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Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Ubuntu and Reconciliation

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Michael Battle's book Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu describes Tutu's approach to creating a more humane world. 

Amazon says:
"Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu" is Michael Battle's highly original analysis of Bishop Tutu's theology of Ubuntu -- an African concept recognizing that persons and groups form their identities in relation to one another -- and the model it affords for facilitating interracial community and reconciliation in South Africa." 

I am, because of you: Further reading on Ubuntu says: 

"Ubuntu became known in the West largely through the writings of Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of Cape Town who was a leader of the anti-apartheid movement and who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. As he approached retirement, Tutu was asked by Mandela to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to come to terms with the human rights offenses of the past in order to move into the future.

In his memoir, No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu writes, “
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu, u nobunto’; ‘Hey so-and-so has ubuntu.’ Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, ‘My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life.”

Archbishop Tutu is the author of  No Future Without Forgiveness.

Amazon says: "The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past.   But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation "looks the beast in the eye." Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world."
 

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