Listening to the silent majority

[116]

In 1988, I attended a South African Council of Churches meeting in St. George's Cathedral in Johannesburg. There were some 250 clergyman present, of whom quite a large number were white. I heard Tutu, Boesak and Chikane speak. Beyers Naudé was present, but didn't say a word while I was there. Boesak, who is President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and maintains close ties with an ultra-conservative religious centre in the Netherlands, at Kampen,^94. was perhaps the most aggressive of the trio in his utterances. Boesak takes the position that he has received a mandate from the Lord to do the work he is doing, including advocating sanctions against South Africa. He considers

94. ... although Kampen is also a hotbed for leftist political notions that doesn't reflect a realistic understanding of the issues

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the Pretoria government simply ‘illegitimate’, ‘that deserves no authority and does not have it... that deserves no obedience and must not get it. The Church must show another way.’ Boesak believes that the people should be obedient to the voice of God, and he clearly implies that God is for sanctions against South Africa. It goes to show that all brains function quite independently and differently.

At the entrance to the St. George's conference hall was a table with publicity material of the SACC. There was also a large poster in yellow and red letters for participants of the Council of Churches meeting to take home, distribute or hang on walls. It showed a coloured picture of the above clergymen and some others being surrounded by members of the SADF and police. It said in huge letters: ‘A government that restricts the Church is a government of bandits.’ I couldn't believe what I read. The SACC circulating a poster calling PW Botha, FW de Klerk, Chris Heunis, Gerrit Viljoen and others, ‘bandits’? I could not understand such a puerile and criminally tainted text being published by God-fearing, mature clergymen. So, I went to the Reverend Beyers Naudé, and asked him how any civilised person could sanction the publication of such a ridiculous text on an SACC poster. One can have serious differences of opinion with some of the thinking of Messrs Botha, De Klerk, Heunis or Viljoen, but to slander these leaders as bandits reveals more of the minds of the leading figures in the Council of Churches, than of those in the Union Buildings.

The appointment with Beyers Naudé in his Braamfontein office was for a few days later. I had witnessed, of course, how the man was telling Dutch television audiences that the South African government was torturing, and even killing, thousands of South African children, and I knew that the University of Maastricht was about to bestow upon him an honorary degree in Law, but all this disturbing information beforehand did not deter me from trying to meet him with an open mind. Just as I entered the office of his secretary, my eye caught on the wall the infamous poster I had first seen at St. George's Cathedral. It caused me to enter his study in a less suitable state of mind than planned. Our 45-minute meeting turned more into a confrontation than a meeting of minds. This I still regret. On the other hand, I flatly asked him how he could lend his name in good conscience to a text that portrayed the leaders of this country as bandits. Of course, he had no explanation for

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this criminal connotation, but he also believed I had been talking to the wrong people in South Africa.^95.

95. I am sure I have not been able to reflect all the opinions among the 28 million blacks in South Africa, but the reader can judge that I tried to find as great a variety of opinion as possible in the limited time and with the limited funds at my disposal