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“Having looked the beast of the past in the eye … let us shut the door on the past – not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.”

Source: Foreword, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, vol. 1 (1998), para. 91

Context From his foreword to the commission's final report, handed to President Mandela in October 1998 after two years of hearings on apartheid-era abuses.

Portrait of Desmond Tutu
Desmond TutuSouth Africa · 1931–2021
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