No Future Without Forgiveness

The Synod of Bishops nominated Tutu for the TRC in 1995, and President Mandela selected him and 16 others. Mandela appointed Tutu TRC chair and named Alex Boraine deputy chair. Instead of retiring, Tutu would spend the next three years working on the TRC. It held its first meeting on December 16, 1995. This date, now called the Day of Reconciliation, was once known as Dingaan’s Day. Ironically named for a Zulu king, this Afrikaner holiday celebrated the victory of white people over natives in a battle in which the latter outnumbered the former. Black South Africans dreaded Dingaan’s Day, as they were subject to more assaults and humiliation than usual on this holiday. In 1948, the holiday’s name changed to the Day of the Covenant to recognize the oddness of naming a holiday after a defeated king: “It was deemed inappropriate to open old wounds of a smarting defeat for the Zulus at a time when the government was trying to woo them to accept the policy of Bantustan homelands” (71). Under this policy, Black people would lose political rights in South Africa and would have autonomy in tribally defined small states without international recognition. Now, under the new government, the Day was to be one of healing and unity.