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Sermon Index

SOUTH AFRICA: IN PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 4th of March 2001

These are words from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom:

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one's birth whether one acknowledges it or not. An African child is born in an Africans only hospital, taken home in an Africans only bus, lives in an Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only schools, if he attends school at all.

When he grows up, he can hold Africans Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass, failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail. His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life.

Two weeks ago, we spoke about how we as religious people respond to violence. We looked at the life of John Brown, the man who attempted to start a mass uprising of Black slaves at Harper's Ferry. All of us, with the perspective of time, believe that slavery is and was evil. Abolitionists believed slavery was evil, too. They had grown discouraged about the prospect of the natural gradual elimination of slavery. Even the Federal Government seemed against them. John Brown turned to violence. Indeed, he seemed to relish violence. Yet in the end, many in his own time considered him a hero, a martyr, and perhaps the catalyst at least a part of the inevitable Civil War and freedom for the slaves.

Today, we look at Nelson Mandela. Mandela grew up in African villages, surrounded by the most part by others of his own tribe. His father was the counselor to a local regent, another African. He had little contact with the world of the British except for the day his father refused to follow British law that demeaned the authority his tribal laws gave him. Because of his refusal, he was stripped of his title and his wealth. Even so, Mandela grew up surrounded by friends and family. He remembers this as a happy time. When his father died, the regent offered to be Mandela's guardian. He sent Mandela to school and groomed him to be a counselor to royalty like his father before him.

As a young adult, however, Mandela rejected this life and went to Johannesburg. There he studied law and learned more about the world, white, black, colored, and Indian. He found a "liberal" white lawyer in an all white firm who was willing to take him on as an articled clerk while he studied for law. But the secretaries in this firm didn't want to drink from the same cup Mandela used. Worse, the firm gouged its black clients. The firm took the lion's share of the commissions from black clients.

During this same period, Mandela made friends with white men who seemed to be color blind. Most of them were Communists. He met Africans who spoke of change, of action, of making the government end the oppression of its people. They introduced him to the African National Congress.

Mandela got married, began a family, started a law practice. Like most of us, he says, he was attracted to the good life, to money. Many people, especially whites, told him to avoid politics. They warned him that he would lose clients, bankrupt his practice. But much like the situation in the south in the 1850's, the situation in South Africa was getting worse instead of better. Mandela soon found himself getting in deeper and deeper.

In August 1943, he marched with 10,000 others in support of a bus boycott called after an increase in the fares. After 9 days of empty busses, the fare increase was pulled back. This was the first time Mandela had become a participant in the movement. Now he felt exhilarated and inspired. Together, they had won.

Soon, Nelson Mandela was elected to the Executive Committee of the Transvaal ANC. This new position increased his commitment to the ANC. It provided him with friends with similar goals and a place that was at least doing something to fight back against the government.

But conditions were going to get still worse. Some of you will remember this either, because you lived through it or from the history books. I had forgotten. This was the first major election after World War II. South Africa had rejected Nazism. The United Party had won against the National Party, which had sympathized with Hitler. But in 1948, the National Party ran again on a frankly racist platform. Africans were shocked and unprepared when they won the election. It was then that the government formally adopted the policies known as "apartheid."

As Mandela commented: "The often haphazard segregation of the past three hundred years was to be consolidated into a monolithic system that diabolical in its detail, inescapable in its reach, and overwhelming in its power."

The new government immediately announced its intention to curb the trade-union movement. It also proposed to restrict the already limited franchises of Indian, Colored, and African People. A number of significant laws were passed. The Mixed Marriages Act outlawed all unions among the races. The Group Areas Act required that separate urban areas be set aside for each racial group. This Act provided that if whites wanted land or houses owned by other racial groups, they could simply declare the land a white area and take it. The former inhabitants then were forced to move without compensation for their property. Finally, new laws required all South Africans to register by race so that the government could limit free movement around the country by nonwhites.

In 1849, the ANC began to call for resistance, protests, demonstrations, and other forms of mass action. This was a radical change in tactics. The ANC had always operated within the law. Now they were following Gandhi' example. Mandela and others believed that they had to be willing to violate the law and if necessary go to prison for their beliefs as Gandhi had.

But this adoption of nonviolence was not done on moral grounds. Mahatma Gandhi's son argued with others in the ANC that nonviolent tactics should be used on ethical grounds. But Mandela and others took a pragmatic approach. Their concern was what tactics were most likely to succeed. They believed that the State was more powerful than the ANC, because of its access to sophisticated weapons, and its trained and organized police and army. The government would crush any violence.

The ANC now decided to lead a small group in a national civil disobedience campaign. Selected volunteers would deliberately invite imprisonment by defying the law. Mandela, in charge of the campaign, told the volunteers that no matter what the authorities did, the volunteers could not retaliate, otherwise they would undermine the value of the entire enterprise. They must respond to violence with nonviolence.

As a result, 250 ANC supporters gladly went to prison. Mandela was one of them. Mandela writes that spirits were so high that "Even on the way to prison. the vans swayed to the rich voices of the defiers singing "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" (our opening hymn this morning). Over the next 5 months, 8,500 people took part in the campaign. The government, however, did not waver in its mission. In response to the protests, it passed legislation that empowered the government to declare martial law and detain people without trial. New legislation also authorized corporal punishment for people who defied the law.

In 1952, Mandela was arrested for violation of the Suppression of Communism Act. He and others were sentenced to 9 months imprisonment with hard labor but their sentence was suspended for 2 years.

As a result of the Defiance campaign, ANC membership swelled to 100,000. During the 6 months it continued, not a single act of violence occurred on ANC's side. But the government juggernaut continued unaffected.

Under the Group Areas Act, the government now acted to remove between 60,000 and 100,000 people from several towns to a tract 13 miles away from the city. Whites wanted to take some of the fine houses blacks owned on this land. They also believed that once the blacks were moved, they could more easily control their movements. The removal was to take place even before the houses were built for the evacuated people.

The ANC was adamantly opposed to this action, and Mandela's views were changing. At one public meeting, with the police in attendance, Mandela announced that the time for nonviolence had ended. It was now a useless strategy and could never overturn a white minority regime bent on retaining its power at any cost.

I began to suspect that both legal and extra-constitutional protests would soon be impossible. In India Gandhi had been dealing with a foreign power that ultimately was more realistic and farsighted. That was not the case with the Afrikaners in South Africa. Non-violent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end. For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

Although the ANC was not yet ready to renounce violence, Mandela and others began to look for weapons. The struggle to end apartheid was now beginning another phase. Though black Africans could not hope to match the weapons owned by the government, they could engage in guerilla warfare, violating the government's sense of invincibility, while continuing the international public relations campaign to make the end of apartheid eventually seem inevitable.

Unlike the more ambivalent feelings many have about John Brown, today we think of Mandela almost as a saint. Following his release after 30 years of prison, Mandela wrote:

I knew that people expected me to harbor anger towards whites. But I had none. In prison, my anger toward whites decreased, but my hatred for the system grew. I wanted South Arica to see that I loved even my enemies while I hated the system that turned us against one another.

Though Mandela sanctioned violence, both before and after his 30-year imprisonment, he emerged from prison willing to embrace his enemies. Willing to work toward healing of all people. Refusing to condemn all whites. Willing to accept that even enemies change. We admire Mandela for not adopting the tactics of murder and torture, for opposing retribution. But we, most of us, accept Mandela's argument that the "violence" he supported was self defense against government-instituted violence.

Mandela was not Gandhi. He challenges us to examine our own beliefs about violence. Mandela adopted nonviolence initially because he felt it was the most effective tool at that time for a group that had no access to the weapons of modern warfare, no means to equipping and training an army. When he felt that nonviolence was no longer working, he rejected it.

What would we do if faced with someone much stronger than we are that is attempting to harm us? What would we want our country to do? What if we saw someone else being hurt by someone who is well armed? What would we want our country to do?

Of course, the issues often are not so simple when countries are involved. Money and power are often more at issue than whether someone is the bad guy.

But I'm speaking for the moment of principle. The easiest case. The meek outnumbered and outarmed by the merciless. On the one hand, we can bear witness to the good and hope to change hearts. On the other, we can take arms ourselves, reluctantly, but hopefully as effectively and powerfully as we can, to try to overcome evil by force.

I believe that violence begets violence. Yet I see in Mandela a third way. Mandela bore witness to the good, even as he supported the bearing of arms. He convinced the world that although he was firm and clear in his pursuit of justice, he was no lover of violence, of indiscriminate slaughter. He convinced us all that he was a seeker of justice. He was quick to forgive, quick to call for healing, sincere in seeking reconciliation.

Near the end of his book, Mandela writes:

I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. . . Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black, I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others

I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come[s] responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

Our long walk has not ended either. Cruelty, greed, and even bloodlust seem always to be present. We just reach the top of one hill and another appears. Like Mandela, we struggle to know what is right, what is just, and, yes, what will work. We cannot tarry in the face of oppression. We cannot procrastinate even though we may be wrong. Even though we may make missteps in the name of justice. We must be humble, but we must try.

Let us walk together, doing the work of justice as we see it. Respecting the work of our neighbor. May we remember that we work for freedom for the oppressed and the oppressor. May we keep our hearts open and our resolve high. May we join John Brown, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela on that long walk to freedom.

Let it be so.