No Future Without Forgiveness

Describing the experience of voting for the first time in South Africa on April 27, 1994, Tutu captures the “excitement, anticipation, and anxiety, with fear even” (3). At 62, Tutu was the Archbishop of the Anglican Church. Before then, the apartheid regime had blocked Tutu and all Black South Africans from voting and subjected them to segregation. On this day, no one knew what would happen. Violence was possible, yet it did not occur. Although many had feared that one of the anti-apartheid parties, Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, would boycott the election, this did not happen.

After struggling so long for voting rights, Tutu characterizes the act of voting as a “veritable spiritual experience” (7). He chose to cast his vote in a Black “ghetto township” in Johannesburg. After Black and white people waited in line together for hours, “the scales began to fall from their eyes” (7) and they saw their common humanity. Each person left the voting site with dignity, “heads held high, the shoulders set straighter, and an elastic spring in her step” (7). Jubilation was in the air. White people experienced a sense of transformation as well. As the guilt of benefitting from oppression and injustice lifted from their shoulders, they too found that “freedom was indeed indivisible” (8).