Chilean-American former exile and author, Professor Ariel Dorfman, was addressing the eighth Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at the University of Witswatersrand, which was attended by several international dignitaries including Zimbabwes deputy Prime Minister Authur Mutambara.
Dorfman warned that bitter rivalry would remain no matter how much it hides itself because former political enemies remember the past differently, until they agree in some way to bury their differences on the path to democracy.
That is why truth and reconciliation commissions, with all their flaws and concessions, all the pain they do not expose, and all the crimes that may remain unpunished, are an indispensable step in the transition to democracy after a period of systemic violence, said the one-time critic of late Chilean dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Dorfman, 68, formerly a cultural adviser to the late Chilean leader Salvador Allende, fled his country to the USA in 1973 amid a wave of atrocities against those opposed to Pinochets regime after Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup by dictator Pinochet.
Speaking on the sidelines of the lecture, Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara, said Zimbabwe, which is battling with a deeply divided transitional government due to expire next year, was on its way towards peace, prosperity and democracy, with people who used to batter each other having chosen to work together.
Post published in: World News