Kenyans for the atrocities contained in the report. Again, what is the purchase of an apology on things that require “further investigation”? What is the truth about these things? How contrite are the hearts of those apologising, or those on whose behalf they apologise?
Do people want to look good without being good? Can we say of them, as Sancho said, “The very manner in which you have apologized for your behaviour does you credit. Contrition, the child of conviction, serves to prove the goodness of your heart”? Can we say of them that they are truly men and women of sense? Can we say of men and women who bowdlerise TJRC reports that they are good of heart? Should we be bothered about the sincerity of those who offer us money and want to construct monuments in our cities, but are also quick to add, “This does not amount to admission of liability”? Or is the money all that matters?
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