HOW MANY TIMES, in the course of our lives, do we ask for someone’s forgiveness? How many times is forgiveness asked of us? And how often do we stop to think about what it actually means to forgive?

In her work as a clinical psychologist in South Africa, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela has devoted much of her life to examining the concept of forgiveness. In 1995, Gobodo-Madikizela was appointed to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a group of committees established to deal with the consequences and aftermath of apartheid. Through her work on the TRC, Gobodo-Madikizela made the decision to interview Eugene de Kock, nicknamed "Prime Evil" and widely considered one of the most brutal of apartheid’s covert police. Having completed a peace fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Research at Harvard and taught courses at Brandeis University, Wellesley College, and Tufts University, Gobodo-Madikizela returned to Boston recently to talk about apartheid, the TRC, and her new book, A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness (Houghton Mifflin).

Q: Why’d you decide to write this book?

A: I was working on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; my background is psychology, I’m a clinical psychologist. And I was struck by something that Eugene de Kock said at one of the hearings; he appeared at the Truth Commission and he asked to speak privately with widows of some of his victims. In that meeting, he apologized and asked them for their forgiveness. And they forgave him. Then I met these women, to talk to them about what they were feeling and what they mean by forgiving de Kock. And it seemed to me that the forgiveness was real — it was not just words, they really meant their forgiveness, they just described it in such profoundly honest terms that it just blew me over, that people who had been wronged so irreparably can forgive in that way. So now my next task was to speak to de Kock and find out if he was deserving of this forgiveness. I had no business finding out whether he meant it or not, but somehow I felt that I needed to know if he was worthy of the forgiveness that they had expressed towards him. Also, just as a psychologist, I wanted to understand: what do these terms mean? What do people mean when they say they forgive, and what do they mean when they say they apologize, in the context of such terrible tragedy?

Q: What’s your own definition of forgiveness?

A: I think forgiveness means different things for different people. I think if we want to understand forgiveness, the real value of forgiveness, we have to appreciate its meaning in the context of these terrible tragedies. On a day-to-day basis, you do something to me, I do something to you, and at the end you say, "It’s okay." You take forgiveness for granted. But when it happens in this context, it just has a depth that is beyond understanding. You really have no concept of understanding what these people actually mean.

In my view, someone who says they forgive may mean, "I don’t want this stuff bottled in me; I just want to move on with my life." Or they might mean, "I just want to get rid of the memory of you as a person who wronged me in this way, and I just want to redefine this relationship." Or it might mean, "Let me clear the air." Forgiveness may not even mean forgiveness in that sense; it may mean, "I just want to clear the air, to create a window of opportunity to start a new relationship with you." And the main thing is that it does bring healing to the victim when people forgive; it allows them to get rid of the burden of this terrible memory of this person who has killed their loved one, or tortured them, or themselves. It enables them to begin the road towards healing. So that is really the most important aspect of forgiveness, in terms of dealing with the trauma. It opens the door to a new way of relating to the traumatic experience.

Q: You talk about how different people forgive differently, and how it means different things to different people. In your experience on the TRC, what was the most common form of forgiveness from the victims?

A: It was the sense that "I want to move on. I want to unburden myself [of] this bitterness." Because many of these people had been carrying the bitterness for so many years that they were really tired of the burden. And that was what was most interesting about it, is that they needed to forgive these perpetrators. And so it was up to them, up to the perpetrators, to make that forgiveness possible, by expressing a remorseful apology. So that seems to me to have been a very important goal, forgiveness. To just allow people to move on.

Q: Can a person be taught how to forgive?

A: I’m not sure of the answer to that question, but I think that people can be given opportunities to forgive. That would be the teaching part of it, that you present people with alternatives. Because often people don’t have these alternatives, they don’t know that they can forgive. You create the conditions that will make forgiveness possible.

Q: Do you think every act is forgivable?

A: I really believe it is. Maybe the way I would put it is that there is no act that cannot be forgiven. Although it’s sort of the same thing, I want to be sure that I do not seem to be suggesting that everyone, no matter what they do, should be forgiven. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that is there is always the possibility. I think that there are certain acts that some people feel, "No, I cannot forgive this kind of thing." But the experience on the Truth Commission — I mean, these are terrible things, these are acts that we consider unspeakable, indescribable, these horrible things that we have no language of defining, of describing. But now here are victims able to reach out to the doers of these deeds, and to say, "Yes, I can forgive you." So in a way it tells us that, well, maybe it is possible to forgive. The Truth Commission has shown that in fact people do forgive, people do forgive when the conditions have been created for them to reach out. But the burden is on perpetrators, whether they act in ways that victims are going to believe they are truly deserving of their forgiveness.

Q: Have you spoken with any survivors of September 11?

A: No, but I was here when September 11 happened. I have not had an opportunity to speak to people who survived. I left the States right after, in December. When it happened, I was teaching in Wellesley.

Q: Did you talk about forgiveness with your students at Wellesley after September 11?

A: My course was on trauma and forgiveness, so September 11 was very much a part of my class. Many of my students came from New York, and some of them were from Arab countries, so all of these tensions were very present in our discussions, and we dealt with many of these issues. Forgiveness, of course, because it was part of the course, came up — the notion of when is appropriate [to talk about forgiveness], whether at all in this kind of thing. And I think there is a certain time after a tragedy when it’s not appropriate to talk about [forgiveness]. But then again, it’s important to make this accessible as well, in whatever way.

Q: If the opportunity arose for victims of September 11 to sit down in a room with, say, Osama bin Laden, on a kind of Truth Commission ...

A: It’s so hard to put it in black and white in that way. People ask, for example, "Would you show empathy for Adolph Hitler?" I can’t say that. I just cannot say that. I think that each situation presents different opportunities, and this one, speaking to Eugene de Kock, was one opportunity on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Q: Talk to me about being on the TRC — what that experience was like, and how you ended up on the commission.

A: The Truth Commission was established in December of 1995, and by that time, President Nelson Mandela had appointed members of the commission, 17 commissioners, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. When the work started, the commissioners realized that the work was just too much; they really couldn’t cope with the demands of the work ahead of them. So they decided to appoint additional committee members in the various committees. There were three committees on the commission: the Human Rights Violations Committee, the Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee, and the Amnesty Committee. I was on the Human Rights Violations Committee in the Western Cape region.

When I look back, to me it was like coming full circle. Having been a child under apartheid, an adult under apartheid, facing the anti-apartheid struggle, and now to be involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the moment of truth, the moment of reckoning, the final moment in the history of this country, my country. And I had just voted two years earlier for the first time. So it was a very special moment, just to be appointed to the commission. And working on the commission, the actual participating in the process, it was like reliving my own past. My story was told through the stories of many of the victims who came to testify before the commission. It was very hard to be separated from the work, from what was going on; it was very hard to draw the line between the people giving the testimony and my own experience. And I’m sure for many of the members of the Truth Commission, it was the same, it was true for all of us. So the importance, just of being part of an event that was like history in the making, was very overwhelming. The task, of course, was quite a big task, having to lend support, emotional support, psychological support, to so many people who came to the commission. It meant that we on the commission had to suspend our own vulnerabilities to be strong, so to speak, for the victims who came to the commission. And that was not always easy. But it was something that had to be done.

Q: Is there a moment from your time on the TRC that stands out as being the most difficult for you personally?

A: All days were very difficult. But there are some testimonies that still stand out in my mind. Testimonies that really had an impact on me. There was this one man who had been tortured on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, and he came from the same hometown as myself. He was tortured to the point of losing his hearing. So when he came to the commission, we had to make special arrangements for someone to sit next to him so he could lip read. I was the one assigned to facilitate his testimony, so I sat next to him, and I’d gone to his home to kind of test this out and meet him and see how it was going to work. When he testified before the commission, at some point the commission asked him what he wanted the commission to do for him. And he immediately got up from his chair and took out from his inside pocket, took out a list, a paper, and he said, "What the commission can do for me is to allow me to read the names of my comrades who were hanged by the apartheid government." And he stood there and read the names of his comrades, one after the other, until he’d read all eight names of the people [he knew] who were hanged by apartheid. And that was all. This was someone who could have asked the commission to give him money, he could have asked for all kinds of things from the commission, but he wanted just for the names of his comrades to be recorded in that book. And that really moved me so much.

Q: It was his way of honoring their memory.

A: Absolutely. That was exactly it. Reclaiming their memory, reclaiming their own identity by mentioning them, recording their names, putting their names there on the record, because they were not there to testify themselves, nor was there anyone to testify on their behalf. So there he was, reading their names. Wow. That’s one of the memories that’s really stayed with me.

Q: To what extent do you consider the TRC a success?

A: I think that the success of the Truth Commission cannot be judged in terms of whether it did this or the other thing. I think its success will probably emerge maybe in the next generation. I think it’s not so much what the commission did when it was in session; I think it’s more what the consequences of the process will be in future generations. Now, I say this because with other atrocities, what we have seen happen is that people remember, people remember with bitterness, you know, they remember things that were done to them, and the next generation remembers things that were done to them, and nobody ever acknowledges these things that were done. Now, one of the things that victims of trauma need is acknowledgement. They need someone to affirm that their suffering is for real, that they are right to feel suffering, that they are right to feel pain, that all of the things that they say happened to them did indeed happen, and in fact here are identifiable people who did it to them. So that is one of the most important things that victims of trauma need to allow them to move on. When they have a name, and they have a face to the deeds that were committed against them, then that allows them to take the next step. It gives them the power. But in many of these tragedies, conflicts, none of that has happened. The commission has done that. So we shall see, with future generations, what kind of language is going to emerge when people in South Africa talk about the past.

Q: What’s your take on how South Africa is doing now?

A: There are huge problems. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was one level of resolving some of the problems. There are two levels, whenever I think about the way South Africa is now. The political level, there has been the transfer of power from the white-minority rule to the majority-black government. And then there was the emotional level of addressing the problems of South Africa, and that’s where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission comes in. Now there is this other piece, the third piece, which has not been addressed: the economic justice. That has not been addressed. There hasn’t been an equalization of the economy. There’s still these huge divisions, and even deeper divisions now, economic divisions happening where black people are very clearly the poorest, and people who originally had economic power still have economic power, and even more economic power. There’s just a very small percentage of black people, the so-called black empowereds, who have earned some place in the economic field. Otherwise the majority of South Africans who are black have not really experienced any meaningful benefits, as far as the economy is concerned. I must say, though, the government is doing its best, you know, they’re building houses — someone who hasn’t been to South Africa for many years and goes back now, they will see the number of houses that have been built. But none of it is enough, because the problem is just so huge.

Q: You lived in Cambridge for a while. What were your observations about race relations in this city?

A: Maybe I should use my son’s experience. My son, when he arrived here, he was 13. Back home, he has grown up in a period where there was an easing of race relations in South Africa, so that through the schools that he went to, there was more openness. It was just the nature of these progressive schools that parents also wanted their children to engage in multiracial relationships. So in that sense, my son’s generation, most of them anyway, have been saved from some of the stark realities of race differences in South Africa. So he came to this country with that background. Then coming to this country and finding that there is so much consciousness about race in America. So I found it very interesting that he got his real lessons about race in this country instead of South Africa, which has been known for its warped race relations.

Now, for me as an adult, I think Cambridge cushions one, in a way. You don’t have a sense of what the reality is until there’s a particular story. And you don’t really feel the tensions much. And I think also because I don’t share a history with white people in this country, I don’t share a political past with white people here, there was a greater comfort. I was always in a comfortable place with white people in this country, because there weren’t any of those underlying, subtle tensions between the whites I encountered and myself. When you have a racial past with people of a different color, anything and everything evokes the memory of the past, so the tensions are bound to be there, but here, because I didn’t share that history with white people here, it was very rare that I felt it.

Q: Do you have a particular accomplishment that you’re most proud of?

A: Not really that I can think of. I think that life is always a journey, and I always want to move on and to do the next thing, and the next. I think that there are things that I probably have achieved, but I always have the sense that there’s so much that needs to be done in my country, so much so that I feel I haven’t done much at all to really begin to cut out a role for myself in the country. I feel that I’m just beginning to explore what role I need to play to leave a mark. I don’t feel any sense of real accomplishment. It hasn’t had any impact in the social frame, as far as black life is concerned.

Q: But certainly the TRC, of which you were a part, had an impact.

A: Yes, that was an important body. But subsequent to that, in terms of what I’ve done, I really think there is so much that needs to be done, and I don’t feel that I have done it. Young people just have no sense of hope, not even the possibility for dreaming. I don’t mean young people as in people who are in schools; I mean young people who really don’t have much — the young people in the townships, young girls especially, whose sense of meaning is in relationships that might lead to their contracting AIDS. All of those questions are just so important, and they bother me. What do we do with young women who don’t seem to have direction, they don’t have the means to dream? One of my own dreams is to establish a mentorship program for young girls so that we can save some of the young women, the same way that I myself was saved, and some of my colleagues. The same way that somehow there were doors opened for us. To create those possibilities for young people to dream.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela appears at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, 70 JFK Street, in Cambridge, on February 11, at 3:30 p.m. Call (617) 496-2457. She also appears at Facing History and Ourselves, 16 Hurd Road, in Brookline, on February 11, at 7 p.m. RSVP to (617) 735-1631. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com.