Considering the profound pain and hurt caused in the past, it is very unlikely that a nation – any nation can begin the process of healing and building a political consensus over a deeply divided past. There is no doubt that the past – no matter how painful or ugly – needs to be addressed, and yet lessons from history has proven that the process need not necessarily start from the past or the present, it could start from the future by envisioning a shared destiny. And perhaps by negotiating a consensus for a common future, it would then create opportunities to constructively address the burdens of the past.
So often initiators of well intended processes fall short of its objectives, essentially because they fail to fully appreciate how conflicting parties have over a period of time rallied and internalized around very different and polarized perceptions over the same past. This poses an extremely difficult and sensitive situation to develop a consensus of understanding. These complexities give rise to varying and diverse emotions, and it has been experienced that any process that begins with either the past or the present will only result in further polarization and personalization of differences. This perhaps was the difference between South Africa and East Timor when it came to addressing and reconciling with their own burdens of the past and their envisioned future.
One remember how in the 1990s, the builders of South Africa as they were transiting between Apartheid and Freedom, advocated and rallied around a public consciousness for a New South Africa. They focused around building a new Rainbow Nation, which with the dismantling of the Apartheid System, would be replaced by a new system where all peoples would be treated equally. And it was in the building of this new South Africa the much divided African National Congress and the Zulu led Inkatha party put aside their differences, which had spilled over to hatred; and forged a political consensus that would enable a new South Africa.
It was in this process that they also realized that for them to have a dignified future, they had to heal from the past. The shared understanding of building a common future was the persuading factor that compelled the whole of South Africa to discern and implement a process of healing. It was the approach of moving from the future to the past and present that enabled a new South Africa to begin a new journey of hope. This was quite different from the East Timorese approach that assumed a more straight forward praxis which assumed that change would occur in the linear time frame of moving from the past to the present to the future.
Neither approach is absolute. The question here is not which is better, but which approach responds favorably within a particular context. After all what works in one context, may not work in the other; nonetheless there are lessons to be learned. There is always a third way. It has never been good politics to be stuck only to ones perception of understanding. After all if the collective aspiration of a nation yearns for transformation of all life, it is only natural that one must explore all possible processes to see that the end result is realized. There must be a co-relation between the process and the end. In this case the approach that turns to the future is more process oriented, while the approach that turns to the past is more result focused.
