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

MS B BAM: Virginia, I want to add one little thing, and that is as Cathy says,   we have been told for so many years that we are inferior, we are weak, we are   emotional, we are not reliable. I don't know why they say we are not reliable,   because we are the fund-raisers of the church, so when it suits them we are   very reliable in raising the money for the church, but when it comes to leading   a church or a position, then we are suddenly emotional and all that. And so   that - and now we have started to internalise these things although we don't   say it, we begin to think it. And because we are afraid of failing, we don't   have confidence in ourselves, we don't have confidence in another women. So   unless we can, as individual women, begin to be assisted by the parents of the   children who are growing, the young girls that they are as good as boys, and   that they are not because of the difference, inferior. We have to start from   there. But I think we learn a lot from the church and the politicians, because   we support our women politicians. That's why they are there. Because we support   them. We must learn also to support other women in the church and not do it   only out there.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I think we want to acknowledge the quite   outstanding contribution of women, both in the church and in the time of our   struggle and as Joyce was saying, one has been struck by the fact that women   coming forward to testify and somebody has pointed out that mostly when they   have come to testify, they have come to tell about what happened to somebody   else, whereas whenever men came they have come to tell us what happened to themselves. 
We have certainly I have, become increasingly aware that without women our   liberation would not have happened and I want to salute the women folk and to   pay a very warm tribute to the. Coming from a church that has only recently   ordained women, I can again testify to how we have been enriched by the ministry   of women. We didn't realise just how impoverished we were in our ministry when   women were not allowed in our church to become priests and again we just want   to say thank you to God and to the women who have brought something that would   not have been there without them. I think that things that you raised about   sexist language and so onI am always a little amused that women get very   upset when you say "God, he" have you ever heard any women worry when   you say of the Devil, "He"? They don't mind, I mean you can be as   sexist as you like, they think they agree that the devil is a he. I agree entirely   that we often minimise the importance of language whereas actually just descriptive   of reality, language creates the reality it describes and therefore, we are   fortunate in our African languages, because I think on the whole that sort of   difficulty doesn't occur in the pronouns, but it occurs in the images that you   use, and maybe we become, not maybe, we should become a lot more sensitive and   I hope that will be the case for those who are here. I am just a retired Archbishop   now and I have no real influence, thank you very much. You may stand down dear   ladies. APPLAUSE.
I don't remember giving you permission to clap, I mean it is - where is it?   Now we call on the Evangelist Mpanza of Ibandla Lama Nazaretha.
Thank you very much for your patience. I will now ask Mfundisi Finca to administer   the oath.
ADMINISTERS OATH.