Prayer a weapon to fight injustice
THERE is historical precedence for South Africans praying for the removal of unjust rule. It is to this that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu alluded a few years ago, on the occasion of the refusal of a visa for the Dalai Lama. On that occasion the Arch warned that the time may soon be here when South Africans would pray for the end of ANC rule, as they had done in the 1980s when many progressive clergy like Allan Boesak, Frank Chikane and others included prayer in their arsenal of struggle against the apartheid regime.
They were not doing anything new in the long history of struggle against colonialism and apartheid. Even in 1912, when many leaders of faith and non-faith gathered in Mangaung to launch what we know today as the African National Congress, the occasion started with a hymn and a prayer. While we have no record of the prayer offered at the opening of that gathering, we do know the quest for freedom that burned in the hearts of those who gathered in that Methodist church to imagine a new South Africa.
The context then was a colonial one. Then, as now, the rulers were self-serving, determined to loot the wealth of the country for their colonial masters in Europe. Then, as now, the people tapped into their spiritual resources, through hymns and prayers, what became an epic struggle to defeat colonialism and apartheid.
To this day our national anthem bears the marks of the spirituality of our forebears who dared to envisage a different future while they were in the belly of the beast of evil and injustice. They knew that evil has a spiritual foundation, and to defeat it requires spiritual power. So, too, to remain free from its tendency to claw back its victims, we must all remain vigilant.
The JZ presidency has been more costly than anyone suspected a president could be. The moral, political and economic cost has been immense and it may take a long time to recover from it. When Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng called the president out for having broken his oath of office, it confirmed that not even the most sacred covenant of the people of South Africa, the constitution, was sacrosanct to the president and those around him. In his defence, it is fair to say no one can be responsible for so much damage. What can be said, though, is that it takes one person, strategically positioned as head of state, to select partners in crime and deploy them appropriately in different positions of state and state-operated enterprises. From these positions the machinery of state capture would be easy to set in place.
With that done, the millions of South Africans who stood in line to cast their vote for freedom in 1994 might as well have stayed at home. The state they sought to democratise has been recaptured, with full permission of the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. It would now serve the interests other than those of the people.
It is for this reason a growing number of South Africans are praying in a focused way about the removal of the root cause of the decay of our state machinery.
President Jacob Zuma’s departure is by no means the silver bullet that will cure the ills of our society, but it is a good starting point.
Moss Ntlha is chair of the South African Christian Leaders Initiative (SACLI) and general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa (TEASA). SACLI is one of the partners behind the Save South Africa coalition. SACLI aims to bring Christian leaders together to serve and speak to a vision of a just and peaceful South Africa.