Father Michael Lapsley is a former South African anti-apartheid activist who has turned his personal tragedy into a clarion call for peace and forgiveness. In 1993, months after the release of Nelson Mandela, the ruling de Klerk government sent Father Lapsley a parcel containing two religious magazines. Inside one of them was a highly sophisticated bomb. When Father Lapsley opened the magazine, the explosion blew off both of his hands, destroyed an eye, burned him severely. Many thought he was dead. Father Lapsley went on to work at the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town, South Africa, which assisted the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Today Father Lapsley is director of the Institute for Healing of Memories.
Father Michael Lapsley talking:
the overwhelming evidence was that it was part of the machinery of the de Klerk government, and I always said that I hold de Klerk politically and morally responsible, because in our case in South Africa, the death squads were part of the machinery of the state, and he knew about them and did nothing to disband them. But as I’m with you today, I don’t know who wrote my name on an envelope. I don’t know who gave the direct orders, who actually made the bomb. So, in that sense, I haven’t forgiven anybody, because there’s nobody yet to forgive.
But I’ve traveled a healing journey, and I realized that I had to learn to deal with my grief. I think my Westernness made me think after the bomb, “Well, I can put on my résumé ’I’ve been bombed, now can I get on with my life?’” But, of course, I had to come to terms with the fact that I will be living with the consequences for the rest of my life. And for me, the particular thing was just to realize that grief would also be part of my life. I haven’t been filled with anger and hatred. I feel anger sometimes towards the political leaders, who didn’t kill anybody, they didn’t torture anybody, but they sat in suits in Parliament and passed laws that led to horrific pain, suffering, degradation, humiliation to millions and millions of people, and who still deny their responsibility for what happened.
I think if the person doesn’t care about what happened to them—what they did to me and maybe to others, I’m not sure that I want to meet them. If, however, they’re a prisoner of what they did to me, I have a key, and I would be very open to using that key. And if they ask for my forgiveness, one of the things I might say to them: “Well, excuse me, sir, do you still make letter bombs?” And they say, “No, no, no. Actually I work at the local hospital.” My response would be, “I forgive you. And I would prefer you spend the next 50 years working in that hospital, because I believe a thousand times more in the justice of restoration than the justice of punishment.” So often when we say “justice,” we mean punishment, if not revenge. But there’s another kind of justice: the justice of the journey of restoring relationships. But I might also say to them, “Well, yes, I have forgiven you, but I still only have one eye. I still have no hands. I’ll always need someone to assist me for the rest of my life. Of course, you will help pay for that person,” so that reparation and restitution are also part of the journey of forgiveness.
“How can you punish them for what they did?” Restorative justice asks a different kind of question. It says, “This reality of life has been destroyed or broken by what has happened. How can we restore the relationship?” And so often in restorative justice, the key actors in the process are central, where often when retributive justice happens, the actual direct survivors and victims are swept aside, and the state then acts on their behalf.
But, of course, key in my work is healing of memories. You know, if horrible things have been done to us or to our loved ones, people are justified to hate, to be bitter, even want revenge. But the problem is, if we keep those feelings inside of us, it doesn’t destroy our enemies, it destroys us. So my work is about giving people what we call safe and sacred spaces, where people can detoxify, where they can deal with the like poison inside them, so that they may be free. One of our great leaders in South Africa once said, “Those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimizers of others.” So if horrible things happen to us, then maybe the journey of victim-victimizer, victim-victimizer—true of individuals, communities and nations—the journey of healing is to move from being a victim to a survivor to a victor, to take back agency. I realized that if I was filled with hatred and bitterness and desire for revenge, they would have failed to kill the body, but they would have killed the soul. So, in doing the healing work, it’s what Albie Sachs calls the “soft vengeance of a freedom fighter,” working for a different kind of society, a gentler, kinder, more just kind of society.
— source democracynow.org
Father Michael Lapsley, director of the Institute for Healing of Memories. Previously he worked at the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town, South Africa, which assisted the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In April 1990, he received a letter bomb that blew off both of his hands, destroying one eye and burning him severely. His new book is called Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer.