Conference Conflict, Reason and Reconciliation. South Africa

Conference
Conflict, Reason and Reconciliation. South Africa Twenty Years Later
7-8 April 2016
Aula Magna
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo A. Gemelli, 1 – 20123 Milan
April 2016 will be the 20th anniversary of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s
opening ceremony. The conference’s aim is twofold: on the one hand, to discuss the idea of
reconciliation starting from South Africa’s experience; on the other hand, to investigate the
inheritance of the TRC in South Africa today.
The first day of the conference will examine the context in which the TRC was created, and focus
on the role of the people and the religious and secular doctrines of reconciliation which made this
experience possible.
The second day of the conference will provide an insight into the TRC’s functioning and
achievements. The discussion will benefit from two approaches, legal and psychological, to
analyse the role of forgiveness and restorative justice to overcome gross human rights violations.
A session will also be dedicated to the role of literature and the participation of the churches in the
process of transition.
Finally, a few concluding remarks will be presented on what the South African experience may
contribute to the process of understanding and integration in today’s deeply divided world.
The conference is organized within the research project “The Crisis of Eurocentrism and the Future
of European Humanism: Historical, Cultural, Religious, Legal and Socio-Economic Perspectives”,
coordinated by Professor Gian Luca Potestà and funded by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
(2015-2018)
(link: http://progetti.unicatt.it/progetti-ateneo-eurocentrismo-home).
The conference is organized in collaboration with the “Federico Stella Research Centre on Criminal
Law and Criminal Policy” of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, and is part of the
research project Giustizia e letteratura / Justice and Literature
(link: http://centridiricerca.unicatt.it/csgp_1982.html).
Speakers (in alphabetical order)
Robi Damelin
South African and Israeli, Robi is at present the Israeli spokesperson and member of the Parents
Circle – Families Forum (PCFF), a group of 600 Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost
close family members to the conflict and who work together for reconciliation and a just resolution
of the conflict. Robi Damelin's son, David, was killed by a Palestinian sniper in March of 2002 while
he was guarding a checkpoint near a settlement during his army reserve service. Since becoming
active in the Parents Circle, Robi has spoken to thousands of Israelis and Palestinians and people
all over the world to demand that reconciliation be a part of any peace agreement. Robi was
named as a 2015 Woman of Impact by Women in the World. In 2014, Robi was selected by the
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice as one of four Women Peace Makers. She is the
protagonist featured in the documentary One Day after Peace.
John De Gruchy
An ordained minister in the United Congregational Church, he served two congregations before
joining the staff of the South African Council of Churches in 1968. In 1973 he was appointed to the
faculty of the University of Cape Town where he became Professor of Christian Studies and,
during the last few years of his tenure, the Director of the Graduate School in Humanities. He
retired in 2003 and was appointed a Senior Research Scholar at UCT and an Extraordinary
Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He has lectured in many countries across the world,
and has authored or edited more than thirty books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the church in South
Africa, contextual, public and Reformed theology, social history, Christianity and the arts,
reconciliation and justice, and Christian humanism. He is editor of the Cambridge Companion to
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Amongst his recent books are Reconciliation: Restoring Justice; Being
Human; Confessions of a Christian Humanist, and John Calvin: Christian Humanist & Evangelical
Reformer. An autobiography, I Have Come a Long Way, was published in 2015.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
Clinical psychologist and Senior Research Professor at the Stellenbosch University, she served on
the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as coordinator of victims’ public hearings
in the Western Cape. In that role, Professor Gobodo-Madikizela participated in and facilitated
encounters between family members of victims of gross human rights violations and perpetrators
responsible for these human rights abuses. She is one of the major experts of the process of
forgiveness and its relation to past trauma. Pumla interviewed the head of the security forces’ hit
squad, Eugene De Kock, commonly referred to as Prime Evil, when she served on the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to get an understanding of how the mind of one of apartheid’s chief
assassins had worked. A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness is Professor
Gobodo-Madikizela's account of her interviews with Eugene de Kock.
Albie Sachs
His career in human rights activism started when he was a teenager. Albie Sachs practiced as a
human rights advocate at the Cape Bar in his twenties: this cost him being raided by the security
police, being banned, and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial. In 1966 he went
into exile, spending some twenty years studying and teaching law in England, first, and then in
Mozambique. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African
security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye. After recovering from the bomb he devoted
himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he
returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the
ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional
democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson
Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court. Through South Africa's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission Justice Albie Sachs of South Africa’s Constitutional Court was able to
meet the security force operative who had organised the placing of the bomb in his car. The Soft
Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter is Justice Albie's account of his recovery and his return to South
Africa where his dream of "soft vengeance" was realised with the achievement of democracy in
South Africa.
Eddy van der Borght
Ordained as minister of the United Protestant Church in Belgium in 1988, he holds a PhD in
Theology (Universiteit Leiden). Currently he is Desmond Tutu Professor and Associate Professor
of Systematic Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His theological research focuses on
the identity of religious communities in relation to their potential for reconciliation and conflict in
South Africa. Aspects of this research deal with the public theology of archbishop Desmond Tutu,
the Christian doctrine of reconciliation before and after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
the symbolic expression of reconciliation in liturgical acts, and the ecclesiological consequences of
reconciliation.
Etienne van Heerden
Etienne van Heerden is a South African writer and is Hofmeyr Professor in the School of
Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town, where he chairs the Afrikaans and
Netherlandic Studies Section. Born in 1954, six years after the official advent of apartheid, he
initially studied law, and became an internationally recognized writer in 1987 with the publication of
his novel Toorberg (Ancestral Voices), establishing its author as the leading novelist of his
generation. Van Heerden was among the Afrikaans writers secretly meeting the banned ANC of
Mandela and exiled writers. He is seen as one of the members of a generation of Afrikaans writers,
intellectuals and musicians who significantly contributed to opening up the Afrikaner psyche to
change. Among his recent literary works are the bestseller Die Swye van Mario Salviati (2000)
(English: The Long Silence of Mario Salviati, 2003), In Stede van die Liefde (2005), Asbesmiddag
(2007), 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (2008).
Programme
Aula Magna, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo Gemelli 1, Milan
Thursday, 7 April 2016 – 14.30-18.00
Friday, 8 April 2016 – 9.30-13.00
Welcome speech
FRANCO ANELLI, Rector, Università Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore
Introduction and chair
GABRIO FORTI, Dean of the Faculty of Law,
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Greetings
Speakers
SAUL KGOMOTSO MOLOBI, Consul-General PUMLA GOBODO-MADIKIZELA, Stellenbosch
South African Consulate General Milan
University
ALBIE SACHS, Former Justice South African
Video – Images from the Truth and Constitutional Court, Yale University
Reconciliation Commission, South Africa*,
presented by RUGGERO EUGENI and ALICE Discussants
CATI, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
FRANCESCO D’ALESSANDRO, Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Introduction and chair
GABRIELE
DELLA
MORTE,
Università
GIAN LUCA POTESTÀ, Director of the Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Department of Religious Studies, Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
ARIANNA VISCONTI, Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore
Speaker
EDDY VAN DER BORGHT, Vrije Universiteit Debate
Amsterdam
14.30-18.30
Discussants
ADOLFO CERETTI, Università degli Studi di Introduction and chair
Milano-Bicocca
ARTURO CATTANEO, Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore
CLAUDIA MAZZUCATO, Università Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore
Speakers
ETIENNE VAN HEERDEN, University of Cape
Debate
Town
JOHN DE GRUCHY, University of Cape Town
Discussant
MARCO RIZZI, Università Cattolica del Sacro
Cuore
*Video edited by Alice Cati, Riccardo
Rovescalli, and Francesco Toniolo, Università Concluding remarks
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
ROBI DAMELIN, Parents Circle-Families Forum
Debate
Simultaneous interpreting provided
REGISTRATION
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1C6UluZD2Gtbsc7ulAoAgME_v6fHMZdSh5yEFOviAjXM/edit?usp=drive_web
INFO
Maria Chiara Cattaneo
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Largo A. Gemelli, 1 – 20123 Milano
Email: [email protected]