'Stumbling blocks' to injustice take many forms, Buthelezi says

 

Bishop Manas Buthelezi addresses students: The Church needed to "talk to the government" to communicate "the prophetic Word of God."

PHILADELPHIA (April 2001)--In 1976 during a protest by Black students against the South African Police, Bishop Manas Buthelezi and members of a Black Parents' Association were mediators in a protest incident that wrote a small chapter in the struggle against apartheid, South Africa's now defunct policy of legalized racial separation.

During the uprising, a march from Soweto toward Johannesburg, the students at one point wanted to advance, and the police were ready to shoot them, he told a Seminary audience recently. He decided quickly to approach the police and asked them not to shoot the students. He also lobbied the students to discontinue the uprising. At the time Buthelezi was General Secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa, and he had been elected to chair the Black Parents' Organization.

 

Bishop Buthelezi enjoys a chat with Professor Nelson Rivera of the Seminary's faculty. Pastor Rivera oversees the Latino Concentration.

His mediation approach worked. "Many lives were saved that day," Buthelezi recalls. It was one chapter in Buthelezi's campaign to offer "stumbling blocks" to South Africa's legislated system of racial separation.

In 1974 Buthelezi was banned by the government, a practice which isolated him from friends and colleagues, and which prohibited him from taking part for a time in political, social or student gatherings. "I wasn't supposed to be in the presence of more than one person at a time," Buthelezi told the Seminary community. But he explained the banning order wasn't as restrictive as for many others of the day. He wasn't subjected to house arrest, or confined to only one magisterial district, and the government never took away his passport, which meant he could continue to serve as a leader in the Geneva-based Lutheran World Federation. And he could continue to pick and choose his venues overseas to get the word out about the pain apartheid was inflicting at home. Buthelezi once refused an offer of political asylum during a visit to Washington, D.C. He decided the best option was to return to South Africa to continue to play a role in the struggle. (In 1981 Buthelezi granted this writer an interview in Johannesburg to describe the struggle against apartheid for readers of The Lutheran.)

 

Bishop Buthelezi greets Pastor Arvid Anderson, a Convocation visitor.

On the home front, Buthelezi served as a Bishop, Church General Secretary and head of the South Africa Council of Churches. And he believes the banning practice against him was less stringent because as one of the first church leaders to be so restricted, news of the banning of Buthelezi prompted a world-wide protest and outcry that he believes shielded him in those days.

He told seminarians of a day when armed soldiers blocked a kilometer-long public worship procession, calling the event an illegal gathering. Buthelezi sent a subsequent letter of protest to the Minister of Police saying that the gathering did "not need your permission to worship God."

Describing his admiration for South African Black activist Steve Biko, Buthelezi remarked that "our (individual) Calvarys may not always lead us to violent death. We may still serve as a stumbling block to injustice. Our service may take a great form when we be who we are." Being who we are, he said, may not always require us to say something while we are acting. But sometimes it does. Biko died under suspicious circumstances while a prisoner in South Africa.

He noted that some protesters of apartheid had felt strongly "that we should not talk to the government. But it does no good if we never confront the oppressor with the prophetic Word of God, but rather leave them to their own devices. There are many forms of outcasts."

In an interview subsequent to his remarks, Buthelezi said his posture of being open to all sides during the apartheid struggle was a posture totally appropriate for the Church. "People will always disagree over an approach," he said during the interview. "But the Church shouldn't take an approach that some people are more dirty than others in the eyes of God. It is important to be open and minister to to all sides. I always told my pastors to take this point of view."

In speaking to seminarians of his personal experience, Buthelezi said the "scandal or challenge of Christ for each person is in deciding how to finally be for or against Christ" in each person's "special callings of the moment."

Mark Staples, Director of Communications