Last month Adriann Vlok repeated a simple action that he’d already done twice before. As a former minister of police under the old apartheid regime in South Africa, he demonstrated his desire to reconcile by washing the feet of those he had wronged.
This time though, rather than symbolically washing the feet of people who he had wronged symbolically, or who had held power in the opposition, he simply invited anyone who had been harmed by the old regime to come forward out of the audience at an event he was speaking at.
“‘It was very emotional. There were tears in their eyes and the last man was deeply touched. They forgave me,’ Vlok said later at his house in Pretoria. ‘Apartheid’s policies were based on lovelessness. They hurt a lot of people.’
A former member of the South African Defence Force, Hannes Ferreira, said the gesture was ‘part of a healing process for Vlok himself, but could also mean a lot for the guy on the receiving side, who may bear a grudge’.
Many former policemen and soldiers believe they had been misled by government propaganda and a strict censorship system, which portrayed anti-apartheid activities as being directed from the Soviet Union and aimed at Christianity.”
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