Justice

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:6-8

From my room, I can see the tops of sugarcane blowing in the wind on the other side of the family’s wall. The sugarcane that surrounds Cool Air, my community, is bittersweet- not literally, but figuratively. The sugarcane is a symbol of injustice.
A few weeks after moving into the Zondi home, I saw my first other white person in the community. The older man drove his truck by our home at 5:30 in the morning. That evening I shared my surprise sighting with my host sister, who explained that the man was probably the farmer checking his sugarcane fields. Although white settlers originally brought the field workers from India, I often see the current field workers, who are all black. The difference between the farm owner and farm workers cannot only be seen based on skin color, but also in their homes. The farm owner’s home may easily be picked out by the palm trees standing above his nice, isolated home. According to my host mom, the farm workers live in compounds built by the farm owner or shacks because they do not make enough, less than R1,000 or US$140 a month, to buy their own nice homes. Is this the post-apartheid promise of justice?
Justice is a complex concept. Defined, justice means being just. According to Webster, “just” means: right or fair; righteousness; well-founded.* In No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu clarifies between two different types of justice: retributive justice and restorative justice. He encourages South Africa to pursue restorative justice where, “In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator…” (54). Tutu’s idea of the goal of restorative justice, to create balance between humans, falls in line with Jesus’ call in the Beatitudes for us to pursue righteousness and be merciful. As Christians, we should pursue restorative justice. We are actively pursuing restorative justice, according to Tutu, when “…efforts are being made to work for healing, for forgiving, and for reconciliation” (55). We should seek justice today to help heal the pain caused by the injustice of yesterday and stifle the injustice of tomorrow.
Although, in South Africa, injustice began well before the Apartheid government, the Apartheid government seized the occurring racism and maximized the injustice against non-white, particularly black, for the white people’s benefit. In Bring Me My Machine Gun, Alan Russell explains the unfair redistribution of land, stating: “In the stroke of the pen, about 75 percent of South Africa’s population was relegated to about 13 percent of its territory” (182). When the Apartheid government started writing laws separating people based on skin color in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the government included a law that redistributed the land so that white people owned the majority of land and forced blacks to live on small pieces of land. Russell asserts that, “Under white rule three-quarters of the land was in the hands of the white minority” (189). Even though 25 percent of the land changed hands to the black government when apartheid ended in 1994, the majority of land continues to be owned by the white minority. Although the government continues to buy back land from willing white farmers, the process is moving slowly. Symbolically, the minority of whites still owning the majority of land argues against the end of opportunity based on race. However, the shadow of the chaos in Zimbabwe reminds South Africans to be patient. Yet, the end of the Apartheid’s injustice continues to affect South Africans without an end in sight.
My host mom states that they still need justice in South Africa. My host sister says that their will never be justice in South Africa. My host mom holds that justice will only occur when all South Africans are colored, for then they will have the same colored skin. I pray that skin color will not stop us for seeing all people as our neighbors to love and to strive for justice for all.
I am a white American from a privileged background. Who am I to speak about justice? Yet, through living in post-apartheid South Africa, I more clearly see the injustice in my own country, the US. Will anyone read this essay who is not white? Why can I only name a handful of friends in the US who are not white? How can I denounce the oppression in South Africa while I reap the benefits of my country killing the native people or moving them onto small reservations? Can I argue that our society is not racially segregated? How do I perpetrate, or at least ignorantly allow, injustice?
In the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus encourages his followers to care for everyone, particularly the marginalized in society. The Beatitudes stress that in the end, the world’s standards stand as contrary to God’s guidance. Jesus tells us, His followers, to pursue justice. Although life on earth may seem a lot easier if we just keep to our own business, Jesus actively cares for the marginalized in society, and, as his hands and feet in the world, so should we. In the inspiring and fantastic book, God Has a Dream, Desmond Tutu poignantly points out: “Can you imagine what would happen in this world if we accepted that fact about ourselves-that whether we like it or not we are members of one family?” (22). May we walk side by side with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Heavenly Father, so often we loose ourselves in the rhythm of life and forget to live compassionately. Help us to see and act against the injustice in our society hand in hand with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen