Archbishop Desmond Tutu
South Africa, 1984
"Reconciliation in Post-Apartheid South Africa:
Experiences of the Truth Commission"
November 5, 1998

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Thank you very much. I am a preacher. I don't know that you will be exposed to quite the treatment that this particular preacher gave to his congregation. He started preaching, and he went on, and on, and on, and on, and said, at some point, "What more can I say?" And somebody in the back said, "Amen!"

I greet you, dear friends, as someone who comes from what is still described as the "new" South Africa, the "free" South Africa, the "democratic" South Africa, the "non-racial" South Africa, the "non-sexist" South Africa. And almost all of us have described what happened in April 1994, at that historic election, as a miracle. And I think, yes, that is probably the most adequate way of describing something that was almost ineffable. We scored a spectacular victory over the awfulness of apartheid. But you know what? That victory would have been totally impossible without the support that we got from the international community. That victory would have been impossible without the love and the prayers and the commitment of very, very, very many people right around the world. And it is not given to too many people who go Âround the world and say, "We have an awful system, please help us to destroy it," and the people give you the help, and the system is destroyed. It is not given to too many to be able to return to those from whom you asked for the support to say, "We've done it. Thank you." Thank you, all of you, who made the miracle possible. Thank you. I would like to give you a clap. But it will look very, very weird if I do it all on my own, isn't it? So how about joining me in giving you and others who have been part of our support a very, very warm hand.

Thank you, thank you very, very much. I did that once with a group of young people in Australia. And I said, "Part of our trouble is that we don't celebrate who we are." And I said, "Well, why don't we give ourselves a warm hand." And they did a humdinger of an applause. And then, I said, "Let's give God a standing ovation." And they all got up and gave God a standing ovation. And without thinking, I said, "Thank you."

But it's been a very great privilege to participate in this colloquium, and very warm congratulations to the University, and to all of those who have been involved, Michele, and Professor Hopkins and the dean, and all of those who have been responsible for this splendid initiative. And the people sitting around here, my colleagues, you will admit are quite, quite exceptional persons. I am always intrigued by His Holiness, particularly. Because, you know, he has suffered a great deal. He is in exile from his country for I don't know how many donkey's years, and yet, he has this incredible serenity and bubbliness, joyousness-I was going to say "naughty."... And the world recognizes that.

You know, we speak of a world that is often dismissed as cynical, hard-nosed, and yet actually, it has an instinct for goodness. You admire a Nelson Mandela, you admire a Mother Teresa, you admire a Dalai Lama because inside you, there is something that tells you-it hones in to goodness. Now that's not what I was going to talk about, actually. This world, which we condemn so frequently, and perhaps quite rightly, for all the awfulnesses there are in it. Awfulnesses caused by us. And, you know, sitting and listening to horrendous stories, as we have done, you can't have any illusions about our capacity for evil. That we, all of us, without exception, have the capacity for the most incredible levels of evil. Ahhh, that is just one side of the story. Because, do you know, we also have an incredible capacity for goodness. And we shouldn't forget that. We shouldn't forget that we have had young people go away from this country, as part of the Peace Corps. Go and work in remote places, when they needn't do so. And they don't get banner headlines. Young people get banner headlines because they are substance abusers. We forget that side of it. We forget that, actually, it was young people, largely, when we were asking, "Please, we want sanctions against South Africa," it was young people at universities and colleges who were striving for disinvestment. And I take my hat off to them! Yes, this world has got many awful things, but it also has some very beautiful things. The awful things are that there is a lot of conflict and most of the conflict these days is within nations, within states: it is civil war. Bosnia. Kosovo. Burundi. Rwanda. Sri Lanka. Burma. East Timor. And all of these places have a conflict which is going to have to be dealt with.

And how do you deal with a post-conflict, post-repression period, as most of these countries are going to have to do? Well, one way, one way that was tried is almost atavistic: revenge. You clobbered me, I am waiting for my chance to clobber you back. That's exactly what happened in Rwanda. The Hutu did something to the Tutsi. And the Tutsi disappeared for thirty years. They came back, and we had genocide. Kosovo. Bosnia. What's happening? Why? Now that's one way.

Another way is Nuremberg, the Nuremberg option. Nuremberg, now most people say, yeah, that probably is not a bad option. But you see Nuremberg happened where there were clear victors on one side and clear losers on the other side. And the winners could enforce, as they say, victor's justice. And have you noticed, in Nuremberg, the prosecutors and the judges, when the case finished, could pack their cases and leave. In most of the situations we are talking about, the judges, the prosecutors, the perpetrators, the victims can't up and leave. They have to share the same geographic space. They're going to have to work out, "Hey, how do we, in fact, live together?"

A third option is do nothing. You say, let bygones be bygones, let's forget the past. For goodness sake, let's forget the past. Why, why, why do you want to rake up the past? Forget the past, and let's get on with the business of living in the present. And so, you can give yourselves, as they did in Chile, "blanket amnesty." Blanket amnesty, which is really amnesia. We forget. Let's try to forget. Mercifully, mercifully, God has created us in a particular kind of way. The past dealt with in a cavalier fashion does not remain the past. It refuses to lie down quietly. Bygones don't become bygones just by your say-so. You don't have a fiat and then you say, "Now, bygones, you are gone." They don't go. They return inexorably. They will return to haunt you. And you remember those quite haunting words in Dachau, the concentration camp museum, at the entrance there: "Those Who Forget the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It."

Yes, but there is this way, the South African way, which didn't happen because South Africans were particularly smart, it was forced on them because of the realities of our situation: no one won. The apartheid government didn't win, the liberation movements didn't win. Stalemate. Hey, how are we going to deal with this? And they struck on this compromise. Compromise tends to have a bad press, but it's not always a bad thing. Because, they said, "OK, in exchange for truth, you will get amnesty. In exchange for telling us everything you know about what you want to ask amnesty for, you will get freedom. Of course, if you don't, the judicial process, we hope, will take its course." You see, to say "let us forget about it" was unsatisfactory also for other reasons. One of them is that you re-victimize the victims. You say to the victims, "What happened in your case either didn't happen, or it doesn't matter." And you remember Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden": the woman recognizes the voice of the man who tortured and raped her. And she manages to tie him up, and she's got a gun, and he still denies. And she is on the verge of killing him. And then, he turns around and he admits he did, and she lets him go. Because the lie subverted her identity, her integrity.

And we found, you know, that just in the telling of the story, people have experienced a catharsis, a healing. And it has been an incredible privilege, sitting there, and listening to people who, by rights, should be consumed by anger and bitterness and revenge, and you experience their magnanimity, their willingness to forgive. Of course, you know Nelson Mandela, he is our spectacular example of this sort of thing that has happened in that crazy country. It is a crazy country. It's an extraordinary country. But it's been made extraordinary by all of you, upholding us, praying for us, sustaining us, supporting us. You might not believe it, but you are a real part of us. I would not be standing here today, had it not been for some extraordinary people like yourselves.

I want to give you one or two examples, and then I will sit down. A white woman is a victim of a hand-grenade attack by one of the liberation movements. A lot of her friends are killed. And she ends up having to have open-heart surgery, and she goes into the ICU. She comes to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to tell her story. And she tells her story. And she says, "You know, when I came out of hospital, my children had to bathe me, had to clothe me, had to feed me. And I can't walk through the security checkpoint at an airport-I've still got shrapnel inside me-so, all kinds of alarms go off when I walk through." Do you know what she said? She said, of this experience that left her in this condition? It has-can you credit it?-she says, "It has enriched my life." She says, "I'd like to meet the perpetrator, I'd like to meet him in a spirit of forgiveness. I would like to forgive him." Which is extraordinary. But then, she goes on to say, she goes on to say-can you believe it?-she goes on to say, "I hope he forgives me."

A second example. One of the former homelands, the Ciskai, banned the ANC from its territory, and said it was a no-go area. And the ANC said they were not going to accept this. And so, they went on a march, a demonstration to Bisho; Bisho was the capital of this homeland. A number of people were killed because the Ciskai defense force came out, they shot and killed a number of people and injured others. We had a hearing on the so-called "Bisho Massacre." The first person who came-and the hearing was in a hall packed to the roof by people who had either been injured there, or people who had lost loved ones. And the first person who comes to testify is the former head of this Ciskain Defense Force. And I have to say, even I was riled. Not so much by what he said, as by how he said what he said. So, the tension you could cut with a knife. And then, the next set of witnesses was four officers: three black, one white. And the white was the spokesperson. And he says, "Yes, we gave the orders to the troops to open fire." Yah! The temperature just shot up! Then he turned to the audience and said, "Please forgive us. Please receive these three of my colleagues back into the community." Do you know what that audience did? That audience broke out into deafening applause. When the noise had subsided, I said, [whispering] "Let's keep quiet, because we are in the presence of something holy. Really, we ought to take off our shoes, because we are standing on holy ground." It's been that kind of experience. Some incredible people. Incredible privileged to have been asked to preside over such a process.

The very last example. The ANC exploded a bomb in Pretoria in one of its main streets, called Church Street. They were attacking the headquarters of the South African Air Force. One of the officers was blinded in that attack, a white man. When the ANC operative applied for amnesty _ and amnesty is applied for in an open hearing-the ANC Operative, Abu-Bakr Ishmael, turned to Neville Clarence and asked for forgiveness. And the two-the one white blind man, and the Indian-shook hands. And that picture became a kind of icon. It was emblazoned on the front pages of our newspapers, and on television. And Neville Clarence said, "As we shook hands, it was as if both of us didn't want to let go of the other."

God has been very good to us, and maybe there is something for the world to learn, from both our mistakes and some of our achievements. And I believe that we are going to succeed in this experiment that is happening in that crazy country. We are going to succeed because God wants us to succeed. And that's not because I have a hotline that I know this is what God is. God is wanting us to succeed for the sake of God's world. Because God wants to be able to point to Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Middle East, Rwanda, and say, "Just look at them." Who could have ever imagined that South Africa could be an example of anything but the most ghastly situations. And now God wants to say, "Just look at them." Utterly unlikely! But they are a symbol of hope, South Africa, a symbol of hope. God's sense of humor! "Just look at them, look at them, they're not even too bright, you know, because if they had been bright, smart, they wouldn't have held onto apartheid for so long." You know the story-we were talking about astronauts. And a South African was upset that America and the Soviet Union were getting all the kudos for the space program. And so he announced that we, in South Africa, were going to launch a spacecraft to the sun. And then people said, no, no, no, man, you can't be serious. Long before it reaches the sun, it will be burned to cinders. He says, "Oh, you think we South Africans are stupid? No, no, no, man, we will launch it at night." But it is that God is going to be saying, "They had a nightmare called apartheid. It has ended. Your nightmare will end too. They had a problem that the world had described as being intractable. They are solving it. Bosnia. Kosovo. Sierra Leone. Angola. Burundi. Rwanda. You name them. Your problem can't ever again be described again as intractable."

Thank you.

DISCUSSION AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS

Julian Bond: Thank you, Your Grace. Mr. Muller.

Bobby Muller: I really respect what you've done with this effort. And I understand a lot of the emotions that you describe, having had the opportunity myself to go back to my war zone, meet my former enemy, and really come to terms with a tremendous amount of emotions based on the commonality of our experience and having shared, really, the pain of war, was something that put us together much more than that which had separated us on the politics around it. So, I can really appreciate the emotions that you are describing having taken place. But there is an aspect of this which I am totally confused about. And it has to do with personal accountability. And when you draw the line, and you hold people accountable for, let's say minimally, crimes against humanity. For which I don't think there should be any statute of limitations. And I don't think that the fact that Pinochet is an 82 year-old guy should exonerate him or let him off the hook for the torture and the murder of as many innocent people as he is responsible for. You know, the whole Nuremberg principles of accountability, I think, were accepted: we have Geneva Conventions that describe, in great detail, what make up a body known as the Laws of War. At the beginning of this bloody century, 90% of the casualties in conflict were military people. That has transformed, where today, 90% of the casualties in these conflicts around the world are innocent civilians. All of this body of agreement, known as the Laws of War as codified in those various mechanisms, apparently seems to mean nothing. And one could say that they are not laws, they are sort of like recommendations, because if you break a law, you're punished. South Africa's got a lot which makes it unique, but-I am sure you support the idea of an international criminal court to try those guilty of crimes against humanity, and the concept of personal accountability to make laws laws is something that I think we've got to look at. I am babbling, but can you sort of help clarify that a little bit?

Archbishop Tutu: Yes. What we did at home, in fact, is to take very seriously the whole question of impunity. Because, you see, before we had our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission, almost everywhere else-the military before moving out-granted themselves amnesty, a blanket amnesty. In our case, which is unique, is that we said amnesty is going to be granted on the basis of an individual application. That's one.

Two: the conditions for granting amnesty are not that you get amnesty just because you come along and say, "I have done such-and-such." Amnesty is not automatic. We received 7,000 applications for amnesty. For the last count, as it were, certainly at the time of the printing of our report, only 154 had been granted, with another 2,000 still to be considered. But the other condition is, you acknowledge, you accept, you say you are guilty. That's accountability. There is no point in giving amnesty to someone who is innocent, or claims to be innocent. And there are people who came, apply for amnesty, and say they were really innocent. And the committee said, "We can't give you amnesty if you are innocent. We can give you amnesty only if you are guilty." And so, people have to accept their responsibility for the atrocity they have committed. And so, your worry about accountability and law, the significance of the law, the autonomy of the law, that is taken account of.

But you see, the other thing is that, I think, lurking behind your question, is the concept of justice. Now you say, everybody has got to be punished. Your concept of what constitutes justice is retributive justice. Now that's not the only kind of justice. We believe that there is restorative justice, because you see, the application is heard in an open hearing, not behind closed doors. Television lights are panned on the applicant. And, in fact, for quite a number, this probably was the first time that their wives knew that this apparently decent man was actually a member of a death squad. And that public appearance constitutes a public humiliation which is, I think if you are looking for punitiveness, there is a punishment. But we didn't think that was where we wanted to end. We were looking for healing, for-and it's probably an African concept of our understanding of penology. What is the purpose? The purpose is ultimately the restoration of a harmony. And now, we are able, actually, to have the luxury of discussing all of these wonderful things at home. Because the compromise was, in fact, made. Had the security forces known that they were going to be for the high jump, we wouldn't be sitting here. The victims accepted that there was a price that has been paid, a price that has been paid for ensuring that the transition happens. But it isn't a price that is out of proportion to the realities of our situation.

Let me just give you an example. I didn't speak about Rwanda. I went to Rwanda very soon after the genocide, and I went to Kigali, to the main prison there. It was chock-a-block full, and some people had actually died of suffocation. And I said to the president of that country, "That jail is a disaster waiting to happen." And I said, "Your history in this country is this kind of thing. You have a top dog and an underdog. Maybe the top dog is Hutu, the underdog is Tutsi. And your history is: underdog seeks to become top dog, and underdog becomes top dog, and there is hell to pay for the erstwhile top dog, for the things that they did to the new top dog when it was the underdog. And so, the thing is turned around. Tutsi now becomes top dog, and Hutu-as is happening now-are the underdog. And the game is played again." And I said to them-I was preaching in Kigali-and I said to them, "If retributive justice is your last word in this country, you have had it. You can write off the possibility of ever having a stable Rwanda." Because, even as we speak now, the Hutu have mostly been the ones that have been arrested. Mostly Hutu have been found guilty, and Hutu have been executed. They are not going to say, "We were found guilty because the evidence indicated that we were guilty. We were found guilty because we are Hutu. We were found guilty sometimes by Tutsi judges. We are waiting for our chance." And I said to them, my own understanding is, for what it is worth, your history of the spiral of reprisal provoking a counter-reprisal provoking a counter-reprisal will remain this way. You need something to go beyond that spiral, to break through. And you need forgiveness.

Bobby Muller: I don't want to get lost in a discussion about what constitutes justice, all right? But I want to come back to the function of law, and why we have it. And part of it is certainly beyond retribution. I don't see that there is a particular sense of satisfaction in taking, let's say, an 82 year-old guy and throwing him in jail. You know, fine. But one of the functions, clearly, of law is deterrence. To set an example of those that are guilty of those crimes, so that those that may be contemplating whether or not they want to try and get away with that, will have in their mind that if they do that, they will pay a price similar to that. And it's a deterrent aspect, of the accountability factor, more than the retribution, that, I think, is an issue. I have spent a lot of time working with Cambodia for a lot of years. And Cambodia changed my life more than the war in Vietnam did, because Cambodia was a case of genocide. The war in Vietnam was brutal, but the genocide of Cambodia dismantled the society, and it was a chill to my soul and it completely changed my life to have some exposure to the degree of horror that was involved in that. Well, the guy that really drove the show there was Pol Pot. And shortly before Pol Pot died, he was in a public court, given a chance to explain himself. And he said, "Yes, in fact, I'm sorry, I made mistakes." He may have said that very sincerely-he may feel, "I made mistakes, but I tried." So where something like that fits in the equation, I think, is open for some discussion.

One of the things we talked about earlier today, was evil. And how vulnerable we are-as you yourself just said a little while ago-to being seduced by the negative force. We are. We are shockingly vulnerable to being affected. Not that it's quite the same thing, but there was a movie about the marines that Stanley Kubrick put out called Full Metal Jacket that illustrates extraordinarily well how eighteen-year-old kids coming into the Marine Corps as basic nummies can be processed, through indoctrination, to wind up charging enemy machine gun positions, which is not a natural act. The point of it is that there are people-Milosevic, Kabila-who foster the negative and have blood on their hands in a way that is something that demands accountability.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Yes. Yes. Perhaps fairly straightforwardly: what we are seeking to do at home is to cultivate a culture of respect for law. You see, we are saying, "You have to take responsibility for what you did." The fact that you have to stand up in an open forum and say, "I have done so-and-so"-remember, the amnesty provision is not something that is going to stay on forever. It's a provision for a transition, you see. There is a limitation to when you can apply for amnesty. In our case, it is long over. That is why part of our recommendation is that those who did not apply for amnesty, and where there is evidence that they were guilty of violations, gross violations, of human rights, then the judicial process should take its course. Because I think that, even with the amnesty process, it incorporates your deterrence element. No one wants to stand up in public and say, "I abducted this young man. I gave him spiked coffee, and I shot him in the head, and I burned his body, and whilst we were burning his body, we had a barbecue." Which is something that was part of the testimony in one of the-I mean, nobody likes being known in public in that kind of way. So that there is a deterrent. The very fact that not everybody applied shows that there is a reluctance to appear. But with regard to Pol Pot, the fact that he stands up and says, "I am sorry, I made mistakes," unless the country says that we are willing to have an amnesty provision, I don't think that that is, actually, a relevant example for the kind of thing that I am trying to talk about. I am talking about a specific-and we're going to get many such-situation of the transition. It's going to happen in East Timor. They are going to be trying to work out: we had collaborators with the Indonesians; how are we going to deal with them? And they can't just say, "Well, it's O.K., we will forget about it." Because they won't forget about it! They've got to find a mechanism. And what one is saying is that we are not claiming that this is an infallible blueprint; it is an option that people ought to be considering as a serious option.

Julian Bond: One more before.

Dr. Rigoberta Menchô Tum: I think that this topic is of tremendous importance. I think that the Nobel Laureates, and perhaps other institutions, should put together a program of study, a program of work, to trace a line of work to produce a systematic gathering of the experiences of amnesties, and also the experiences of truth and justice in areas of conflict. I, as a victim, would like to know who are those responsible for the torture and death of my mother. If I were to find them, I would like to bring them before justice, and I would like that they at least demonstrate their innocence of all these things. On behalf of the victims, there can be decrees, but the solution of damage that has been done is not a matter of a decree. How can we hope that they at least ask for forgiveness? I can't forget that forgiveness comes with truth and with justice, and I recognize Bobby's concern-what can we do to perfect the process by which we address this in the future? Because the past is something that we lived, that we have acted in, and, normally, the processes of peace have ended in a climate of impunity, how, in the future, can impunity not have a place in the countries that have suffered these conflicts?

Julian Bond: Your Grace, before you answer that question, I want to see if Harn Yawnghwe and Betty Williams also have interventions, and perhaps you can summarize them in one, because we have questions from the audience, and our clock is ticking on.

Harn Yawnghwe: I am very interested because we have a very brutal regime in Burma, and we will have to come to terms with it very soon. Both your experience, and maybe Jos» in East Timor, and maybe in Guatemala, you have this basic concept-either Catholic or Protestant-of forgiveness. Will it work in a situation like Burma where, really, we don't have a concept of forgiveness? You have compassion, you may excuse people, but the concept of forgiveness is something quite different. I know there is not enough time, but that's something that really I would like to explore.

Julian Bond: Ms. Williams.

Betty Williams: Dear, dear, dear Father Tutu. I love you so much, because the only way forward for the world is in forgiveness, and I think that South Africa has created a model that should be copied by other places. Burma could learn a lot from His Grace's work in South Africa. One of the things that really bothers me is this question of law, and when the law, as we know, has no respect for the people, then the people will have no respect for the law. And I taught in Texas for four years at a university. And while I was there, the then-governor, Ann Richards, appointed me to the Texas Commission of Children and Youth. The answer to everything in Texas was to build bigger and better prisons. And I mean, "Duh!" Don't you know that if you work in the ghetto, you won't need the prison to be as big? We spend billions and billions of dollars here in the United States of America incarcerating people instead of spending the same billions of dollars in the ghettoes in better housing, in jobs for people, and all of that. It just doesn't make sense.

Julian Bond: Your Grace, can you summarize?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Betty was making a comment and we said we concur with her. I don't know about Buddhists not knowing anything about forgiveness. What happens when you quarrel with your wife? Because I think in that particular situation, in every language, every culture, the most difficult words you have to say: "I'm sorry. Forgive me." Otherwise, actually, there is no future in that relationship. And, basically, I am saying that even in the world, forgiveness is not just a spiritual-something that is nebulous. It is in fact realpolitik: that there will be no future without forgiveness. And that is for real. And I think, looking at a military junta that is scared of a woman who is about that" size [holds one hand above the other a few inches apart].... Speaking about authority, moral authority. But that our Sister Laureate is remarkable in her gentleness and her willingness to say, "Let's talk." And that is part of what we are saying is maybe the paradigm that the world wants to be looking at.

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Julian Bond: Professor Hopkins, with questions from the audience.

Jeffrey Hopkins: This is a question for President Arias. The notions of human rights and reconciliation of conflicts seem to appeal to and invoke a common bond that exists among all beings. What is that common bond, and why is it so frequently forgotten?

Oscar Arias Sánchez: Which is the common bond? Well, I believe it is common values, isn't it? Perhaps common moral values. The ones that have been mentioned here: tolerance, the force of dialogue, of understanding. What we have been talking about this afternoon: forgiveness. I don't know if the person who asked this question had in mind something different, but I think that what makes social togetherness viable are common values.

Jeffrey Hopkins: Then, for Betty Williams. How can one strike a balance in daily life between forgiveness and standing up for oneself?

Betty Williams: Oh dear. I am not known to be very even-tempered, so.... I can forgive very easily; it's the forgetting I have a problem with. Much to my shame, Your Grace. Because every now and again, I think, "Well that person did so-and-so," and that little devil imp gets on this shoulder, and for a while forgiveness goes out the window. Standing up for oneself, I guess, it depends on what one's self wants. What are you standing up for? I stand up for children. What does standing up mean? I'm like His Holiness on this one: I don't know.

Jeffrey Hopkins: Then, a question for Harn Yawnghwe. Why isn't Aung San Suu Kyi present here?

Harn Yawnghwe: She's not present here because she really can't be. Let me try to explain. The military would very much like her to get out of the country because by being in the country, she is creating a lot of problems for them, and they would love to see her out. And if she were to get on a plane and go somewhere, anywhere, they would never let her back in. And that is the reason she is not here.

Jeffrey Hopkins: Thank you for representing her here. This is a question for Jody Williams. Would you comment on Amnesty International's decision to add the United States to its list of countries guilty of serious human rights violations.

Jody Williams: Given their history of solid documentation of abuses of human rights, if they have added the United States to the list, I assume they should be there.

Jeffrey Hopkins: This is a question for Dr. Menchô Tum. In light of the enormous tragedies you have suffered in your fight for peace and justice, what gives you the strength to carry on?

Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum: I have always thought when one lives through something, one must live through that thing. We have no alternative but to do so. People who are victims have had no alternative but to live the experiences that they live. The hope that one has that the world will one day be different has to do with one's hope that no one will have to live through the things that one has experienced. And so, this becomes a profound conviction, that human beings must find a way to live with each other, and to find a way to live together. But I also gain strength from people, from women and from those people who work in little corners that go unrecognized, but where they are sure of a new future. And I have also seen that when people obtain something-a school, or something like this-this gives them the energy to keep on going. Every success makes them live life anew. So, I believe that we have no reason to complain about history, about our history; what gives people the strength to carry on are our mutual interests, or people, and the possibilities for the future. Above all, because I am a Maya, and we Maya believe that all of us are but passers-by on this earth, that we are here for a short time, and that we must do something while we pass through. This is what motivates me.

Jeffrey Hopkins: And a final question for Archbishop Tutu. Based on your experience of sanctions toward South Africa, what do you think about the current U.S. sanctions on Burma?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: We would not have succeeded quite to the extent that we did, and perhaps with so much less bloodshed than would otherwise have been the case, had it not been for the sanctions. And we have said, as Laureates, when we went to Thailand on behalf of our Sister Laureate, that we were calling on Western countries, and Asian countries, that this is a non-violent strategy for changing an unjust system. And we went also to the White House, and made the same pleas. And we have to say that President Clinton was very good to have responded positively to our particular plea. You get all sorts of people saying all sorts of things about sanctions: that they will hurt the people you are trying to help. Twiddle! It's baloney on the first order! Because you are speaking about people already suffering, and you are saying you are trying to find some way that is a non-violent strategy for bringing about the change that everybody says they want. And we would-well certainly let me say that I haven't consulted my colleagues-I would want to say as firmly as I can that it is a moral issue. It's asking: are you on the side of right or the side of wrong? Are you on the side of justice, or on the side of injustice? Are you on the side of freedom or oppression? It is very clear. And everything else is obfuscating, and I would be pleased that we do all we can to put the screws on that military junta, that they should accept the result of the election. I know you were saying that this is the last question, wasn't it?

Jeffrey Hopkins: Yes.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: But may I just have a last word? The God that I worship is a strange God. Because it is God who is omnipotent, all-powerful, but he is also God who is weak. An extraordinary paradox: that it is God, a God of justice, who wants to see justice in the world. But because God has such a deep reverence for our freedoms all over the place, God will not intervene, like sending lightning bolts to dispatch of all despots. God waits for God's partners: us. God has a dream. God has a dream of a world that is different, a world in which you and I care for one another because we belong in one family. And I want to make an appeal on behalf of God. God says, "Can you help me realize my dream? My dream of a world that is more caring, a world that is more compassionate, a world that says people matter more than things. People matter more than profits. That is my dream," says God. "Will you please help me realize my dream, and I have nobody, except you."