SOUTH AFRIC~ I FAITH· HOPE &LOVE ,~~1~
E:f-~ fzPn1 titL d4du ~ 1-~ /'IS'~ PtUA4L-~~ i!J'!- t VA~ Wiu-n#A ~ ~cl. ~ u/. ~~~ ;(~"F~ ~ ~~ During the summer of 1988 my wife and I spent five ' weeks in Cape Town and its environs while I served as exchange pastor of the Central Methodist Mission, a church formed by the recent merger of an all-white congregation and an essentially "coloured" congregation. Following the exchange period, we spent an additional month travelling throughout Namibia and South Africa getting to know the people and the apartheid situation in other parts of the country. We do not claim to be experts on South Africa. We did see the South Africa which tourists see and listened to those carefully screened South Africans whom the government presents to tourists as representative voices of their country. We also saw a South Africa very few tourists see and which, in fact, very few South African whites see. Most whites there never get into townships (black• "coloured" and Indian communities) and know people of color only as their servants. At my co~issioning by presbytery I was charged to learn what the conditions were in South Africa, what challenges the church of Jesus Christ was facing there, how it was responding to those challenges, and what the future looked like. I was also charged to bring back the story to our presbytery and to its churches. This diary/journal is part of my fulfillment of that charge. You may ask, why should Long Island American Presbyterians be particularly interested in South Africa? Aren't. there worse situations ~ · which should demand our attention? Burundi today and Idi Amin's Uganda yesterday are and were far worse. But when folks tell us to clean up our family, our own home front, our problems, before we stick our noses into the problems of other peoples, we must respond that South Africa is our family, our home front and its problems are ours. Why? For two reasons: · -1- First, the dominant church has, until very recently, contended that apartheid is God's will for South Africa and has convinced its members that the Bible and proper theology argue for apartheid or the separation of races. That church, the South African Dutch Re.formed Church, claims to be faithful to the same Calvinist theology as we Presbyterians hold. Their apartheid theology has rightly been declared a heresy. Second, our government, through its "constructive engagement" policy, has been tacitly working with the South African government or at least not opposing it with any strength. Furthermore, some of our business concerns and multi-nationals with home bases in our country have, through their trade with South Africa and the taxes they pay to the South African government, been helping finance the brutal, inhuman oppression of peoples of color in that country. But enough of introduction. On to the exce~pts of my diaryljournal. ********** Cape Town - July 4, 1988 We drove through Crossroads, KTC and Nyanga (black or "coloured" townships outside Cape Town), observing the shacks and deplorable conditions. Vergene took several pictures but was a bit reluctant to impose on the people. Right across the streets from shacks were government tents and even some substantial dwellings, but all were very crowded and trash was all around. There was almost no place for children to play. It was cold and there was no heat or water in many dwellings. Women were carrying huge pails of water on their heads, without steadying them with hands. Many outdoor portajohns were in evidence. Conditions were really terrible ••••• -2- While in Crossroads we saw mostly strong anti-apartheid blacks. In other townships, however, we saw graffiti both for and against the government, some of it violently attacking Tutu and the African National Congress (ANC). Our guide, Jacky Jooste, the "coloured" Associate Pastor of our church, said they might have been put there by policemen. The government seeks to divide and conquer, hiring starving, unemployed blacks to police the townships. Cape Town - July 5, 1988 At the Buitenkant Street Methodist Church I met with Jacky and a white constable who was interviewing him about his living in the Methodist manse situated in an area designated as all-white residential under the Group Areas Act. Jacky quite deliberately was late for the appointment, keeping the constable waiting. A neighbor of the manse had apparently complained. I had a sense that the constable was rather uncomfortable with me sitting in on the interview and seeing first-hand what he mus·t have known, a point of South African law which was quite detestable to me. He was all apologetic and said over and over again that he was only doing his duty. His unpleasant task was to investigate complaints about violations of the Group Areas Act. The constable wanted the confrontation to be between one "coloured" man, Jacky, and the state. Jacky wanted it to be between the Methodist Church of South Africa and the state and Jacky seemingly won this round. Cape Town - July 6, 1988 We· went to the Community House in Salt River where the Western Province Council of Churches (WPCC) is located, along with COSATU (the central labor union) and the United Democratic Front (the highly restricted loose organization of groups fighting apartheid). Community House has a guard. To get in you need a visitor's badge. It has been raided often and even bombed. (The US government's rifling of the Christie Institute and other sanctuary outfit offices is child's play compared to what seems to be standard operating procedure here.) -3- At Community House, where Leslie Liddell used to work as ecumenical director of the WPCC we first met and chatted with Charles Phillip, who described the work of the Justice and Reconciliation Department of which he is the head. They are concerned with political trials which they want to publicize to South African blacks and the rest of the world. The government tries to stretch out the trials so everybody will get tired and forget. Charles' group is also fighting capital punishment and forced removals as decreed by the Group Areas Act. They are also concerned with refugees from other countries who come to South Africa and are given a hard time by the South African government or are deported, e.g. villagers from Mozambique escaping from Renamo guerillas. They monitor justice issues and publicize what they can concerning these matters. We also met and talked with Ian McKenzie who is in charge of "Free the Children" work, seeking to get children out of detention. He says that there were·upward of 50,000 children in detention after the school demonstrations and boycotts in 1976, but due to publicity (theirs and others) and pressure from locals and overseas, the number is perhaps down to 250 at any time now. He is involved in organizing marches and demonstrations on behalf of the detained children and publicizing the situation where he can. He shares a very small office with a group opposing nuclear power and war ••••• We met and briefly talked with Glen who heads the anti-military service program. In this country there is no conscientious objection recognized. If you do not serve in the military for two years, you get six years in prison. Glen is white. Later, in August, his organization was banned. -4- We saw Veronica, working for the United Democratic Front, a restricted organization, and she gave us a copy of the Freedom Charter which was unbanned only a couple years ago. Cape Town - July 8, 1988 We visited the offices of_the Foundation for Justice and Peace which is under the leadership of Alan Boesak. A guard let us into the compound which was ringed by a high metal fence with barbed wire at the top and had a gate locked with a very special lock. Boesak has been threatened many times and once a brick was thrown through his office window just missing both his head and a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. A security police car was right there and everybody is sure the brick was thrown by a policeman. Also, his home was similarly attacked with a brick which just missed the heads of his two children. Security measures are amply justified because of state violence. Raid~ are expected at any time. Somerset West (near Cape Town) - July 10, 1988 In Somerset West the original "coloured" owners of property have been displaced by whites as, under the Group Areas Act, this better location was designated "white". The Methodist church there owns a couple blocks and coloureds still live in its houses. The state apparently does not yet want to challenge the denomination on this issue. Were the church to sell its property to anybody else, the "coloured" residents there would be removed. The Methodist Church is a "coloured" church now in anall-white area. They had to close their school which now stands empty. "Coloured" schools in the coloured areas are terribly overcrowded and teachers are out of work and have to travel to Cape Town for jobs while white schools stand empty because of the curse of colour-consciousness. -5- We saw shanty towns, somewhat better council houses, fairly good "coloured" areas and white areas. For the most part, "coloured" areas and white areas are separated by buffer zones which are industrial and successfully keep white - "coloured" contacts to a minimum. Cape Town - July 12, 1988 At the University of the Western Cape (mostly "coloured" and black) we spoke with one young man, perhaps 19, and in his second year of university education, who was arrested with 38 others for peacefully demonstrating against a change in their financial support. The police here and the courts are really thought-control agents and can do almost anything to those who, even in the most orderly and non-violent ways, seek redress of injustices ••••• Cape Town - July 13, 1988 Jacky and I went to Langa, a pretty shabby black township. We saw deplorable single-sex hostels where men live eleven months a year and then return a single month to their homelands to be with wives and families. The hostels have tiny rooms with more than one man in each. During non-working hours there is no recreation or anything for these men to do, not even grass or trees around. It is so depressing. No wonder alcoholism and prostitution are rife ••••• We had a long talk with the mother of Trevor Manuel, the former UDF leader in the Western Cape who had been released after two years of detention a couple days ago. It was so sad. She told how Trevor and his wife and children had suffered and how she, his mother, had also. Trevor was detained (without charge, of course) solely for heading the UDF, not for doing anything at all violent or illegal. He had been in jail for two years. -6- A "parents of detained persons" group was also banned and so could not meet to support each other. They did meet ostensibly for social purposes but, of course, really they supported each other in their misery. In spite of her experiences, Mrs. Manuel has a hope and trust for the future and was not bitter. Cape Town - July 14, 1988 Reuben Richard, a "coloured" Religious Studies · student at the University of Cape Town, was the chauffeur of a group from the Synod of the Northeast. Reuben is a Baptist but feels there is no place at all in that denomination in South Africa for anybody engaged in the "struggle" for justice. Baptists here are, Reuben feels, entirely other-worldly. He stays in the denomination only until they kick him out, but he knows they will not recognize his education or make a place for him in the Baptist ministry. They are, he says, entirely preoccupied with "saving brands from the burning". University of Cape Town - July 16, 1988 We went to the conference on ,the Freedom Charter. In 1955 hundreds of people struggling for justice and freedom had gathered in Kliptown, a part of Soweto near Johannesburg, to draw up and sign the Charter. The document was banned as communist and many of those who participated in the gathering were detained. (See July 7 and August 28.) Over the conference ~1as the shadow of Nelson Mandela's seventieth birthday which falls two days hence. The moderator announced that a sports program in honor of Mandela had been banned. Some 500 police had ringed the campus of the University of the Western Cape for the afternoon, sealing it off from any who might want to hold some sort of a meeting there. All but a handful of the events scheduled to celebrate Mandela's birthday have been banned and their organizers detained. -7- The Freedom Charter seems so obvious and right that it is hard to see how it could have been banned when it was first proposed and adopted. But an autocratic, rich man's fearful government cannot stand much. They branded it communist and that is enough to get it banned. The principles of the Freedom Charter are: 1. The people shall govern. 2. All national groups shall have equal rights. 3. The people shall share in the country's wealth. 4. The land shall be shared among those who work it. 5. All shall be equal before the law. 6. All shall enjoy equal human rights. 7. There shall be work and security. 8. The doors of learning and culture shall be opened. 9. There shall be houses, security, and comfort. 10. There shall be peace and friendship. Why would these be considered "communist" and treasonous? Perhaps because these rights are claimed for all, not just for the whites. We looked at a display of photographs of the most horrendous situations, e.g. police gunning down funeral participants, boys' bodies after whippings, the roughing up of some white women of the Black Sash, soldiers with machine guns on casspirs (armed troop carriers) and many killed and injured blacks. It was both moving and disturbing. It brings anger to the observers of such governmentally initiated and approved violence. There is no question where the terrorism and violence starts in this country. Black terrorism is minor and very limited compared to the systemic and government sponsored variety. -8- Many of the questions and answers at the Freedom r Charter conference centered on violence and armed resistance. All speakers disavowed violence for themselves but they said they could not unequivocally condemn it in others struggling for justice, even though it would not be their way. They could understand it but not condone it. That night we read many newspapers. Those which opposed the government carried dozens of advertisements congratulating Mandela on his birthday and wishing him well. They were accompanied by strong language for justice and liberation of the powerless oppressed groups. Many of those ads came from overseas - Holland, Berlin, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, but none from the USA. One from Japan indicated that many unions and businesses there abhor apartheid and pledge to do no business with South Africa as well as interfering as much as possible with other Japanese firms which do trade with South Africa. This contradicts the usual American claim that if we pull out of South Africa·, the Japanese will rush right in and take the business. Actually, business and labor in Britain, Germany and Japan seem to be more inclined to isolate South Africa than are the same units in our country. Cape Town- July 17, 1988 Jacky told us that the special Mandela service at the University of the Western Cape at which Alan Boesak was to have preached had been banned and the University was surrounded by police in casspirs with guns to keep everybody away. Then, when folks were to go to the University of Cape Town for celebrations, the police also closed that off ••••• After Sunday evening service, Vergene and I waited with Ellen Rainey (an elderly "coloured" church member) for her sister to pick her up in a car. After an hour when the car did not appear, we went across the street to the police station -9- to ask if we could call the sister. Ellen asked the white officer if she could use a phone there. He said they had no phones at the station. While he said that he had his two hands on two phones. I wonder what he would have said if we white folks had come alone and asked. Cape Town - July 18, 1988 In the local court house we found a large group of students waiting in the hallway outside the courtroom where 38 of their colleagues were to stand trial for participation in a peaceful demonstration (see July 12). We went to the far end of the line of students and tried to engage a few women in conversation. They were extremely reluctant to talk with us. Obviously, as "coloured" people, they thought we whites might be informers. After we had chatted for some time and exposed our American souls and experiences, they did loosen up. They too had been part of the demonstration but had escaped before the others were arrested. They had come to show support for those on trial ••••• With Charles Villa-Vicencio (chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town and one of South Africa's foremost radical theological minds), his wife Eileen and their two young girls, we headed for a Nelson Mandela birthday party celebration which we thought was scheduled for the township of Guguleto. On the way Charles told us the venue had been changed to St. Francis Roman Catholic Church in Langa. Charles fully expected to have the place blockaded by police, but though police were there, they did not stop us. Eileen was very frightened by their presence. A yellow helicopter was overhead and casspirs were on every side. A year ago Charles had been teargassed and had to vault over a six foot wall when police started firing live ammunition at a crowd of non-violent anti-apartheid people outside a church. The arrival of foreign diplomats from such countries as Greece, Germany, Britain, Holland and the United States made us feel a bit easier as it seemed quite unlikely that the police would teargas them. -10- When we did go inside the church, the blacks and "coloureds" were chanting. The men's voices were so strong you could not hear any women's voices at all, although they obviously were also chanting. The loud deep roar was thrilling, not frightening. As the service began and continued, more and more people arrived - students, children, whites, Muslims, blacks. Most whites, including ourselves, sat in the front pews. We sang and heard messages, Charles read a birthday letter signed by 250 or so South African clergy, laity and theologians. Hundreds of messages from all over the world were referred to but only few were read. Prayers and liturgies were used. We sang two numbers we knew accompanied by guitar, violin and flute. The service was frequently punctuated by chanting and dancing in the aisles and pews and many almost spontaneous calls with the crowd echoing them. But when the leaders called for quiet, they got it fairly soon. The place was rocking most of the time. Alan Boesak gave the main message and lit the candle for freedom. It is amazing what a hold Mandela has on these people even though he .has been banned and detained for 26 years and nothing he has said or written has been able to be repeated publicly or legally all that time. At one point a group of perhaps 30 small children sang two-part harmony, very simple words but very moving. Quite informal power was in evidence. The people seemed very confident of victory in the future. Boesak saw that the police were opening the back doors, perhaps to fire tear gas. Two of the organizers of the event went to the back door very rapidly and showed considerable concern. Boesak, however, told the police they should have been in church the day before instead of breaking up birthday celebrations. He invited them to worship right there, but if they did not intend to do so, to leave pronto. It worked, as the police retreated. -11- Somebody had made a very colorful birthday cake with Mandela's picture in icing and words in English "70, Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela." Boesak paraded the cake up and down the aisle and led children in a huge parade through the church. Balloons were given out. Several big Mandela posters were held up in the congregation, inspiring chants and shouts. The small man next to me held up a poster but he was too short to have it really be seen so I held the top of it up and he held the bottom. cAm I on the government's list of treasonous people? Many newspapermen took photos so I may be in West German and Scandinavian and British press holding a Mandela poster ••••• At the conclusion of the service, we were told to leave by a side door and go straight home. Everybody wanted to avoid a confrontation with the police who were probably eager for a chance to cause trouble. Charles told the chief of police that the leaders had instructed the worshippers to leave immediately after the service and not cause trouble or respond to any provocation by the police. Rock-throwing would have given the police an excuse to get violent and even kill. Charles also asked the police to see that their men did nothing to provoke a violent confrontation. The crowd did disperse quickly and without incident. Eileen, Charles' wife, was very frightened as she had to drive her car between two big police casspirs. This celebration, though on a much smaller scale, and with the added ingredient of hostile police, reminded me of the rally in Washington D.C. when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech or like the Central Park peace rally where we had 750,000 orderly non-violent paraders. -12- Later we heard that police had surrounded many schools, preventing childr~n, on dismissal, from going home or leaving at all and also prevented parents from coming to pick them up. This was to prevent children from engaging in any rallies, but effectively, was kidnapping -en masse. Some whites later told us it was done to protect the children. Naturally there was almost no press coverage at all of the party service. Cape Town - July 19, 1988 We attended a "Save the Press" conference at the University of the Western Cape. On display outside the lecture hall were a series of political cartoons by Shapiro lampooning the government and political figures. Shapiro had won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US, but a couple days before he was to go he was imprisoned (detained) by the government. They cannot stand any dissent ••••• One of the speakers had been editor of the Argus, perhaps the largest paper in Cape Town and a very cautious, middle-of-the-road, (by South African standards) paper. He had lost his job and his reputation because he printed the truth which the government did not like. He spoke about the pressures put on the press not only by government but by big business which owns and controls all the main print media ••••• Cape Town - July 22, 1988 We went on a tour of wine and farming country with a young, radical white pastor, Peter Grassow, who punctuated the travels with a sociological and political lesson helping us to understand both what we were seeing and the entire climate of the country. Peter is one of those young radicals who has committed class suicide. He had been pastor at Worcester and found whites leaving the Methodist Church there as they did not want to consider the implications of a gospel of justice and freedom in their kind of society. -13- Peter told us about the "tot" system in the wine country. Farmers give their workers not only pitifully small wages but also wine-breaks at the beginning of the day, during the day and at its end. Most workers become alcoholics and are passive. This system has been legally forbidden now but workers have gotten into the alcoholism habit and will not stay with farmers who do not · give them their "tot." The rural slums defy description. Peter pointed out the "demonstration" small black farmer homes which are shown to tourists. Then he showed us the vastly different shacks in which most farm hands live. Peter told us the history of some of the townships around Cape Town which were most dangerous, Mitchell Plains and Kayalitsha, for instance. The first people who moved there were the homeless vagrants who had no employment and no roots in any establised community. They formed gangs, terrorizing each other. There were no community-structures and the gangs set the tone for the townships. Then, others who had resisted forced removals and came only later piece-meal, were not able to overcome this initial dangerous climate. The last to come were those displaced by the Group Areas Act who had invested the most in their communities and had the experience and expertise in making a community work, but they came too late and were not able to build any community at all in such a hostile environment. Peter also told us about the political leadership in the townships, blacks or "coloureds" who had bought into the system. They alone were allowed to run for office and anybody who opposed the system could not run or even distribute literature. Anybody who wanted to start a business in a township or rent a home had to get proper authorization and permits and that meant greasing the palms of the officials. Corruption was not only countenanced by the government but encouraged by it. -14- ...------ .Cape Town- July 25, 1988 Vergene went to St. Mary's School in Langa where the nun principal was much on edge because there had been four murders over the weekend involving two warring gangs. She thought no pupils would be at school. Actually, attendance was about 50%. When teachers came, they had to spend some time talking with each other before teaching as they too were very upset. Vergene reports abysmal physical conditions in the school - no books at all, paper only on the back of mimeographed sheets, only tiny stub pencils and not enough of these for each child. Although this is the worst-equipped school she had seen, it was better in spirit and teaching than the others. The live-in black maid arrived in mid-morning. She had come from her home in the Transkei, a homeland some 17 hours away by bus. She apparently goes back there once month to visit with her three children and family. The children are brought up by her mother. She has a room on the back of the manse. It makes me a bit nervous to have her here. I cannot understand our relative roles. She is enculturated to behave as a second-class citizen by my standards. I do not like being addressed as "master" ••••• Vergene went to a shoe store here and asked for something in her size. she was amazed to learn that shoes come in only one width, though in several lengths. Companies which had made shoes in several widths had left the country - an evidence of the flight of many businesses which do not want to sink with the unstable economy in South Africa. Maybe this one-width shoe is a · metaphor for South African government principles - no dissension, just conformity, even in foot width ••••• -15- .5o-t..d IPYM-ri__ cfU?a.Jaf ~ &crweZiJ - . i ,i,, ,• d_ ,urtt..e~ "[;:{ph~ .4-u:u::r .4~ u._ {!.tz..o-u.J!O ~. Yb, ~ ..1~ aA..(_ ~ "3 lo!tu.k fUIJ~· In the evening we visited Eddie Daniels, a former political prisoner with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island for 15 years. He spoke at great length about the vicious cruelty visited on prisoners by the sadistic, racist guards. It included not only beatings, but also starvation, humiliation,. naked searches and the like. Over and over again he had worked out plans for escape, none of which materialized. The authorities offered him early release if he promised not to speak or to espouse violence, but he never agreed, much as Mandela did not. They both said they would disavow violence when the ·government did the same. He almost idolized Nelson Mandela as a true leader with total integrity and compassion. Mandela was the most marvelous man he had ever met. He also spoke very highly of Walter Sisulu who was a prisoner on Robben Island at the same time. Both Mandela and Sisulu were great inspirations to Eddie. They helped him keep his sanity and earn two degrees in spite of all sorts of obstacles placed in his way by jailors. For a school drop-out, that was something. Cape Town- July 27, 1988 I visited with Syd Lucckett, a white Anglican priest in charge of social action and community work. Syd works closely with Desmond Tutu, the black bishop of all Anglicans in South Africa. The Anglican church is about 80% black. Many whites have left for quieter religious waters, often to escapist Pentecostal waters. Syd is definitely fearful that the future will be filled with violence. He believes that if the African National Congress is not given more recognition and if the government does not stop treating it as treasonous, the black revolution will be both polarized and fragmented and violence will escalate. I asked what he felt I should push when I got .I home and he said two things: economic isolation of South Africa, that is, sanctions, divestment -16- and dis-investment; and recognition of the ANC and support for it as a voice for most of black South Africa. He feels that economic collapse of the country is the only or last chance to end apartheid short of a blood bath. It may not be the whole answer, but perhaps enough whites will find their high standard of living cut out from under them and see no future in the siege mentality now dominant and start to work for radical change. He did see a danger in both the Anglican Church and the Dutch Reformed Mission Church ("coloured"). There is a tendency for members of those two communions to treat Tutu and Boesak as their Hessian troops, doing the struggling for them so they themselves won't have to get engaged. Cape Town - July 29, 1988 Stella Neilson, an elderly white retiree, took us to lunch at a white retirement club in an affluent part of Cape Town. We were tastefully . served a delicious three course meal for two rand each (about 80e) with all the fixings, and "coloured" waitresses. It included soup, fish, vegetables, potatoes, dessert and coffee. This was, naturally, largely subsidized by the government and taxes. Much of the talk at several tables near us, and Stella's as well, was about imminent trips to Europe, mostly England, and how difficult it now is. Stella could only afford to spend about 10,000 rand this trip. They were having subsidized meals while blacks, "coloureds" and Indians, for the most part, had little education support, miserable living conditions, and not enough food to eat. There was very, very little governmental money going to help them ••••• In the evening we went to a Presbyterian young adult group in a very fiice private home, my first and only Presbyterian connection in South Africa. I told them they would have to pay me for my talk and payment would be their discussion of their ',country, its good and bad points, its opportunities and its liabilities or problems, their understanding of their church's mission in such a country and the like. At the conclusion of my talk, there was rather reluctant discussion, mostly defensive at first. Eventually they began to warm up to the subject and even disagreed at times, a quite un-British thing to do. Some said nobody was detained except criminals. Nobody knew anyone who had been detained. Finally, one woman volunteered that her cousin had been and then others were emboldened to admit they too knew some who had been detained. Some identified the church's .mission solely with getting people into heaven ~: and proclaimed that if the blacks and 11 coloureds11 were only more loving the problems would go away. Others disagreed, but politely. One or two even said they often felt a sense of guilt, being white South Africans and doing nothing about justice issues. Some did challenge the assertions that whites were doing a great deal for blacks and 11 coloureds11 and the government was maki~g significant strides toward modifying apartheid. Some expressed concern about accountability of governmental forces and a desire to get more involved. When pressed, some in the group became a bit defensive. Two of those present had left the Central Methodist Mission because it had merged a white and a largely 11 coloured11 congregation. They did not like such boat rocking: After about 30 minutes the Scottish pastor said that this discussion was amazing and quite unique in their church, perhaps in the whole Presbyterian denomination. He said they never talked about politics or religion because such subjects led to uncomfortable disagreements. He was serious. Peace at any price. He did not actually advocate that, but was not about to challenge it or rock any boats. -18- r t- Few, if any, present had ever been in a black or "coloured" township. Luderitz, Na~ibia - August 6, 1988 We had a tour of the elegant burgermeister's house. Namibia had been a German colony until the First World War and since then it has been under South African control, illegally according to the United Nations for the past three decades. The house had been built from materials shipped in from Germany to this barren area and paid for by the diamonds discovered nearby. The white woman guide responded to our question "How many people live in Luderitz?" by saying: "Three hundred ••• and the blacks." Of course, there were several thousand blacks living in the most abject poverty and miserable conditions in areas just outside the main town. Durban - August 13, 1988 We went to a Methodist supplementary education center where volunteers were teaching black·zulus so they could pass examinations and get decent jobs. The state school education is most deficient for all but whites. Blacks need supplementary help to get ahead in life. The director explained such to us including the problems of pupils coming but not attending classes or participating only sporadically. We got the feeling that the white teachers and administrators really had no idea what the blacks wanted but only what they felt was best for the blacks. They did not listen and treated blacks as almost sub-species. They were paternalisti cally band-aiding the problems - well-meaning, but totally ineffective. Why didn't they see that the indifferent attendance might say something about how the blacks viewed what they were doing? Blacks surely take seriously programs given by folks who are Wrking to overthrow apartheid. Whites here feel a lot of progress is taking place in their program and the country. We feel they are engaged in wishful thinking. -19- Durban - August 14, 1988 We had dinner and chatted with Ruben and Rosemary Philip at the Blue Waters Hotel. He is rector of an Anglican church and she is director of an elementary school. Both were in the USA for education a few years back - he at Union Seminary in New York and she at NYU. Ruben is at the forefront of the liberation struggle in his area. He knew Steve Biko well. He described a funeral service he had for a political figure murdered by the police. The funeral was tear-gassed which made all attending become radicals. Rosemary said the fact that our table was integrated - Indian and white - was raising a lot of eyebrows. Blacks, Indians and whites were in the dining room, but ours was the only integrated table. Cape Town - August 24, 1988 We attended a Thanksgiving service focussing on Nelson Mandela and his apparent recovery from tuberculosis. The service was in the Bellville Dutch R~formed Mission Church whose pastor is Alan Boesak. The church was nearly full for this evening service with many University of the Western Cape students in attendance. There was a lot of singing - congregational, choral anthems, small singing groups, solos. We heard poems and litanies and the clergy birthday letter which Charles Villa-Vicencio read. There was scripture, candle lighting and a sermon. Police informers were definitely present and the place was undoubtedly bugged as police, in casspirs, were a block away listening. Boesak made a big joke out of the whole bugging thing. The very enthusiastic service lasted from 7:30 until 10:15 pm ••••• -20- Johannesburg - August 25, 1988 At Khotso House (Peace House) the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches in downtown Johannesburg, we spent some time with a woman who was with the Black Sash, an organization of white women who are deeply involved in the struggle for justice. Our interview was frequently interrupted by black trainees or subordinates or phone calls dealing with employment, housing, pensions, firings and the like. Black Sash, in part, serves a paralegal function. The phones were ringing off their hooks. Beulah was also training a young black woman to work in Soweto Black Sash advice offices. We spent time with Venita of the Detainee Dependents Conference, a group which organizes support groups for families of detainees, provides financial help to them and to the ex-detainees as they seek employment. Johannesburg - August 26, 1988 We went to a very moving worship service at Khotso House, the way they start every day. A West German woman, who was leaving after a period working for the Council of Churches, led the service. There was much inspirational singing and prayer. Wesley Mabuza, whom we had heard at the Freedom Charter Conference in Cape Town, participated ••••• At the Central Methodist Church we spent some time with David Newby, Associate Pastor, much of whose responsibility is helping families who are about to be thrown out on the streets because they, black folks, are living in areas designated as white under the Group Areas Act. White landlords arrange to have blacks evicted by the police so they can rent to other blacks at four to five times the rent legally set. Then blacks, in order to pay the rent, have four or five families live in an apartment meant for one family. -21- Philip, a black staff member at Central Methodist, drove us around Soweto, showing us both areas of fairly decent housing and squatter camps. Garbage was all over, piled high at street side. We stopped at Philip's uncle's house only to find the uncle maudlin drunk. Philip passed some money to his aunt. At a Methodist Church we listened to Otto, a district superintendent, who spent a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He dealt with such Soweto problems as education, police harrassment and public services. One night at 2:00 a.m. the police put sneezing powder in his church, making it unusable for some days. Otto is working on reconciliation between black groups so they can present a united front in the struggle for justice. That seems almost impossible as the black community is so fragmented. The government has been quite successful in applying Hitler's "divide and conquer" policy to blacks. Johannesburg- August 27, 1988 We drove to Pretoria to see the Voortrekker Museum and Monument commemorating the Great Trek of 1838 when many Afrikaners were dispossessed by· British who wanted the Cape area for themselves. The Trek led the Afrikaners to wild back-country. There are many stories of heroic bravery and the conquest of Zulus and others when the whites were vastly outnumbered. This trek served much the same purpose as the Exodus did for Israel and cemented the Afrikaner belief that God was on their side, had chosen them as the divinely covenanted people to rule South Africa. The monument is a Mecca or Kabala for Afrikaners. It is huge, massive, bulky, insensitive, the antithesis of delicacy and subtlety. It is to be entered with hats off, feet shod and in silence the symbol of state religion gone to an extreme. It gave us a feeling for the arrogant, stolid, stubborn Pharisaism of the Afrikaner ••••• -22- Soweto - August 28, 1988 We picked up our black guide, Mncedisa Mbambisa where he lived illegally in a somewhat run-down house in a posh all~white area. With him live several blacks, including, from time to time, some on the run from the police who want to detain them. We went through Kliptown, one of the townships of Soweto. (Incidentally, Soweto stands for South West Townships of Johannesburg.) The Freedom Charter was put together and signed in Kliptown in 1955. There we saw single-sex hostels for Zulu men who live in perfectly terrible conditions, work in Johannesburg and visit their "homelands" one month a year. Kliptown floods badly when the river rises. We visited several squatters' shacks and entered a couple. They had dirt floors, no privacy and were vastly over crowded. We attended the .Methodist Church of which Paul Verryn is pastor, the first white pastor in black Soweto. There was much singing with a huge black man with an equally huge voice leading. Scripture and prayers were in English, Afrikaans, Sosotho, Zulu, and Xhosa. Fourteen baptisms (7 infants, 6 children, and 1 adult) took place. Five or six couples were restored to membership after confessing their sins (meaning: having children outside of wedlock). Two new members were received. One repentant sinner came forward. After the sermon a wedding was included and communion. Paul asked me to pronounce the benediction and assist in the administration of the communion. After service we and two other whites were invited to Paul's home for tea. Paul houses 5- 10 former detainees who cannot go to their homes for fear of assault or mutdet by the police. They talked with us for some time about their experiences in detention. One was a youngster whose detention came when he was eleven years old. -23- The five of us, four whites and Mncedisa, drove around Soweto the rest of the day. We went in one 1 & 1/2 room house (small rooms at that) in which 28 people lived. The heating in many homes was very dangerous and almost every day somebody in Soweto suffocates or dies in fire. We visited a single-sex hostel where great numbers of men were sitting, drinking and entertaining women who, obviously, were not their wives. The hostels were filthy and dingy with little or no light. The toilets, in a separate building, were completely clogged up and unusable. The men relieved themselves in the open. It was all very smelly, depressing and discouraging. The men were either zombies or angry complainers. Many asked us to tell the outside world what their living conditions were. i. Never think they don't know any better and are satisfied with how they are forced to live. We visited a tent squatter camp behind a Roman Catholic Church. Vincent, a very bright, young black explained the history of the camp. Again, it was very overcrowded and dirty. Two or three families lived in each tent. Hordes of children roamed around on the barren ground outside the tents, barely clad in cold weather, smiling, friendly, dirty, with runny noses. The residents want houses, but to get them they would have to bribe corrupt councilors who are "elected", but only after a careful screening by the government to see that all are Quislings. Mncedisa told of the antagonism between those in single-sex hostels and the rest of the township divide and conquer again. When the school boycotts took place in 1976 the township people went on strike, but the men in the hostels did not join as they had no interest in schools and wanted to get their pay. Then, during the strike, there were wild, violent clashes between blacks. This the government publicized to convince the whites and the world that blacks were irresponsible and would bring chaos if given the vote and control of their own destinies. -24- We visited Sylvia, whose very bright son was killed by the police for being filmed for the television show "Children of Apartheid" and for mailing fliers related to the struggle. At his funeral police teargass~d the entire area. We also visited the family of the best friend of Sylvia's son, a young man now out of the country for his own safety. Henry, his father, had been an ANC leader with Mandela and others. He was one of the organizers of the Freedom Charter Conference in 1955. We drove back to Johannesburg after dark, a very frightening experience. The streets have potholes like bomb craters. They are, of course, not paved. There is sewage in them. There are no sidewalks and hundreds of people, including very small children, walk both on the sides of the streets and in the middle of them. Intersections have no stop signs or traffic lights and cars play chicken at the crossroads. Drunks staggereverywhere. Headlights are all on bright beam. I was exceedingly glad to get out of Soweto with no accidents. Johannesburg - August 30, 1988 At Khotso House we spent time with Eddie Makue, a leader of the Justice and Reconciliation Department. He spoke about the philosophy, structure, funding, troubles with the government, and general programming of the department. He also told us about work with and for rural workers, covenant groups which relate groups in South Africa to support communities in other countries, about capital punishment, trial monitoring, investigations of abuses and trials and sanctuary for ex-detainees, all of which his department works on. While we were there, he got a call from a contact person whd told him one of their people had died in jail. The conversation was certainly bugged so it was cryptic, but Eddie told us it took no great expertise to understand that the man had been killed by his jailers. -25- r:t. 1 :11 •.. We have been impressed by the South African I Council of Churches. It is really doing 1: · phenomenal work at the cutting edge of the gospel 1 1! in South Africa. We have seen nothing faintly ' like it in American Councils of Churches. Of course, the SACC is able to do what it does both because its workers are willing to sacrifice and even be detained, always living on the precipice of a very costly faith and because the vast majority of its funding comes from abroad. White congregants of its member churches would not fund its activities and black congregants are generally very poor. It really puts a liberation theology into practice and does all it can to be an advocate for and servant of the poor and oppressed even when that mission and ministry comes at very great cost. During the afternoon we went to a trial of metal wo·rkers unionists at the court house. This trial is based on the legal description of treason which includes almost anything which tries to change or eliminate apartheid. The court rooms had sever~! very young police with rifles and sub-machine guns openly displayed. Johannesburg -August 31, 1988 We went to the Central Methodist Church for lunch at their canteen, a sort of farewell visit. There Paul Verryn and David Newby advised us that a press conference was in session at which SACC leaders were dealing with the bombing of Khotso House at 1:30 that morning. This was news to us. We had been in Khotso House less than 12 hours before it was destroyed. Frank Chikane and Peter Storey, present and past SACC general secretaries, spoke about the bombing, promising that the work of the SACC would continue and units would be housed in Johannesburg churches temporarily. (Later we have learned that, because such units are in the Central Methodist Church, that church has been raided many times by police. Services have been interrupted and bomb threats sent frequently). -26- The bomb which destroyed Khotso House was in a car parked in the garage underneath the building. One security man was injured and 15-18 others in the neighborhood were wounded, mostly by flying glass. The first two floors of the bui~ding were destroyed and it seemed quite likely that the whole building was so damaged structurally that it could not be restored for use. The lift was blown through the roof. Cleaners, fortunately, were on upper stories and so were unhurt. The lobby and building face were totally destroyed. No one can prove who did the bombing because it is the police who investigate and they will be careful never to find out the culprit. Later in the day we called Ellen Mothopeng and another woman whom we had met at Khotso House to express our sorrow and condolences. Both of them were so grateful for our concern, the sort of thing which apparently is seldom expressed. We spoke to Eddie Makue and Venita of the Detainee Dependent Conference. Both were shaken and sad, but determined not to be intimidated. They plan to carry on their work. Paul Verryn had been in Khotso House and left the parking garage only 10-15 minutes before the bomb exploded. We went to a Five Freedoms meeting on the recent banning of the End Conscription Campaign group. Actually, that was so overshadowed by the Khotso House bombing that it seemed quite pedestrian and anti-climactic. ******** I hope these excerpts from my diary/journal will move you to take a step in support of fellow Christians who are suffering so much in their struggle for justice and freedom in an environment hostile to the gospel. We are one body in Christ and when one part of the body is suffering, we all suffer. Praying for and writing to Christians in South Africa is -27- immensely encouraging to them. Sending money to worthwhile projects (and some that claim to be worthwhile are not necessarily so) is very helpful. Working on our own American problems of racial injustice and oppression is also encouraging to South Africans who sometimes see us as models (either good or bad models). And finally, there are some actions we might urge on our government and businesses which most South African Christians engaged in the struggle feel would put economic pressure on the Botha government to move toward the abolition of the evil and un-Christian apartheid system. -28-