Chapter 7 Chapter 7 The Freedom Struggle in Southern Africa: The Role of the Norwegian Churches 1948-1994 Berit Hagen Agay I visited South Africa for the first time, as a student, in 1986. On 17 May, Norway's Constitution Day, I went to the Norwegian Seamen's Mission Church in Durban to take part in the celebrations. A lot of people were gathered, mostly descendants of Norwegian traders and missionaries who arrived in South Africa more than a century ago. Others were newcomers working for The Norwegian Missionary Society for a short period. My host was one of these, a Norwegian pastor working for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa. Some months earlier he had, as one of very few Lutherans, signed the Kairos Document, and he was known to be a committed anti-apartheid activist. He had introduced me to some of his South African friends, people whose Christian faith had inspired them to take an active part in the struggle against the racist regime. I was now looking forward to meeting Norwegians living in the Durban area, hoping to find more of these dedicated freedom-fighters. After a while, an elderly lady came towards me and gave me a small leaflet which read "Let us pray that Mandela must be kept in prison until he is saved". I was taken by surprise, and asked what it meant. Her reply was: "Don't you know that Mandela is a Communist and a terrorist and that the ANC is fighting against all Christians?" When I carefully tried to dispute this, I was for the first time in my life told I could not be a true Christian. On 17 May, six years later, I was sitting in the Oslo Cathedral listening to the "terrorist" standing at the pulpit reading from the Bible. Nelson Mandela thanked all those whose prayers had kept him alive during the long years in prison, and he told us how God had given him and his fellow prisoners strength to continue the struggle even in the darkest hours. I was reminded of the words of the lady in the Norwegian Seamen's Mission Church. The history of the Norwegian Churches' attitude towards the struggle for freedom and democracy in Southern Africa embraces both the radical and ANC-friendly missionary and the Christian lady in Durban who gave the impression of supporting the policy of apartheid. It is also a story about those who in 1992 were welcoming Mandela to Oslo, singing Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika and praying together with him in the Cathedral. Among them were bishops and prominent church leaders, but most of the congregation were ordinary lay- people. Some of them had been involved in solidarity work for decades, and at last, Mandela was there right in front of them, alive and smiling.1 Introduction The Church of Norway was one of the main protagonists in Norway for the liberation of Namibia and South Africa. The late Foreign Minister Knut Frydenlund put it like this: Without the work performed by the (Church of Norway) Council of Ecumenical and International Relations, we would never have been able to win Parliament's approval of the support for the liberation struggle in Southern Africa. The church's attitude has been decisive in forming a favourable opinion.2 Almost NOK 250 million (approx. USD 35 million) was given by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the church who transferred it to antiapartheid organisations and individuals within Namibia and South Africa. How was this possible? Why did the church act as a channel for government money? Was it on the instructions of the Norwegian government or did the church itself ask to perform this task? If the latter, why was the Church of Norway so concerned about the liberation struggle in such a distant part of the world? This chapter will try to answer these questions. We will describe how the Norwegian churches got involved in Southern Africa and outline their main activities in the region from when the apartheid regime came to power in South Africa in 1948 and up to the elections of 1994. There are at least four starting-points for a history of church relations between Norway and Southern Africa: 1. Norwegian settlers and white Lutherans Descendants of Norwegian traders and missionaries make up a small congregation in the Durban area. In 1880 they established the St. Olav church in Durban, a so-called "white" Lutheran church.3 Many of the members of this 1 In the interest of objectivity, I wish to state here that I was employed by the Council on Ecumenical and International Relations (CEIR) from 1987 1997, working on Southern African affairs, human rights and development education I have also been a board member of the Norwegian Ecumenical Council for Southern Africa (NEKSA) and the Norwegian Council for Southern Africa. 2 Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Aiok. Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1981. 3 Literature about St. Olav Church and Norwegian settlers: B.J.T. Leverto: The Natal Norwegian Centenary, 1882-1982. Latertr 1982; F.M. Lear: St. Olav Lutheran Church 1880-1980. Durban, 1980. church sympathised with the policy of the Nationalist Government after 1948. When the St. Olav church in 1975 insisted on not joining the newly established national Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (ELCSA), the Church of Norway was presented with a delicate problem, because the bishop of Oslo had for many years been the spiritual supervisor of the St. Olav church. Bishop Andreas Aarflot visited the congregation in 1985 and tried, in vain, to persuade its members to join their fellow black Lutherans.4 The St. Olav congregation was split a while later, and those in favour of joining ELCSA established the new congregation St. Michael. The Church of Norway also got involved in the difficulties the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) experienced with the white Lutherans in South Africa and Namibia. The two bishops Gunnar Lislerud and Andreas Aarflot, together with the Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations secretary-general Gunnar St~lsett (secretary-general of LWF from 1985-94), were all personally involved in LWF's effort to motivate the white churches to denounce apartheid as a sin, and to merge with the nonracist Lutheran churches in South Africa and Namibia. 2. Norwegian missions and ELCSA The Norwegian Pentecostals established mission work in Swaziland, Mozambique and South Africa in the early 20th century. The Norwegian Lutheran Mission5 has for many decades been working in Tanzania and the Methodist Church in Angola and Mozambique. Since these missions got involved in the political liberation struggle, only to a small degree, they will not be further discussed here. Instead, we will look at the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) which started its work in 1844 in the Zulu kingdom, and was active in South Africa to 1997. This society is an independent organisation but defines itself as working on behalf of the Church of Norway. Striking similarities are to be found between the Lutheran missionary practice and the creation of daughter churches according to race by the Dutch Reformed Churches. It is argued that the main reason why the Lutheran churches were not multi-racial was that the missionaries wanted to create national churches (so-called people's churches) which they were familiar with from Europe. But in Africa a 'nation' was understood by the missionaries as an ethnic group living in one limited area, and not a state created by colonial governments. This Lutheran missionary practice differs from that of the English- speaking churches 4 A. Aarflofts letter to St. Olav Church of 3 July 1986: 'I feel compelled to suspend my relations to St. Olav congregation until you have found a solution regarding your relationship with ELCSA. As I tried to tell you during my visit, it seems odd that as a bishop of the Church of Norway, I shall enjoy full spiritual fellowship with our Lutheran sister church in South Africa, and at the same time keep up a spiritual supervision of a congregation that has virtually backed away from such full spiritual fellowship with the same church.' CEIR- archives. 5 Norsk Luthersk Misjonssamband. where all converts became members of the same church irrespective of race (due to the colonial government's policy of territorial race segregation, the local congregation however normally consisted of only one ethnic group). At the end of the 1950s the European missionaries in South Africa took the initiative to try and establish a Lutheran co-operation on a national level between the different mission churches and the white churches. The first (out of five) regional Lutheran churches in South Africa was established in Natal in 1960 (Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa-South East Region), and the Norwegian Zulu Synod was integrated in it. None of the white churches in Natal joined the new church. In 1975 the regional churches merged into the national Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa (ELCSA). But still no white churches wished to mix with black Lutherans.6 The role of the Norwegian missionaries in the establishing of Lutheran churches is an interesting subject. Even if the missionaries never intended to create race-segregated churches, this was the result Unfortunately, the space available does not allow us to elaborate on this subject. The Lutheran churches' attitude to apartheid is tangled and difficult, both due to the complex church structure, the division between white and black Lutherans, and not least the Lutheran teaching of the Two Kingdoms. Traditionally Lutherans have been very reluctant in involving the Church in politics, holding this should be left in the hands of the secular authorities.