Quote of the Day - 16.12.2013

So, here we stand as a small group representative of millions of apathetic people who didn't do the right thing.
Antjie Krog, Quoting Amnesty Applicants in Country of My Skull


The problem with reading a book from cover to cover for an essay is it often takes several days, so apologies for posting from the same book two days in a row. In this quotation Krog quotes six young black men who applied for amnesty on the basis of omission, arguing that it was precisely because they had not got involved in the struggle for liberation in South Africa that they required amnesty.

This is an interesting concept for me because it seems to strike at the heart of something we have yet to fully know how to process here in the West, how does one deal not with wrongdoing, but with the absence of 'right-doing'?

I'm sure anyone who has grown up in Britain will remember a school assembly at which the following poem by Martin Niemöler has been read and discussed:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

Within our society we struggle at times to come to terms with our inaction, there is a sense deep within us that we should speak out against injustice and oppression, or that we should have spoken out in the past, but no real method of dealing with this guilt. Instead we do guilt very well, we revel in it. At 21 I was born long after the British Empire had officially fallen, and yet was raised in a culture that still at once celebrates it and revels in our guilt for its very existence.

Antjie Krog, having related this episode goes on to write that 'With applications like this, the amnesty process has become more than what was required by law. It has become the only forum where South Africans can say: We may not have committed a human rights abuse, but we want to say that what we did - or didn’t do - was wrong and that we're sorry'. And whether others agree with her or not, I think the need for a space such as this is vital.

It can be found in places, there are prayers in my own tradition that allow me to say not just Father forgive me for what I have done, but for what I have failed to do. But as a society, we have no such outlet. And such an outlet is vital. We must be able to stand up and say my apathy was wrong, there must be some method of atoning for it. Maybe the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that for some South Africans. Where is the space for us?