In July 1993 four young black men entered the St James Church in Kenilworth, Cape Town, with M26-hand grenades and R4-assault rifles and instantly ended the lives of 11 worshippers while leaving 58 others with gaping wounds for the rest of their lives. In June 2015 a single young white man entered Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina (US), and after sitting for nearly an hour through the evening bible study pulled a .45 calibre handgun from his bag and sent nine worshippers to their deaths while leaving a survivor with scars for life.Both were racist attacks. Both happened in countries with long histories of white supremacy and racial violence. Both involved angry youths tutored in the politics of hatred. Both took place in countries awash with guns. Both targeted churches.A church is supposed to be a neutral site, a place where ordinary people come to worship and seek peace for themselves and others. Most times there are no guards at the entrance or security fencing closing off the perimeter. Not too long ago, some churches did not even lock their doors so that people could come and pray at all hours of the day or night.It is this vulnerability that makes a place of worship an ideal hunting ground; a man with a gun can pick off his candidates for death without the fear of resistance. A church is a killing field for cowards.Yet in both cases something truly remarkable happened. Almost immediately, those who lost their dearest family members offered the hand of forgiveness. In the only Western country that still executes people and where "an eye for an eye" still drives the logic of much of US foreign policy, ordinary black people said to the young white killer as he listened from behind security glass windows: We forgive you.Several of the St James worshippers who lost mothers, fathers and children not only extended the hand of forgiveness, they actively sought reconciliation with the four killers and their handlers in the months after.Forgiveness is extremely difficult to comprehend, especially when someone is killed because of their race and in their place of refuge. This is what makes this supreme act of grace so powerful in nations with histories of racism, rage and revenge. Forgiveness relieves the victims and their families from carrying the burden of vengeful hatred; in fact, there are clear benefits, emotional and physical, to those who forgive.Forgiveness breaks the cycle of violence and thwarts the deadly intentions of perpetrators - the white killer says he wanted to spark a race war. Well, he might just be responsible for finally bringing down the Confederate flag - a symbol widely associated with the practice of slavery. Forgiveness often propels the perpetrator and victim towards reconciliation, a restart to broken human relations.But forgiveness goes much deeper than this. The logic of the Christian community is, to me, deeply moving: I forgive you because I have been forgiven. In that simple statement there is the acknowledgement of mutual vulnerability and of human reciprocity. It acknowledges that I am not better than you but that I am also subject to weakness and, as a human being, in need of forgiveness. This is profound because it takes the logic of forgiveness out of the realm of legal resolution and away from the very human instinct for retaliation. It draws attention to our entanglement in each other's lives, for human togetherness."I refuse to forgive," say some. "There are some crimes that are simply not forgivable," say others. We must not judge victims who withhold forgiveness; that is their right. But what we know from these two tragedies, 22 years apart, is that there is an alternative.In this "new rage" sweeping campus and country where everyone from the white right to the black left feels they have an unresolved grievance, it is a good time to reflect on a forgotten heritage from our transition. As an international commentator on the Charleston killings said after a church service in that southern town, "Not since South Africa have we seen such forgiveness ... "..