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Vocabulary Lessons
by Jean Rodenbough
Jun. 3, 2008
[Have thoughts about how other languages and movements can supplement our work of building beloved community? Share them on our online discussion board.]
Sometimes other languages can supplement our thinking in concepts that English words cannot provide except through longer phrases. To borrow from other tongues is a way to stretch our own world views and understand what we may not have fully comprehended before. I’m thinking of two African expressions that meet this criteria.
When Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke at a Forum at the National Cathedral last November (in fact, on the day when a group of us were catching a plane to Johannesburg) he and Dean Samuel Lloyd discussed the question, “Can We Forgive Our Enemies?” Tutu referred often to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the strengths and weaknesses of the process. “I sometimes think things could have been a great deal better. They certainly could have been a great deal worse, without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” he observed.
Dean Lloyd asked him how was it possible to “move in the direction not of retribution and revenge . . . but . . . forgiveness and reconciliation,” as Tutu quoted to him the words of Nelson Mandela. Lloyd asks, “How was it that you all created a climate where people were willing to let go of what had been done to them?” And here is where we increase our vocabulary. Tutu uses the African word, ubuntu, which speaks of the “essence of being human.” He states that being human is fully possible only through inter-dependent relationships with other human beings. “Ubuntu says we are made for harmony,” and points out that “revenge and anger are subversive of this harmony.” He understands that forgiveness is a by-product of ubuntu. And so we stretch our own concepts by appropriating the word ubuntu, short enough to fit in a crossword puzzle, to grasp a very complicated theory, or theology, of human relationships that require harmony and inter-dependence.
And now for the next words, a phrase that describes our Truth and Reconciliation process in two words: mato oput. As defined in a recent Christian Century feature on Uganda, this phrase is “a traditional tribal form of justice that seeks the restoration of relationships on the basis of truth telling, accountability, forgiveness and reparations” (“Longing for home: A photo essay by Paul Jeffrey,” p. 31, June 3, 2008). There you have, in two words, the process undertaken in Greensboro to discern the complete history of the November 3, 1979 event, that has traumatized an entire portion of this city in some manner ever since. Mato oput. How could we say it more succinctly and at the same time more fully?
When we are asked to explain why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission embarked on that two-year process, and now we are involved in its follow-up efforts, simply explain to those who question the purpose that it all boils down to ubuntu and mato oput. If they want to know what those words mean, suggest that they look them up.