That is what enabled me to address my sisters and brothers in Rwanda in a manner that under other circumstances might have been seen as insensitive and presumptuous.
I have had the same experience in other parts of the world where people are seeking to face their history. In 1998 I was in Dublin and Belfast. In both cities audiences warmed to the lesson of our South African experience - that there is hardly any situation which could be said to be devoid of hope.
Our problem was one which many had believed was intractable. I told them in Dublin and Belfast that "Yes, we have lived through a ghastly nightmare, but it has ended." They, too, were on the way to an end of their nightmare, I said. For had there not been the Good Friday Agreement?
I told them they ought not to become despondent at obstacles preventing the implementation of that crucial agreement. Our experience in South Africa had been that, frequently, the enemies of peace responded to breakthroughs by redoubling their efforts to derail the process. I told them to redouble their own determination and vigilance to ensure that such a priceless gift as the end of their "Troubles" would not elude them just when it was within their grasp.
I told them that in South Africa it had often felt as if we were on a roller-coaster. At one moment we experienced the most wonderful joy, euphoria even, at some new and crucial initiative. We would see the promised land of peace and justice round the corner. Then, just when we thought we were on the last lap, something ghastly would happen. A massacre, a deadlock, brinkmanship of some kind, a walk-out by one delegation or another. And we would scrape the rock bottom of despair and despondency. I told them this was normal. As sure as our nightmare had ended so would theirs. As sure as night followed day.
I visited the Holy Land over Christmas 1989 and had the privilege of going to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. When I was asked for my impressions afterwards I said it was a shattering experience. But I added that the Lord, whom I served and who was Himself a Jew, would have asked, "but what about forgiveness?" It set the cat among the pigeons.
I was roundly condemned. I had also expressed dismay at the treatment meted out to Palestinians. I was charged with being anti-Semitic. Graffiti appeared on the walls of St George's Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem. It read "Tutu is a black Nazi pig". So I was apprehensive about going back to Jerusalem again in January of last year. I need not have worried. My hosts in Jerusalem had to turn people away. It was clear everywhere that what occurred in South Africa fascinated people greatly. There was deep interest among Israelis in the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and in the concept of forgiveness and reconciliation. In South Africa we also happened to be blessed with leaders who were ready to take risks. When you embark on the business of asking for and giving forgiveness, you are taking a risk. If you ask another person for forgiveness you may be spurned. Or the one you have injured may refuse to forgive you.
The risk is greater if you are the injured party, wanting to offer forgiveness. The culprit may be arrogant, obdurate or blind; not ready or willing to apologise or to ask for forgiveness in their turn. He or she thus cannot receive the forgiveness they are offered. Such rejection can jeopardise the whole enterprise. Our leaders were ready to say they were willing to walk the path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation, with all the hazards that lay along the way. It seems their gamble is paying off. Our land has not been overwhelmed by the catastrophe that once seemed so inevitable.
IT is crucial when a relationship has been damaged, or when a potential relationship had been made impossible, that the perpetrator should acknowledge the truth and be ready and willing to apologise. It is never easy. In almost every language the most difficult words are "I am sorry".
So it is not at all surprising that those accused of horrendous deeds, and the communities they come from - for whom they believed they were committing those atrocities - almost always try to find ways out of admitting that they were capable of such deeds. They adopt the denial mode.
When the evidence is incontrovertible, they take refuge in feigned ignorance. The Germans claimed they did not know what the Nazis were up to. White South Africans also tried to find refuge in claims of ignorance. But Leon Wessels, the former apartheid cabinet minister, was closer to the mark when he said that they had not wanted to know.
Forgiving and being reconciled are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not a patting of one another on the back or a turning of a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation - the truth. It may even make things worse. But in the end it is worthwhile. Because in the end there is real healing from having dealt with a real situation. Spurious reconciliation brings about only spurious healing.
And in forgiving people we are not being asked to forget. On the contrary. It is important to remember, so that we will not let such atrocities happen again. Nor does forgiveness mean condoning what has happened. It means taking what has happened seriously and not minimising it. It is a drawing out of the sting of memory that threatens to poison our entire existence. Without that there really is no future.
Dr Desmond Tutu is the retired Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and in 1995 was chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by President Nelson Mandela. His book No Future Without Forgiveness, a personal memoir of the Commission's work, was published last year (Rider, £18)
