Abstract
The article represents auto-ethnographical (narrative) reflections about the author’s journey towards reconciling diversity with the advent of democracy in South Africa. The author recounts aspects of his participation in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It focuses on aspects of Reformed theology and spirituality as instruments for reconciling diversity. Local and international theologians opposed apartheid, calling it an unjust and indefensible political system, using their Reformed conviction, often applying the very same notions and principles. The article discusses the opposition to apartheid in the Reformed world, which culminated during the Ottawa meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982 when apartheid was denounced as a ‘sin and a heresy’ – a legitimate cause for a Status Confessionis in a classical Reformed manner. The article demonstrates the way in which the TRC took note of all of this and includes testimonies of Reformed theologians and leaders who opposed apartheid, often paying a costly price.
Highlights
A personal reflection on a journeyI was sitting in my office at the Faculty of Theology, in January 1996, when the telephone rang
Tutu’s critics, among them Randera, accepted the fact that for the audience as well as for the South African community, the vast majority of whom saw themselves as religious, it was proper to conduct the business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) coram Deo
The commissioners realised that in the South African context the issues of justice and reconciliation, of truth, forgiveness and healing were very much intertwined with religious understanding and that it would be impossible to conduct the process in a ‘secular’ way
Summary
A personal reflection on a journeyI was sitting in my office at the Faculty of Theology, in January 1996, when the telephone rang. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was very much in the news at the time, and heatedly discussed.
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