Restorative Justice Lecture Series: Healing Memories

Katie Rowe (3L)

On November 17th, Father Michael Lapsley asked a room full of faculty, students, and members of the public to contemplate restorative justice as the means for achieving “our dream for the human family.” A native of New Zealand, Father Lapsley has spent nearly the past four decades working in South Africa – first, battling against its apartheid regime and, more recently, helping its people recover. His initiative, the Institute for Healing of Memories (www.healing-memories.org), seeks to provide victims of injustice with a place to deal with their emotional and spiritual suffering. Lapsley certainly understands struggle; he was exiled from South Africa for his anti-apartheid beliefs and then, in 1990, he received a letter bomb from apartheid supporters which stole both of his hands and an eye. His own journey from victim to survivor informs his concepts of restitution and reconciliation; he rebuilt his life by seeking redemption and reparation – in contrast to revenge and punishment – and healed by sharing his story.

After apartheid was abolished, the South African government created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), composed of three smaller committees, as a restorative justice approach for dealing with the atrocities. First, the Human Rights Violations Committee was tasked to investigate the human rights abuses executed by both sides. Second, the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee was charged with the duty of finding ways to rehabilitate the victims. For example, they recommended a one-off ‘wealth tax,’ intended to target those who benefitted under apartheid. Predictably, this proposal was not well-received by corporations operating in South Africa, nor white individuals; consequently, the state never implemented the tax. Third, the Amnesty Committee was authorised to grant pardons to human rights violators. For an individual to be granted amnesty, they had to establish that their crimes were proportionate and politically motivated, as well as prove that they were telling the whole truth during the inquiry. After the TRC concluded, many from the victim community were dissatisfied with its results, cynical that the world had moved on.

According to Father Lapsley, the key to recovering from any trauma is two-fold: knowledge and acknowledgement. By this he means that, not only must a perpetrator acknowledge the wrongs they have committed, but greater society needs to know that these wrongs have been acknowledged. Lapsley contends that victims of apartheid were unfulfilled with the TRC’s impact because they were denied open acknowledgement. He does not maintain that the TRC failed, but rather that the government did by unsuccessfully addressing the victims’ needs and cowing to pressures from transnational corporations.

Father Lapsley urged the audience to consider the lessons of his own life, South Africa, and the TRC. This is particularly significant while Canada engages in its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission with respect to residential schools. Both knowledge and acknowledgement are critical in repairing broken relationships. Restorative justice is about holding wrongdoers accountable to their victims, not through punishment, but through reparations and restitution.