There will be no future unless there is peace. There can be no peace unless there is reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation before there … - Desmond Tutu

In the law which Parliament passed establishing the commission, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, it was enough for the applicant to satisfy the main conditions laid down: The act for which amnesty was required should have happened between 1960, the year of the Sharpeville massacre, and 1994, when President Mandela was inaugurated as the first democratically elected South African head of state. The act must have been politically motivated. Perpetrators did not qualify for amnesty if they killed because of personal greed, but they did qualify if they committed the act in response to an order by, or on behalf of, a political organization such as the former apartheid state and its satellite Bantustan homelands, or a recognized liberation movement such as the ANC or PAC. The applicant had to make a full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to the offense for which amnesty was being sought. The rubric of proportionality had to be observed — that the means were proportional to the objective. If those conditions were met, said the law, then amnesty “shall” be granted. Victims had the right to oppose applications for amnesty by trying to demonstrate that these conditions had not been met, but they had no right of veto over amnesty. Nothing was said in the law about remorse — an omission that upset many of us at first until we realized that the legislature had been a great deal wiser than we had at first thought.

I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one un-deserving of forgiveness.

We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.