WORSHIPPING FOREIGN GODS
I’m in the last hours of a two-week visit in South Africa — a country, not unlike our own, blessed with tremendous natural resources, temperate climate, geographical accessibility to two oceans and democratic government supported by a legal system based on Anglo-Saxon and Judeo-Christian heritages.
South Africa also shares a similar history with us. The original European settlers of the land were predominately Boers (poor Dutch and French Huguenots who were ostracized because their politics or Protestant faith were not acceptable). Once they discovered the fertile soils in South Africa, these land-hungry, hardworking men and women continually pushed eastward from Cape Town to find new lands, much like our Manifest Destiny. In the process, they ran headlong into the bush people who were hunter-gatherers. The bushmen’s spears, arrows and hide-covered shields were no match for Boer guns and gunpowder, and soon they were reduced to second-class communities on land left over. Sound familiar to our Trail of Tears?
South African pioneers also used slaves to exploit wine, timber and wheat production. Though slavery was prohibited in the British Empire 30 years before our Civil War, the remoteness of the land and the great majority of black and “coloured” people (a South African term meaning Asians, Indians and mixed races) led the white ruling class to pass draconian laws that ensured there would be segregation of the races to preserve white supremacy. It took years, but those laws, known collectively as apartheid, were protested vehemently around the world. United Nations-imposed economic sanctions along with the protests and uprisings led by courageous South Africans like O.R. Tambo and Nelson Mandela combined to end this ugly blight that in Tambo’s words strangled both the oppressed and the oppressors.
However, South Africa still wrestles with racial issues. Although they have elected a succession of black prime ministers and many blacks are in the middle or upper class, the blacks still struggle. Driving from Cape Town to the airport, we drove several miles alongside Cape Flats, a pitiful collection of closely arranged hovels of plastic, tin and cardboard where barefoot children break through safety fences to play soccer on makeshift fields only feet from a major highway with traffic zooming along at 70-plus mph.
While climbing the famous Lion’s Head Mountain in Cape Town, I met a young missionary from Australia who tries to reach children in these communities by offering rudimentary education in hygiene and life skills. Those endeavors are important, but perhaps more important is the love he shows. St. Francis said we should spread the gospel always and, when necessary, use words. This young man was doing exactly that, and through him, these people might discover God’s love and the hope it offers all mankind.
It’s ironic that his and my Christian faith, carried by early European settlers to South Africa, was largely responsible for the segregation of races. The Boers were strict Bible adherents, but their focus was on the Old Testament admonition to Hebrews entering the Promised Land to avoid association with alien cultures. Their selective biblical interpretation offered the ideal rationalization for a people committed to establishing large productive farms on fertile land used for centuries by black bushmen. Their ownership of land and the wealth they created became their soul — the very “foreign gods” the prophets warned the Hebrews to avoid. Now, generations later, the people of South Africa are dealing with the tragic result of a people who used their Christian faith to suit their needs.
It’s easy to criticize the Boers using historical hindsight; however, I wonder: Who or what are our foreign gods in America today?
Roger Smith, a local author, is a frequent contributor to the Times Free Press.