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

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Mcebisi? Piet Meiring?
PROF.

P MEIRING: I was listening very carefully to what you said to us, especially   the last paragraph about reconciliation and the problems of a cheap, glossed   over reconciliation, but what I'd really like to know is your advice on real   reconciliation. What is the commitment of the Call of Islam and also what is   the things that you can put on the table with your experience, with your expertise,   that will really help us forward? Because reconciliation is not only to my mind   a means to an end, it is also an end. We are the TRC and the process of reconciliation   is very dear to us, but from the experience you have and from the experience   of the Muslim community at large, what is the specific contribution that you   think that the Muslim community and the Call of Islam in particular will be   able to make?

MOULANA DR FARIED ESACK: Thank you very much. Just a point of correction. I was the   National Co-Ordinator of the Call of Islam during the years under discussion.   I no longer retain any position in the Call of Islam. 
I think that essentially words such as peace and reconciliation are vague and   empty, if they are not accompanied by a very real socio-economic changes and   dynamics that are effected within our society to concretise these concepts.   It is all very well for me to have a Malawian (Malawian by the way is a word   that is used for black Muslims inside South Africa very often because the early   black Muslims had come from Malawi so we talk about our Malawian brothers),   it is very easy for example to have a black Muslim with me in the Mosque and   so on and then we pray together and shake hands and hug together, and that is   the end of the story. But my Muslim black brother would have to go in the end   to the street where he sleeps in and I go back to my palace. And so, despite   the limitedness of your own mandate, there is the significant question of economic   justice as a means to true reconciliation. That is the one thing. The other   thing of where people come to the TRC and they come and we lament our tales   and we cry and in the end there are no firm recommendations from this commission   about how reparations are going to be done, and you end up with "finders   keepers, losers weepers", quite literally the losers come here and weep   again, and they go out and they are still the losers, and so there needs to   be a recommendation on economic redistribution of the resources of our land.   Certainly in Islam forgiveness is premised on returning stolen goods. There   is no forgiveness without ...[inaudible] without a return of whatever ill begotten   gains you have, and so for me this return of the ill begotten gains, radical   as it may sound, unfashionable as socialist ideals may be sounding today, for   me that is the only avenue to any kind of authenticity to reconciliation.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Joyce?

MS JOYCE SEROKE: You mentioned in your submission the fact that the women in   your community are marginalised. I would like to know what steps are being taken   to free the women and make them human beings within their own rights?

MOULANA DR FARIED ESACK: Thank you very much, sister. The battle for gender equality.   If you think that it was difficult to get Muslims on board the struggle against   apartheid, you don't know what you've got coming to you when you talk about   the battle for gender justice. Yesterday, mercifully, the High Court ruled against   Radio Islam, when Radio Islam insisted that the IBA had no authority to take   action against it. There are we started from a very, very difficult situation.   The Christian Church is debating whether women should be ordained. Of course,   as the Reverend Father has always said, I mean, Priesthood is a calling. We   have always said that the Priesthood is a calling. If it is a calling from God,   why on earth can't we leave it up to God to decide whom he wants to call? But   at least Christians are debating that, Muslims are still debating whether women   should be allowed into the Mosque or not! And so we are in the dark ages. There   are small glimmers of hope. In a Mosque like the Claremont Main Road Mosque,   the only Mosque in the world where women preach, sometimes on a Friday. The   only Mosque in the world and we are proud that it is in South Africa! There   is gender activists, deeply committed Muslims who are fighting to retain their   identities as Muslims and at the same time to be true to their own identity   as oppressed gendered beings, but these are small candles in the darkness, and   I don't know, certainly not in our lifetime. I always say, I mean I am also   a Commissioner for gender equality, and I certainly say that if there is a job   that is going to be around for a long time, then it's Commissioner for gender   equality.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Virginia?

UNKNOWN: Thank you your Grace, Joyce has asked the question I was going   to ask.

CHAIRPERSON: Oh, you wonderful child. Thomas?
MR T.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Thank you Faried. It may be by way of recapping. I may have   lost in the midst of all what was being said. Can you give us, you know, a strategy   or a form into which all these things can fit in for execution, or for implementation?   You have spoken widely about issues that are of real concern. I would have loved   to see us narrowing them to, you know, whether it is a structure or what, where   these things can be fitted into, where they can be monitored, where they can   be seen to be done.

MOULANA DR FARIED ESACK: I don't know. Like all theologians, it's all very easy to   be fuzzy wuzzy on all sorts of ideas and so on and then when anybody asks you   for any concrete ideas you are completely lost. At the end of the day, I am   just another budding theologian. Um, I don't know but I certainly think that   there have been structures in the past that WCRP have initiated; the Forum for   Religious Leaders, groups that can get together and on anyou see that   the problem is that many religious leaders, we have either now serving as Commissioners   or as directors in some Deputy President's office, blah, blah, blah, and so   we in many ways have lost our own sense of vocation. But the challenging role   for example that the South African Council of Churches played in the 70's and   more particularly in the 80's, I think there is again a need for those kinds   of forums to be established and again to continuously challenge society, draw   up a new Kayros Document for a post-apartheid South Africa and in the tensions   that we had among ourselves and the programmes that emerged from those tensions,   I certainly think that we are people who claim that our inspirations comes from   inside or from above, and note necessarily from socio-political dynamics around   us, but in the end of the day, I can only say that a forum of religious leaders   committed to this kind of truth and reconciliation that I was referring to,   such a forum may be able to come up with a more concrete programme that you   may want to see.

CHAIRPERSON: Khoza?
REV.

KHOZA MGOJO: Thank you Sir. I feel that I need to ask this question. In your   presentation, you did mention that the Muslim community benefited as far as   business is concerned. And you also mentioned Natal, where I come from. What   contribution do you think that your community could make in terms of reparation?   Because most of the businesses of the Muslims in Natal have been supported by   those people who are the victims of the system.