Archive: Storey Clarifies South African Crisis

South Africa remains at the forefront of world controversies. Most United Methodists know they oppose apartheid, the racist system which defrauds black South Africans of their rights. However, many find the details of the crisis in South Africa confusing. Dr. Peter Storey is the former president of the South African Council of Churches and former head of the Methodist Church of South Africa. On a recent visit to the United States, Dr. Storey stopped in at the Good News headquarters and gave the following interview about his troubled country.

Good News: What is the racial makeup of the Methodist Church in South Africa?

Storey: Eighty percent black, twenty percent white.

Good News: How large is the church?

Storey: Membership is approaching one million and constituency two million.

Good News: How many Christians are there in the entire South African population?

Storey: The population is supposed to be about 70 percent Christian.

Good News: What is the Church’s condition in South Africa?

Storey: God will ask one question [to those of us in South Africa]: “What did you do about apartheid?” I’m afraid that means there’s a large body of sincere Christians who are not witnessing to Christ. They are avoiding the Christ who speaks with anger and compassion about the oppression of black people in South Africa.

If you were to ask what the Church’s priorities are in South Africa, vis a vis apartheid, I would say the first priority is to go on making Christians. Evangelism is not irrelevant in a time of political tension and violence. Political repentance in South Africa would mean a surrender of privilege by the 10 percent in power, so there’s a sense in which the [surrender] dynamic of Christian conversion has deep implications for the situation in South Africa.

Evangelism is not irrelevant, provided it is prophetic. Pietistic, personal-salvation evangelism, if not linked with the challenge to be involved in social transformation and justice, is, in fact, a dangerous thing for South Africa.

The second priority for the Church should be to tell the truth, to reveal what is happening. This is crucial because of the amount of control the media now has in South Africa. We only know what is happening because of reports we get from local parishes saying, for instance, “We were having a service, and the police came and smashed the church up and arrested 200 people.”

The next priority is to bind up the broken. There is a ministry in caring for and repairing people, which can sometimes be done by counseling ex-detainees who have been through a severe trauma. Some of these ex-detainees are 15- or 16-year-olds who have been in solitary confinement for 90 days.

Good News: What impediment has the Dutch Reformed Church’s support of apartheid placed upon the spread of Christianity?

Storey: The Dutch Reformed Church has recently moved from support of apartheid to a form of qualified neutrality. But you cannot be neutral and be a Christian in South Africa. If you are neutral, you are for apartheid, and you are being used by the powers of evil.

But there is a difference between neutrality and independence. I believe the Church must retain sufficient independence from political movements so that it is able to prophesy into those situations and not be so identified that it no longer has prophetic integrity

Good News: It seems there is a growing feeling that it’s only a matter of time before apartheid is dismantled.

Storey: The South African government is now committed to a multi-racial South Africa. It is willing to make any concession on the level of race and color as long as no one seeks to take away its power. It is more a power issue than a color issue now. As long as the white Afrikaner retains the power, he does not mind making some concessions on the issue of race. Whites can marry blacks, whites can sit with blacks in buses and eat with them in restaurants—these issues are irrelevant. The essence of apartheid is who’s running the show. It is a power game. In the maneuvering to deal with that power center, there is no question that the group with the largest support in the South African black community is the African National Congress (A.N.C.).

Good News: Is that even larger than Mangosuthu Butheleizi’s [Zulu tribal chief and chairman of the South African Black Alliance] support?

Storey: Yes. Butheleizi is limited because he has made the fatal error—short-term advantage, long-term error—of establishing his political base in an ethnic tribe, which immediately raises the suspicions of every other tribal group in the country. Many Zulus would support the A.N.C. rather than Butheleizi’s movement.

Good News: Regarding disinvestment by American corporations, I read that South Africa has the largest black middle class in Africa. It seems some of those corporations might have had an impact in raising the conditions for some blacks. Is that a misunderstanding?

Storey: No, but I think our people realize those changes happened soon after the first threats that the corporations might be losing their profits and have to give up. The commitment to change was sudden and happened just recently, but that does not mean it is not important.

Good News: What are practical ways Christians in America can be of help to South Africa?

Storey: The first practical way is to pray, and that is not impractical. Prayer is a political act. You should pray for South Africa not just because it is the last outpost of racism; pray for South Africa because it represents what lies under the surface of your own society.

The second thing you can do is maintain a sense of moral outrage. People say there are other situations in the world which are bad. I say, “I know that, but I am grateful that the moral outrage is directed against the evil in my own situation.” In whatever way possible, stay mindful that apartheid is condemned in the counsels of God.

Third, I would like to see every Methodist congregation (because I am a Methodist) bring one young person out of South Africa and expose him or her to a free society, democratic values and the opportunity to get away from the pathology of a hate-sick society.

Good News: If an American church wanted to know how to do this, would the Methodist Church of South Africa be able to help?

Storey: I’m not the boss of our church right now, but I’d say yes, we would.

Good News: One of the problems Americans have with processing reports of strife in the world is figuring out who has done what to whom, especially when information does not come clearly, and there are both right- and left-wing viewpoints.

Storey: I understand that. In South Africa today right-wing violence is increasing. On the other hand, there are bombs going off in white shopping centers which are either from the A.N.C. or some other liberation group, so we are confused about where the A.N.C. stands on the issue. Publicly they have condemned it.

Good News: What have they said about necklacing [putting a gasoline-soaked tire around someone’s neck and burning them to death]?

Storey: They condemn necklacing.

Good News: That’s interesting; I have never heard anyone say that.

Storey: There is an awful lot of literature that says the opposite. Necklacing was a horrible phenomenon which arose as a disciplinary method of execution; young people organized themselves in townships to resist the troops, and this was their punishment to collaborators. The A.N.C. did not initiate or control that uprising, but when they began to encourage it, it became an issue. In the end the A.N.C.’s answer was, “No, stop that.” And it stopped; it is not happening anymore.

Good News: One of the things we hear is that a significant chunk of the A.N.C.’s leadership has Marxist connections. Traditionally that has not been a good omen for representative government. How valid is that concern?

Storey: I think it is a valid concern; it is never easy to be sure who is calling the shots. My knowledge of some of the individuals in leadership indicates that they would say, “We will make up our minds about where we will go, and we certainly won’t have our program programmed for us from Moscow or anywhere else.” They mean it.

I also think it is odd to hear the West express such anxieties and then refuse to show interest in or support for these movements. If your house is on fire you borrow a hose from anyone; you don ‘t ask him what his politics are first. It was, in fact, the socialist countries—the communist countries—that offered support [to South Africa]. I think that is forever to the detriment of the West. If western democracies had given more attention and support earlier to movements like the A.N.C., they may never have abandoned their long-held, non-violent stance.