The CIHA Blog has previously published posts condemning the insurrection in the U.S. on January 6th and on reversing the lens to assess the state of democracy in the U.S. Today, we run a post by Dr. Willy Mafuta reflecting on the discourse on unity in the country in the aftermath of four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and the January 6th insurrection. In this piece, Dr. Mafuta echoes the call made by several others, including House Representative Barbara Lee, for the need to establish a truth commission in the U.S. to further reconciliation and unity in the country.
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By Willy L Mafuta, Fellow Researcher, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Adjunct Professor, Drake University, Iowa
Four months after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., the word “unity” appears to be a diminishing dream, both for Democrats hoping for unity to advance the Biden agenda and for Republicans who lobby for treasonous right-wing Trump radicals to be given a pass in the legal system. Can the U.S. be united as a nation by foregoing constitutional law and ignoring insurrection?
New York Times columnist Charles Blow contends that unity has never existed in the American fabric. We do not fully unite either when attacked or when declaring war. Unity is often confused with silence from those who disagree, allowing the dominant view to reign. “I don’t want to be unified with anyone who could openly cheer my oppression or sit silently while I endure it,” Blow mused. I don’t know exactly what Blow is advocating, but if unity requires a reservoir of shared values, symbols, and rituals holding us together as a nation, this moment of history requires a process of truth-telling and reconciliation.
I have witnessed the power of truth and reconciliation. Soon after the 1995 election in South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s Government of National Unity addressed the injustice, inequity and social unrest apartheid had generated over the prior 50 years. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was formed as a platform where both perpetrators of odious crimes and their victims faced each other, told their truths, vented anger, and sought reconciliation for the sake of the nation. This commission was led by prominent clergy such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Critics thought the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to provide adequate counsel and reparation to victims as some perpetrators went free too easily. But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission also powerfully rallied South Africans around common shared values. The U.S. Capitol insurrection took us to a low not seen since the Civil War, breaking a false narrative of American exceptionalism, revealing a naked political tribalism and racial division. Many are demanding the perpetrators of the January 6 attack be held accountable. While the Department of Justice and Congress say they will follow the law, legal remedies cannot satisfy our inner desire to reconcile with a fellow citizen who has wronged us and there is a need for truth to emerge and open the possibility of reconciliation. Americans must learn to tell the truth to one another as they seek to reconcile over past and present wrongs in order to discover a new and better way to live together in unity despite our political, racial, and personal differences.
Yet the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been resisted by U.S. politicians, despite Rep. Barbara Lee’s attempts to create one well before January 6. There is not yet enough political will to nationalize reconciliation in the United States. Arguments against the idea include the fact that the U.S. has a long history of injustice that has been perpetuated for centuries, as opposed to a singular dramatic event that other countries with TRCs grapple with. There is also the fact that widespread systemic racism makes it challenging if not impossible to envision how the process of reconciliation could look in such a large country as the U.S.
Moreover, a large segment of the American population dismisses the connection between slavery, Jim Crow, and the current police brutality of white police forces towards black and Latino communities. Despite those challenges, some states, however, have started to undertake their own reconciliation initiatives. The Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission is one example. Established in 2019, It researches racially motivated lynching cases and holds public meetings and regional hearings. The commission also encourages individuals to talk of their ancestral connection as related to lynching either as perpetrators or victims.
Those efforts need to be duplicated all around the country. Some signs of encouragement came when President Biden and Vice President Harris were inaugurated. In their addresses, they called Americans to national unity. While the form of that unity needs to be defined, I hope we all hear, we all talk and we all help create opportunities in churches, schools, and workplaces where we speak the truth, listen fully, feel deeply, and seek reconciliation to live together with political, racial, economic and sexual differences.