Product Description

This is the Archbishop's personal account of his experience as head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission broadening the debate on the merits of reconciliation after conflict with observations, based on visits to, and experience of Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Dachau and Rwanda.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #396819 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Archbishop Desmond Tutu stands alongside Nelson Mandela as one of the most iconic figures of the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. As Archbishop of Cape Town throughout the 1980s, Tutu came to symbolise dignified, rational opposition to the iniquities of the apartheid regime, a faithful irreverence for unjust authority that led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. In 1995 he took up his greatest challenge: he was appointed Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the remarkable yet harrowing attempt by South Africans to come to terms with the gross violations of human rights committed throughout the apartheid era by offering amnesty and forgiveness rather than punishment and dismissal.

No Future without Forgiveness is Tutu's remarkable personal memoir of his time as Chair of the Commission. It records his insistence on the need to discover a "third way" in the healing of the national psyche, and his powerful belief that "we can indeed transcend the conflicts of the past, we can hold hands as we realise our common humanity". Yet what is so striking about this memoir is his appreciation of the personal cost that the painful testimony of the Commission caused. He grapples with the theological, political and ethical objections to the Commission, as well as offering an absorbing account of the fall of apartheid, the birth of the Commission, and his own lifelong fight for justice and equality. The book offers uncompromising, often horrific, accounts of atrocities and sickening human brutality, from the emotive cases of Steve Biko and Winnie Mandela to the cases of "the little people": those whose voices are so often drowned out or forgotten in the process of political transformation. Tutu's characteristic humour, resilience and compassion are evoked in this memoir in a way that demonstrates how essential they have been to his unique political style and his ability to get results where all others failed. He recalls during the darkest days of apartheid's "vicious awfulness" when preaching about God's authority being "frequently tempted to whisper in God's ear, 'For goodness sake, why don't You make it more obvious that You are in charge?'"

No Future without Forgiveness could be profitably read alongside Antje Krog's equally compelling Country of My Skull, as it considers the emotional toll that such a process of national soul searching has had upon its participants. As Tutu himself points out, "it is a costly business to try to heal a wounded and traumatised people, and those engaging in that crucial task will perhaps bear the brunt themselves ... we were, in Henri Nouwen's celebrated phrase, 'wounded healers'". No Future without Forgiveness stands as the eloquent testimony of one of South Africa's most admired wounded healers. --Rachel Holmes

Customer Reviews

Extraordinary insight
Desmond Tutu has given an extraordinary and illuminating account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa in the late 1990s. Many stories are touching, and quite frankly I did not know just evil and perverse apartheid was till reading this - I thought I knew, but I didn't.

The book is readable, humane, engaging - I've given it 4* not 5* though as it is very much a "Christian" account seen through the eyes of a Christian archbishop. Obviously we would expect that given Tutu's position, but I do personally find something a bit self-righteous (even smug, though not with Tutu who writes with deep humility) in christian accounts..."we know best if only you would see it our way...". Tutu's account of the Israeli position in Middle East affairs described towards the end I found a bit troubling - he mentioned a story of discovering he didn't trust black (Nigerian) pilots on a turbulent flight on account of his South African racial conditioning, yet seemed subsumed by Christian conditioning where the Jews are concerned. I'm not a Jew (or Christian), but have taken time out to see both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy - and there are two sides Desmond, not one.

Overall though a stirring and touching account of an extraordinary event (the TRC), and I would recommend this book to everyone - above all for its deep and rich understanding of the forgiveness and reconciliation process as a healing of human affairs.