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

UNKNOWN: The Chairman of the commission, the most Reverend Desmond   Tutu and the Commissioners. The Methodist Church of Southern Africa appreciates   the invitation to make this submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.   I would like to point out, Sir, that the Methodist Church of Southern Africa   covers six countries in our sub-continent. Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho,   Mozambique and South Africa. Sir, our appearance before the TRC is not a mere   formality. Rather, it is a quest to offer our apology to South Africa for our   shortcomings, when this country was afflicted with apartheid. And to confess   our co-operation with that system, both intentionally and unintentionally. We   have agonised with the question of whether a conference can confess on behalf   of its local societies or not. We believe that it is our obligation to offer   our corporate confession, trusting that our societies and members share in the   spirit of this confession. On the other hand Sir, this confession does not seek   to prevent those of our members who may have violated the human rights of others   from making their individual submissions to this body. In fact, we have sought   to encourage such people to approach the TRC for that purpose. Whilst the Methodist   Church of Southern Africa can claim to have endeavoured to stand with other   religious communities in rejecting the policy of apartheid from its codification   in 1948, we do not believe that this opportunity is for us to parade our efforts.   Rather we wish humbly to face those shortcomings that compromised our witness   to the Lord Jesus Christ. We confess that on many occasions we failed to live   up to the mission of our Lord, to preach the good news to the poor and proclaim   freedom for the prisoners. We have, over many years, struggled with our failures   and a number of times through our conference resolutions we faced these and   sought to bring them to the attention of our people in a spirit of repentance.   In 1960, we offered this confession "The Methodist Conference of Southern   Africa recognises that christian people and groups, whilst responsible for contributing   towards the solution of the problems of humanity by interpreting the mind of   Christ in the situation of South Africa, they themselves are deeply involved   in these problems. We as a church, confess that many of our own members are   guilty of race prejudice and are prone to the very sins that we regard as our   duty to condemn."
In 1976 we again struggled with our failure. We confessed that in the life   of our churches, we had not sufficiently shown the possibility of an alternative   to racial discrimination and group selfishness. That our fellow countrymen have   not been able to look at our churches and say, "See how these christians   love one another". We confessed too that as leaders of the christian churches   we had failed to give justice and reconciliation high priority. We pointed to   the tragic events of 1976 as having brought home to us the need to hear God's   word to us at that moment of our national history and to mobilise all our resources   for the urgent cause of our people's freedom. In response to the debate on disinvestment   in 1985, conference confessed that in our churches there had been no proper   debate and consideration of the disinvestment question because we had allowed   ourselves to be restrained by the severity of laws designed to prevent open   discussion of economic sanctions. This meant that the only arguments being heard   in South Africa were those is opposition to disinvestment. In 1986 conference   admitted its own failure to grapple timeously with the issues of great importance   to the disadvantaged people of South Africa and acknowledged that well intentioned   decisions on their part had sometimes been mistaken for indecisiveness and lukewarm   commitment to the liberation of our people. Conference asked for forgiveness   for its failure and for grace to respond more adequately. In 1988, when our   conference recognised that the concept of a peace church had been rejected by   its synod, it confessed that we had failed as a church to give sufficient attention   to God's call to be peacemakers and thus to provide an alternative to violent   action to change. That we failed to provide sufficient opportunity for consultation   and study of the peace church concept. We confessed that there were deep divisions   within the church over the issue of the peace church. Sir, we now ask that these   confessions presented in the past to the Methodist people be heard and met with   forgiveness by the public of our beloved land. These are not the only failures   we have to confess, there are many more. We allowed our skewed society values   to dictate our actions. We paid unequal stipends to our ministers. We trained   our ministers incorrectly and in most cases we did not equip our ministers for   the struggle against apartheid. We stationed our ministers racially ensuring   that both black and white congregations were locked into their own separate   cultural worlds instead of allowing them to be informed by one another. For   a long time we did not recognise black leadership in our midst. Sir, the list   is endless. We are grateful to God that the holy spirit continues to disturb   us. Both our confessions recorded in our minutes, conference after conference,   and our efforts to respond to these injustices point to a people who felt caught   in the complexity of our common sinful life, unable to find the boldness to   move together to the future that we knew God desired for us in this land. The   opposition of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa to apartheid was compromised   by fear of possible consequences of radical action, but undue sensitivity to   the views of its economic powerful white constituencies. By insensitivity to   the aspirations of the black majority, by undue respect for the institution   of government and above all, by a failure to adequately express at local level   the principles which it proclaimed in its official conference pronouncements.   A great number of Methodists, ministers and lay persons in all sections of the   community, remained silent and uninvolved and many defended their inactivity   by seeking to separate these fears of religion and politics. The Methodist Church   acknowledges its failure to convince such people of the integral link between   the gospel and justice and to make them aware of the socio-economic and political   implications of christian discipleship. We continued to examined our life in   co-operation with the other churches in the witness of the SACC and later in   the work of the Rustenberg Declaration. We are grateful to God that in spite   of our shortcomings we were given strength to resist the evil of apartheid.   In spite of extreme government pressure, we refused to withdraw our membership   from the World Council of Churches. A number of our pulpits fearlessly proclaimed   a wholesome gospel that prophetically declared that the people of South Africa   will be free. We constantly focused our prayers to the cause of justice and   to the discomfort of many, we used sometimes symbols that sought to keep the   hope alive for a new South Africa to dawn. A number of our ministers suffered   public humiliation at the hands of the government and its agents of evil. A   large number of Methodist families suffered at the hands of the tyrannical system,   as they responded to the prophetic call to resist apartheid. These, for us,   are not a cause for boasting, for the pain that accompanied such witness is   still pulsable. In 1978 the Methodist Church of Southern Africa suffered a major   blow when it was banned and declared an undesirable organisation from Transkei,   one of the areas where Methodism is strongest in Southern Africa. All our properties   in Transkei were confiscated without compensation. The most valuable of them   were then sold and they are now lost to us. Apartheid effectively wanted to   alienate the Methodist Church from part of its roots in the Eastern Cape. The   reason being simply the refusal of our conference in 1977 to accommodate the   fracturing of the people of Southern Africa according to their ethnic backgrounds   and their balkanisation into independent Bantu states. For ten years we were   forbidden from ministering to our mothers and fathers. We were forbidden from   bearing our own without the permit of the oppressor. To minister to our own   people, turned either into a criminal offence or an act for which one could   be labelled ...[inaudible] from the Church Catholic. Today we wish to offer   an unreserved apology to those who felt that our refusal to minister in Transkei   under these stringent conditions imposed by that government was to abandon them.   We also wish to offer an apology on behalf of those who felt compelled by the   needs of our members there to serve within the Methodist churches formed according   to the law of the government of Transkei. The wounds of that blow are still   fresh for us, because some of our people were permanently alienated from us   as a result. We deeply long for a reconciled Methodist Community, restored to   its full fellowship and connection. We thank God for the changes that have come   to our land. We wish to state without ambiguity that we are committed to our   responsibility to help bring healing and reconciliation to South Africa. We   will continue to build racially mixed congregations where individuals are honoured   and their heritage welcomed for the growth of all together. We have committed   ourselves to joining hands with other christian communities to fight hunger   and poverty, which is often, if not always, a direct consequence of our unjust   history. We are prepared to be in dialogue with people who may have a claim   on some of our property, as a result of having been unjustly removed from their   land. We have called on our congregations to use our facilities for projects   that will assist those who were denied opportunities to gain valuable skills   for their future. We have opened our facilities for healing and counselling   sessions such as Kulumani, and we have set as one of the three goals of our   connection that the church at every level will encourage the creation of speaking   forums where people can speak about their pain and help one another to heal.   We are deeply conscious of the breakdown of morality in our land as a result   of apartheid and we seek to place emphasis again on values such as family life,   that were broken down by apartheid acts such as the migratory labour laws. We   have, and we will continue to write liturgies that allow people to look back   at their history and see that their heroes were not victims, but people, who   like Jesus, laid their lives down for the freedom of the nation. We will endeavour   not to flinch or hesitate when required to say a prophetic word that will help   our country and all its organs so that we will never allow ourselves to repeat   the mistakes of the past as a nation. We believe that it is all the people of   South Africa who must have the will to move their country to a destine of freedom,   wealth, charity and respect for creation and human dignity. We believe that   it is our task that we should appeal to the gospel of Jesus Christ for such   a will to be nurtured and strengthened among our people. I thank you Sir.