Our fight for social justice continues
Institutionalised apartheid might be history, but South Africa still battles its legacy to bring about equality, writes
THE humanist struggle that Father Trevor Huddleston mounted in South Africa, his adopted land, and England, his land of birth, left a deeply etched mark in historical memory. This distinctive individual legacy will continue to inspire thousands who embrace human rights and social justice.
It is a legacy with a strong presence in the post-apartheid social landscape, manifested in the notable role of the interfaith community in contributing to efforts to rebuild our nation along the lines he envisaged.
At the core of the life of Father Huddleston, as a man of the cloth, was the idea of justice, or, broadly, social justice.
The idea of justice itself is among the defining tenets of the Christian religion. Father Huddleston would have heeded the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 23:23: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness.”
Father Huddleston understood the primary reality of racial oppression in the political makeup of South Africa as an assault on the notion of justice.
Archbishop Huddleston openly stated that his own Anglican Church had not faced up to the problem of apartheid: “After all, the Christian cannot escape the daily responsibility of choice, or if he does he is not in fact accepting the challenge of his faith. Yet in South Africa every day and almost every moment the white Christian is confronted with a choice of quite momentous consequence. The same choice, in fact, that was put before the priest and the Levite as they hurried past that torn and bleeding figure on the way down from Jerusalem to Jericho.”
Nelson Mandela, in his statement after the passing of Father Huddleston, reminded us that: “At a time when identifying with the cause of equality for all South Africans was seen as the height of betrayal by the privileged, he embraced the downtrodden. He forsook all that apartheid South Africa offered the privileged community. And he did so at great risk to his personal safety.”
Ministering to the community of Sophiatown, Father Huddleston experienced at first hand the unsightly social, economic and political effects of the prevailing system of political oppression.
A true Christian who recoiled from acts of injustice, he openly embraced the emergent alternative vision for South Africa advanced by a cross-section of society led by the ANC. This anti-colonial force was unified by its adherence to the notion of a just, humane society; the notion of social justice and its historical underpinnings continue to shape our post-apartheid thinking.
The disappearance of institutional forms of social injustice does not automatically mean the effects of injustice have disappeared. Many of the prevailing discordant social attitudes result from the long history of social fissures along ethnic lines.
Separate geographic residences and other divisive means propped up by racist theories and officially sanctioned differential economic benefits would over generations be internalised as a world outlook.
This is part of the intangible legacy of apartheid that post-apartheid South Africa has to contend with if our construction of a just society is
Think, when you speak of our weaknesses, also of the dark time that brought them forth
to see the light of day. Institutions of socialising our young have changed and now ventilate a new democratic value system, but the economic inequalities that provide the underpinnings of social divisions have yet to be eradicated.
One definition of social justice holds that it is “promoting a just society by challenging injustice and valuing diversity”. It exists when “all people share a common humanity and therefore have a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights and a fair allocation of community resources”.
Social justice in any intelligible form began stirring into life in South Africa only with the April
LIFELONG CALLING: Father Trevor Huddleston with two children in Johannesburg in the 1950s 1994 democratic elections.
Unusually, in the liberal framework within which colonialism ushered in a modern state in our country, economic considerations took precedence over moral consistency. As such, the emergence of social injustice in South Africa was part of a global climate of colonial supremacy manifested through the race/class nexus.
In historical terms, the notion of social justice has been philosophically entwined around the core vision driving the ANC’s quest for liberation. Social justice in this sense partly traces its origins in the ANC to the religious, especially Christian, vision espoused by early African nationalism.
Most of the men and women who would play an immense role in the evolving ideological coherence of the ANC drew inspiration from Christian traditions.
The Freedom Charter is a document steeped in the edicts of social justice. In substance and spirit, it invokes social justice and envisages a future grounded in the framework of social justice.
When the Freedom Charter’s preamble says, “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”, it affirms an inclusive conception of social justice.
Post-apartheid South Africa is anchored in the notion of justice as well as recognition of the injustices of the past, as our constitution loudly proclaims.
The task of addressing the material legacy of apartheid is taking place in the context of an erratic, unpredictable and impersonal global economic framework where the devil takes the hindmost.
It is simply a cut-throat world, bequeathed to modern generations by a history of conquest and geopolitical domination.
The current global economic reality is that conditions of impoverishment sweeping across the world and pointedly felt in working and under-class communities are gradually deracialising poverty.
Hamstrung by a history of underdevelopment, middle-income countries such as South Africa find it hard to meet development and economic growth targets that may attenuate the biting conditions facing the masses of our people. In such conditions, issues of social justice are thrown into bold relief.
The challenge is to do everything possible to ensure economic growth. This is Hobson’s choice: we have no option when it comes to the urgent matter of economic growth as the social salve that can assuage the pathetic social conditions of our people.
At the same time, the truth remains that the African working class, under-class and peasants constitute the largest segment of the social poor. It is a historical challenge we cannot withdraw from without undermining the moral foundations of the struggle for social justice in South Africa.
Social justice should remain the main item on the agenda. Further, concentrating on an effective education system that produces a holistic human personality equipped morally, culturally, intellectually and with cutting-edge skills for modern hi-tech society, the state has the moral duty to use its central location in post-apartheid society to make the difference.
It is the responsibility of all social partners, including business and civil society, to maintain a moral climate supportive of efforts to eradicate the apartheid legacy.
Father Huddleston saw the fight for social justice as a lifelong calling. In his own words: “. . . for it will always be the duty of the Church to proclaim that this world is God’s world, and that infringements of his law will bring their own terrible penalties. Sin is not and never can be a purely personal matter. The problem of evil affects the whole human race. The sin of racial pride, the evil of the doctrine of apartheid, these are things which must be condemned by the Church and their consequences clearly and unmistakably proclaimed.”
To this penetrating thought I would add Bertolt Brecht’s illuminating poem To Posterity, which reads in part thus: “You, who shall emerge from the flood / In which we are sinking / Think — / When you speak of our weaknesses, / Also of the dark time / That brought them forth.”
This is an edited extract from former president Motlanthe’s address at the 101 Centenary Naught For Your Comfort Trevor Huddleston Memorial Lecture at Christ the King Church, Sophiatown, Joburg, last weekend