Special Hearings — Faith Community Hearings — 1997-11-17

MOULANA DR FARIED ESACK: In the name of God the gracious, the dispenser of   grace. Mr Chairman, the question of representation is not an easy one. Who do   I represent? I do not believe that I as a Muslim theologian can represent the   Muslim community, neither do I put it to you, can any of the "representatives"   here represent their communities. Which Dutch Reform Church representative can   speak for Hendrik Verwoerd and for Malanie Verwoerd? Or for Willie Lubbe and   for Gerrie Lubbe? Or for Eugene Terreblanche and Sampie Terreblanche? Or for   Willie Breytenbach and Breyten Breytenbach? Which Jewish Rabbi can speak for   Sol Kerzner and David Bruce. And I dare say, which Muslim theologian could speak   for Mohammed Bham, that human rights activist and for Ibrahim Bham, the person   who is supposed to have been here and who now heads Radio Islam, the radio that   denies women a voice on their stations because men get turned on by the voices   of women? And so, I can only speak for myself and I speak for those Muslims   who felt that they had to South Africanise their Islam and by that, to develop   an empathy with the people of our land and to identify with their suffering   and to give their everything to alleviate the pain and the injustice that visited   our land.
As the for the past, Mr Chairman, the past apartheid, the injustices are only   in some ways about 1948 the Nationalist Party, the Bureau of State Security,   Bantu Education, Homelands, etc, etc, but it is also about Christian triumphalism.   It's also about the fact that as Muslims were subjected to Christian national   education. We were forced into it. It is also about symbols like that that continue   to dominate a process like this even. I'm talking about the symbol of the crucifix,   it's a bit of an irony, and despite[SIDE 2]the denying of women   to open bank accounts or accounts in shops on their own. It's also about women   in Kwa Zulu Natal, who have to fold up their mattresses against the walls when   their husbands go back to the cities and the mattress can only come down once   their husbands come back. The past is also about the control of women's bodies.   It's about the denial of the right of children to be children and of adults   to be adults. Adults as beings responsible for their own bodies, for their own   sexual, personal and social lives. The past is an embracing past. And I make   this point because if we do not understand the all embracing nature of the injustices   of the past, what will happen is that as religious people, we have this remarkable   ability to shift as the winds shift, to change our theology as the wind changes.   And so our confessions in front of you, our lamentations about the past, these   are mere games of adjustments that we make, as the power structures in our country   have changed. And all of our confessions, if we do not recognise the comprehensives   of the injustices that have visited our land, if we do not recognise it, our   confessions here will amount to sprinkling a little bit of perfume over a heap   of cow dung in the hope that the smell will disappear.
As Muslims, Muslims were never singled out during the apartheid era, for any   special kind of oppression. We formed part of four fears that the regime persistently   articulated swart gevaar, rooi gevaar, room se gevaar en die Islam se gevaar.   But it was part of a combination of these four dangers that Muslims had fitted   into. There was one exception in the way in which the apartheid regime treated   us, and that is that our Mosques were left untouched under the Group Areas Act.   And so you had the spectacle of, currently still visible in District Six for   example, of a large area of vacant land and you only see the Mosques. They did   leave St. Marks Church there also, but that is because they couldn't possibly   leave four Mosques, and demolish one church. But in the other group areas throughout   the country, they also demolished churches, and that was the only exception   they made for Muslims. Under the Group Areas Act, Muslims, a minority community,   were uprooted from their homes, thrown into the middle of nowhere, away from   the business centres, Muslim business owners were removed into isolated other   areas. And we suffered lot, but we did not suffer as Muslims. We suffered as   coloured people, we suffered as Indian people and there are a handful of blacks   and a handful of whites. And at the same time as coloured people and as Indian   people, we were also privileged. The colour preferential job policy in the Western   Cape, for example. The way in which the Muslim business community in Gauteng   and Kwa Zulu Natal benefited in many ways from the system. And how, for the   vast majority of blacks, for very many blacks, the first line of oppression   that they met was often Muslims, the Muslim business keeper or the Muslim housewife   in whose house they were employed as a servant. And that is why often people   do not understand how you can talk about Islam and a struggle against apartheid   in the same breath. Because in our own personal lives, in our homes and businesses,   we were no different from those "white" people that we sometimes reduce   to as the "oppressor". 
As far as our collaboration and resistance to the system is concerned, there   is the community at large. In truth, the community at large was a complacent   community, feeble in its responses and going whichever way the wind was going   at a particular moment. And then there was the religious leadership of the community.   The essential attitude of that religious leadership, despite whatever nice words   have been coming in the last few years as a part of this theology of accommodation,   is essentially one of betrayal. In 1979, Imam Abdullah Harum was murdered in   detention after being kept there for six months. Twenty five thousand people   attended his funeral, and not a single voice in the Muslim community was raised   about the nature of his death, and all the injuries on his body. Not a single   voice in the Muslim community from the religious leadership of the Muslim community.   And this silence, Mr Chairman, held for seven years, non-stop! At a Mosque level   and in a Muslim publication level. Of course I speak with anger. By God, I've   got a damn right to be angry! For seven years the silence held. He was a nice   man. He was praised for being a good religious leader, but of course we don't   know why, we can't say anything about the reasons for his detention. And now   it has come out he was murdered. The Muslim Judicial Council, from 1961 up   to the period of 1964 issued five statements condemning different acts of apartheid.   A total of five statements and held a single public meeting. The two other dominant   cleric councils in Natal and the Transvaal, did not issue a single statement,   and did not ever hold a single meeting. On the contrary, there was persistent   denial of space and of legitimacy to all of those Muslim activists and organisations   that were a part of the struggle. I studied Islamic Theology for eight years   in a seminary. Five years of it with the person who was supposed to have been   here before me, and who is in perfect good health, certainly by late last night   and three years in another seminary. For four years I spent doing my doctorate   for ...[inaudible] and I spent another two years doing post-doctoral work in   biblical ...[inaudible]. The Muslim clergy described me in their paper as an   ignoramus masquerading as a theologian. I am not personalising all of this,   I am only saying that this is the way the religious leadership treated those   of us who were a part of the struggle. But our history, Mr Chairman, and I want   to get to the end, is not only one of collaboration and betrayal. Our community   has given rise to remarkable individuals, people who were deeply inspired by   our faith Islam, people such as Achmad Timol, who fell down, who slipped on   a bar of soap, and then he died in John Vorster Square. People like Babla Selojee,   who "hanged himself". People like Jusuf ...[inaudible], a 22 year   old person, nine months into his marriage being blown apart by a boobie trap   hand-grenade, and people like Moegsien Jina. We have produced many, many activists,   the likes of Ebrahim Rassoul, the likes of Achmad Kassiem, Jusuf Patel, Rafiek   Ruhan, people who have earned their stripes on Robin Island. 
And then there were the Muslim organisations. The Call of Islam which I headed,   the MYM (Muslim Youth Movement) and Kibala, the latter especially added an enormous   amount to the growing militancy of the eighties. They mobilised the Muslim community   and they travelled the length and breadth of the country, organising thousands   of people. And the Call of Islam particularly focusing on inter-religious solidarity   against apartheid. And I served as the National Vice-President of the WCRP for   about six years, and at the same time Mr Chairman, we gave the impression that   we got our communities on board. We succeeded in shutting up and marginalising   in public the leadership of our communities. We succeeded in embarrassing them   and never succeeded in getting them on board. Internally in the community, in   the religious circles we remained the marginalised, we remained the mavericks. 
As a matter of interest, I wasn't initially intended to be the speaker here   today. But as I pointed out to Dr Piet Meiring, the time that people like myself   are on the margins, was yesterday, not today. Today people like myself are in   the centre of South Africa and that's where we are going to remain. 
A word about reconciliation to conclude with. I have been on record as criticising   the Christianisation of this process. I maintain, Mr Chairman, that I have a   great fear that this commission will focus on nice language at the end of the   day, that your own humanity, and I am referring to Archbishop Desmond Tutu,   that your own humanity, that your own unbounded grace is going to reflect far   too heavily in the report of this commission and that the anger and the pain   that our people have experienced, on the one hand, and on the other hand the   lies and games that the State and religious figures come to you with, the accommodation   tactics, the peppering over of the cracks, I fear that they will get away with   it. And so truth, reconciliation is premised on truth, but reconciliation is   not only premised on truth, reconciliation is also premised on justice. And   so when this process is finished, it is not truth and reconciliation that is   finished. It will only be the beginning and I will want to see recommendations   in your report that essentially addresses the question of truth and justice   as means to reconciliation, because reconciliation is not an end by itself.   I do not want to reconcile with those who want to turn over a new page, but   they have given me no indication that they have actually read the page that   I am putting in front of them at the moment. 
Thank you very much, and God bless you all.