Orthodox Christian Initiative for Africa: Apartheid

Εμφάνιση αναρτήσεων με ετικέτα Apartheid. Εμφάνιση όλων των αναρτήσεων

Τετάρτη 29 Μαΐου 2019

"Tales from Dystopia", memories of the apartheid era in South Africa from an Orthodox Christian writer...

(Orthodox Christian Blog from South Africa)

Tales from Dystopia is a series of blog posts I am writing of memories of the apartheid era in South Africa.
I started it because of some comments made by some South African Christian bloggers about the need to remember history so that we are not tempted to repeat the mistakes of the past. Some were also too young to remember what the apartheid era was really like. And some noted a tendency of some, even those who had lived through it, to say that it was not so bad, and that it had good intentions, and that in any case we should forget about the past and “move on”.
But it is not so easy to “move on” if we forget about the past, because the past is also a great weight to which we are tethered, which keeps us from “moving on”.
So here are some memories. They are just one person’s memories, but if others follow a similar idea and write about their own memories, we may get a fuller picture, and be better able to come to terms with the past.
If you don’t have a blog, it is quite easy to start one at sites like WordPress or Blogger, and just start recording your memories of the time. and encourage others to do so as well. Many of those who struggled against the evil of apartheid are dead, and their stories perhaps did not get recorded in the history books, but they live on in the memories of others, and those others can record them and share them in blogs.

Orthodoxy in South Africa before and after Apartheid

Stephen Hayes, A children’s novel about apartheid

Mamelodi (South Africa) : Christina Mothapo’s funeral

A spiritual trip to South Africa in 2010!

Δευτέρα 21 Αυγούστου 2017

Own Affairs redux

Newly-illumined servants of God in procession around the font and Epitaphios (funeral shroud of Christ). One Lord, one Faith, One Baptism, One Holy people of God, black, white, coloured, Asian, Bulgarian, Greek, Russian, American.

Khanya

tags: ethnocentrism, Orthodox theology, own people, phyletism, racism

There are lots of Internet discussions about racism going on at the moment, and one that particularly concerns me was on the “Ask an Orthodox Hipster” group on Facebook. Facebook groups are good for quick questions and simplistic answers, like soundbites, but they are not good for more nuanced discussions, so I’m writing about it here, partly in the hope that I can clarify my own thinking, and partly hoping that others may contribute useful insights.
There are several links to other sites and articles in this discussion, and I’ve included some in the texts, and put others at the end.
The core question that concerned me was this:

Maximos Williams: I think loving ones own people first and foremost is admirable.
Me: And what constitutes one’s “own” people? Surely our “own” people are our fellow-citizens of the kingdom of God who are joined with Christ and us in baptism. See 1 Peter 2:9-10. If we think that “blood is thicker than water” (the water of baptism) then we sell our heavenly birthright for the pottage of this sinful world.

I should also say where I am coming from.
I lived through the entire apartheid period in South Africa, where the concept of “own people” was at the core of government thinking and the policy of the ruling National Party. For 46 years they tried to indoctrinate the entire population with the notion expressed by Maximos Williams, and I saw the results of that policy, and the results were evil. Not only were the results evil, the thinking behind it was evil. Apartheid was not just a good idea that was badly implemented. It was a bad idea. Full Stop. Period. <EOT>
And when apartheid was crumbling, and even the National Party had agreed to negotiate for a different future without it, one group of diehards who wished to retain apartheid thinking went around putting up posters saying “Own People, Own Land.” It was probably translated from Afrikaans by people who did not realise how ambiguous it is in English (Eie Volk, Eie Land), but as Paolo Freire pointed out in his Pegagogy of the Oppressed, the oppressed internalises the image of the oppressor, and those apartheid chickens are coming home to roost in the Black First, Land First movement.
During the first 20 years of apartheid it was criticised by some Christian leaders because it was unjust and oppressive. But there was usually the underlying thought that a juster, kinder, less oppressive form of apartheid might be acceptable. But they had not really examined the presuppositions on which it was based. One of the first theological critiques of the ideological underpinnings of apartheid was from an Anglican priest, Trevor Huddleston, in his book Naught for your comfort, where he pointed out that it was incompatible with the incarnation of Christ. It was only in 1968 that a significant number of Christian leaders concluded that apartheid was worse than a heresy, it was a pseudogospel. Its premisses were not merely un-Christian, but anti-Christian. They did this in a public document called A message to the people of South Africa.

We, in this country, and at this time, are in a situation where a policy of racial separation is being deliberately effected with increasing rigidity. The effects of this are seen in a widening range of aspects of life – in political, economic, social, educational and religious life; indeed, there are few areas even of the private life of the individual which are untouched by the effects of the doctrine of racial separation. In consequence, this doctrine is being seen by many not merely as a temporary political policy but as a necessary and permanent expression of the will of God, and as the genuine form of Christian obedience for this country. But this doctrine, together with the hardships which are deriving from its implementation, forms a programme which is truly hostile to Christianity and can serve only to keep people away from the real knowledge of Christ.
There are alarming signs that this doctrine of separation has become, for many, a false faith, a novel gospel which offers happiness and peace for the community and for the individual. It holds out to men a security built not on Christ but on the theory of separation and the preservation of their racial identity. It presents separate development of our race-groups as a way for the people of South Africa to save themselves. Such a claim inevitably conflicts with the Christian Gospel, which offers salvation, both social and individual, through faith in Christ alone.

In other words, the ideology of apartheid (and not merely its implementation) was based on the premiss of a pseudogospel, a false offer of salvation, salvation by race and not by grace.
I give that explanation of where I am coming from because I am aware that I might be overreacting to Maximos Williams’s statement. The phrase “own people” may carry a lot more baggage for me than it does for him.
But nevertheless the core question remains — who are our “own people”?
And if they are anything other than our fellow-members of the Body of Christ, then where do our fellow-Christians come, if not “first and foremost”?
Do they take second, or third, or fourth place?

And if so, is this not idolatry — because if God’s people are not “first and foremost”, then surely God himself is taking second place. “You shall have no other gods before me” — but if we put God and God’s people in second or third place, or lower down, that means we have made an idol of ethnic or racial identity, and that is the very “phyletism” that was condemned by a synod in Constantinople in 1872, whether you call it a council or not.
Another contributor to the Facebook discussion said:

Christopher Dane: I understand the nuance Maximos Williams is trying to discuss. I’ve said it three times here.
I think there needs to be serious discussion about the difference between preferential and violent racism vs identity politics. I haven’t seen a single mature conversation on that topic yet.

Now I’m not sure what “identity politics” is, or how it differs from “preferential and violent racism”. I think “identity politics” may be something peculiarly American, so I’m not qualified to say much about it, or about the “maturity” needed to discuss such a topic. Perhaps that kind of maturity is peculiar to Americans, and the rest of us should back off. But it is Americans who like talking about “American lives” and denounce the idea that “all lives matter” — and isn’t that a kind of “own people” thinking again?
So I think that, regardless of the difference between “preferential and violent racism” and “identity politics”, the core question is who one’s “own people” are.
The original question, that Maximos Williams was responding to, was “What is the Orthodox position on racism and white supremacy?
And someone responded with this cite from the Synod held in Constantinople in 1872:

We renounce, censure and condemn racism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers which “support the holy Church and the entire Christian world, embellish it and lead it to divine godliness.”

I don’t know whether that is an accurate quotation or translation of what the Synod said, but it seems similar in import to what South African Christian leaders came up with 96 years later in the Message to the people of South Africa.
And who are “our people”?

But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may shew forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy (I Peter 2:9-10).

Early Christians thought of themselves as a “third race”, regarding every foreign country as a homeland, and every homeland as a foreign country.

Links

Τετάρτη 10 Μαΐου 2017

Tales from Dystopia XXI: Capitalism and alcoholism (a voice from South Africa)

"...It was about capitalism, not alcoholism. It was not about the failings of the flesh of flesh and blood alcoholics, but about the world powers (kosmokratores) of this present darkness (Ephesians 6:10-12)."

Khanya e isoe ho Molimo holimo

One of the notable features of life in post-apartheid South Africa is the way the Christian churches seemed to drop the ball after 1994. Before 1994 many Christian groups were quite vocal in their critique of apartheid, and in analysing the ills of society. Once the first democratic elections were over, however, they seemed (with a few exceptions) to breathe a collective sigh of relief, sit back and take the attitude that the government should get on with fixing things. After all, the government was now a democratically-elected one.
Perhaps this contributed to the government’s losing its moral compass, and the government seemed to become aware of it before most of the Christian bodies, and the Moral Regeneration movement was a government initiative, though even that has now been forgotten.

Now there is talk of “white monopoly capitalism” and “radical economic transformation”, which I think is more smoke and mirrors, but perhaps that, and some aspects of Christian blindness, can be illustrated by some more tales from the apartheid dystopia.
If I name names, it is not to blame particular people (I think the people named are probably dead by now, and anyway they are no more to blame than many others) but rather to show that this took place in concrete history.
In 1980 I attended a consultation called by the South African Council of Churches (SACC) at Hammanskraal. It was ostensibly called to evaluate the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) Programme to Combat Racism, but it didn’t do that at all.
I was in a group that was discussing racism in the church, and one member of the group, Ben Ngidi, of the Congregational Church, called for a Black Confessing Church. He said it was necessary because blacks responded to the gospel from a position of poverty and oppression, while whites did so from a position of power and privilege. I thought that this was something of an oversimplification, because here we were, a bunch of mainly middle-class mainly clergy, and that black middle-class church leaders were probably not in a better position to respond from a position of poverty and oppression than white middle-class leaders. I was trying to point out that we needed to look at class as well as race.
I gave an example of a black Christian business man whose behaviour could be seen to be oppressive, and everyone in the group sought to justify it. One member of the group, Maredi Choeu, himself a businessman, said, “Perhaps he gives bursaries.”

The example I gave had to do with Nondweni, a resettlement area in Zululand.
In South Africa white people built towns and established businesses, but complained about the shortage of labour. They induced black people to settle close to the towns (but not in them) in places called “locations” or “townships” to provide the labour needed. So there was established a pattern of a white bourgeoisie and a black working class.
When apartheid came in 1948, however, the Nationalist government thought the “locations” were too close to the towns, so they established a different pattern. They built large rural “towns” further away from the white towns, so that the “labour” would commute long distances by bus, train or taxi. But these “towns” where people settled were unnatural. They were urban residential areas in rural areas. There was no industry, no employment. When they were established, and people were forcibly moved to them there were no public buildings at all. There were no shops, no schools, no churches, no clinics. Such places were the product of ethnic cleansing, and most of the people who lived there were unemployed, because there was no work nearby, and as it was an urban area, people could not keep cattle, sheep or goats, which normally fed people in rural areas.
Nondweni was such a place.
And the first public building in Nondweni was a bottle store (liquor store). It was owned by a Christian businessman, Gideon Mdlalose.

The Mthonjaneni Deanery of the Anglican Diocese of Zululand, of which I was then a member, was aware of this, and it was discussed at a deanery conference. In many of the resettlement areas where black people were forced to move the first public building that was erected was a bottle store, so that the unemployed could squander what little money they had on booze, and the businessmen who owned the bottle stores, whether they were black or white, were making private profit out of public misery.

Location of KwaZulu (red) within S. Africa

The Deanery Conference, after discussing this, proposed a very cautious and diplomatically-worded motion on this to be presented to the Diocesan Synod, to the effect that the synod requested the KwaZulu government to be very careful about granting liquor licences in places of high unemployment. The resolution named no names, pointed no fingers at anyone. It did not mention Nondweni specifically, because there were many such places.
The problem, of course, was that the liquor trade was lucrative. KwaZulu was then a “homeland” controlled by an army of (white) civil servants from the central (Nationalist controlled) government in Pretoria, many of whom taught everything they knew about corruption to their black underlings (yes, blaming corruption on apartheid is not entirely wide of the mark).
We debated all this in the Deanery Conference. We could propose blustery resolutions condemning such abuses “in the strongest possible terms” (without, of course, actually using such terms), but we felt that that might make us feel good and self-righteous, but would not actually change anything. So we sent the diplomatically-worded motion to the diocesan office to be included in the synod agenda.
The people at the diocesan office, when they received the motion, decided that it was marvellous, and decided they were going to make it the central focus of the whole synod. The only trouble was, they got it spectacularly wrong.

They hired a film on alcoholism, and were going to get some social worker or someone to speak about alcoholism. And when it came up for discussion at the synod, the clergy, in particular, got up one after another to speak and denounce drinking as a sin. Only one (who was one of the very few white clergy) got up to point out that it was not drinking, but drunkenness that was a sin.
But the sin that the motion was aimed at was not drinking, or even drunkenness, but the sin of economic
exploitation, and one of the chief sinners actually got up and confessed his sin — Gideon Mdlalose himself got up and confessed that the first public building in Nondweni was a bottle store, and that he was the owner of that bottle store, and that terrible things happen there, but if it wasn’t there people would just go to buy their liquor at Nqutu, or if that was closed, they would go to Dundee. But the point of the motion was that hardened drinkers might well do that, but the young children would not. I read Nehemiah 5:7-13 to the synod. Does that not have something to say to all of us, black and white, about “radical economic transformation”?
And it was that example that I put before Maredi Choeu and others at Hammanskraal.
Yes, there is a problem with white monopoly capital. But there is also a problem with Indian monopoly capital, represented by the Guptas. The problem is not with the colour of the capital, but with monopoly capital itself. The ones who are concerned about the colour of the capital are themselves the bourgeoisie. So talking about “white” monopoly capital is something of a smokescreen.

But it is the other problem concerns me more — that a motion to a church synod about capitalism should be transformed into one about alcoholism. By doing so, the church was essentially blaming the victim. Yes, if people did not drink, there would be no business opportunity for a bottle store. But the business opportunity arose because of an unjust political system which removed people from their homes and dumped them in the veld where there were no churches, schools, clinics, sports clubs and above all no work — what else was there to do but drink?
And yes, if a Christian businessman had had scruples about establishing a bottle store in a place like Nondweni, a non-Christian businessman would have even fewer scruples about doing so. Gideon Mdlalose was not a bad man, and I’m not trying to get at him. In fact he was one of the most perceptive people at the synod, because he was one of the few, outside the Mthonjaneni Deanery, who could see what the motion before the synod was really about. It was about capitalism, not alcoholism. It was not about the failings of the flesh of flesh and blood alcoholics, but about the world powers (kosmokratores) of this present darkness (Ephesians 6:10-12).
And the problem persists in our day. We still fail to see the wood for the trees. It is not the racial epithets we put in front of monopoly capitalism, it is monopoly capitalism itself, and the value system that serves it, that we need to be aware of.
___
This is part of a series of blog posts on Tales from Dystopia — memories of the apartheid years in South Africa.

See also

The Orthodox Church in the Republic of South Africa

Orthodoxy in South Africa before and after Apartheid

Stephen Hayes, A children’s novel about apartheid

Mamelodi (South Africa) : Christina Mothapo’s funeral

How “White” is the Orthodox Church?
Orthodox Mission in Tropical Africa (& the Decolonization of Africa)

Orthodox South Africa (in our blog)

The Orthodox mission in South Africa (video)

A spiritual trip to South Africa in 2010!

Capitalism Orthodox Church & Capitalism: Orthodox Fathers of Church on poverty, wealth and social justice
Is capitalism compatible with Orthodox Christianity?

Grace and “the Inverted Pyramid”

Δευτέρα 6 Μαρτίου 2017

Stephen Hayes, A children’s novel about apartheid

Khanya

My children’s novel Of Wheels and Witches is available for 100% discount from March 5-11 [2017], to mark “Read an e-book Week”. It normally sells for US$2.99, but for this week it will be free if you go to the site and enter the coupon number when you check it out.
In the story a Johannesburg schoolboy goes to spend the school holidays at a farm in the Drakensberg. There he meets three other children from different backgrounds. They have fun riding horses and exploring caves, until they encounter an ominous symbol of a wheel, and through a witch they learn of a plot to harm the father of one of them and they embark on a cross country journey to warn him.
You may read more about the background to the story here A children’s novel about apartheid | Khanya. It’s intended for children aged about 9-11, but those over 18 might also like it.

The promotion begins at 10:01 am on Sunday 5th March, and ends at 09:59 am on Sunday 12 March (South African time). For one week only, thousands of Smashwords authors and publishers will provide readers deep discounts on ebooks, with coupon code levels for 25%-off, 50%-off, 75%-off and FREE. You can find more about it here.

If you are a reviewer of books, on blogs, or journals, or anywhere else, please use this opportunity to grab yourself a free review copy.
So get it here, if not for yourself, then for your children, or grandchildren or godchildren. Encourage them to write reviews of it to saw what they liked about it, what they didn’t like about it, things they didn’t understand, and what they learned from it that they didn’t know before. And if anyone wants to write a review on Good Reads, you can find it here.

See also

The Orthodox Church in the Republic of South Africa
Afrikaners en die transendente: Waarom ek die Ortodoksie gekies het
Orthodox South Africa (tag)

Orthodoxy's Worship: The Sanctification of the Entire World

A Deer Lost in Paradise
LIVE, BEYOND THE LIMITS!

Orthodox Mission in Tropical Africa (& the Decolonization of Africa)

The Kingdom of Heaven, where racial discrimination has no place

The Heresy of Racism

Fr. Moses Berry, a descendant of African slaves, Orthodox priest and teacher in USA

Παρασκευή 2 Δεκεμβρίου 2016

Top 10: Filmes sobre a África

Passaporte Africa 7 de junho de 2012

Em primeiro lugar, bom feriado aos nossos leitores! E pra aproveitar esses dias que ficamos em casa só curtindo, uma sessão com 10 filmes sobre a África para vocês conhecerem mais sobre esse lugar enquanto estão longe da escola.
Aproveitem!

1) Hotel Ruanda-Hotel Rwanda,(EUA/ Itália / África do Sul) 2004

Um gerente de Hotel de luxo em Ruanda, durante o conflito ente tutsis e hutus, consegue salvar milhares de vidas, permitindo que as pessoas fiquem no hotel. Baseado numa história verídica.

2) O Senhor das Armas-Lord of Technorati
(Marcas:filmes,africa,dez,lista,cinema,hotel,ruanda - War (EUA) 2005)

Traficante de armas, sem o menor escrúpulo, fornece armamentos para milícias africanas, contribuindo para guerras civis e violência.

3) O Jardineiro Fiel -The Constant Gardener (EUA) 2005

4) Diamante de Sangue -Blood Diamond (EUA) 2006

Homem tem seu filho seqüestrado pela milícia para ser treinado para matar e vai em busca dele. O filme mostra o tráfico de diamantes em Serra Leoa e as conseqüências dele.

5) Crianças Invisíveis – All the Invisible Children (Itália) 2005

Documentário que mostra a situação de crianças em vários países, inclusive no Brasil. São mostradas as crianças na África que sofrem seqüestro e lavagem cerebral para se tornarem assassinos para as milícias.

6) Amor sem Fronteiras – Beyond Borders( EUA) 2003

Mulher da alta sociedade conhece um médico idealista e se apaixona por ele. O primeiro acampamento mostrado fica na África. O filme mostra os próprios africanos que roubam doações de alimentos e remédios dos civis para alimentar as milícias.

7) Um Herói do Nosso Tempo- Va, Vis et Deviens (França / Bélgica / Israel / Itália) 2005

Menino negro se passa por judeu para ser levado a Israel e ter condições de sobreviver. Na época, o país estava resgatando os judeus negros da em situação de miséria. Mesmo entre os judeus, existe o preconceito pelo fato dele ser negro.

8) O último Rei da Escócia - The Last King of Scotland(Inglaterra) 2006

Jovem escocês recém formado em Medicina decide partir numa aventura e trabalhar em Uganda. Acaba conhecendo por acaso o ditador Ide Amim, que acaba simpatizando com ele. O jovem passa a freqüentar festas e a alta sociedade e não faz idéia do que é capaz o ditador.Baseado numa história real.

9) Infância Roubada – Tsotsi (África do Sul / Inglaterra) 2005

Jovem rouba carro e só depois percebe que tem um bebê dentro. Ele leva a criança para uma moça que ele mal conhecer cuidar e começa a se apegar a criança.

10) Um Grito de Liberdade – Cry Freedom( Inglaterra) 2007

Filme sobre o apartheid na África do Sul, mostra a amizade entre um líder negro Stephen Biko e um jornalista branco. Baseado em uma história real.

Esses são alguns dos filmes que abordam as temáticas africanas, embora existam outros bons também. Pretendo fazer uma segunda parte deste post, com os filmes que faltaram aqui. Acabei lembrando de diversos filmes.
Esses filmes podem ser utilizados por educadores nas escolas para ilustrar os diversos temas que abordam.

Fonte: Cinemanet

Παρασκευή 17 Ιουνίου 2016

The Universal Day of the African Child & The Tears of the African Child...

Today has been designsted as the universal Day of the African Child in memory of the massacre of African pupils and students on June 16, 1976 by the racist apartheid government of South Africa.

The Orthodox Mission in Sierra Leone is earnestly seeking to provide the African children in its protection the same educational facilities as any white child in Australia, Europe or the USA - with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ.

https://www.facebook.com/rev.themi?fref=nf (we saw it here)

The Tears of the African Child

Father Themistoklis Adamopoylos (Themi Adams)
FREETOWN
Sierra Leone
The charity Paradise 4 Kids (P4A) was first established in Australia to help Rev Themi and other missionaries in their calling from God; now with committees all around the world, made up of dedicated Christians in the Orthodox Church and in other Churches, P4A have set themselves apart by being a total Voluntary organization with no one receiving any remuneration, (not even Brother Themi), by funding his outreach to anyone who will listen and to other missions as directed by Brother Themi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5zq1JE88rc&spfreload=10

See also

Kenya: Our Volunteers in Non-Profit Orthodox Orphanages...

Some child-advocacy ministries of Orthodox Church in Kenya, Uganda & Sierra Leone...

Orthodox Sierra Leone (tag)

African Children (tag)

Child soldiers (tag)

Τετάρτη 13 Ιανουαρίου 2016

Orthodoxy in South Africa before and after Apartheid

Nelson “Madiba” Mandela, the first democratically-elected President of South Africa, has been a beloved figure for decades, and his death drew an outpouring of grief all over the world. But few of us know much about the South Africa that he helped to radically change. Wanting to learn more about life in South Africa–and especially about missions and Orthodox Christianity- before and after the fall of apartheid, I have asked Father Deacon Stephen Hayes to answer some questions.

Fr Dn Stephen serves two congregations in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa. As an Anglican in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, he worked as a missiologist training self-supporting priests and deacons, as well as developing theological education by extension. As a result of his missionary efforts across racial lines under South Africa’s apartheid government, Fr Dn Stephen was deported, listed as Enemy of the State #1658, and banned from 1972 – 1976.

While converting to Orthodox Christianity in the mid 1980s, Fr Dn Stephen and his family participated in founding the Society of St Nicholas of Japan with the aim of promoting the Orthodox Christian faith among people of all ethnic groups. Fr Dn Stephen remains active in missionary work, participates in a number of internet discussions on Orthodoxy and missiology, and continues to supervise post-graduate students in missiology at the University of South Africa. His blog Khanya has articles on Orthodox missiology, the history of St Nicholas parish, and other topics.

More extensive biographies can be found here and here.

By James Hargrave in The Sounding
Orthodox Christian Network

Father Deacon, what was apartheid? How did life function under it?

I think the best way I can answer that is to refer to a series of posts I wrote on my blog, to answer that question, and similar ones. The series is called “Tales from Dystopia”, and you can see it here.

In what ways is your day-to-day life different today than it was before 1989?

In some ways very little. We live in the same house, we travel around in much the same way. But there is a better feeling about it. There is no longer the feeling that someone is watching over your shoulder to see who you meet, who you talk to, listening to your phone calls, opening your letters (especially ones to foreign addresses).

As a song we used to sing put it, in the old days:

When I’m walking down the street
I must be careful not to greet
people of a different pigmentation
lest the government suspect
or the Special Branch detect
a dark affiliation
to a communist organisation.

Is there any link to be made between President Mandela himself and Orthodox Christianity?

Not much. He was a Methodist, but he welcomed Orthodox bishops (and the Pope) when they visited him.

Is there any link to be made between the anti-apartheid movement and Orthodox Christianity?

Again not much, except that in Orthodox Christianity phyletism (racism) has been declared a heresy. Most Orthodox Christians here have been immigrants, and therefore not much concerned about local politics outside their ethnic communities.

To you, personally, is there a link?

Very much so, but that was because, even before I became Orthodox, I saw that the apartheid ideology was directly opposed to many fundamental truths of the Christian faith. As a Protestant might express it, it was salvation by race, not salvation by grace.

From an Orthodox point of view, any ideology that says that belonging to a group of people who have the same skin colour as you is more important than belonging to a group of people who were baptised into Christ with you is, ipso facto, heretical.

Should I be calling this the anti-apartheid movement, or would use use a different term?

It was usually called the anti-apartheid movement in other countries. But inasmuch as apartheid was the policy of one political party, most other political parties and groups were against it to a greater or lesser degree.

My generation–North Americans who came of age in the 1990s–know of Nelson Mandela only as a symbol of kindness, graciousness, and reconciliation. I myself think of him in the same category as Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. We hardly see him as a person, but mostly as a picture. We also have very little sense of what the anti-apartheid movement (and post-apartheid life in South Africa) looked like beyond the person of Mandela himself. What can you tell us to give us a better picture of Mandela himself as a human rather than a symbol, and what can you tell us to give us a broader picture of South Africa beyond the person of Nelson Mandela?

As our bishop said when he urged every parish in the diocese to hold a requiem for him last Sunday, he stood for justice, peace and freedom.

For me, it is above all freedom. But unlike Gandhi, or even Martin Luther King, he was a disciplined member of a political movement that he regarded as bigger than he was. There are good points and bad points about that. Since the ANC came to power, the movement has been infiltrated by people who have been seeking to use it for personal advantage. I think it happens in America too, and I think you have a word for it — “pork barrel politics.” There has been a lot more of that since he retired, and I think it has been growing.

Will you say more about how you see Mandela standing for freedom above all?

I’ll quote again from one of my blog posts:

My main memory of that period was that the ANC, in particular, seemed to be taking one of their own slogans seriously — that “the people shall govern”. A lot of energy and effort was put into soliciting public opinion and ideas on all kinds of things, from the content of the constitution to the promotion of education, art and culture. Conferences were held, submissions sought, and many of these things were subsequently incorporated into the constitution.

There was a feeling of “inclusiveness” in the best sense. If there were to be leaders, the leaders must be sensitive to the needs of the people, and must listen to the people. There was a Zulu proverb, that a chief is a chief because of the people. So there was a ferment of ideas, and a feeling that anything was possible.

This inclusiveness of was not the ideological western kind, but part of the African idea of ‘ubuntu’.

But Nelson Mandela, in particular, had a vision of a free and democratic South Africa, and part of that vision was that people should be free to say what they thought freedom should be like.

As late as the 1980s, many people in the United States viewed the anti-apartheid movement in general- and Mandela in particular- as either terrorist or Communist or both. The ANC wasn’t officially removed from the United States’ terrorism watch list until very recently. Given the European (and Ethiopian) context which associates Communism with violent anti-religious persecution, targeted particularly on terrorizing Orthodox Christians, what do these ideas have to do with the reality of the anti-apartheid movement and with Nelson Mandela himself?

For people in South Africa, the apartheid regime tried to scare us by saying that anyone who opposed them was “communist”, but in fact there was little to fear from a communist takeover, because we already had the most fearsome features of communist regimes — secret police, detention without trial, an authoritarian state system, persecution of Christians (except for the government-approved varieties, which enjoyed special privileges).

The ANC was (and still is) allied to the Communist Party, but since they came to power, we have had a democratic constitution that guarantees freedom of religion, and that part of the constitution was drawn up by a communist lawyer (Albie Sachs, you can Google him) who invited the widest participation of religious groups in drawing it up. You see, in South Africa, most persecution of Christians came from the ANTI-communists.

Would you give one or two brief examples of persecution of Christians under apartheid?

You can find a couple in my “Tales from Dystopia” and also here and here.

St Moses the Ethiopian (see here)

When reading South African history, we sometimes hear of people having been ‘banned.’ What does it mean to be banned? Were you ever banned? How does it affect a person’s life?

I’ve got a web page on that, which should tell you most of what you want to know, and also one of the “Tales from Dystopia” series. I was banned from 1972-1976.

Does South African history have something to tell us about love for enemies?

Yes, quite a lot. Actually, your president Barack Obama summed it up when he spoke at Mandela’s memorial service on Tuesday — “He freed the prisoner and the jailer.”

Our struggle, as St Paul says, is not against blood and flesh. The people who advocated and enforced apartheid were not uniquely evil — they were slaves of an evil system, and needed to be free.

I was once catechising a girl who had been brought up as an atheist, and she said she had difficulty with the idea of giving thanks to God for everything. “How can you give thanks for Mr Vorster?” she asked. I said, “You can thank God for giving you Mr Vorster to love.”

And I immediately thought, who said that? Did I say that? Where did that come from? And then I realised that it must have come from the Holy Spirit. It certainly wasn’t something I was thinking of.

A common theme among North American Christians is that Christians–and especially the Church as a body–should be apolitical. In the United States, the notion of ‘separation of Church and State’ is sometimes taken as an Eleventh Commandment. Does organized political involvement by the Church or by Christians–especially perceived leftist political action such as liberation movements–contradict Christian belief? What about armed struggle? Do politics, by their nature, pollute Christianity?

Since our primary loyalty must be to Christ and his kingdom, that must come first. So yes, there is a sense in which the Church as a whole needs to be apolitical, in the sense of not endorsing any particular party, policy or movement. I think Christians can join parties and work for political goals, but never uncritically, never in the sense of “my party right or wrong”. Yet many Orthodox Christians, and even Church leaders, have worked for political liberation movements — Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, for example, and some of his associates were called “terrorists” by the British. Another, in a different time and place, was St Sergius of Radonezh (icon).

I’m inclined to be pacifist, and am not too keen on “armed struggle”, but I recognise that not everyone shares that point of view. Americans have the example of George Washington, who was leader of an armed struggle, and so was probably just as much a terrorist as Nelson Mandela. But if a Christian’s conscience allows him to take part in an armed struggle he should always remember that military power is the power that is most susceptible of all to abuse, and be alert to the danger of its abuse, whether by himself or others.

When I hear about South African politics and South African church life, I frequently hear the term ‘ubuntu’. What is ‘ubuntu’?

‘Ubuntu’ is a Zulu word that means “humanity”, the quality of being human, and humane, and seeing other people as people and not as things or objects to manipulate.

One of the most noteworthy examples for me was an Anglican priest named Hamilton Mbatha. He was on the board of a church hospital, and one day there was a block in one of the sewers of the hospital. They dug up the drains, and found the blockage was caused by a human fetus, dead of course. It was probably one of the nurses, trying to get rid of an illegitimate child. But the thing that shocked him most of all was when they burned the fetus in the hospital incinerator, along with all the medical waste — old bandages, swabs etc. And Hamilton said, “You don’t just throw a person away.” That’s ‘ubuntu’.

Whether it’s an unborn baby, or a youthful drug addict, or a middle-aged AIDS victim, or an old person with Alzheimers, a prostitute, a banker or a terrorist — you don’t just throw a person away. Jesus didn’t. And that’s ‘ubuntu’.

People like to talk a lot about ‘ubuntu’, but there’s not much of it around these days.

I have some experience of ‘ubuntu’ decision-making in the Tanzanian context, although that particular terminology isn’t used. It strikes me as being similar to the Orthodox Christian concept of ‘conciliarity.’ Is there a similarity?

It’s more the compassion that the Fathers keep urging us to show, to love and go on loving.

But yes, conciliarity is part of it. Majority rule is better than minority rule, but consensus beats both, and that springs from ubuntu, the desire to not shut anyone out.

What do you think North American Orthodox Christians can learn from South African Orthodox Christianity? From South African Christianity? From South African history and culture?

Perhaps a slightly different approach to the relations between religion and secular society? But I’m not sure, I haven’t had enough experience of American culture to know. And in South Africa, Orthodox culture hasn’t really got deep enough roots, so in a sense it is too early to say.

How old is Orthodox Christianity in South Africa? Is it rooted in immigrant history, in indigenous movements like those in East Africa, or both?

Orthodox Christians from other places, mostly Greece, Cyprus and Lebanon, began coming towards the end of the 19th century. The first bishop was appointed in 1924.

There were some discussions between the leader of the African Orthodox Church, Daniel William Alexander, and the local bishop of Johannesburg, but, unlike in East Africa, not much came of them at the time.

You are a non-immigrant (indigenous?) Orthodox Christian South African and member of the clergy, and I understand that you have relationships with a handful of primarily non-immigrant congregations. Did the growth of Orthodoxy among non-immigrant South Africans begin before or after the end of apartheid? Has the end of apartheid affected the way Orthodoxy has developed?

It began shortly before the end of apartheid, manly because some of us knew about the African Orthodox Church and tried to make contact with them, though they had then split into several factions. We formed a mission society (the Society of St Nicholas of Japan) and made contact and then worked directly with the patriarch because the local bishop was not much interested.

During the time of apartheid, all Orthodox clergy came from overseas, and were only given visas if they (and the bishop) signed an undertaking that they would confine their ministry to their own ethnic community. That was in accordance with the basic principle of apartheid with its notion of “own affairs”.

That was one reason why we founded the Society of St Nicholas of Japan. It was founded by South Africans, so the government couldn’t deport us (as it could with most of the priests), and if they asked the bishop about us, he could disown us, and say we weren’t under him.

North American Orthodox Christians are accustomed to overlapping jurisdictions, where a single city might have Orthodox congregations under five or six different bishops, all answering to their own synods or patriarchs overseas. In South Africa, I understand that all Orthodox Christians are under the same bishop, who is a member of the Holy Synod of Alexandria. Does this mean that congregations are generally of mixed ethnicity, or is there de facto ethnic segregation from church to church?

There are various ethnic parishes, Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian, but all fall under one bishop.

Many of the ethnic parishes concentrate on one ethic community, using the language of that community, but, depending mostly on how mission-minded the parish priest is, some have outreach into local communities as well.

Some of the parishes are “community” churches, run by an ethnic committee, which employs the priest, and those are less interested in what happens outside, and tend not to like it when the priest engages in what they regard as extra-curricular activities. Others, like the Serbian parish, are church-controlled, not community controlled (there was a bit of a fight over that), and it is the priest who encourages the laity to take part in mission, rather than the laity discouraging the priest. The church-controlled parishes are generally more open and mission-minded than the community parishes.

And then there are mission congregations, established with local people and using local languages. Most of them were started after 1997.

Orthodox Outlet for Dogmatic Enquiries
Pemptousia

See also

The Heresy of Racism
African Orthodox Saints
The Orthodox Church in the Republic of South Africa

Orthodox Archbishopric of Good Hop, Cape Town
Orthodox Archbishopric of Johannesburg and Pretoria
Orthodox Metropolis Of Good Hope - Cape Town - Facebook
Orthodox in Southern Africa

Orthodox in Gauteng
St Nicholas of Japan, a multi-ethnic orthodox parish in Johannesburg
Afrikaans Ortodoks
Orthodoxy.faithweb.com
Khanya
Orthodox South Africa (in our blog)