The Churches struggle against apartheid and a comment on the effectiveness of this Challenge.

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Page  of                 Alex Martin

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The failure to denounce, resist and incite to resist apartheid and its resulting violations of human rights, constitutes the failure of the church to live up to its faith convictions. Rather the church often got caught up in its debates on the legitimacy and right of resistance against the authorities. These debates were dominated by the question of the violence and the armed struggle. This furthermore happened under circumstances in which our members were part of the armed wings of the liberation movements. Prozesky, Martin, Christianity in South Africa p 132


The Churches struggle against apartheid and a comment on the effectiveness of this Challenge.   

        


When the National party was officially elected to parliament in 1948 they implemented a policy of Apartheid. Apartheid literally means apart, and was the separation of blacks and whites painstakingly and permanently.

        But we must also remember that the oppression of coloured persons living in South Africa did not start with the National party but with the white colonizers. When South Africa was colonized, the black natives had there lands seized they were deprived of there political identity and the cultural and religious identities were suppressed.  “It was the beginning of a form of oppression which characterizes the social structure of South Africa today.”

        Some of the most extreme Afrikaners looked up to Hitler, The path of racial segregation for South Africa was not a Master plan leading to the final solution, it was a general policy for the country that was adapted over time to meet the circumstances of the country at that time. Although when it was first implemented the ideology of apartheid became clear which was an idea of white supremacy.

        The Apartheid System was based upon the earlier system of segregation. Segregation was the system imposed on the British colonies in the rest of Africa; this system was in no way linked to any religious ideology. This differs to apartheid, which later on in the development of this system, was justified, although through a narrow minded, and some would even say twisted interpretation of the gospels, the system of apartheid and racial segregation.

        Of significance was the way the policies were enforced. The Native affairs department of the earlier segregationist period was more passive than its successor, The Bantu Affairs Department.  The Bantu Affairs Department played a far more direct role and was remembered for its authoritarian control over the daily lives of the African people.

        Now that the differences between Apartheid and the segregation of Africa have been shown, we must not forget the similarities between the two. The laws gave the white South Africans privileges were not knew to the country, laws passed in the early twentieth century also allowed colour discrimination, and the Land Act of 1913 denied Africans the right to choose where they wanted to live.  This marked the permanent segregation of South Africa into areas designated for white or black ownership.  Martin Prozesky comments:

         ‘The unmentioned purpose of the 1913 Land Act is to confine the Black man within such circumscribed limits that he should never be territorially independent ’  

        

Many apartheid laws were passed under the slogan “separate but equal”, but in reality, the facilities and provisions for whites were far superior to those of other racial groups.  In 1937, the Native Laws Amendment Act prohibited Africans from buying land in urban areas as these were considered “white areas”, and yet the 1946 population census showed a majority of native Africans living in urban areas.

As each new law was passed, the Churches in South Africa and the churches in the rest of the world reacted; some groups supported the apartheid legislation, while others rejected this apartheid legislation.

        Next we shall now outline each of the Churches views and comment on their struggle against the apartheid regime. The first churches are what were known as the Afrikaner reformed churches these churches are best remembered around the world for the support given to apartheid by their church leaders. Also the charge of heresy later placed upon them, to many these churches are seen as the ideological source of apartheid although there is some truth to this there is also a lot of nonsense, the main church to fall under this umbrella was the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC).

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        The DRC was first set up in South Africa in the seventeenth century. The DRC was officially recognized by the state in 1651, this was just before the Dutch East India Company established the first Dutch Reformed Church at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. As black Africans and people of mixed race converted to the religion, the DRC debated the question of racial separation. The pressure to have racially segregated congregations grew rapidly especially in respect of the Eucharist, but this issue was complicated further by the demands of some black church members for churches and congregations of ...

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