Seeing Africa

Seeing Africa is under development and will launch soon.

It is popular today, in the West, to speak of “saving” Africa, saving it from just about everything – genocide, poverty, famine.  As important and well-intentioned as those efforts are, they often leave the impression that Africa is a continent of disaster, disease, conflict, despair – and little else. Rarely do we see Africans as a source of answers for their own challenges, or of lessons for the rest of us.

This is a project about “seeing” Africa, rooted in the conviction that the West has much to learn from the peoples of Africa, from their values and traditions. It is specifically a project devoted to exploring lessons of forgiveness and reconciliation in the post-conflict societies of Sierra Leone, Liberia, northern Uganda and Rwanda. These traditions differ in some aspects, from country to country, but they are all rooted in a sense of justice that flies in the face of western notions about crime and punishment.

Truth-telling and forgiveness are the foundations of these traditions, which hold that peace is found in restoring broken relationships and communities, not in punishing and alienating offenders. As Alex Boraine, the deputy chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has said, “With its uncomfortable commitment to bringing the perpetrator back into the family, Africa has something to say to the world.”