The Presiding Bishop's Visit To Southern Africa
Episcopal News Service. July 6, 1989 [89120]
Katerina Whitley
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- It started with a British Airways flight from New York to Johannesburg on May 23 and ended with a march in Washington, D.C., on June 17. Putting his commitment to justice in Southern Africa to work, and standing by Anglicans there in true solidarity of faith and purpose, Edmond L. Browning, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, traveled thousands of miles, listened to thoughtful voices, preached in a variety of churches, sat in many airports and airplanes, before arriving back in the United States to bear witness to what he had seen in Southern Africa and to link arms with South African anti-apartheid leader Alan Boesak and many others and march to the White House to offer a prayer and participate in a role call of victims of South Africa's repressive system.
The Presiding Bishop's month of intensive and focused activity in support of his brothers and sisters in the Anglican Province of Southern Africa had its origins in an invitation extended to Browning in 1988 by his close friend Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Cape Town, to preach at the Sunday Eucharist of the Provincial Synod of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (CPSA) on June 4, 1989. Once Brownign decided to attend the synod, planning began for a visit that would last two weeks and would include four days in one of the frontline states (i.e., Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) that suffer from destabilization brought on by the South Africa government's military and economic interference. Mozambique was the state chosen.
Before leaving, the Presiding Bishop had already committed himself to participating in the "From Pentecost to Soweto" campaign in Washington, D.C., a national anti-apartheid effort initiated by Churches in the United States in response to the call from South Africa's Churches to "Stand for Truth until South Africa Is Free."
What Bishop Browning saw and heard in South Africa solidified his determination to stand by the CPSA and to proclaim the truth -- "the Church must name the enemy," he said -- in the killings taking place in Mozambique and in the black-on-black violence in Natal.
Besides his contacts with Archbishop Tutu and other bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church, the Presiding Bishop and his team met with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Durban, the Most Rev. Dennis Hurley; with the staff of the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa, Dr. Stanley Mogoba; with members of an ecumenical agency, Diakonia; with the editor of the Durban Sunday Tribune, Ian Wiley; with Michael Sutcliffe, who specializes in city planning; and with Professors Jonathan Draper and John Aitchison, who work with the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness. Browning and his party also visited the Federal Seminary in Pietermaritzburg and African homes in the cities of Soweto and in the KwaMazu and Umlazi townships.
The Presiding Bishop was accompanied by his wife Patti, with whom, as he says, he has "a joint ministry"; by their son John, the youngest of their five children, who is a student at the University of California in Santa Cruz; by the Rev. Patrick Mauney, his Deputy for Anglican Relations; by Liberian-born Canon Burgess Carr, Partnership Officer for Africa, and his son Oye Carr, a student at Wesleyan University; and by Katerina Whitley, former diocesan editor and currently a writer for the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief.
The Presiding Bishop's party listened, absorbed, worshiped, and traveled together, following an intense schedule that did not keep them isolated but brought them in close contact with blacks and whites involved in Africa's struggle for freedom.
The following articles are summaries of what the Presiding Bishop and his team heard and saw in four days in Mozambique and seven days in South Africa.
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- The reality of apartheid surrounded the Presiding Bishop and his party on their visit to Southern Africa. The system of racial separation that has caused revulsion around the world and has often been condemned by political and religious leaders both within and outside South Africa is disturbing enough in principle. But only close contact with what it does to its victims -- ironically, white as well as black -- can bring an awareness of the full extent of its evil, of a system of separation so total and so clever as to be demonic.
No photograph, no television image, no description can prepare the first-time visitor to Soweto for the smoke that permeates that sad city; that clings to your hair, your clothes; that enters your nostrils, your lungs, and makes your eyes burn.
Soweto, at five in the afternoon on the day in May when the party of Episcopalians from the United States visited there, was already dark. Because there is no electricity, the people have to burn rubbish or garbage, in order to cook their meals and heat their homes.
Children play in unpaved streets littered with garbage and splattered by sewage from broken mains. They get very dirty, and washing children and clothing is difficult in Soweto. Often, water has to be carried from a great distance in plastic containers.
A Soweto doctor, Sampson Shabangu, an Anglican, came out of his office to meet the visitors and was amused that they are surprised by the poverty surrounding him.
"Only 14 doctors in a city of over two million?" we asked, incredulous at what we had heard.
Shabangu laughed and said, "Well, we feel over-medicated these days; there used to be only three."
Even though there is no electricity for the use of poor people, there are street lights of a sort in Soweto's neighborhoods. They are on tall, metal poles and stay on all night long. It soon becomes apparent these lights are not there for the convenience and safety of the people of Soweto. They are part of a surveillance system and make the periodic raids of the township by the police more efficient. When we passed a playground, we could hear the children's voices as they played soccer and the sound of the soccer ball being kicked, but we couldn't really see them at first; they were hidden in the thick smoke, and there was no light on their playing field.
In Soweto, a city of 2 million people, we learned that there is one firehouse and one movie theater. But by the time we found that out, we had stopped being surprised.
The Presiding Bishop's party left Soweto and its smoke, and returned to the outskirts of Johannesburg to spend the night in an airport hotel. The air was crisp and clear there.
At night, Durban, the major city of the Province of Natal, seemed to bear no resemblance to Soweto. The shops were fashionable, the streets clean, the buildings elegant. The group from the United States stayed at a fine hotel, across from the impressive City Hall. The staff at the hotel were black and Indian. The service was excellent. But we knew from experience that there were questions that needed to be asked. For instance, "Where are the slums?"
Michael Sutcliffe of Diakonia, the South African ecumenical center, was the person who helped us find out what we needed to know about Durban.
Sutcliffe, a white architect, knows a great deal about the problems -- and injustices -- surrounding the issue of housing for black South Africans. He is also a professor at the University of Natal in Durban and a member of an organization of architects and students called the Built Environment Support Group (BESG). BESG works with clients who request special projects for their communities.
For instance, helped with rebuilding homes after devastating floods in the region in 1988 and also involved in planning schools, community centers, and "built environments" for disadvantaged people, not neglecting the political aspects of their work -- the need to protect the people they are housing against political injustice.
Sutcliffe showed the Presiding Bishop's group Natal's black townships, places where the province's African majority live, places that tourists never see and that white residents are either discouraged from knowing about -- or choose to ignore. ("Africans" is the word used by white South Africans for black South Africans.)
African residential areas are deliberately separated from white areas by buffer strips -- highways, hills, parks, industrial areas -- so that whites do not ever have to drive through them or be "offended" by seeing them. A single two-lane highway in bad need of repair leads from Durban to the black townships. Since a million or so black workers must go daily from the townships into Durban and other areas to work, traffic jams are a major and dangerous problem.
There are actually two possibilities of housing for blacks in urban areas like Durban. There are the actual black townships, where most housing is provided by the state, and there are more informal settlements where people have been forced to build their own housing -- hastily constructed shacks, for the most part. In 1960, 10,000 people lived in Durban's shack settlements; today, there are 1.7 million people housed there. This means that 1.7 million people live just outside Durban without ready access to water, sewers, decent roads, and other basic facilities.
On another day, the Episcopal group was driven to Pietermaritzburg (also in Natal), through a beautiful, rolling, green countryside. Pietermaritzburg itself was idyllic, beautifully situated, with impressive architecture. But the group quickly realized that there was something odd about Pietermaritzburg -- there were no blacks, no "Africans."
Two days later, the Episcopal group returned to see Pietermaritzburg's black townships. These townships did not look like the city, and their people seemed to be in despair. Here, closed in, there is much violence among black factions, of the Inkatha of Chief Gatza Buthelezi against the United Democratic Front comrades. The contrast between Pietermaritzburg and the townships, between idyllic calm and strife, can be directly attributed to apartheid.
In 1913, a Land Act reserved only 13.6 percent of South Africa's land for the African majority -- constituting 70 percent of the population. In urban areas, the blacks were referred to as "temporary sojourners." And even though the whites had most of the land to begin with, they could have more by forcibly removing blacks. Since 1913, more than three million black South Africans have been forcibly removed from their homes. An interesting comment lies in the fact that today, in the Durban area with its poor housing conditions for blacks, 35,000 subsidized apartments and houses stand empty. They are in white-only areas.
In 1950, the Population Registration Act was passed; it identified and called for the classification at birth of each person according to four distinct racial groups. This act is the true basis for apartheid.
To make matters worse, the Group Areas Act was passed in 1966. This legislation sought to create a total social and residential separation between the country's four identified racial groups. This clinched the unequal treatment in housing and land of whites and blacks.
Responding to protest within South Africa and pressure from outside, the government passed the Total State of Emergency Act on June 12, 1986. This gives power of arrest and detention to the lowest ranking policemen and soldiers; free reign to security forces seeking to maintain the status quo; and strict government control over the media.
Taking into account the repressive laws and constrictive living situations for the majority of South Africans, it was not difficult for the group from the United States to understand why, despite the beauty of many things and places in the country, the feeling of tension and frustration was so overwhelming.
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- "In the name of God!" Desmond Tutu said when he entered the church. And you knew that it was indeed in the name of God that he stood there in the impressive vestments and miter of an Anglican Archbishop at the opening of the Synod of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, held in Durban, Natal, from May 31 to June 8.
The triennial gathering in Durban over which the Archbishop would preside, analogous to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, would deliberate important issues in the life of the Church -- the ordination of women to the priesthood, among them -- and would witness the presentation of the Church's first new prayer book in 36 years, An Anqlican Prayer Book 1989, volume that will eventually be translated into eight of South Africa'; major languages
Awe and authority, electrifying love, and an ever-present playfulness -- these are all realities people remember once they have seen the small, black South African leader enter a room or climb the steps of a pulpit. And most people remember his voice, the pliant and subtle instrument of an actor, long after hearing him preach.
Desmond Tutu has always been a charismatic figure -- even before he won the Noble Peace Prize; before he became Primate of a vital, racially integrated Church. Tutu projected a unique presence in 1982 when he spoke at the New Orleans General Convention of the Episcopal Church and told delegates and visitors the truth about South Africa. And in his telling of the story, he demanded a commitment from all those who heard him by being himself, a man burning with the conviction of God's love for all his children regardless of their color; a man full of courage, although fear of an unjust government must have hung like a noose around his neck from the beginning.
At home in Africa, as celebrant and archbishop, Tutu used his voice to call his people to prayer: it is a strong, low-pitched voice, switching with enviable ease from English to the clicking, surprising sounds of Xhosa, to the liquid consonants of Zulu, to the rather harsh sounds of Afrikaans, without missing a beat.
In Durban, in his role as president of the synod, Tutu spoke with authority and conviction; but even then, his natural wit bubbled over. And he made everyone laugh with his sudden jokes. But when the discussion threatened to become confrontational, he switched to a different voice, a soft, pleading voice that came over the microphone as an urgent whisper. And then he asked for quiet in the gathering and he received it. Then he continued with the authority of a spiritual leader, and the atmosphere changed again.
When Tutu asked the delegates if they were ready for the question [the synod was about to take its long-awaited vote on the ordination of women in the Province of Southern Africa], waiting for signs from the delegates, he couldn't resist an observation: "I don't know what you are thinking; white faces are more transparent than black faces...," and the tension broke for a while.
But just before the vote, he reminded the synod: "I have listened with growing pride and thankfulness to you. The standard of the debate on the whole has been very good. You tried to speak the truth with love.... Further discussion is not likely to change the minds of people. If I had entered the debate I doubt I would have persuaded Bishop George [a vociferous opponent of women's ordination] to vote differently. But we have listened to each other...."
Tutu went on, a man inspired by his knowledge of Scripture, by his love for his people, and by his awareness of evil powers that would tear his Church apart if they could, and said: "We are pilgrims who lack infallibility as we go seeking God's will for us in these parts. I, your Archbishop, want to be able to say, 'We are still family.' When we have bruises, I want to be able to say, 'You are my bruised sister, and I can't flourish without you.' We must demonstrate the glory of being able to disagree and still love each other. Hey! It's God's world, with a tremendous diversity, and we hold on to each other! I'd like for us to be able to say, 'We disagreed but we held on to each other, for the Jesus we worship pulled us together.' Our unity is a gift from God. I love you, and it's an incredible privilege to be your father in God."
Even after that, the opposition to women's ordination continued, and before the vote, the Archbishop once more asked for quiet and offered a simple prayer: "God, we are your children; we seek to do your will. Bless us with your Holy Spirit so we would know your will and do it."
The next morning, Sunday, at the Festival Eucharist celebrating a new Prayer Book, Tutu's natural ebullience came to the fore. He was joyful and delighted to have his good friend Edmond Browning, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, as the preacher for this important service. "You Americans," Tutu said to visitors in his congregation, "don't look at your watches; this is South Africa!" When he introduced the Prayer Book, and there was quiet, he called out: "Why don't you applaud?" It was only later that night that the group from the United States learned that Tutu had not slept from worry about the vote on women's ordination. But worry and concern had vanished from his face the next morning; it was then time for praising God and for celebration.
During the Peace, Tutu came down from the stage and embraced as many of his people as he could. And all the while, there was a dance of joy going on, in the South African spirit of music and movement to the glory of God. It was a long service, and the Archbishop must have been exhausted. But even so, after the service and the dinner that followed, he was able to leave the festivities still dancing, and his wife Leah was dancing, too.
"Where do you get your energy?" someone asked the Archbishop's wife, and Leah pointed to her husband. "From him," she said, and looked very proud.
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- "My ministry is a ministry of presence," Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning said in one of his sermons in the Diocese of Lebombo in Mozambique in late May. A year before, the Primate of the Church in Southern Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had invited the Presiding Bishop to preach at a Sunday Eucharist during Southern Africa's triennial synod in 1989. The Presiding Bishop accepted the invitation, expressing a desire to visit one of the province's politically and economically troubled "frontline states" during his time in Africa.
Among the frontline states of Southern Africa, Browning chose to visit Mozambique because of that country's sad history of violence and civil strife. He wanted to share with Mozambique's Anglicans the support of Episcopalians in the United States. In the cathedral in Macien, Browning told the congregation of 1,200, "My prayer for this diocese is that the American Church and the Church in Mozambique become partners and seek to serve God together. So I come here today to say to you that the people in the Church in the United States wish to identify with you in your prayer and in your ministry."
"One of the things I love about the Anglican Communion is that it is worldwide," the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church likes to say, and his exhausting travel schedule proves it. In the span of a month, he visited Central America and Cyprus, and on May 23 set out on a much longer trip -- across two continents -- to Southern Africa.
During his four days in Mozambique, Browning preached in two churches in the capital city of Maputo, and in the cathedral in Macien, a town that is deserted before nightfall, because of the danger of roaming bands of guerrillas who strike at anyone, at any time, in the devastated countryside.
The energetic young bishop of Lebombo, the Rt. Rev. Dinis Sengulane, had arranged for the Presiding Bishop to meet with key people -- Melissa Wells, United States Ambassador to Mozambique; the the Prime Minister, Mario Machungo; and the Governor of the Province of Gaza, Francisco Pateguane. Browning also visited the Christian Council of Maputo and the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Maputo, Alezandre dos Santos.
But it was the people of the Church in Mozambique, the hundreds of Anglicans, adults and children together, who attended the church services with so much joy and patience, that made the visit especially memorable for Presiding Bishop and his party.
"The Marxist ideology doesn't worry us," Bishop Dinis Sengulane of Lebombo said of his country's government. "We are worried about human sin."
In the case of Mozambique, "a vast,'least evangelized' country," according to the young bishop, sin has taken the form of extreme violence. The countryside of Mozambique has known many deaths, abductions, mutilations, and dislocation of families since Renamo resurfaced in 1981. (Renamo was created by the Rhodesian military intelligence in 1976 and, by most accounts, has been extensively supported by South Africa and by right-wing groups in other countries as well.)
According to Redd Barna, the Norwegian Save the Children group, 4,000,000 persons have been displaced internally, and another million have fled to neighboring countries. The life expectancy of Mozambicans is 42 to 45 years.
Mozambique, which gained its independence in 1975 after 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, has paid dearly for its freedom. When the Portuguese left, there was little financial stability. An empty, unfinished skyscraper in Maputo, the capital, is symbolic of the obstacles the young nation has faced. In a country where housing is in short supply, this huge building stands unoccupied because the Portuguese pov ad cement in all the plumbing to make it uninhabitable by the locals.
The Presiding Bishop's party had landed first in South Africa, at the gleaming, modern Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg. After a layover, the party continued on to Mozambique. After Johannesburg, the airport in Maputo, Mozambique, seemed small and shabby, part of a different world.
Browning was accompanied by his wife, Patti, and their youngest son, John; by his Deputy for Anglican Relations, the Rev. Patrick Mauney, and by Katerina Whitley, a member of Episcopal Communicators. In South Africa, the team was joined by the Rev. Canon Burgess Carr and his son, Oye. Carr is the Africa Partnership Officer and has a vast knowledge of the continent's turbulent history. They also joined forces with three other members of the Episcopal Church Center staff, the Rt. Rev. Furman Stough, the Rev. Bill Caradine of Mission Plar.: Lng, and Carolyn Rose-Avila of the Overseas Development Office. Stough, Carradine, and Rose-Avila had also completed a visit to %'n Diocese of Namibia. With them was Brian Sellers-Petersen of the Episcopal Center for South Africa Ministry at All Saints, Pasadena, California.
The visit to Mozambique began with lunch at the house of the United States Ambassador to Mozambique and ended with a compline service at Bishop Sengulane's house.
Sengulane's clergy, their wives, and members of the Diocesan Standing Committee came to his house on the visitors' last night in Mozambique -- a Sunday -- for a meal, compline (conducted, movingly, by Sengulane's children), and a question-and-answer period with the Presiding Bishop. First, however, the Presiding Bishop asked Sengulane what he feels his diocese needs.
Bishop Sengulane repeated comments he made when he first welcomed the Episcopalians from the United States. He believes that the top priority in his diocese is to evangelize. He believes that in order to do that, his diocese has three practical needs: training for seminarians somewhere other than in South Africa; written materials in Portuguese [it is expensive to import literature from Brazil]; and transportation [a Land Rover in the countryside would do wonders] since Lebombo's archdeacon has to visit 70 congregations. Very hesitantly, Sengulane added another need -- one that he has already characterized as "unpopular" with grant givers - the need for a church building in the northern and inland parts of the diocese where Anglicanism is growing rapidly.
Sengulane also talked about the need for seminary teachers, but they have to be people "who take into consideration the danger of the country, which should not be ignored." Lebombo has a seminary that is "very expensive" by local standards, and the food is rationed, he says. The Diocese of Lebombo has 24 priests, and the Diocese of Niassa, 14.
The first question was on peace and justice issues and how the Episcopal Church in the United States deals with these issues. Browning explained that this has had top priority since he became Presiding Bishop and told how the Washington Office of the Episcopal Church works with its four-member staff, and the development and research they do on issues that are then related to diocesan groups and to the many Episcopalians in Congress. "Not all Episcopalians are in favor of this," he added, "but as Presiding Bishop I say that the Church has the responsibility to raise for its nation the great moral and ethical issues of our time."
And then the host revealed how much he likes the peace and justice literature for children that he has found in the United States and that he is trying it with his own children. If they respond, Sengulane said, he will then introduce it to the diocesan youth. Other questions dealt with the charismatic movement in the United States, the reality of the homeless, the "Mothers' Union" or ECW, UTO, and ecumenical relationships. The Presiding Bishop listened to all these questions and answered them at length and with candor.
"I have not been as thrilled and as excited about the faith and its expression as I have been the last four days," Browning told the people gathered at Sengulane's house on his last night in Mozambique. "You are very impressive. And the joy and strength you have shared with me, I shall never forget."
In between these two landmark visits, there were services in Ronga, in Portuguese, and in Shangana -- and much singing in all three languages. The churches, Saints Stephen and Lawrence, and St. Cyprian's in Maputo, and the cathedral in Macien, were filled to capacity.
Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, is a comparatively peaceful place. The people go on with "life as usual." However, Sengulane explained to his visitors from the United States that there is great danger from guerrillas 30 kilometers to the north of the city, 40 kilometers to the west, and 15 kilometers to the south. Mozambique is a place where it is perilous to walk in the countryside. And yet many of the people must do so to go to work, to get water, or to attend training sessions connected with church projects.
In the northern Diocese of Niassa, the situation is much worse. In fact, it was judged to be so bad the Presiding Bishop and his party were advised not to go there despite Browning's wish to make contact with all of the Anglicans of Mozambique.
At the Lebombo's cathedral in Macien, hundreds of Mozambicans greeted the Presiding Bishop and the other visitors, singing and moving to the music of traditional African songs -- "God sits us down, God stands us up, God binds us together." During the Presiding Bishop's sermon, torrential rain began to fall on the tin roof of the cathedral, making a deafening din, but the congregation remained attentive.
What moved Browning and the rest of the visitors were the offerings the people brought forward -- each one of them bringing something precious - money, seeds, fruit, and even a chicken or two. And all the while they sang.
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- Children have been the chief victims of the vicious guerrilla warfare that has tormented Mozambique since 1981. It was in 1981 that Renamo, the Mozambican National Resistance Movement, resurfaced. The underground organization, similar in many ways to the death squads that have ravaged portions of Central America, was originally created by Rhodesian military intelligence in 1976. In the 1980s it has terrorized the countryside of Mozambique with killings, abductions, mutilations -- the full complement of twentieth century death-squad horrors. Renamo's backing is generally assumed to be primarily in South Africa, with support from right-wing political groups in other parts of the world as well.
The number of children under 15 in Mozambique is estimated at six million. Those under six number about two and a half million. It is Mozambique's children who have been the primary victims of the guerrilla war. Children from the youngest age group, living in the danger zones in the countryside, have been the most deeply impacted by Renamo attacks. Fear has been part of their lives since they were born.
Some 800,000 children in Mozambique who are of school age cannot go to school because their school buildings have been destroyed by Renamo. It is estimated that about 42 percent of Mozambique's school system has been effectively knocked out by guerrilla activity. The violence has also destroyed some 720 health-care units and 36 boarding facilities for school children.
However, Mozambique's children do have hope for the future, thanks to the efforts of many people within their own country and to friends from overseas.
Martha Clark-Boothby, a young American woman, stood quietly with the Mozambican women in Maputo as they welcomed the Presiding Bishop and his traveling team. A mother of two, she has chosen to serve an internship working with and for the children of Mozambique as she studies for ordination at Duke Divinity School.
Martha Clark-Boothby is the daughter of Episcopalians, missionaries to the Philippines, where she grew up. Her father, the Rev. Charles Clark, is now rector of St. Paul's Episcopal School in Concord, New Hampshire. Martha is married to psychologist Neil Boothby, a graduate of Harvard, who studied with child psychiatrist Robert Coles. Boothby has one of the most challenging and unusual field positions in the world. He is an expert on children in armed conflict situations and, this year, is leading a Save the Children project in conjunction with the Mozambican Ministry of Health. He is treating children who have been taught to kill.
The Renamo forces, who have been waging a war of destabilization and terror for the last 8 years, specialize in brutalizing children. According to reliable sources, Renamo targets children between the ages of 5 and 15, and teaches them how to kill others. Action for Children, a UNICEF publication, says that in the most dangerous rural zones of the country, a child has a 50 percent chance of living to the age of 5.
There are also some 200,000 "unaccompanied" children in Mozambique. In some places, they would be known as street children. Neil Boothby also heads a program aimed at reuniting these children with their families. The parish where Clark-Boothby is an intern, the Church of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, has launched a special program for the street children of Maputo.
Although the task of reuniting families in Mozambique is very difficult, the basic methods used are quite simple. The Save the Children team takes photographs of the children, enlarges them, and attaches them to large posters. Under each picture they provide all the information they have managed to glean from the child -- his or her name, village, parents' names -- and take these to the various deslocados camps, refugee camps where villagers have gone to escape the killing in the bush and countryside.
Clark-Boothby described a video they made of these encounters. "They are so stoic," she said of the mothers. "They look at the pictures, and I remember one woman; without a word she pointed to a picture and then she turned around, and only then did the tears come." As of early spring, 250 children had been reunited with their parents.
Her husband's other job is much more difficult. Boothby tries to help children, who have been brutalized by being forced into becoming killers, to reenter the world of childhood or, at least, a more rational society. He tries to get them to come to terms with what has happened to them by using group contact, socio-drama, and dance.
Does the government of Mozambique care about its children, its people?
To this question, Clark-Boothby answers with an unqualified, "yes." She continues, "Neil has been overwhelmed by the response of the people and the government to the children. We had heard rumors of how villagers hated them and wouldn't accept them back; but we have found the opposite to be true."
"This is the first project here," Clark-Boothby says, "and it's really been a good thing for me. The Church here deals differently with problems. It is not the "soup kitchen mentality" of some churches in the United States. She praises the rector of the church where she is based, Father Carlos. "I've learned so much here...." Clark-Boothby's project has taken shape in just three months. "It takes so long for things to happen in the States," she said; "churches are so reluctant to open their doors. But here it moves along; the people take the children in and teach them."
The church in Maputo has taken in 25 boys. They guard cars, carry the groceries from the local supermarket that serves most of the expatriate community, and some even go home at night. (One of the misconceptions about these children is that they have no families. Many do; but their families cannot look after them.)
But the children sponsored by the church in Maputo are also active participants in everything that happens at the church. After the service, they reassemble according to age groups and give a performance for the visitors. They enter, doing a very graceful walk, two-by-two, then they sing, and out of the crowd individuals emerge, without the slightest self-consciousness, to recite poetry or Scripture. They are all gifted actors.
Sts. Stephen and Lawrence hired a social worker, Clark-Boothby says, a 27-year-old woman who doubles as secretary and "who is a wonderful presence with the kids. She's learning along with them; she falls on her face, gets up, and is not scared." In the process, the young woman has become Clark-Boothby's friend.
The 25 boys also do the shopping and preparation and all the cooking for themselves, and they eat together. In the last two weeks, there on the church grounds, they are making their "machambas," small plots of land where they grow their own vegetables. One of the sisters of a local Anglican order has been teaching the boys Bible stories, "and they really are responding to that," and a seminarian has started them in simple math. The youngest of the boys is 8.
"These are not beggars," Clark-Boothby says; "they want to work. Now the Department of Agriculture has asked some of them to do farm labor in exchange for a meal and a small salary."
When asked about her own boys and their response to the third world society they live in, Clark-Boothby's face lights up. "It's wonderful. They go to the International School, taught by a teacher from one of the African countries." In Mozambique there are relief workers from many parts of the world. "I love that part of living here; the many different cultures."
Clark-Boothby and her children will return to the United States in July, and her husband will finish the year completing his unusual, healing work.
The Episcopalians who accompanied the Presiding Bishop to Mozambique will all probably remember a day they spent away from Maputo. Early in the morning, two small airplanes piloted by men who give their time just to fly relief to troubled countries, transported the visiting Episcopalians over the green farmland of a country at war; over the Limpopo River, to the Province of Gaza.
The party was met in Gaza by the provincial governor, who welcomed them all warmly -- especially the Presiding Bishop. The only strange thing about this was that the friendly governor was an official of a "Marxist-Leninist" country, and as such, might not be expected to be friendly to religious leaders. In fact, all of the Mozambican officials who spoke to the Presiding Bishop seemed gracious and genuinely friendly.
A crowd of women was there, singing, as they waited for the bishops to arrive. A couple among the welcoming crowd, a French physician, Gill Guion, and his American wife, Gail Senetro, were involved with significant ministries in Mozambique. Guion, who belongs to a group called "Doctors Without Borders," and Senetro, are involved in a health project in the villages surrounding Maputo.
Guion and Senetro describe the Mozambican people with whom they work as "incredibly responsive to working together and to building a project from community energy and spirit." There is an agricultural project in the villages that is designed to support the health project, Senetro said. There is actually, right on the grounds of the airport, a farm where villagers grow vegetables, and raise rabbits and chickens. The project also includes a small shop for seeds and equipment. Money goes back into a fund for the health sector, and "it's working out," she said. The health project includes a vaccine campaign, maternal health care, and nutrition.
The health problems in a country at war are overwhelming. In the interior of Mozambique, the humidity and heat are unbearable in the summer, and sanitation facilities almost nonexistent. But the relief teams, such as Save the Children, and its Norwegian counterpart, Redd Barna, ignore the danger and the hardships and are helping the people to build modern latrines. They are also helping them rebuild their schools and health clinics, prime targets of Renamo attacks.
NEW YORK (DPS, July 6) -- On Friday, June 16, people from 24 states lobbied their senators to support a South Africa sanctions bill pending in Congress that would close loopholes in current laws by banning United States institutions from investing or trading in South Africa. On Saturday, June 17, some 2,000 people participated in a peaceful March for the Children of South Africa that began at the Washington Monument, went to the gates of the White House, and ended with a rally in Lafayette Square.
These and other events on those two days in June were part of a campaign called "From Pentecost to Soweto" -- commemorating the thirteenth anniversary of Southern Africa's Soweto uprising, in which many black civilians were murdered. The June observance was sponsored by Sojourners, the National Council of Churches (NCC), the Episcopal Church, and many other mainline Christian bodies. Their Washington gathering was a statement made in solidarity with the South African Council of Churches' (SACC) own "Standing for Truth in South Africa" campaign that was formally launched at the SACC Convocation at the end of May 1988.
South African religious leader Allan Boesak spoke on Friday night at Washington's historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. The next day, before the March, there was a rally at Washington Monument. Again, Boesak was the featured speaker. Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, standing by his commitment to the people of Southern Africa and to his friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu, offered the opening prayer that launched the March for the Children of South Africa.
Starting at the Washington Monument, the march continued down 15th Street, turned on Pennsylvania Avenue, and passed by the gates of the White House. Everyone of the more than 2,000 marchers wore a placard with the name of a child killed, tortured, or imprisoned by the South African government. In front of the White House, each of the marchers called out the name of the young victim they represented, and then assembled at Lafayette Park for music and mutual encouragement. The Presiding Bishop joined other Christian leaders at the head of the march. Also marching were his wife, Patti, and son, John [who had accompanied Browning on his trip to South Africa], members of the Washington Office of the Episcopal Church, and many other Episcopalians from across the nation.
"I am not wedded to sanctions," Archbishop Tutu had recently said in his charge to his Church's synod meeting in Durban. "If we can bring about the end of apartheid without sanctions I would be the first to say 'Alleluia.' Last December your bishops asked you, our people, to suggest nonviolent, viable strategies to end apartheid. Nobody provided us with really viable options. Consequently, we have suggested that targeted pressure should be used in a multifaceted strategy to end apartheid."
In a remarkable litany ending with "there's work to do," Boesak listed the injustices against the blacks of South Africa and said: "As long as there are people who must accept slave wages while companies from this country and other countries rob them from the backs of our people, there is work to do."
In a long exposition of the demands Washington makes upon his people to remain peaceful, Boesak responded, "Fine! All we want from you is to walk the path of peace with us, and one way you can do that is to apply unequivocal, clear, effective sanctions on South Africa." As to the suffering of blacks that sanctions might bring, Boesak cried, "We have been suffering under apartheid for 40 years now; we have been dying ever since white people came there; now they tell us sanctions will hurt. They have not yet understood the distinction, that even though sanctions may hurt black people we have long since discovered that apartheid kills black people." And, he continued, "You cannot express your sympathy for black people who might be hurt by sanctions while you continue to support the regime that kills them."
The Episcopal Church's resolutions on the Shell boycott, the divestment of the Church's portfolio, and the support for economic sanctions, the Presiding Bishop says, puts the Episcopal Church in the front line of those individuals and institutions opposing the system of apartheid.
The Presiding Bishop's support of the campaign to "Stand for the Truth Till South Africa Is Free" brings him full circle, and puts him on the front lines, too, in solidarity with the African people he met and listened to during his visit to the Province of Southern Africa.
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