Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – The Role of the Church in Reconciliation in South Africa

By Dion Forster
April 2010

Cunningly, this ensured that black citizens, who are the majority population group in southern Africa, did not have a right to vote in “white” South Africa (even if they lived there) since they were only eligible to vote in their “independent homeland.” The black independent homelands were the most remote, least arable, and least economically viable tracts of land in southern Africa. Implementing this system from the early 1940s meant that many native South Africans were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands throughout southern Africa.

The land itself was expropriated and either put to use by the government or sold to white South Africans to establish farms. In order to maintain this system of segregation, and force black persons to remain in the black homelands, black South Africans were systematically oppressed and disenfranchised by various means.

Economically, they were disenfranchised through job reservation (meaning that certain jobs and professions were not open to black South Africans), Bantu Education (a system of education that trained black South Africans to do nothing more than unskilled and manual labour), inequitable access to health care, and more severe restrictions on freedom of movement.

The violent and systematic implementation of this evil system had considerable, and damaging, effects on southern African society as a whole, and particularly on the individual South Africans who suffered under it. The effects of Apartheid are likely to be felt for many generations to come.⁶

Within this context, the missional question must be: What would God want Christians to do in order to change society to reflect the Kingdom of God? Surely, mission in this context would be quite different from mission in China, or even in some parts of Europe? It was out of this realisation that the churches in southern Africa began to be shaped for their mission of healing and transformation. At times, the mission of the South African Church had a decidedly social and political overtone.

Neville Richardson notes just how influential and significant this ideology of systematic oppression was and how it would affect the Church:

…the church under apartheid was polarized between “the church of the oppressor” and “the church of the oppressed.” Either you were for apartheid or you were against it; there was no neutral ground. Given the heavy-handed domination of the minority white government, those who imagined themselves to be neutral were, unwittingly perhaps, on the side of apartheid. This complicity was especially true of those Christians who piously “avoided politics” yet enjoyed the social and economic benefits of the apartheid system… While young white men were conscripted into the South African Defence Force, many young black people fled the country to join the outlawed liberation movements that had their headquarters and training camps abroad. What could the church do in this revolutionary climate? And what should Christian theology say now?⁷

Out of this context the churches of southern Africa sought to bring about an approach to Christian salvation that is free from oppression and subjugation, is filled with God’s love that celebrates diversity without dividing and the reality of being graciously united with God and with all the people whom God loves, and includes a society that reflects the values of God’s kingdom. This became the Church’s mission.

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Dr. Dion Angus Forster is a minister and academic. He is the former dean of John Wesley College, the seminary of the Methodist Church of southern Africa, and a research associate and lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Stellenbosch (BUVTON). Forster serves as a chaplain to the Global Day of Prayer and the Power Group of companies in Cape Town, South Africa. His most recent book on Christianity in southern Africa is entitled What Are We Thinking? Reflections on Church and Society.