8 4. Continente Africano (Sudáfrica y Ruanda). 25. Al recibir el Informe de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación de Sudáfrica, el Presidente de aquel país (Sr. Nelson Mandela), en discurso pronunciado en Pretoria el 29.10.1998, advirtió: "It will be difficult for the victims of gross violations of human rights to accept the philosophical account of the trade-off between punitive justice and a peaceful transition. It may be difficult for many to accept the finding the apartheid State was the primary perpetrator of gross human rights violations. Yet if we are true to our founding pact, we cannot equivocate about a system which exacted such inhumanity. There can be no dissonance with regard to the clarion call: never again!"26. 26. Poco después, en su evaluación de la labor de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación sudafricana, publicada en enero de 1999, el Sr. Desmond Tutu concentró sus reflexiones en el tema del arrepentimiento y la búsqueda del perdón. Ponderó él que "Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the normal terms of political discourse. They are playing on home ground in the religious area. And so it was to be expected that we would bring our religious religious insights and perspectives to bear on the delicate business of healing a traumatised and deeply wounded people. (...) Forgiveness in an important way is making it possible for the wrongdoer to make a new beginning and not to be imprisoned in a paralysing past. It opens a door to the possibility of a fresh start, which would not be feasible without that forgiveness. But the only way forgiveness can be appropriated is by the perpetrator confessing because he is penitent. Something similar is true for communities and people"27. 27. En seguida, el Sr. Desmond Tutu se refirió a la tragedia de Ruanda: "I visited Rwanda soon after the genocide there. I said that if retributive justice was to be the last word in dealing with that awful happening, then Rwanda had had it, for her history has been one of reprisal followed by counterreprisal, as first Tutsi and then Hutu took the opportunity for revenge, as each in turn toppled the previous top dogs. Their hope lay in something which went beyond retributive justice, and that something was forgiveness. (...) And so we see that without forgiveness there can be no future"28. 28. 26 . En su decisión emitida en Arusha, el 02.10.1998, en el caso Prosecutor versus South African Government, www.info.gov.za/index, Statement of 29 October 1998, p. 2. . D. Tutu, "Seeking Reconciliation in South Africa", in Franciscan magazine, European Province of the Society of Saint Francis (January 1999 issue), reproducido in: www.franciscans.org.uk/1999jan-tutu, pp. 1 y 3. 27 28 . Ibid., p. 3.