Pardon Punishment And Amnesia Summary

In Pardon Punishment and Amnesia: Three African Post-Conflict, Lyn Graybill examines the ways in which Rwanda, South Africa and Mozambique have recovered from internal conflict. He identifies three ways in which these nations deal with traumatic and dramatic events that shaped the political and social climates. These means are of course as mentioned in the title are pardon, punishment and amnesia. I found the authors identification to be less than ideal, although they cover the decisions made by governments in dealing with aftermath of these conflicts, it does not necessarily deal with how the perpetrators and victims interact with one another in society. This interaction or lack thereof has many economic considerations as a nation seeks to

Graybill cites Archbishop Desmond Tutu who advocates for forgiveness underpinning policy, rather than punishment. Those with this view advocate for the notion of Ubuntu, which does not have an exact definition, but connotes humaneness, caring and community (1118). In addition, to religious advocates, this policy of forgiveness has been adopted legislatively and embraced by the courts. The policy itself resulted in a very small fraction of the overall of the population applying for forgiveness. Graybill only examines the views of what can definitely be termed as the elite in post-apartheid society, in government and religious life. Furthermore, the fact that few applied for this amnesty sanctioned by the government shows either a distrust of the government or a general lack of remorse for past actions. In order, to understand how a nation is recovering from a decade’s long conflict where persons were detained captured and killed it is important to know the changing views of both victims and perpetrators. Although this notion of Ubuntu was implemented by the courts it is unclear in this piece if this idea is accepted by the population at large and if it is not tensions between these groups will continue to run

The public has been overwhelmingly supportive of this system and has actively engaged in the election of over a quarter of a million judges to handle these cases (1123). In comparison to how Graybill presented South Africa, for Rwanda he placed great emphasis on the involvement and support of the citizenry. However, he also shows that due to the widespread participation in violence the nation of Rwanda is overburdened as it seeks to achieve gacaca. Unlike the South African case the use of written apologies was written into the law, in order to facilitate forgiveness. Mozambique is a peculiar case, considering the choice of what has been described as amnesia by Graybill. After a nearly 20 yearlong war where one million civilians are killed there have been no calls for punishment or accountability. According to Graybill in Mozambique, “If someone talks of wanting to avenge him listeners will remind him how revenge leads to counter revenge and so-forth” (1125). Graybill points out that although this may have worked in the short term, there is a chance that this may just allow old wounds to fester and come to the forefront later as it has in Chile and Argentina (1127). As Graybill has presented this case I would like to see further research on the view of individuals on the conflict and whether victims view