Ubuntu

Mandela’s political life is the public test of that idea, and the hard part is repair. Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, gave it its best-known statement. Revenge repeats the harm in a new pair of hands. Forgetting leaves the harm in the ground and calls the silence peace. Repair keeps the record: names, dates, what was done, who was hurt. A flattering story that moves the names and the dates is forgetting in a new coat. A consequence can still be real. The consequence is not a second crime committed so the first one feels answered.

The proverb is not a demand that a person disappear into the group. A person remains a person. The claim is that the person was never a sealed unit who only later, optionally, acquired neighbors. On this climb, Ubuntu is that account of freedom, and repair is the form it takes when the record is bloody.