No Need for Revenge

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Mark Mathabane, a native South African, was subject to Apartheid. After Apartheid was lifted, there was talk of violence against the whites. In The Cycle of Revenge Can Be Broken, Mathabane writes “Guns, bombs, and tanks cannot defeat hatred. It can be vanquished only by humanity”. I agree with his claim, but also think that not wanting to do the things done to oneself to other people also influences people to be able to overcome hatred and revenge.
Mathabane overcame revenge by seeing the humanity in white people. In The Cycle of Revenge Can Be Broken, Mathabane tells a story about a nun who cared about his family: “My mother had been repeatedly denied a birth certificate for me -- a necessary document for school registration -- because she did not have a permit proving that our family had a right to live in Alexandra. But we couldn't get the permit without the birth certificate. My mother asked a white nun for help. When she realized the Catch-22 my mother was trapped in, the nun cried. I remember being stunned by her tears, for they were the first I'd ever seen streak a white face. I remember saying to myself: ''She feels my mother's pain. She's human after all, not a monster.''” In this story, he saw that this white nun had empathy-she cared about him and his problem. This was nothing like the white policeman, who were cold, hard, and devoid of empathy. He realized that exacting his revenge on all white folk would mean killing people like the nun, who cared about black people and were probably against Apartheid. Also, if he started killing white people in “white homes, kindergartens, shopping centers, schools, buses, and playgrounds”, then wouldn’t he be worse than the policeman also killing people?
By seeing the hu...

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...ey be any better than Nazis? The entire Holocaust happened because Hitler blamed Germany’s loss in World War I on the Jews, and wanted revenge. Some of you may be thinking, “The Jew should take revenge”. If the Holocaust never happened, and the Jews randomly killed innocent Germans, (like what the Africans in South Africa could have done after Apartheid was lifted), wouldn’t that have been considered evil, horrible, and inhumane? But as revenge, acts like this seem acceptable.
People can quench their thirst for revenge by not wanting to cause the pain on others caused to them. Also, revenge can be overcome by, as Mark Mathabane writes, “It [hatred] can be vanquished only by humanity”. Hatred will only cause more hatred, creating increasingly more and more pain and instability for everybody. The only way this cycle can be broken is through peace and forgiveness.

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