This conference is going to be interesting, especially from the South African side, since I think many/most of the participants are white. Perhaps the concept of "post-colonial church" is a little too "out there" for most South Africans, where "post-Apartheid" is closer to home, but it's still a case where from the white side the idea is, "Apartheid is over and racism is no more - just get over it already." And from the black side it's, "White people haven't a clue what it was like, and what it continues to be like." And then there's everyone else (Coloured, Indian, Asian, etc) who aren't in the white-black polemic, and can easily be excluded from this debate (and this is an over-simplification, of course).
The 3 most significant developments in South African over the last year or so have been:
- The xenophobic attacks in March last year, which have more to do with mounting anger over a lack of service delivery than with an actual hatred of foreigners, but people can't do anything about service delivery whereas they can do something about foreigners. This anger can only be dealt with by creating what the ANC takes as its mantra: "A better life for all."
- Thabo Mbeki being ousted 6 months from the end of his presidency, amidst accusations of lack of due process, and political interference in the prosecution of Jacob Zuma.
- Jacob Zuma becoming the new South African president (he's due to give his State-of-the-Nation address today) in April this year. He has many challenges ahead of him, not least of which are cultural differences between his culture (he has multiple wives, for instance) and others.
Against this landscape the church carries on. Christians from my own background (white, English-speaking South African) largely, from a theological perspective, haven't a clue what to do with the (quite correct) critique of what Apartheid brings against how the Bible was read and applied; the white Afrikaans churches are in the most pain because they're on the forefront of this, while the English-speaking churches sit more in the "We didn't really know what was happening and it didn't really happen to us so we'll just go on and worship God, because that's what really important anyway".
South African is so interesting because it's a mix of modernism, postmodernism and a kind of pre-modern tribalism, with no clear delineations between them. Most white South Africans are modern/late modern with an increasing number who live in a postmodern culture. The influences are very American and very European, much more so than local non-Western influences (again over-simplifying, but fairly accurate). (This is particularly the case with theology - I can name one well-read South African theologian - David Bosch. The good theology in SA (amongst much crap) comes from the publishing houses of the West). Living at Nieu Communities last year in Pretoria with Americans was interesting, because it showed me that there's about 6 month to a 2 year gap between what happens culturally in the US (like new language and new music) and when it makes it to South Africa (like Jason Mraz, who made it biggish a while back in the States, but only early this year got airplay in South Africa).
Which brings us back to Amahoro. Everyone is living and working in their own contexts, and asking variations on the theme of "How can I change things?" or even "How can I (and my church) make it to next month?" Addressing questions of post-colonialism means thinking structurally, which is a big stretch. My favourite Amahoro talk was Kenzo Mabiala's "Towards an African post-colonial theology" which, if that's all that we get to this conference, that will be enough.
My own take on the South Africans and Africans at Amahoro is that the whities are too postmodern to care about post-colonial, and everyone else is too communal to think structurally. Which is exactly what makes it fun!
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Comments
Indeed!
Well said, Arnau - we do indeed need to change the heart that constructed this ideology. And we also need to be aware of the ways that the lived ideology can be both overt and covert.
I still meet people who are overt racists (and who - usually - keep that a bit more hidden in public). The real problem is covert racism, which is all about being a part of an oppressive ideology, while at the same time denying that me, personally, am oppressing anyone.
RACISM = SIN! Yes! South Africans have largely dealt with overt racism at the level of expressed language, yet done very little to deal with covert racism, because that means questioning our base assumptions and our hearts - which is a difficult journey.
Your thoughts? How do we go about this?
3 risks to reformation reconciliation and transformation
Roger
Thanks for these thoughts.
Mine are on:
http://www.emergingafrica.info/blog/2009/06/03/3-risks-reformation-recon...
Not sure I follow
Thanks for the comment Arnau. Are you saying that Apartheid and racism are separate, and we should address the one and not the other? And you are saying that since Apartheid is a political issue, Christians shouldn't get involved on that level?
I couldn't disagree more! Racism is what led to Apartheid; we can't address racism without addressing Apartheid - the two are irrevocably and irreversibly intertwined. Attempting to address one while ignoring the other is like bringing mielies to a braai but expecting to eat steak!
I'm worried that if we relegate Apartheid to the realm of "politics" and then say, "Christianity is more about ethics than politics," we end up drawing a false separation in our mode of engagement with others. What does that do to the Kingdom of G-d, which is about everything which happens on earth? Let's not fall into the same simple separation between the public realm of politics and the private realm of personal ethics, and only allow Christianity to affect the latter.
For us Christians, it's not just racism that's the problem which needs addressing. It's the blinkered presuppositions that allowed white South African Christianity to re-cast the Bible (and Jesus) in such a way as to support domination and prejudice (while believing that was what G-d called for) - which then led to institutional racism. In short, our hermeneutics need to be radically re-examined, as does the institution of the Church.
Give me back my bicycle!
I hear what you're saying about the wife-beating issue, Arnau - we can force people to obey laws, but we can't legislate a change of heart. So while we do want to make just laws which protect people (the role of the State) we also want to do what we can to facilitate heart-transformation (and religion is one means of this).
It's absolutely important to address racism, as it was a contributing factor to Apartheid, and it also indoctrinated deep beliefs about the "other" ("die swart gevaar") which needs to be undone, and the church is well-placed to do this. And while we're addressing the inner reality of heart transformation away from racism (and towards something else), we also have to address what is the outer reality for those people that suffered as a consequence of that racism (i.e. the large amounts of poverty-stricken people in South Africa). Otherwise our talk is cheap!
To put it another way, it's not enough for white people to repent of racism; we also need to realise that the Group Areas Act, although not legislated any more, still controls our country - and we can allow ourselves to come up with creative, Kingdom-bringing ways of reconciliation.
Transformation isn't simply an inward reality, but an outward one too. The white man also could have returned the bicycle - and then what? Maybe the best ending to the story is the he gives the bicycle back, and then says, "Let's work together to build a society where both of our children can have bicycles."
More than just racism
Apartheid was not simply a political ideology, but also a Christian one. Christian theology allowed for the ideological underpinnings of Apartheid. And so if we are to enter a meaningful examination of what Apartheid teaches us, we need to look at how it was that good, G-d fearing Christians (who read their Bibles every day and went to church every week) were able to create a narrative which favoured them and relegated others to the role of servant/slave, and so allowed for systemic oppression to be legislated (and then, by and large, did nothing to critique that system, because they simply did not believe there was anything wrong with it).
The process of re-casting of Scripture and of G-d in such a way which led to an evil system also needs to be understood, and is the third part of meaningfully engaging with the post-Apartheid critique (Part 1: racism, and a change of heart. Part 2: living out that change of heart in symbolic ways which change the lived reality for the previously disadvantaged and poverty-stricken. Part 3: hermeneutics).
This is what you allude to when you ask the question, "What does the Bible say about discriminating against someone who is from another race group than myself?" Well, it was precisely that kind of question which, with slightly different words and with a slightly different emphasis, allowed for the oppression of people in the first place! In other words, Apartheid-era Christians were using the Bible to justify discrimination against other races!
So to even ask the question, "What does the Bible say?" presupposes that we've already asked the question, "And how did we get it wrong in the first place?" which then presupposes that we're willing to do some work to understand the steps that led to that place. In understanding those steps, we open up a space for a new understanding of G-d, and in how things went wrong in the first place, and we might learn a bit about ourselves and our culture along the way.
Thank you for clarifying what you mean - I hope you feel I understand you better now? Apartheid will continue to be talked about in the political sphere, and rightly so. Apartheid needs to be talked about in church - but I've heard very little of it, and I can't imagine that most pastors want to go there, because it's a touchy subject and elicits instant defensiveness in a congregation, and therefore closes down the opportunity for learning.
I wonder if a better question to ask than "How would you react if someone from a different race group walked into the church?" is "Why don't I visit the church of a different race and form friendships with the 'other' so that instead of welcoming 'them' into 'our' circle, I take the courageous first step of being a visitor in an unknown space?" This is where Christianity has, I believe, the most potential for reconciliation out of all factions, religions and political groups in South Africa, because what is shared between race groups is the love of Jesus, and the knowledge that we are all part of G-d's family.
Familiar?
Hi Arnau
That's why you're familiar - when I looked at your blog I thought it looked a lot like Cobus's first blog - turns out you're his Dad! It's a pleasure to meet you. Cobus and I were both at Amahoro this week, and it was fantastic. Something that came through strongly is the need for reconciliation between different generations of white South Africans because of Apartheid. You can download the talks (as well as a testimony from an ex member of Koevoet in a panel discussion with Adriaan Vlok) here.
I hope you will respond to my replies to your comment, so that I know you feel heard.
Post-apartheid and post-colonialism
Roger,
I think you give a good summary of the situation we find ourselves in, though I disagree with some of the details, especially on the "English-speaking churches".
While those churches use English at their synods and other such formal gatherings, most of their members are not English-speaking, and for most English is a second language.
But I know what you mean.
For some years I was sent by my bishop to represent him at meetings of a group of Johannesburg church leaders (which has now folded), and I found them useful because I could to some extent keep in touch with developments on the broader Christian scene. It was attended sporadically by various leaders - Anglican and Methodist bishops (including Paul Verryn, who has a better idea of what is going on than most), people like Nelus Niemand, and occasionally people from the SACC and a leader of a federation of Zionist Churches, and sometimes representatives of the Coptic Bishop, who as Egyptians were pretty out of touch with the South African scene (and we have similar problems with Greeks, Serbs, Russians etc).
Where I think colonialism is relevant is in the attitudes of such as the Democratic Alliance. Even though they took a huge step forward by getting rid of Tony "fight back" Leon, they are still wedded to neo-colonialism, wanting South Africa to align itself with furmer colonial powers and become part of the American empire. I'm not sure that the ANC government is much better, though, in aligning itself with China (witness the Dalai Lama affair).
The English-speaking church leaders at the Johannesburg church leaders gatherings (with the exception of Paul Verryn) seemed to generally take the DA line and adopt a neo-colonialist mindset. They had, to some extent, fought apartheid, but once apartheid ended, they lost their way. They had no vision for the society that should follow apartheid.
The ANC tried to develop such a vision, outlined in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, which they abandoned within a year of coming to power, and sold out to Thatcherism and really fostered the ambition of becoming obscenely rich. That is what the Black Elite Enrichment (BEE) programme is really about.
The RDP vision was something that could have involved government and civil society (including, therefore, the Christian churches) in building a new South Africa.
When the government dropped the RDP ball the churches, if they had been on the ball, could have picked it up and run with it, but they didn't. They were too busy sitting around sipping their celebratory champagne and saying "Isn't it nice that we got rid of apartheid."
More than 40 years ago a British friend, living in South Africa, predicted that once South Africa had solved the problem of the black and the white, only then would the real problem emerge -- the problem of the haves and the have nots.
And she was dead right.
Good points, Steve
Thanks for this, Steve - some really interesting thoughts here, especially with neo-colonialism. I'm amazed by how open we are to American - and European influence - and of course we want to be a player on the world stage, but we also want to nurture our identity.
When I say "English-speaking churches" I almost always mean "white (South African) English-speaking Churches" - as this is largely my experience. I'm not trying to say much about other English-speaking churches, and especially not those who are using English as a second language.
So, given that the ball has been dropped, what we do (on a large-scale level) to pick it up, and not only right the injustice of the past, but aim towards "a better future for all"?
The devil is in the details?
To come back to the details, I feel like a late-comer to the post-Apartheid conversation in (white) Christian South Africa. I was 15 years old in 1995, and I don't remember hearing a single sermon on Apartheid during my entire church-going career (although others may refresh my memory). So perhaps the Church did indeed deal with the issue and then moved on to more important things, like the exposition of 2 Corinthians.
If the Church has comprehensively dealt with Apartheid (and I'm talking about the white church, specifically the white English-speaking church) then I've missed it. Can you recommend some good resources I can read, or websites that I can visit, which deal with this in a useful way?
I can't help but wonder that for most white, English, Christian South Africans, the story goes like this:
While the above paragraphy may read quite cynically, I don't think it's untrue. Apartheid is still as invisible now as it was in the past. I keep on hearing comments that black people need to just get over it already, as if what happened to them was a mild annoyance that, given that they are free, they can just fix.
So I'll be very happy to discover that, in fact, white English-speaking Christian South Africans have done the hard work of seeing reality from the perspective of the oppressed, have re-examined how they read Scripture, have submitted to the process of self-examination (and are open to the possibility that they are, indeed, covert racists) and transformation, and are actively righting the wrongs of the past by re-building South Africa. Anyone who can steer me in this direction, please?
English-speaking churches and apartheid
Here are some books:
Cochrane, James. 1987. Servants of power: the role of the English-speaking churches 1903-1930. Johannesburg: Ravan.
Before our time, even before apartheid, but it was a formative period and set a pattern that the churches found it difficult to break away from when they saw that the power they were serving was not benign.
Another is Charles Villa Vicencio's Trapped in apartheid, and you can see my critical review here: Notes from underground: Trapped in apartheid - South African churches.
There is also John de Gruchy's Church struggle in South Africa. I believe there has been a revised edition, which I haven't seen.
Thanks
Thanks Steve, that's helpful. I only have access to de Gruchy's book at present, but I'll add the other two to my list.
one story...
Roger
I can't show you that those in the category called "white English-speaking Christian South Africans" have done anything extraordinary, because we are quite guilty of many of the things charged. Our basic "sin" remains our buy-in to the framing story of western progress and consumerism.
But the struggle continues: I think it is important to keep telling our stories, living them, and to keep stepping away from stereotyping, which kill Story. We need to move from generalities and cliches to particularities and fresh, experiential knowledge.
I am struck that you were 15 when the Apartheid Doctrine was declared legally anathema. For me (and this is just MY experience) the most poignant years were 10 years earlier, when it became aparent that we were a nation at war with ourselves. The tragedy, the drama, the angst, the soul searching, were incredibly intense. The fasting, the praying, the Security Police raids, the fires, the fear, the loathing ...
After my "bekeering"/metanoia in the mid 80's I decided that not only was apartheid evil (as my liberal family had always believed) but that we needed to address this evil head on.
I, together with many many other people began earnestly asking the question, What response was the right one? Simplistically we had these choices (all of which can be defended "biblically")
1) apathy and convert complicity.
2) political activism, and if necessary, violent activism.
3) a "third" way of love, reconcilliation and justice, as outlined by those such as Desmond Tutu, Walter Wink and Jim Wallace.
As we wrestled with this, we were coming to realise the primacy of relationship in all this. What use was activism if only for an amorphous "cause"? So a church emerged, for better or worse, in we endeavoured to place the power and the ownership in the hands of all of us. We practiced a reverse relocation, and met in Soweto. We started to allow friendships to form. But it was costly, for all of us. As it stands, I do not know whether we suceeded. (Trevor Nthlola will be able to shed light on that question.)
Right now, relationship as primary is more true than ever. It has been stated that underlying the apartheid doctrines lie a deeper reality - injustice, and this injustice remains.
I am very interested in revisiting these questions from a postmodern/postcolonial perspective.
Paving the road to...
Thanks Nic, this helps me understand your own journey too. I wonder if part of the Third Way would've been to give up privilege, move into Soweto, and wait in line for the taxi like everybody else. But what a price to pay! To live in a place where being white was life-threatening? And what of your family? I know what I would've done: nothing. I might've gone as far as doing church in Soweto, but moving there? No - the price would be too high.
Interestingly, I'm faced with that same choice right now. Although the Group Areas Act is no longer legislated, it still controls our existence (Cape Town is a good example). Dare I simply form friendships with people living in the townships? Well, yes - that's a good start. But until I'm willing to move into the township, to take a step downwards on the ladder of upward mobility, I think my good intentions will...keep on paving the road to somewhere not that great.
Maybe there's a middle road?
roads to freedom
Roger
You need to follow your heart in this.
Yes - relationships remain the foundation, whatever else follows.
PS I have several songs to play you - one called "Freedom Taxi" and another called "Elegy for Stephen Bantu". (For Biko)
Follow my heart?!
What, follow my heart?! I laugh in the face of your mushy emotions-driven gospel! Haha! I choose to follow the path of the yellow brick road!
Can't wait to hear the songs :)
Amahoro Africa: The African Reformation
Hi Roger, Arnau, Nic, Steve. Thanks for starting the conversation.
I also hope that we will be able to re-discover what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ and what it means to be the church, irrespective of our backgrounds. It is our shared identity of being in Christ (died and raised with him) that should move us to confront the injustices of colonialism, apartheid, racism, sexism, exploitation of the poor etc. And it is our shared identity of being in Christ that should move us to create new communities of hope, life and reformation. As leaders we should deal with these issues in our own lives, repent and forgive on behalf of others who might be unwilling to do so and create examples of the African Reformation in action.
Here is my introduction.
2 conversations
It's going to be good - can't wait! Your comment is well-said, Andries - I heartily agree. I'd like to see what repenting and forgiving on behalf of others who might be unwilling to do so looks like in practice, and what the unintended consequences of that might be.
I think there's 2 conversations that will happen here, and forgive me for naming and over-simplifying them, but here goes:
1. The white conversation
2. Everybody else.
These conversations are intertwined, but come at postcolonialism from different places. The "everybody else" conversation is about "our ancestors - and us - were oppressed by the colonial narrative. As we break free from that we are (re)discovering Christianity, and gaining the courage to stand on our own two African feet." This conversation is essentially about deconstructing colonialism from the outside.
The white conversation (sorry for calling it that) is about deconstructing colonialism from the inside. Even for those of us who didn't personally get into a ship, sail to Darkest Africa and civilise the natives, introducing them to the glory of our god, we carry that narrative in our skin and in our culture - regardless of how much we've personally distanced ourselves from that narrative. This conversation is about becoming more aware of the unintentional role that whites (or the privileged, because this is also a class division, and not necessarily a white-black polarisation) played (and play) in covert oppression. In some ways, this is the more difficult conversation - because it's easy to demonise "colonisation" as the great evil out there which happened to some other people, but it's much harder to say, "Yes, by virtue of my ancestry and worldview, I am part of that narrative."
I already see these two conversations working themselves out in me - I shall watch with interest as to how they unfold during this week in others.
Two conversations?
Roger,
I really, really hope that those two conversations do not take place at Amahoro.
We had the "white converaation" and the "everyone else" conversation in the days of apartheid, and that was precisely what made apartheid last so long -- because most whites were cocooned in a little fantasy world, and the rest of the world was kept at bay by the government.
Now the government has removed the fences, but people still don't cross the lines marked by the fences, because the fences have been internalised into a mental barrier.
So I hope we will have a multisided conversation.
Deconstructing colonialism from the "inside" and "outside"
It also depends on your perspective whether it is blacks or whites who have to deconstruct colonialism from the inside or from the outside. White people were on the inside of dishing it out but on the outside of receiving it. Likewise black people were on the outside of dishing it out and on the inside of receiving it.
I remember a sermon by dr Willem Nicol when I was a student in the late eighties/early nineties that started to open my eyes. He said it's one thing to get out of your car and see someone lying with his head under the wheel but it's quite another matter if you are the one lying on the tar. He was basically saying that we cannot understand what apartheid is doing to black people because we are not on the receiving end of it; we're not experiencing it from the inside, but from the outside, from a distance.
We are living in a complex mosaic (as Steve put it in a comment on my blog) that is inside out, outside in and upside down. And here we are, fifteen years into democracy, still trying to make sense of it and somehow trying to put things back right side up – right side up according to whose perspective, we might ask.
As whities we tend to try and put things right side up according to our perspective before first understanding and experiencing the mosaic for what it is. That's why we need to listen more, experience more, fellowship more, talk less and plan less.
For me it was Alistair Sparks' book, the mind of South Africa (1989) that really opened my eyes to the invisible fence in the minds of all South Africans, black and white. It also turned my guts because Sparks held up a mirror for me about my own Afrikaner history that was ugly and drove me to tears.
Here's the difficult part that you are referring to above: "Yes, by virtue of my ancestry and worldview, I am part of that narrative." And here we can already see the mosaic becoming even more complex. You are grappling with it from an English perspective, I from an Afrikaner perspective.
That Afrikaner history was very much a part of my identity. I grew up believing that we were God's chosen people to save darkest Africa. It was subtly conveyed to me in school, in church and in the Voortrekkers. A fellow theological student said we received racism with mother’s milk.
There were layers of the onion I've had to work through but one day almost all the remaining layers came off at once. I attended a seminar arranged by Mercy Ministries. There people of colour told their own painful stories and how they had come to the point of forgiveness. There was a voluntary feet washing session where anybody could go and confess sins, both personally and collectively. I thought of Sparks' book as I washed the dark feet of a grey-haired man and we both wept. I also confessed the sins of my fathers and of other Afrikaners still blind to the injustices caused by apartheid.
That day I was set free from the oppression of apartheid, a system I did not design, a system I did not like but that benefited me because I was born into it. And although I benefited from it, it also held me captive.
Now I’m on a journey of re-discovering what the church should be, irrespective of our backgrounds. I am starting to discover that dealing with our complex mosaic might be a lot simpler than we sometimes think. We have to get back to the basics of confessing our sins to one another, reading the Bible together, praying together, living in relationships of accountability, helping people who are poor and suffering. And we have to simplify our lifestyles. To me that is the most difficult part. But failing that I simply don’t have enough time for relationships. Failing that I simply don’t have empathy for poor people.
Simplicity does not necessarily mean that we deny the complexities of our context. But at some point we need to acknowledge that all people, black and white, rich and poor are all human and are suffering from the same human condition. We all need to be set free from stuff so that in our shared brokenness we can heal others around us.
Whose story?
we need to listen more, experience more, fellowship more, talk less and plan less.
Yes, that's it. And that's why I don't think we need a white conversation, because, in spite of what Biko said, whites in South Africa are not homogeneous. And the Afrikaners too were on the receiving end of British colonialism -- that's what the two Anglo-Boer Wars were all about.
And Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educationist, said that the oppressed internalises the image of the oppressor. The oppressed does not feel fully human and so the image of humanity becomes the oppressor -- to be fully human the oppressed must become an oppressor. And we see that in our history. Alfred Lord Milner had his Anglicisation policy, and the oppressed (or some of them) internalised the image of the oppressor, and so you got Andries Treurnicht and Ferdi Hartzenberg in the 1970s doing to blacks what Milner had done to the Afrikaners 70 years before.
And as Christians we need to do what Christ did, and to find the image of true humanity in him and not in the oppressors of this world.
And yes, there is the English perspective and the Afrikaner perspective. But one difference is that while one can speak of an Afrikaner perspective there wasn't an English one, at least not after the 1960s. English-speaking South Africans were never offered a "homeland" (nor were German, Portuguese, Italian or Greek-speaking South Africans). While there was a link to the British crown, before South Africa became a republic in 1961, there was a potential focus for an "English" group loyalty, but after that there was none. So English-speaking South Africans were not a group, and did not have a single coherent group identity.
And that was, in a sense, the significance of the Message to the People of South Africa. It was developed largely by English-speaking Christians, and it called on them, and all South Africans, to find a common identity in Christ.
Blacks supported it, but did not think it applied to them. They said, yes, we agree with it, but you must preach that to the whites, they are the ones who have a problem with it. We black Christians have never had a problem with it.
Informative
Informative post, thanks for sharing. I was even more enlightened by the fact that South African is a mix of modernism, postmodernism and a kind of pre-modern tribalism which make them more interesting.
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