RECONCILIATION IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL CONTEXT: A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING

Reconciliation is a very central teaching and practice fundamental to the life and witness of the Church. The position taken in this paper is from the Judeo-Christian perspective, which is essentially a christo-centric perspective on reconciliation. Whereas the South African public has politically come through a process of Truth and Reconciliation in the post-apartheid democratic dispensation, the church in its public responsibility has to ask itself what the implication of this political process is for our society. Did the TRC process achieve its goals? Did the TRC succeed in being a part of the process of the healing of our nation? How is the church to understand political reconciliation? Is there a correlation between political reconciliation and the church’s understanding thereof in our context that can be utilized to build community and ubuntu? The article seeks to find ways in which the church’s nature of koinonia in partnership with government and civil society (in realising that “critical to the process is the fact that reconciliation and reconstruction or transformation are flip sides of the same coin”) could help to handle transformation and reconciliation in such a way that national unity and the well being of all South Africa citizens can be pursued