conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about South, Archbishop, Nelson with the genre: History, World?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'No Future Without Forgiveness'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled No Future Without Forgiveness about Future, Without, Forgiveness with the genre: History, Africa.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond M. the author. Image Books,1999
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: No Future Without Forgiveness
  This was equally the case with the electronic media. The South African Broadcasting Corporation was under the thumb of a secret society, the Afrikaner Broederbond (Brotherhood), an organization which promoted Afrikaner interests and which had tentacles in every single sphere of life: in the church, in the schools, in business, culture, the universities, in the professions, in the Defense Force, in sport, in the media and, of course, politics. Its policies became government policy. If you wanted to make it in the Afrikaans world in any sector of human activity your chances were nil if you were not a member of this powerful, all-pervasive secret society. You could not gainsay its decrees and decisions. Your goose was cooked if you did.
  All this was possible because of the prevailing racist ideology. It was possible for a television news bulletin to be interrupted because the state President did not like a particular item and it had to be changed. That was not thought to be odd. This was South Africa and the government was in charge and no one who could have really dared to raise questions. Mr. P. W. Botha was the state President and, being the irascible, difficult, and stubborn man that he was, he had a short fuse. It was said that he reduced grown men, his cabinet ministers, to tears with his caustic tongue and no one dared to cross him. What he wanted he got. His wish was everybody's command. That was the prevailing ethos.
  During our hearings, the faith communities were generally far more forthcoming than members of other institutions about confessing their shortcomings and their collusion with the apartheid status quo. They admitted that they had often been very vocal and sharp in their criticism of apartheid but had practiced it in the ordering of their institutional lives. There were those that had split into racial groupings. Dr. Frank Chikane had been interrogated and tortured by a group of Security Police who were commanded by a member of the white section of his denomination, the Apostolic Faith Mission, a man who had gone to a church service from a torture session. (The two sections of this denomination have since amalgamated at a deeply moving service where the whites asked for forgiveness from their black counterparts.) During the Truth and Reconciliation process the faith communities realized that they had a special responsibility in the whole business of healing a wounded people, in encouraging reconciliation and reparation among their adherents.
  White farmers and those involved in commercial agriculture had benefited from both the original conquest of the land and then the racist and infamous Land Act, dating back to 1913, which allowed them to acquire huge tracts of farmland. They received state subsidies and loans, in later years from the Land Bank, on very favorable terms. They had available an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor—the pass laws were designed to prevent blacks from competing as food producers with cosseted white farmers, for there had been a time when blacks had been successful peasant farmers, posing a real threat to white farmers. The government then had pushed blacks off the land to become wage earners in the mines as contract laborers. It was suggested that the churches, particularly, should examine how they had acquired their land and return it to its rightful owners if it had been acquired in ways that were less than fair. The churches were also urged to see how they could ease the huge desire for land among the landless.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: All of this says that there is hope. There is hope because they are revealed as being human beings, frail but with the capacity to do better if they get out of the self-justifying mode, the denial mode, and are able to say quietly, humbly, "I am sorry, forgive me/us."
  A year after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, when at least half a million people were massacred, I visited that blighted land. I went as the president of the continental ecumenical body, the All Africa Conference of Churches. In my ten-year, two-term presidency I had tried to take the AACC to its member churches through pastoral visits, especially to those countries that were experiencing crises of one sort or another. So I and other AACC officers had visited Nigeria; Liberia during its civil war; Angola and others. We also went to celebrate successes when, for instance, democracy replaced repression and injustice in Ethiopia. But usually we wanted to demonstrate solidarity with our fellow Christians in lands that were experiencing some trial or another. So the AACC leadership had gone to Rwanda.
  The scene was a deeply disturbing and moving monument to the viciousness that as human beings we are capable of unleashing against fellow human beings. Those who had turned against one another in this gory fashion had often lived amicably in the same villages and spoken the same language. They had frequently intermarried and most of them had espoused the same faith—most were Christians. The colonial overlords had sought to maintain their European hegemony by favoring the main ethnic group, the Tutsi, over the other, the Hutu, thus planting the seeds of what would in the end be one of the bloodiest episodes in modern African history. (The third group was the Twa, much fewer in numbers.) That genocide made one think anew about blaming racism for every conceivable ill that has befallen humankind, because, while whites had a hand in fomenting the ethnic internecine strife, the actual perpetrators were black against fellow black.
  A few kilometers from this church, some women had begun to build a settlement which they named the Nelson Mandela Village. It was to be a home for some of the many widows and orphans created by the genocide. I spoke to the leaders of this women's movement. They said, "We must mourn and weep for the dead. But life must also go on, we can't go on weeping." How wonderfully impressive, how indomitable. Over at Ntarama, we might say, there was Calvary, death and crucifixion. Here in the Nelson Mandela Village was Resurrection, new life, new beginning, new hope. Once more it was noteworthy to see how women have this remarkable resilience and an instinct for nurturing life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Once more it was noteworthy to see how women have this remarkable resilience and an instinct for nurturing life.. Here in the Nelson Mandela Village was Resurrection, new life, new beginning, new hope. Over at Ntarama, we might say, there was Calvary, death and crucifixion." How wonderfully impressive, how indomitable. But life must also go on, we can't go on weeping. They said, "We must mourn and weep for the dead. I spoke to the leaders of this women's movement. It was to be a home for some of the many widows and orphans created by the genocide.
  A few kilometers from this church, some women had begun to build a settlement which they named the Nelson Mandela Village.) That genocide made one think anew about blaming racism for every conceivable ill that has befallen humankind, because, while whites had a hand in fomenting the ethnic internecine strife, the actual perpetrators were black against fellow black. (The third group was the Twa, much fewer in numbers. The colonial overlords had sought to maintain their European hegemony by favoring the main ethnic group, the Tutsi, over the other, the Hutu, thus planting the seeds of what would in the end be one of the bloodiest episodes in modern African history. They had frequently intermarried and most of them had espoused the same faith—most were Christians. Those who had turned against one another in this gory fashion had often lived amicably in the same villages and spoken the same language.
  The scene was a deeply disturbing and moving monument to the viciousness that as human beings we are capable of unleashing against fellow human beings. So the AACC leadership had gone to Rwanda. But usually we wanted to demonstrate solidarity with our fellow Christians in lands that were experiencing some trial or another. We also went to celebrate successes when, for instance, democracy replaced repression and injustice in Ethiopia. So I and other AACC officers had visited Nigeria; Liberia during its civil war; Angola and others. In my ten-year, two-term presidency I had tried to take the AACC to its member churches through pastoral visits, especially to those countries that were experiencing crises of one sort or another. I went as the president of the continental ecumenical body, the All Africa Conference of Churches."
  A year after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, when at least half a million people were massacred, I visited that blighted land. There is hope because they are revealed as being human beings, frail but with the capacity to do better if they get out of the self-justifying mode, the denial mode, and are able to say quietly, humbly, "I am sorry, forgive me/us.All of this says that there is hope
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My cancer helped me to be a little more laid back, as they say, because I realized more sharply that there was literally not enough time to be nasty. I used my illness sometimes to twist my colleagues' arms: when they were somewhat obstreperous I said with mock earnestness, "Oh, be nice to me. Remember I am a sick old man!" It sometimes served to defuse tense situations.
  Suffering from a life-threatening disease also helped me to have a different attitude and perspective. It has given a new intensity to life, for I realize that there is much that I used to take very much for granted—the love and devotion of my wife Leah, the laughter and playfulness of my grandchildren, the glory of a splendid sunset, the dedication of colleagues, the beauty of a bedewed rose. It helped me to acknowledge my own mortality, with deep thanksgiving for the extraordinary things that have happened in my life, not least in recent times. What a spectacular vindication it has been for my involvement in the struggle against apartheid, to have lived to see freedom come and to have been involved in our Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
  Yes, I have been greatly privileged to engage in the work of helping to heal our nation. But it has been a costly privilege for those of us on the commission and I have come to realize that perhaps we were effective only to the extent that we were, in Henri Nouwen's celebrated phrase, "wounded healers."
  I am not sure whether I would have coped with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission without my wife Leah, and I am deeply grateful to her for her loving support through the hearings and other processes of the Commission.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about responded.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My cancer helped me to be a little more laid back, as they say, because I realized more sharply that there was literally not enough time to be nasty. I used my illness sometimes to twist my colleagues' arms: when they were somewhat obstreperous I said with mock earnestness, "Oh, be nice to me. Remember I am a sick old man!" It sometimes served to defuse tense situations. 
  Suffering from a life-threatening disease also helped me to have a different attitude and perspective. It has given a new intensity to life, for I realize that there is much that I used to take very much for granted—the love and devotion of my wife Leah, the laughter and playfulness of my grandchildren, the glory of a splendid sunset, the dedication of colleagues, the beauty of a bedewed rose. I responded to the disease not morbidly but with a greater appreciation of that which I might not see and experience again. It helped me to acknowledge my own mortality, with deep thanksgiving for the extraordinary things that have happened in my life, not least in recent times. What a spectacular vindication it has been for my involvement in the struggle against apartheid, to have lived to see freedom come and to have been involved in our Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 
  Yes, I have been greatly privileged to engage in the work of helping to heal our nation. But it has been a costly privilege for those of us on the commission and I have come to realize that perhaps we were effective only to the extent that we were, in Henri Nouwen's celebrated phrase, "wounded healers. "
  I am not sure whether I would have coped with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission without my wife Leah, and I am deeply grateful to her for her loving support through the hearings and other processes of the Commission.