That acknowledgment is crucial if healing is to go on and if the undercurrents of conflict are not to be left simmering, as they have been so many times in so many parts of the world. I asked Tutu how he could justify forgiving the perpetrators of apartheid. Retributive justice will adjudicate guilt, then the case is closed. But restorative justice is about the profound inability of retributive justice to effect permanent closure on great human atrocities. There is no point exacting vengeance now, knowing that it will be the cause for future vengeance by the offspring of those we punish.
Vengeance leads only to revenge.
It is, in fact, thoroughly realistic. It can never lead to forgiveness and reconciliation. Amnesia is no solution. Vengeance destroys those it claims and those who become intoxicated with it. It seems clear that if we can't deal with deep conflicts, they don't disappear.