'Spiritrestoration'

The lives of two beautiful young women, murdered in Cape Town ten years ago, one American, one South African, are today exerting a wide influence in South Africa and further afield. Foundations in their name are benefiting the poorer and less favoured sections of society. All because of the open-hearted, forgiving spirit of members of their families.

Hate the sin and love the sinner. It rolls off our tongue so easily. But it is not so easy in real life. What about rape?

Many Americans judge Muslim countries and the Muslim faith by the Taliban, by September 11 and al-Qaeda. Many Iraqis judge the United States and Christianity by the desecration of a Muslim cemetery, by abuses at Abu Ghraib and incarcerations at Guantanamo Bay.

Unresolved issues from the past are like buried land mines waiting to be triggered. They are not made inactive by the passage of time, there is no statute of limitations - ask companies who did business with the Nazis or banks who hold holocaust survivor money. Unless past issues have been faced honestly, and unless there is a willingness to face them again for the sake of people alive today, they have not been defused.

A Norwegian friend, Leif Hovelsen, was tortured as a teenager by the Gestapo. He is deaf from the beatings he received. After liberation the tables were turned and he found himself guarding his guards. He began to mete out to them some of the same punishment he had received and was startled, he says, to discover that the same root of evil he despised in the Nazis was also within his own nature.