The story of South Africa is one where a flawed theology facilitated terrible injustice, but it is also one that illustrates the beauty of a repentant people who were involved in the most miraculous transfer of power.
Early
Protestants in Cape Town
The Dutch East India
company established Cape Town in 1652.
From there farmers began to spread inland which brought them into
contact with the KhoiKhoi. The KhoiKhoi
were nomads whose language including making clicking noises with their tongues. Missionary efforts to the KhoiKhoi were very
limited.
One interesting story
concerns a KhoiKhoi girl named Krotoa. She
was a servant in the household of the colony’s founding commander. She swiftly learned Dutch and became a
Christian. She ate Dutch food, wore
Dutch cloths and later described herself as having a Dutch heart. When she travelled inland she was mocked for
having a different faith. However, she
prayed for a relative to be healed of an illness and people listened to her
message with tears in their eyes as her relative recovered. Tragically when the commander moved to
Indonesia, Eva lost her job and was said to have turned to drink. Her life became a tragic mess. Her story led some to believe that the
KhoiKhoi were beyond reach.
By around 1700 European
immigration had largely dried up. The
Dutch in Cape Town increasingly regarded those farmers on the frontiers (‘Boers’)
with contempt. These Boer settlers read
their Bible through the lens of the Old Testament conquest, believing they were
a chosen people been given a new Promised Land amongst a heathen people.
Not all Christians though
viewed the surrounding cultures with hostility.
A Moravian missionary by the name of George Schmidt set up a mission
station eighty miles from Cape Town in 1737.
Despite some success he ended his mission isolated and worn out and
returned to Europe. As a parting gift he
left his Dutch New Testament with a girl whom he had baptised Magdalena. In 1792 Moravian missionaries were able to
return to the area and were greeted by a now elderly Magdalena who unwrapped
the treasured Bible its sheepskin case.
The community had survived in their faith and they were not surprised
that missionaries had return, for God had told them in a dream to expect their
return.
Blood
River
The colony was seized by the British between 1795 and 1806. The first significant wave of British settlers arrived in the 1820s. There was a distinction between the English settlers and the ‘Dutch’. Those with Dutch roots would later be referred to as Afrikaners.
Hostilities between the
British and the Dutch led to the Great Trek where about 12,000 Dutch-speaking
inhabitants left the Cape Colony for the interior. These people saw themselves as a covenant
people escaping the slavery of British rule and heading to a Promised Land. On the trek a group of 470 Dutch were
attacked by a Zulu army of around 12,000.
They vowed to commemorate God’s mercy if they survived. They fought off the Zulus without receiving
any fatalities. They did have the
advantage of guns and a good defensive position, nevertheless interpreted their
delivery as confirmation of their status as a covenant people.
The
Boer War
The Dutch established the colonies of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. When diamonds and gold were discovered in these regions the British launched an attack on against the Afrikaners. This became known as the Boer War (1899-1902). The British forces emptied huge tracts of land of people and there was the new innovation of concentration camps. The British victory was deeply resented and this resentment led to the formation of the National Party in 1914, with the aim of asserting Afrikaans identity.
The British tried to tie
up the wounds left by the war with a promise of white unity. This was a keystone of the newly formed Union
of South Africa in 1910. The former
Afrikaner republics remained under white control and in the Cape Province, non-white
rights were increasingly curtailed.
Separateness
A theology emerged that believed
that nations were defined by God and that these cultures should be preserved
(Acts 17:26 was a cited text). From 1929
on Dutch Reformed Church writers began to use the word ‘apartheid’. The differing tribal groups were seen as
representing different nations and the best way to maintain good neighbourly
relations is to build good fences.
In 1948 the National
Party campaigned on a policy of anti-communism, protecting the Afrikaans
language and the emerging policy of apartheid.
It lost the popular vote but was able to form the government by formation
with a small allied party. Hendrick
Verwoerd became minister of ‘native affairs’, a position he would hold until
becoming Prime Minister in 1958. The National
Party would remain in power until 1994.
The National Party was seen as having close ties with the Dutch Reformed
Church.
In 1956 a report of the
Tomlinson Commission by the National Party suggested that South Africa itself
be partitioned. The white-ruled state
should relinquish land to form a number of black-run states. There were a number of problems with
this. This was not a mutually agreed
policy and it was not in the interests of those who had the resources to give
up the amounts of land that the Commission called for. Prime Minister Malan suggested that the sort
of apartheid that was envisaged was not yet possible. Verwoerd who didn’t seem to share Malan’s personal
Christian commitment was blunter in rejecting the Commissions intentions.
In 1959 Verwoerd became
Prime Minister and proposed the creation of Bantustans, or ‘homelands’, for the
black population. These feel far short
of the black-run states of the Tomlinson Commission. Now those who worked in white areas were
classified as immigrants. There were
condemnations of National Party policies from the English-speaking churches,
but these tended to be tame. However, the
churches, including the Dutch Reformed Church, did stand up to the Native Law Amendment
Act, which would have made it hard for non-whites to attend churches in
white-designated areas. This action
forced Verwoerd to back down.
Resistance
In 1960 the Pan-Africanist
Congress called for nationwide demonstrations against the pass laws (which
required non-whites to carry identification papers at all times). At one march police baton charged and killed
three protestors. At Sharpeville, south
of Johannesburg, police opened fire on a mostly female crowd, killing
sixty-nine people. A state of emergency was
declared and thousands of opposition activists were arrested. The Pan-Africanist Congress was banned, as
was the more moderate African National Congress (ANC).
In 1968 a multiracial forum
of churches, the South African Council of Churches, was refounded. In 1976, the SACC’s white president resigned
so that a black church leader could take the role. The role was given to Desmond Tutu. Drawing its inspiration from the civil rights
movement in America, the SACC advocated peaceful civil disobedience. The unrest of 1986-1990 left many dead and
the fear that the country would descend into chaos.
Yet South Africa
witnessed a remarkable turn around and the role that the Christian faith of certain
individuals played should not be underestimated.
In 1989 a new president, F.W. de Klerk was elected. He was a member of what was called the Dopper Church. While we should not ignore the role that ANC pressure put on the government, it would be wrong to say that de Klerk was forced to the negotiating table. In fact, military and intelligence advisors favoured believed that they could sustain a long war. Also, it has to be realised what the white population risked in letting go of power—they could have lost all they had and be subject to terrible retribution.
There were external factors
that facilitated change, including the fact that the Soviet Union was
collapsing—meaning that there was less reason to fear communist influences in
the ANC. Then there was the moderating
voice of Nelson Mandela.
A change in theology led
to a willingness to reach out. One survey
of Afrikaner business leaders found that between 1968 and 1988 almost half ceased
believing in the theology that humanity was divided into nations as an
expression of God’s will. It should not be
thought that this change in belief was simply because South Africa was becoming
more secular, church attendance was still high.
This was a genuine willingness to listen to their critics and re-examine
their faith.
In 1986 the Dutch
Reformed Church produced a report admitting that forced separation of people
and the ban on interracial marriage could not be justified. In 1989 the Dutch Reformed Church issued what
was really of confession of past errors.
Remember that these statements came before the ANC were in power. Johan Hynes who had been elected moderator of
the Dutch Reformed Church paid for his reforming views with his life, being
shot dead by an unidentified gun-man as he played cards with his wife and
grandchildren.
President de Klerk called
for a council of all South Africa’s churches, which was held in November
1990. The most notable event was when a
Dutch Reformed Church leader, named Willie Jonker, issued a heart felt apology
for his and the church’s wrongs. Desmond
Tutu responded to his apology by offering forgiveness.
Of course, things were
not entirely smooth. Some members of the
Dutch Reformed Church, including former president P. W. Botha, resented been
told that they were penitent. Similarly,
some criticised Tutu for been too quick to offer forgiveness. Also, the Dutch Reformed Church’s formal
statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggested that apartheid
was an idea that had denigrated into injustice, rather than been an idea that
was intrinsically wrong.
However, to see how great
the change in the Dutch Reformed Church was one simply needs to see how the
general synod invited the newly elected president of South Africa, Nelson
Mandela, to address them.
Conclusion
Those of us who are old
enough to remember watching the news in the 1990s will remember the sense of
hope and tension that accompanied the transfer in power to a black-led government. Prayers were offered all over the world that
this would happen peacefully. Rarely in world
history has there been such a change of heart amongst a ruling elite in handing
over power to the majority.
Before we finish I want
to make a few observations:
1.
Afrikaners were not the only people to believe
that they were a nation with a special covenant to God. Read the writings of Pearce on blood
sacrifice and you will see that Ireland was rooted in a similar thought.
2.
The seeds of every known sin lie in each
of our heart. Racism is not only a white
issue. In fact, hatred of people who are
seen to be ‘other’ is not only seen in issues related to skin colour.
3.
Apartheid may have been used to maintain
inequality. In that sense it is a microcosm
of a global issue that we are involved in.
We live in the most affluent part of an unequal world. Our purchases are made inexpensive because we
depend on the cheap labour in other countries.
Our immigration policies are reflective of our desire to keep our wealth
to ourselves and keep the ‘other’ separate from us. Our government’s foreign aid budget stands at
just stands just 0.32% (well below the 0.7% of GNP recommended by the UN.
4. One of the tragedies of apartheid was the
idea of segregated churches. We should cherish
the multiculturalism in our own church.
But sometimes our commitment to multiculturalism is shallow. For example, people have said, ‘well if they
are in our country they should do things our way.’ But we are not to be an Irish church, we are
a church of God’s diverse people based in Ireland. To insist that people in our church adapt to
Irish customs is a form of segregation.
It says, ‘this is our church not yours.’
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