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

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Now your Moderator has eaten up a lunch of   30 minutes, there is actually nothing left but in the interest of church unity   I think we will let you have maybe five minutes.

REV MAPHOTO: Thank you. It is an honour and a privilege for me to openly say   in affirming what my Moderator has said in short. I wish I was speaking at a   time where we are not a Uniting Reformed Church but a United Reformed Church   with our fellow Dutch Reformed Church.
We are guilty both of the same type of sin. We have sinned against the nation,   we have misrepresented God's word in whatever we did. From the Uniting Reformed   Church I must simply say we have been throughout the time, been a testing ground   of any legislation from the National Party parliament.
One example as a young student in the church, at training college, on a Sunday   an honourable Minister of Religion came to offer holy communion and baptism   and he decided not to do that, but tried to explain to us the new coming legislation   over the separate development.
Children were not baptised on that day, holy communion was not served on that   day but a clear picture was put to us of the benefits that we would get from   separate development. I looked upon those present and I knew nobody could question   that and it went on, he explained at the end, he offered another time to come   and give holy communion and serve holy communion.
The important issue was to use the time to introduce the separate development   into the country. We had been total guinea pigs of our mother, to say to the   world that you are the only church that understands. If chaplains were needed   for the Police and the Defence, it will only come mostly largely, almost 90   percent from the ranks of the United Reformed Church, for both Defence and the   Police, but we are aware that we as a church had never had peace within ourselves,   within ourselves, within our mother and those were sent by the mother to help   us. There has been an undiminishing intensity of war within us.
That is the bedroom war, which ended up with the births of the Belhar confession   where we say up to here can no more longer. A status confession has to be declared   in which we say any difference on this question of apartheid, can never be reconciled   with the Word of God.
Now, we want to say our church as a testing ground served the National Party   with many informers. People outside, they know some of the things that we do   not know, that some of our ministers were used to serve the interest and we   want to openly this afternoon confess to the nation that we have sinned against   you. We knew the truth and we avoided to live with the truth.
Some of the things that are not known to us, that our members were involved   in, are those things that we want to say to the nation, may God grant us grace.   His grace is immeasurable, it can never be measured by a human being. He loves   us and we want to say as my Moderator said create a conducive atmosphere for   reparations and for the better way forward.
We have sinned against the nation, and we confess of our sins, thank you sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

REV XUNDU: Thank you for your submission which I think you gave elaborately   and very clearly. I want to say like the others, you have come to confess and   come and share to what degree your own (indistinct) took part in the struggle   or in taking part in collusion with the system in the struggle against apartheid   whilst you yourselves, you had your own struggle.
That struggle has been expressed in many ways and I am grateful that you are   able to confess and for the whole of South Africa to realise that you do, you   have come to terms with that.
I realise that in paragraph 8, in page 21 or 158, you have listed the things   which you are saying are things that take you through the road of reconciliation,   as a way of addressing that this should not happen again and I think that those   things speak for themselves and I think they are a repetition of some things   that were said by other people who gave testimony.
I therefore thank you and I am not wanting to make any more comments.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

UNKNOWN: In the likelihood of there being quite a number of perpetrators   in the pews of your churches, is there any organised way of addressing these   people and their families and further with that kind of knowledge, could you   be of value to reconciling processes because we shall need the perpetrators   who have come to the fore, who shall have been healed, who shall have been counselled,   to help this process?

UNKNOWN: Our clear understanding of the process we started as I said about   two years ago, of which we had two sessions last year, has in this overall vision   of the church one that we clearly need to understand, the nature of the remnants   of apartheid and of the history of the former churches within this church.
Similarly we understand that it would include our having to deal with our past,   having to deal through our own ministry of reconciliation and especially in   view of our own paragraph 3 in the confession of Belhar.
Both the victims within the church as well as the perpetrators, the principal   area in which this should happen to our understanding if I should speak within   the framework of our church, is the devise and development of this programme   within regional Synods for it to take effect right down to grassroots level   within congregations.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. We are deeply grateful and we thank God that   the spirit of God is moving you together and we hope of course that eventually   you will be one church as God intends you to be. You may stand down, thank you   very much.
We now call on Dominee Swanepoel of the Dutch Reformed Church. Good afternoon   brothers. We wish to extend a hearty word of welcome to you here. We are very   glad and happy that you are here. We are glad that you decided to be present   at this hearing. Will you please introduce your colleague as well?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman, together with me is Dr Willie Botha and he will   sit here to hold my hand.

CHAIRPERSON: Will he perhaps participate in answering questions or is he just   there to make sure, okay, I see, that explains it all.
The Rev Bongani Finca will assist you in taking the oath. Come on, get busy.

UNKNOWN: (confirmed)

CHAIRPERSON: As I have already said, we are very glad because of your presence   here with us today. We thought that we might be disappointed because you might   have been absent, but you are here. We thank the Lord that He had worked in   you to bring you here to us.
I would therefore like to hand the microphone to you. Let me just find out   about the - I don't know that we have enough of these contraptions. Do we have   enough of these? Those who will not be able to follow in Afrikaans, you will   need the headsets.

INTERPRETER: There are 50 headsets available all and all.

CHAIRPERSON: And which channel?

INTERPRETER: English will be on 2, and Afrikaans will be on 1.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you brother Swanepoel.