Forgiveness: More precious than silver and gold

South Africa is well known as one of the top providers of gold and diamonds – supposedly the most precious commodities you can have. After all who else can boast that you hail from Egoli, the city of gold, or Kimberly with its big hole where cocopans full of diamonds were hauled off to the world.

But now we are offering something far more precious: the power of forgiveness. Last week Reverend Mpho Tutu came to London to promote The Book of Forgiving which she co-authored with her father Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both of them can walk the talk, Desmond having chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate apartheid-era crimes and Mpho having found her own housekeeper brutally murdered in the family home.

The book which is well worth adding to your summer reading is about answering the questions we all wrestle with. How do we forgive? How do we heal the harm we have caused others? And how do we forgive ourselves? Desmond and Mpho point out in the book that numerous studies have shown the social, psychological, spiritual and even physiological benefits of forgiveness but often the actual process of forgiveness remains unclear.

They offer a practical guide to four steps we can apply to our own lives.

• Telling the story
• Naming the hurt
• Granting forgiveness
• Renewing (or releasing) the relationship.

When asked how we as South Africans are succeeding in forgiving each other she acknowledged our successes and failures. “South Africa is a mixed bag in many areas.”

On the issue of the possible parole of apartheid arch-villain Eugene de Kock , she mentioned how even he mentored the Worcester Bomber Stefaans Coetzee on the road to reconciliation.

So next time you open your cupboard and choose what you are going to wear while slipping on the gold and diamonds consider dressing yourself with forgiveness.

It will make you far more attractive.

By John McCabe