NOT TO BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION

CHRIST THE KING - SOPHIATOWN INAUGURAL

NAUGHT FOR YOUR COMFORT LECTURE

7™ AUGUST 2004

INTRODUCTION

What a great honour this is which you are bestowing on me, perhaps one of the greatest I have received. Thank you. Obviously there are many who deserve it more.

You won't be surprised that I wax somewhat nostalgic. I attended Madibane High School in Western Native Township which became Western Coloured Township to satisfy the mad obsession that the Nationalists, like Hitler, had with race. Like many others I commuted daily between my home in Krugersdorp to Westbury. It was a great relief when I got a place in the Fathers' Hostel next door to the Priory at 74 Meyer Street, right by the only swimming pool for the teeming population of Kofifi. Like many others I was to fall under the spell of those remarkable men, none more remarkable than Father Trevor Huddleston.

In many ways those who were what Father Huddleston called "creatures", a veritable who's who of South Africa. It was people like Michael Rantho, Walter Makhulu Archbishop Emeritus of Central Africa, Norman Montjane to whom Trevor Huddleston's book "Naught for your Comfort" was dedicated, a book which like Alan Paton's "Cry the Beloved Country" shocked the world to an awareness of apartheid's dastardly awfulness - it was people like your own Father Mashikane Montjane who went to study at Leeds and did us proud when he won a boxing title there, so be careful, don't underestimate him (his left hook is lethal). You all, of course, know that Hugh Masekela got his first trumpet from Trevor Huddleston who had got it from that Jazz great, Louis Satchmo Armstrong. I used to help wash up in the Fathers' kitchen in exchange for my supper and the chef was Sally Motlana's father. She was helped through University by the Community of the Resurrection and what a splendid investment in a wonderful woman. I could go on and on.

Yes, we came under his spell. We learned a little bit that we were of infinite worth because we were created in God's image. I was a server in Christ the King and after the Sunday High Mass, quite an institution. Father Dominic Whitnall who is still alive in Mirfield, would have me man a stall just outside here to sell holy books, rosaries and crucifixes. Father Keith Davie tried to teach rne Greek and then Latin but ultimately had to admit defeat. I just couldn't make it. I hope he was somewhat consoled when he conducted my retreat for my ordination to the diaconate in 1960.

 

Trevor Huddleston was passionate in his commitment to justice and spoke out fearlessly to oppose the awfulness of apartheid and especially the destruction of Sophiatown. He was deeply prayerful and we learned by example more than precept that the spiritual was utterly crucial and indispensable for an authentic Christian life. It was because he and his Community prayed and encountered God there that they were constrained to seek to encounter God in the neighbour especially the weak, the vulnerable and voiceless. Father Huddleston was a close associate of Oliver Tambo and Madiba and was present at the signing of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown. No wonder he was awarded the Isi twalandwe.

I was quite amazed that someone so important and so busy could have taken the time to visit me so regularly when I was hospitalized with TB for 20 months. I was but an unimportant township urchin. That interest in a nonentity like me taught me profound lessons about the importance of each person lessons I hope that helped to shape my own ministry. I learned that this was the man who had swept past my mother and me when I was about nine or ten and had doffed his hat to my mother, a black domestic worker, doing something that was so thoroughly un-South African in those days. That was a gesture that made an indelible impression on me — I was surprised how much it had impressed me when I looked back in my later life.

 

The Community of the Resurrection were important to me also because I was trained for the priesthood by them at St Peter's and was influenced by such as Father Timothy Stanton who amazed us by his remarkable humility. He, a white man and vice principal, took our breath away by regularly joining us in doing menial tasks such as polishing the floor of the College chapel.

On the eve of my ordination to the priesthood in December 1961 I accompanied the new Bishop of Johannesburg, Leslie Stradling who performed the last confirmation in the Church of Christ the King. I was shocked to see what apartheid had done to our vibrant ommunity. Houses were razed to the ground as if Sophiatown had been bombed. The bustling township was no more. Triomf, a white suburb, was to be built and as if to rub salt into our wounds they retained the old Sophiatown street names. Our Church, indeed our country owes the Community of the Resurrection an immense debt of gratitude.

I should add that Father Huddleston lent me some of the money I needed to pay Leah's lobola -so the CR have a share in her, mercifully they are celibate.

Trevor Huddleston was unrelenting in his fight against apartheid. He became the President of the International Anti-Apartheid Movement. If anyone person can be credited with ensuring that apartheid was on the world's agenda then that one person was undoubtedly Trevor Huddleston. He always used to say he would not die before apartheid died and he was proved so right when he attended the inauguration of his friend Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected President of a free South Africa in 1994.

Our skills were honed in that anti-apartheid struggle - as a Church we declared that the Kingdom of God required a free and democratic South Africa where everyone counted. We were very much in theagainst mode and apartheid was an obvious enemy out there that galvanised and united us all. Now we have achieved our goal - a free democratic, non-racial, non-sexist South Africa.

Do you know something? It is a great deal easier to be against than to be for. I said God was smart to let me retire when we made the transition from repression to democracy, from being in the against mode, to the for mode.

The Church is always the agent of the Kingdom. No political dispensation however ideal can be coterminous with that Kingdom. There is always a "not yet" aspect. Now the Church is no longer the opponent of the Government. It must work in solidarity with the Government but it must not be co-opted. It must retain a critical distance so that it can always say, "Thus saith the Lord", without having its patriotism and loyalty to South Africa called in question.

We must commend the Government for all the good that it has achieved and there is much to be thankful for. We have a level of stability, «despite all the crime, that is the envy of other lands. Our President is held in high esteem in the councils of the world. What a metamorphosis for a country that was a universal pariah now to be taking the lead with NEPAD and in the African Union. We are going to host the African Parliament, a huge feather in our cap. The repulsive caterpillar has become the beautiful, attractive butterfly.

You see we are all fallible even the best of us. We are all tempted to abuse power whether in Government, civil society, indeed even in the church. The Church should thus be vigilant to call attention to those temptations to abuse power, to become corrupt, the temptations of nepotism. We are answerable ultimately to God. We have all left the house of apartheid's bondage. Some, an elite few, have actually crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. Others, too many, still wallow in the wilderness of degrading, dehumanising poverty, far too many still live in squalor and deprivation. Much has been done. People have clean water and electricity who never had these before but we are sitting on a powder keg because the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and some of the very rich are now black.

The Church must always be there for the poor, the vulnerable, who will always be with us. We cannot, we dare not, wait on government to do everything. It is possible for us to be generous and compassionate. We can share, caring for and sharing with others. Concern for others is the best form of self-interest. Many of us can adopt at least one poor family as I suggested at Walter Sisulu's funeral. We can commit R100 - R200 to one family per month. We can, some of us, adopt a child from a poor family to pay their school fees. Let us do it whilst we can. We could be overwhelmed by an uprising of the poor and then we will have nothing to share. Let us put a smile on God's face.

Our land is being devastated by AIDs, by crime and corruption. How wonderful that so many involved in the anti-HIV/AIDs campaign are white when most of the victims are black. But we can make our churches and neighbourhoods more hospitable to those living with AIDs. Let us oppose stigmatization with all the strength we can muster.

We should be involved in the moral regeneration of our nation. We should recapture the spirit of reverence for human life. Let us stand up against criminals and hijackers, against those involved in 'white collar' crime. We should seek to fill our people with a love for our land, a pride in our beautiful land so that we will not pollute and litter. To pollute and litter is a sin and a crime. We should keep all of us on our toes. Only the best is good enough for us, for South Africa.

Apartheid forced the different denominations and indeed the different faith communities to co­operate in the face of a common foe. Now that that foe has been vanquished we have tended to retreat into our denominational ghettos and are no longer as keen as formerly to engage in interfaith dialogue and co-operation. The developments in the Middle East have affected especially the relations between Muslim and Jew to the detriment of our land. We should be keen to promote interchurch and interfaith dialogue and co-operation.

A distressing phenomenon in our country is the rise of xenophobia. Understandably locals may resent competition for such scarce commodities as jobs and accommodation, but it can never justify xenophobia. Can we have forgotten so soon just how other African countries bore the brunt of the wrath of SADF cross-border hot pursuit attacks? Can we have forgotten how poor countries gave refuge and asylum to our exiles and accommodated our liberation movements at very great cost to themselves? We as Church must speak out against this evil. Yes, of course some of these asylum seekers and refugees may be criminals and drug dealers, but surely we know how painful it is to suffer under stereotypes. Not all Nigerians are drug peddlers. After all Yebo Gogo is a Nigerian.

When I was Chairperson of the TRC, I was appalled by a certain phenomenon. It did seem as if Ngunis ruled this land. I was Xhosa, the Chairs of the Human Rights Commission then, of the Electoral Commission, of the Gender Commission, the then Public Protector and the National Director of Prosecutions were all Nguni. Just count the number of Nguni speaking people in the Cabinet. We need to be very wary. The genocide in Rwanda was because the Tutsi had been top dogs over the Hutu most of the time. Nigeria is shaken by ethnic strife, and it is also behind the atrocities in Darfur in the Sudan where Arab is pitted so sadly against African.

 

Much of the politics in Kenya is based on tribal affiliation. In Zimbabwe Ndebele and Shona have tended to belong to different political formations. We should be careful that we are not stoking resentment that could explode one day. South Africa should not become a kind of Nguniocracy. We should take seriously half facetious observations such as "Before I was not white enough; now 1 am not black enough". Many a truth has been said in jest. We should beware of a simmering resentment that could explode one day.

Yes, because we are proud of much that our Government has done and is pledged to do that we should hold them to high standards all round. We must question the appropriateness of spending as much as we are going to on arms. We have no real external enemy. Our real enemies are internal - poverty crime, disease and corruption. Those pose a far more serious threat to our land than any external enemy on the horizon.

 

What is important is to stress that a vibrant democracy is one where vigorous debate, dissent, disagreements and discussion are welcomed. No one has a monopoly of wisdom and ability. We must avoid kow towing sycophancy like the plague. If policies are good then they can withstand scrutiny and dissent. No one is infallible. We must encourage those who ask awkward questions "but why" for our rulers are our rulers because we chose them and they are accountable to us. We used to say to the apartheid rulers, "You are not God". No government can be Cod. We should play the ball and not the man/woman. My father liked to say, "Improve your argument, don't raise your voice". Those whom we elected and whom we support should have the self assurance, not the arrogance, of being open to scrutiny and debate and especially be able to admit they are wrong when they are.

We should require that our government pursues policies of which we can be proud and which we will be ready to defend stoutly. Our policies towards Zimbabwe are not in that category.

South Africa can become a scintillating success. We are, extraordinarily, even now a symbol of
hope for many countries hag-ridden by conflict. Our reasonably peaceful transition and our
pursuit of forgiveness and reconciliation are inspiring other lands to emulate us. We can, we
must, succeed for the sake of God's world and the Church as God's agent must be able to say
prophetically, "Thus saith the Lord". :

END