Where does guilt and forgiveness lie?

I have been trying to think why I was so disturbed when I heard that Professor Jonathan Jansen pardoned the Reitz students. They had supposedly urinated on food and videoed the cleaning staff eat it in a mock initiation rite.



He explained that the university shared their guilt as it had long been an institution which had allowed racism. It is a university which traditionally served the conservative white Afrikaans student. Even post-1994 the residences have been segregated. Without doubt it has not confronted racism which is rife on the campus. Prof. Jansen also explained that part of his pardon was to encourage reconciliation.



However, I think that Prof. Jansen faulted on a number of levels. I agree that the university has responsibility in what has happened. It is a shared responsibility which extends to all South Africans, and to a large extent more to white South Africans - we all bear responsibility for the world we have created. But this does not take away the responsibility of the individual. The students are also partially responsible for creating a world in which cruelty and racism exists. I struggled with this concept when working with men who had tortured. They understood it better than I did, and when I indicated that I thought we as a society were guilty of atrocities, they would say that it may be true on one level, but we had not attached electrodes to a suspects genitals. Prof. Jansen can apologise for the institution and to some extent for society, but he cannot take on their individual guilt. We can only apologise for being part-creators of such a world. The students are still, individually responsible for their role in the creation of a world in which people are degraded and treated cruelly. On this level, the call for them to show remorse makes sense - we need to see them accepting responsibility for their actions, acknowledging the harm they have done and demonstrating remorse.



We regard to forgiveness: Prof. Jansen does not have the right to forgive them their actions; this right belongs to the victims of these young men. He only has the right to acknowledge their remorse if it is there, but he has to direct them to the people they have harmed. He can, if he chooses, acknowledge the lack of protection offered the victims by the institution he represents and ask their forgiveness for not ensuring that they were treated with dignity. He can also, if he chooses, apologise to the students for an institution which did not insist that they acknowledge the humanity of all people.

Inviting the students to continue studying risks implying that their behaviour did not matter. It also implies that the dignity of those they injured is of no importance. The only way this could have been ameliorated would have been with a public recognition by the students of the wrongness of their behaviour, clear remorse and a commitment to restitution.