The recent bloodbath in Bisho (Ciskei), following on the Boipatong massacre a few months earlier, has sent a sobering message to the nation. Unless South Africans are able to put an end to the violence, the country is doomed to become another Bosnia-Herzegovina, Beirut, Sudan, or Ethiopia--little more than just another no-hope basket case, to be sent occasional food aid. It is partly this that makes negotiations the only viable option for all concerned.
A pertinent question is whether Christians have a healing ministry to offer. Prior to February 2, 1990, the church was actively involved at the center of resistance politics. The unbanning of the liberation movements and the release of Nelson Mandela have changed this, with the church having increasingly adopted a more neutral and passive political role.
An Image That Haunts
The reality of this change was seen on television screens around the world the day after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. He had spent his first night of freedom at Bishopscourt in Cape Town. The next morning under the focus of the cameras, Archbishop Desmond Tutu escorted Mandela to his car, prayed for him, and sent him on his way. "I can now get on with the work of the church," Tutu told reporters.
The image haunts church social activists. Despite the important role still played by the archbishop, grassroots Christians are no longer sure of their role. "Before we simply got out there and disrupted things...we made the place ungovernable," observed a young member of a township church. "Now we don't know what the hell to do!"
The Spiral of Violence
The escalation of violence has reinforced the church's sense of impotence. Rev. Stanley Mogoba, president of the Methodist Church, personified the predicament of the church on the day of the Bisho massacre. "Standing between the soldiers and the protesters, when the first volley of bullets was released all I could do was to throw myself to the ground. When I got to my feet people were dead."
The cause of violence is complex and there is sufficient evidence to say that the hands of the government are far from clean in this regard. At the same time, the oppressed majority has a responsibility to find alternative ways of responding to both the provocations of agents provocateurs and differences of opinion.
The arrival of a group of eminent church persons in South Africa to monitor the situation and offer a healing ministry is a move in the correct direction. It is also only a beginning. There is likely to be more violence before and after the installation of a new government. Violence is endemic. There is a culture of violence to be broken.
For all its limitations, the church comprises people of different political and ideological persuasions. As such it is often able to minister to people across these divides. The urgency of this is underlined by the Bisho killings.
Transitionary Politics
The church's task, however, goes beyond "putting out the fires." It is required to engage in a ministry of reconstruction. To appreciate the complexity of this ministry, it is necessary to understand the nature of the present political situation.
South Africa had long been locked into a cycle of uprisings and repression. The uprisings followed ever closer and closer on one another, with each act of repression becoming increasingly costly in terms of human life, social destabilization, and international response. This led President F.W. de Klerk to engage in a calculated political act designed to break the cycle.
He did not negotiate in the face of military or political defeat. Nor did he undergo a Damascus Road conversion. He sought to curtail the uprisings and "normalize" (control) the political process. In brief, he sought to manage the change process, placing himself in a better position for the inevitable negotiation process.
To a significant extent, his pre-emptive action paid off. He succeeded (at least for a while) in taking the struggle out of the streets, locating it in negotiation chambers and political meetings. Important as these forums are for political progress to be made, they by definition exclude large sections of the population who hitherto saw it to be their personal responsibility to be engaged in direct political action. As a result, negotiations have had a depoliticizing effect on the greater part of the population - and not least in the church.
De Klerk (like any politician) is committed to maintaining as much power as possible. Opposed to majority rule, he is ready to allow for democratic rule in the lower house of assembly, while opting for consensus politics via minority party controls in the senate, or upper house. He further favors a Bill of Rights that includes the strict protection of private property which, as a result of apartheid manipulation, has been removed completely from the hands of the vast majority of blacks.
Transition is at the same time almost impossible to manage. There will inevitably be compromises on the side of the African National Congress (ANC) and the ruling National Party, with political agreement likely to locate power, with some restraints, largely in the hands of the majority party.
Economic agreement is likely to be more difficult. The near insoluble dilemma is how to ensure both economic growth and redistribution. Unemployment is estimated by some to be in excess of 43 percent, with only one in every 14 black high school graduates being employed and no obvious relief in sight. Liberation movements have, in turn, created enormous expectations.
"You have got to go back to your people and tell them that what you said was wrong," a leading business person recently told a group of black church leaders.
"In fact we were essentially told that the present generation of black people are expendable," Takatso Mofokeng, a meeting participant, reports. "Business is telling us a vigorous capitalist economy may be able to rescue the next generation, but only if the present generation is prepared to pay the price!... With no guarantees that even this is possible, there is no good news for the poor."
Is the Church Still Relevant?
Given the realities of the sociopolitical situation, the economic state of the nation, and the present limited influence of the church, what realistically can it be expected to contribute at the level of reconstruction?
The religious ethos of the South African context provides the church with a unique place in the production of culture. Religious symbols and ideas constitute part of the language, social vision, and personal identity of the vast majority of South Africans. The church needs to create a spirituality (an inner incentive) that relates matters of ultimate concern (God) to the most immediate needs of the nation.
If, for example, national reconciliation, economic reconstruction, and educational renewal could be promoted within church (as well as synagogue, mosque, and temple) as a part of the religious responsibility of the faithful, a new energy could be released in the country, creating a milieu within which the necessary solutions can be found to meet these problems. Significantly, at the height of the struggle in South Africa, it was liturgies, Bible studies, and worship resources which linked the social needs and political aspirations of people to worship that were confiscated by the security police. The more learned texts written by academics and scholars on liberation and black theology were ignored! A liberating energy is needed for a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist South Africa to emerge.
This said, Christians in South Africa need to accept (and most do) the significance and importance of a secular state. The domination or protection of any religion is a dangerous thing. The task of the church is to influence values, liberate the souls of its people, and serve the poor, without ever presuming that it has a monopoly in doing so. The infinity of God can never be contained in the views, perceptions, or values of any religion. Says Archbishop Tutu: "We are all created in the image of God. The problem is that we have returned the compliment by creating God in our own image!"
Such action destroys the very eschatological dimension of theology which reminds us that God is greater than any particular vision of God and that the will of God demands more than even the finest and most compassionate social order can offer. This might just be the greatest contribution that the church has to make to secular politics.
Given the presence of churches in every dorp, township, ghetto, and rural area, the contribution the church can make to the re-establishment of an independent, grassroots, civil society accountable to ordinary people in South Africa is immense. No future government can be expected to meet the expectations of the people who will elect it to power.
Religious institutions with a commitment to be the servant of the people have a unique role to play in such areas as: literacy, primary health care education, welfare, and a host of related areas. Without the assistance of intermediary structures, the empowerment of the poor and their participation in the remediation of their own problems will simply never happen. To expect the state to provide for all the basic needs of the poor is, in addition to all else, to promote the worst kind of dependency.
The church has a lot of work to do. The long march to renewal has only just begun. The question is: Does the church have the will and inner resources to face the challenge?
Charles Villa-Vicencio was a frequent contributor to Sojourners, a professor of religion and society at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and the author of A Theology of Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 1992) when this article appeared.
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