20 YEARS OF DEMOCRACY

It is 20 years since the dawn of democracy in our beautiful but troubled land.

Freedom Day was and remains a defining experience in our country. The actual event of voting in the first non-racial, democratic elections was preceded by much hard work by South Africans from opposing political creeds, and with the support of friends around the globe.

History will record the big role played by the ANC in our struggle, even if there were many ancillary forces, both within the country and abroad, that were part of our liberation.

Among those who contributed were compatriots – across the length and breadth of SA – who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Some died in the streets of barren townships, in ghastly interrogation cells, at the hands of hit squads, or as collateral victims of the struggle for justice. Many succumbed in lonely exile far away from the land of their birth.

In celebrating this day, we pause to remember all these. We acknowledge those who put aside self-interest and principle – honourable or mis-guided - in pursuit of the common good.

Given the decades of antipathy and the prospect of violence mere days before we voted, our country wobbled on tenterhooks right up to the last.

But April 27, 1994, dawned with great anticipation. Millions of us queued to vote, our joy tempered slightly – but never completely – by the fatigue of standing from dawn to dusk.

Our act of voting then was an expression of hope for a future in which peace would triumph and democracy be entrenched. It was a commitment to finding creative, meaningful ways of dealing with the wounds of our racist past, making ‘justice for all’ our mantra - not least the justice required to redress historical and legalised economic inequality.

Through our vote, we trusted that the political parties against whom we placed our crosses would not disappoint us but lead our united efforts for a better future with courage, optimism and integrity.

Twenty years later we must take time to celebrate what we have achieved. Only the churlish and those with very narrow sectarian interests will not acknowledge that South Africa is a radically different country now than it was in 1994.

But this is also a moment to be saddened by the missed opportunities reflected in the failings of our political leaders, the policy shortcomings and bureaucratic catastrophes, the moral depravity and societal degradation, the tentative – at best - move away from a racialised past. And the frittering away of our democratic dividend. - From the Daily Dispatch

Slumbering Church Begins Collective Lament On Easter

PERHAPS the Christian church – in its many local denominational variants – was built for crisis. Or maybe, crises build or form the local church community.

Certainly, the early church – the small, motley group of people who had followed Jesus and who gathered together in his absence – was built by experiencing his agonising abuse and death on a cross, and by the group’s own persecution at the hands of both religious and secular authorities.

OUTSPOKEN FOR JUSTICE: Archbishop Desmond Tutu will lead today’s march

Of course the message of Christ, especially as it is celebrated at Easter, never ends at his death on the cross, so we know the church was also built by the “Good News”, the resurrection of Jesus, by God’s providence at Pentecost and in myriad ways since then and throughout the ages.

But it is in the quick moment or long years of despair and rejection, of having to deal with serious personal or corporate challenges, of experiencing the ways of brutal opponents including religious or secular states – and of the deep lamenting and crying out to God that flows from those times – that the church, maybe, grows most.

But there are good enough reasons to accept the church may also have been intended for crisis: the crisis of the world – crappy, complicated and conflictual.

Christ envisioned his church as a community of believers who would exist firstly to love God and then to love each other. And loving God and each other meant – as an imperative – also loving the world.

Seasons of rebirth and growth in the church have usually followed a time of crisis. But the church needs firstly to recognise there is a crisis. And then to ask: what are we, the church, to do in this crisis?

In South Africa, since 1948 a few Christian churches, along with individuals who felt alienated from their own conservative churches, recognised that the country under legislated apartheid was in crisis, and they felt compelled to do something about the government’s racist policies.

These churches came down firmly on the side of the disenfranchised and oppressed black majority, poor and mostly confined to the semi-independent homelands.

Among the most enduring images of the 1980s, as the struggle against apartheid intensified, were pictures of ministers leading large groups of protesters in marches of civil disobedience.

It is important to emphasise – lest we give the revisionists too much leeway to rewrite our history – that these initiatives were taken by only a few churches, because the formal position of most denominations at the time was support for the apartheid state, to a greater or lesser extent.

Opposition to apartheid was a radical, kairos moment, which most churches were not prepared to align themselves with.

It is now widely accepted that, in the democratic era, faith communities stepped back from – abdicated would not be too serious a charge – their previous, activist approach, as they left the ANC-led government of national unity and let its successors get on with the job of governing.

But that distancing themselves from the issues of the day has led to a church that has become increasingly inward-looking, stuck in the structural and programmatic aspects of being a community of believers, just another organisation keeping itself going.

The effect has been a church that is increasingly moribund, incapable of being the salt of our society in the multitude of ways that salt is now needed.

But all that is changing again. Christians in South Africa are being called to take sides again as the ANC shows its incapacity to deal with the challenges of government, for whatever reasons, honourable and dishonourable.

It is time to take a stand and do something about poor service delivery, corruption and other social problems in our society, from within the church and throughout local communities.

The church has (finally) realised it cannot leave the future of our society in the hands of a secular state. The issues are too critically important to the lives of the vast majority of South Africans.

Today in Cape Town, ordinary Christians and leaders of churches will join with people from other faith communities, in a “Procession of Witness”, a march from District Six to Parliament during which they will call upon government to ensure a better life for all South Africans.

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was the bane of apartheid government officials for his outspoken utterances against apartheid, will be among the key religious leaders to take to the streets at the head of the procession.

The event has been called a “collective lament” for all that has been left undone since the official demise of the apartheid state.

Easter is a festival over three days, because it commemorates the passion, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It is symbolic the march on Parliament today takes place in the in-between “waiting” period of confusion and misery for followers of Christ, between the brokenness and suffering of Good Friday and the triumphalism of Easter Sunday.

It is a time of waiting not because we don’t know about the suffering, or because we don’t anticipate the celebration to come. It is that necessary preparation before we, too, take up our cross to follow Christ.

These acts of orderly protest, of sending a message of concern to the political leaders, of trying to effect change that affirms life and democracy, that says no to corruption, maladministration, and the abuse of the resources of the state by individuals – however many they are – are not guaranteed to elicit the appropriate response.

Expect vilification, even opposition, from the state security apparatus, using tactics from a former era, from the side of those with an interest in maintaining the heinous status quo in our country.

A recent personal experience of being barred from a local church cell (Bible study) group – because of a report I wrote in the Daily Dispatch about a corrupt municipal property transaction – has reminded me of the very personal challenges we all face in taking a stand.

We may find the South Africa of today cannot easily handle the challenge of people in the same family, clan, tribe, community, standing on opposite sides on the issues we need to address if we are to radically change the lives of our suffering citizens.

That may be especially relevant for the Eastern Cape, where our bonds are very strong.

It was, perhaps, easy under apartheid to be a mass of disenfranchised people – different by skin colour, class, religious affiliation, gender, sexual orientation – but similar in our separation from the right to vote for the government of our choice to lead the country in a just manner.

The ruling party today, however, does not take kindly to opposition from any quarter, even from within its own ranks.

This new period of taking a stand against injustice might be a bit more difficult and painful, especially for a Christian church moving from its moribund state.

Henry Chadwick wrote in 1967 about the early Christians that “the paradox of the church was it was a religious revolutionary movement, yet without a conscious political ideology”.

But, history shows us events such as today’s demonstration in Cape Town will gain momentum.

A group of radicals following the example of Jesus can achieve remarkable things. The church in South Africa has been made for this crisis moment, and this moment will build the church too. — From the Saturday Dispatch, Easter 2014