A crowd of more than 200 turned out for an afternoon program of fered by Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution last week that highlighted the peaceful way in which South Africa was able to overcome decades of harsh apartheid rule and transition to a democratic government.
Three highly distinguished survivors of the apartheid era highlighted a panel discussion titled “Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Healing” about lessons South Africa could teach the world’s mediators. The speakers included Ebrahim Rasool, the current South African Ambassador to the United States; Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest who lost his hands in a letter bomb explosion while living in exile in 1990; and John Allen, a political journalist and press secretary for Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Thomas Stipanowich, professor of law and academic director of the Straus Institute, moderated the discussion as the three guests spoke about what it was like to live in South Africa under apartheid rule, and the deep schisms that developed between the oppressors and the oppressed over four decades.
South Africa’s policy of racial segregation officially began in 1948 when citizens were classified into four racial groups and made to live in segregated residential areas with separate education, medical care, beaches and other public services. Segregation in residential areas was often carried out by forced evictions.
Uprisings in the 1950s were countered with government repression and violence, and the imprisoning, torture and exiling of anti-apartheid leaders. By the 80s, the world put so much pressure on South Africa through trade sanctions, etc., that President de Klerk began the process of ending apartheid in 1990, resulting in the multiracial democratic elections of 1994 won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela.
Lapsley recalled thinking for a time that he could just “sit on the fence” about apartheid, until he experienced apartheid firsthand.
“The day I moved to South Africa, I stopped being a human being and became a white man,” Lapsley said. “My race dictated which bathroom I could use, which beach I could go to. It became a struggle for my own humanity.”
Lapsley believed justice could be obtained through nonviolent means until he witnessed police shooting students. When he spoke out on behalf of students who were shot, detained and tortured in the 1976 Soweto Uprising, he was expelled from the country.
“Our problem was the Constitution itself. It was a tribute to a racist God who denied fundamental rights to the majority, who were voteless,” he said.
Lapsley joined the African National Congress and mobilized faith communities worldwide to oppose apartheid. In 1990, while in exile, he lost both hands when he received a letter bomb that exploded. In 1993, he returned as a chaplain at a trauma center for victims of violence and torture in Cape Town.
Ebrahim Rasool, the current South African ambassador to the U.S., grew up in Cape Town’s infamous District Six as part of a Muslim minority. He said the Muslim community was inspired to action by the surge of young Iranian Muslims in 1979.
“My faith was challenged by what was happening in Iran – the new assertiveness and what it said about my role in South Africa.”
Rasool credited Archbishop Desmond Tutu with “starting a great interfaith movement against apartheid.”
In terms of mediation strategies that involve conflict between religions, Rasool advised finding the middle ground. “Orthodoxies act in much the same way…It’s human solidarity and values that form theologies, not the rules and regulations…The Muslims, the Christian community and Jews for Justice all came together [against apartheid],” Rasool said. “Fundamentalism is undesirable because of its violence and its total and absolute mindset.”
Lapsley concurred, saying, “The worldwide anti-apartheid movement found its commonality in its commitment to social justice.”
John Allen, the third panelist, was a political journalist in South Africa who became press secretary for Desmond Tutu and the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC), which was set up by the Mandela government to offer both oppressors and oppressed the chance to come to terms with what happened during apartheid.
Archbishop Tutu wrote that the “TRC gave perpetrators of some of the most gruesome atrocities amnesty in exchange for a full disclosure of the facts. Instead of revenge and retribution, the new nation chose to tread the difficult path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.”
Pepperdine School of Law’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution has been ranked as the number one law school dispute resolution program by U.S. News & World Report for the last nine consecutive years.