Forgiveness and Reparation, the Healing Journey

Forgiveness and Reparation, the Healing Journey is about reparations. We think of reparations as a remunerative act and as a punitive one. The colonial powers must pay back a significant percentage of what they stole from the colonized. To arrive at what would be a meaningful amount, we must tally up the cost of the human lives lost, the opportunities denied, the mineral wealth ravaged, and the ecosystems destroyed. How can we even begin to calculate the worth of even one of those categories? How can we rightly price even one human life? Furthermore, this approach assumes there is only one side in need of repair--the side of the subjects who were raped, ravaged, abused, misused, and had their lives and labor stolen. But reparations rightly engaged is part of a spiritual process of forgiveness and reconciliation. Reparations would be an element in a process of atonement and restorative justice that sees the need for acknowledgment of the damage done to the enslaved and colonized, healing and restoration of the lost humanity of the perpetrators, and repair of the violated relationships between the human and ecological victims and the human perpetrators.

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Mpho Tutu van Furth is a South African pastor, author, artist and activist. She is the daughter of Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu, and the founding director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. She is known throughout the world for her advocacy work on issues including forgiveness, the safety and wellbeing of girls, and same-sex rights.