Perhaps the first place to start is in defining the terms we will be using. Restitution is a complex term. We typically hear it in a legal sense: a man who has stolen R1000 is ordered to make compensation in the same amount. We often understand it as a quid-pro-quo kind of arrangement: pay back precisely what was taken, and all parties can go their separate ways with the matter resolved.
We understand restitution to go much deeper than this, and to be one of the most significant tools available to us in addressing the residual ills of apartheid and discrimination as well as other causes of inequity in our communities. Restitution involves seeking to set right the generational ills of inequality by engaging those who have benefited from the system, directly or indirectly, in transferring wealth and social capital and reinvesting in communities that still suffer from the past’s grim legacy.
In such a model, a one-to-one sort of repayment makes no sense. Imagine this scenario: a man’s bicycle is stolen. This now means he has no transport, and cannot get to work; thus he loses his job. Without a job, he cannot educate his children or support his family. Perhaps he used that bicycle to run errands for the homebound elderly woman next door; now she is affected by the loss as well. Jobless and frustrated, he becomes a drain on his community rather than a resource. What would restitution look like in this situation? Certainly it is not just returning the bicycle. He is not the only person who has been affected by the crime; his family, his neighbors and his community have also suffered.
Now imagine that theft not only of resources such as land, education and money has occurred on a broad scale, but also of intangibles: dignity, a sense of safety, self-worth, an understanding of one’s rights, a sense of belonging in one’s own country.
The process of restitution recognizes that this is precisely the situation we face in South Africa today. How we make restitution for not just the tangible but intangible things that were lost under apartheid is something we must struggle through together, with both humility and hope. Churches are uniquely situated to deal with this question. We are a deeply religious nation, yet our faith has been profoundly compromised by the political climate sustained for several generations. The church remains intensely segregated, which results in a continuing segregation of resources which is self-perpetuating. Through restitution, we seek to make Christians aware of their complicity with unjust systems, engage them in ways to relate afresh to their neighbors and to begin rectifying the situation, and through this create a model that will catch the imagination of the country, Christian and non-Christian alike, bringing about transformation.