Towards The Resolution Of Conflicts: Lessons From Mandela
Prof. R.S.Perinbanayagam
One of the ways of resolving long-standing conflicts can be termed as aspresentism and futurism. In deploying this strategy one focuses only on what his happening now and what is available on the ground and in futurism one focuses on what can be done to secure a better set of circumstances than what had been available in the past. In pursuing these two strategies, the first step is to ignore, however painful it had been, the past and start anew and constitute systems of relationships and programs that will ensure a relatively congenial and efficient functioning of the social order in the future.
This in fact was the strategy that Nelson Mandela adopted in South Africa, not only after he became president but even before that. In the beginning he favored a nonviolent approach in the fight against apartheid. He soon abandoned such a strategy, after certain events that had transpired, and opted for an armed struggle. Once he found out that that was not going to be fruitful he returned to the strategy of negotiating with the state as the intelligent and prudent and efficient way of achieving freedom for the black and brown people of South Africa. Negotiating for a non-apartheid South Africa meant that one underplays all the injustices and cruelties of the past, leaving that to future historians, and seek to make fundamental changes in the current political structure so that the people who are living now and those who will live in the future are served well. It does not mean forgiving or forgetting the wrongs done in the distant or immediate past but focusing on “what is to be done” now so that the future can be better served. It also means forgetting about seeking revenge and retribution and working towards the future of the people for whom one is fighting as well as for the future of one’s one-time antagonists.
Revenge truly has no place in politics and in life too. “Vengeance is Mine, and retribution. In due time their foot will slip. For the day of their calamity is near, And the impending things are hastening upon them.” sayith the God of the Jews, and not man’s. He will take care of vengeance in His own good time and did!. Christ too spoke strongly against revenge in his famous sermon on the mount. The Buddha recommends compassion, right action and right speech In the Mahabaratha, which is really a narrative of events that lead to a great war, one may mention that after Krishna’s passionate recommendation to Arjuna of the virtues of the war, the Pandavas and the Kauravas were at peace with each other in the afterlife, described in the last chapter of the epic.
