“Justice requires not only the ceasing and desisting of injustice but also requires either punishment or reparation for injuries and damages inflicted for prior wrongdoing. The essence of justice is the redistribution of gains earned through the perpetration of injustice. If restitution is not made and reparations not instituted to compensate for prior injustices, those injustices are in effect rewarded. And the benefits such rewards conferred on the perpetrators of injustice will continue to “draw interest,” to be reinvested, and to be passed on to their children, who will use their inherited advantages to continue to exploit the children of the victims of the injustices of their ancestors. Consequently, injustice and inequality will be maintained across the generations as will their deleterious social, economic, and political outcomes.”
― Amos Wilson
Watching the racial dynamic cluster-fuck that is unfolding at our former White-only universities in South Africa feels like a kind of national de-ja-vu; the revisitation of the ghosts of apartheid. White brutes beating Black protesters in an attempt to protect their privileged way of life even as the legitimate demands of the working class become un-ignorable.
Land, fees, language, inequality…IMHO all of these boil down to a lack of adequate reparation and restitution at 1994. Too much fake kumbaya, too little real redistribution. As an artificial group ‘selected’ and ‘glorified’ by apartheid, White people did not offer up an unqualified admission of guilt and of unlawful enrichment as apartheid ended. Forgiveness was offered before it was asked for. Looking back over the last few years, or looking ahead at the elections to come, the topic may change but the tune is the same – people that have been consistently fucked over by colonialism, apartheid and now a self-enriching elite are eventually saying “Enough is enough, we also want a dignified existence.”
I cannot see how there can be true forgiveness and reconciliation without justice and reparations. There can be no sustainable peace and shared prosperity without justice.
Nic Spaull 