Listening to the silent majority

[p. 76]

[60]

Disinvestment was a constantly-recurring theme during all conversations between 1986 and 1989. In the summer of 1988 I filmed in half a dozen black townships with my West-German television partner, Michael Stroh. In Crossroads we experienced an amazing event indeed.

Of course, the entire world is familiar with the name Desmond Tutu as the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, mainly because he was awarded the Nobel Prize. But I discovered eventually that there were other religious leaders at the Cape who didn't live in the richest white area of the region, Bishopscourt, but who conducted services right in the heart of Crossroads and other black townships. One evening we drove out for a meeting with eight bishops and other clergymen in the office of the all-black Western Cape Council of Churches in the Old Crossroads. Actually, what was called an office was a modest type of shack lit by an oil-lamp. I thought of Tutu's mansion where I had gone to seek an appointment, to find that, as usual, the Archbishop was travelling. That time Tutu was in Australia.

In the course of the conversation it became abundantly clear that, as the churchmen expressed it to us, ‘a large majority of blacks at the Cape were vociferously opposed to sanctions’. They said that compared to the power and influence of Desmond Tutu, their opinions were ignored and they never received any media attention either. Much the same story as Jabulani Patose in Lekoa. They felt hamstrung and were obviously angry about it. They had repeatedly sought to speak with Desmond Tutu, but, as Archbishop Thomas Siyolo phrased it, ‘He does not even deem us worthy of a reply.’ Syolo, ‘What can we do? He goes abroad and says that he speaks in the name of blacks in South Africa. But, the Archbishop certainly does not speak in our names or in the name of all the black townships at the Cape. We live here. We work here. You must come and attend our services in Crossroads.^43. We know how the people feel here. They are against the boycott that Bishop Tutu advocates all over.’

I made a proposal. I suggested they send another invitation by messenger to Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Bishopscourt proposing a meeting no later than June 15, 1988. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘you will this time have

43. Mike Stroh and I filmed the Crossroads church services

[p. 77]

the support of a television camera. If His Eminence again chooses to ignore your invitation, you will confront him with the question, “why?” If he accepts your invitation, then we will be at the meeting to film your exchange with him on the subject of disinvestment and the boycott. It will be very interesting to see what the participants of that confrontation have to say to each other.’ I recalled Henry ii, who said of Thomas à Beckett, ‘Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?’

We had been accompanied to Crossroads by a white aide of the Crossroads Town Council. He confirmed, incidentally, what the black ministers had told us, that Desmond Tutu had never set foot in Crossroads either. Once, he brought a white British colleague to the entrance of the township, had some pictures taken and had disappeared as fast as he had come. Our white escort had not uttered a single word during our conversation in the office of the Western Cape Council of Churches. I saw him frown, when Archbishop Siyolo asked me to draw up a text for an invitation to Desmond Tutu, but I ignored this sign of disapproval. This was a mistake, because, as it turned out, he was already brooding about how to sabotage the entire plan.

Mike Stroh and I returned two weeks later with a tv team from Johannesburg to Crossroads. To our utter surprise and disgust, we discovered that our town council escort had indeed advised the churchmen not to dispatch the message to Desmond Tutu as we had emphatically agreed on during the earlier meeting. I contacted this official at home and asked how he had dared to intervene in my work. He replied in tears. His story was, that he had tried for several years in Crossroads to win the trust and allegiance of the blacks. He added with emphasis, ‘including the udf and the anc’. He continued, ‘If the radicals discovered I was present when you agreed with the church officials to issue an invitation to Archbishop Tutu, my work in the townships will be destroyed, and worse, my life might be in danger.’ He sobbed that after our fateful evening in Crossroads, he had lived in constant fear of his life, had hardly slept, and in short was a complete nervous wreck. To my question as to how Desmond Tutu would ever find out that he had been there when I set up the television coverage around this crusader for disinvestment versus the anti-boycott black churchmen from his own backyard, the Western Cape, the white official replied, ‘Tutu will send his spies into the township and it would cost him no more that 100 Rands to uncover the truth.’

[p. 78]

Until I met the members of the Western Cape Council of Churches, I had always assumed that at least the blacks in the Cape supported Desmond Tutu's forays into the world to beg peoples and nations to bring South Africa to its knees. We filmed the Cape blacks building their own houses according to a new system, imported from Israel, by which almost anybody can construct his own home. And, it began to dawn on us that many were clearly critical of Tutu's behaviour overseas. Condemnations were often couched in pretty strong language as well. Our perception of the Archbishop as mouthpiece of South African blacks first underwent a drastic change in the Cape itself, later to be reconfirmed elsewhere in the land.

At the time of this writing I was to discover a tremendously sad story about the Western Cape Council of Churches and what happened to their office in Crossroads some time after Michael Stroh and I had visited them and produced the anti-Tutu interviews with the bishops for Sunrise Productions in Pretoria. Not only did our film disappear from the face of the earth, (a matter now being handled by my lawyer before the Supreme Court in Pretoria) but without prior warning bulldozers erased the office of the Western Cape Council of Churches in Crossroads from the face of the earth as well. A letter was sent to the bishops that this was going to be done, arriving one evening at 19 00h. But the next morning the building had already disappeared with its contents of files, bibles, furniture, everything included. The bishops wrote to Minister Chris Heunis and asked for an explanation. They were promised an investigation for which they have now been waiting nine months.

One wonders who could have initiated such Mafia conduct in a black township at the Cape without anyone bothering to come to the aid of the financially weak black bishops in the poverty-stricken areas of the Cape. Perhaps George Stamilatos had not been exaggerating after all when he said that dark forces were at work that have nothing to do with government, but demonstrated a government-within-a-government that is apparently out of control. I am on the side of the religious leaders in the townships of the Cape and have gone out of my way to bring this matter to the attention of the most responsible government circles I could find, including the office of the State President.