Tensions Rise over South African Election Boycott
Episcopal News Service. October 20, 1988 [88220]
NEW YORK (DPS, Oct. 20) -- On October 25, leaders of many denominations from across the United States will meet at the Interchurch Center in New York City in solidarity with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other South African leaders who are defying the South African government's continued support of the country's apartheid system. The meeting is called on the eve of South Africa's October 26 elections -- elections that Tutu and other South African religious leaders have urged the people to boycott. Alarmed by the atmosphere of government violence surrounding the boycott, the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) are sponsoring this meeting. American church leaders will be "challenged to put aside priorities and organize a coordinated and sustained ecumenical response to last as long as the-battle wages in South Africa." Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning will be among the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox leaders attending.
Tensions between South Africa's government and many of its religious leaders have escalated dramatically in October. On Sunday, October 9, Archbishop Desmond Tutu again defied the South African government by calling for a boycott of municipal elections scheduled for October 26. In a pastoral letter read in all of the churches of his Cape Town diocese, Tutu urged all Christians to avoid voting on the grounds that participating in the system would further the structures of apartheid. The letter was also signed by Tutu's three suffragan bishops.
The pastoral letter further stated that the bodies for which South Africans will be voting in October are racially based and that the government would use the elections as a stepping stone toward the establishment of a national council -- in Tutu's words, "an undemocratic body which is unlikely to produce just or representative constitutional proposals." The letter from Tutu and his suffragans is in the spirit of statements by both the South African Council of Churches and the Catholic Bishops' Conference; both groups have urged Christians not to "participate in their own oppression" by either running for office or voting.
The warnings of South Africa's religious leaders are given in the face of the ruling National Party's determination to make the election process work. The government has spent large sums of money advertising the elections, which are open to all races. Political commentators in South Africa have suggested that the National Party itself may rise or fall on public response to the elections, which represent an important part of their reform policy. Pressure to participate in the election process is heightened by the country's emergency regulations that make it illegal to publish or advertise in any way a boycott of the elections. Penalties are severe and could include a ten-year jail sentence or very substantial fine.
However, Bishop Tutu, his suffragans, and other South African religious leaders are firm in their resistance, despite the pressure -- and the danger of their stand. In the pastoral letter from the Cape Town bishops, they point out that the elections take place at a time when the government has outlawed extra-parliamentary organizations working for change, and when many political leaders are banned or in jail. "While the Government claims it is organizing 'democratic' elections... it is using all the instruments of a totalitarian state to create a climate in which talk of democracy is hollow."
The Cape Town letter is very clear in its rationale for an election boycott: "We believe it is of critical importance to our country's future that the Government should be given a very clear message that its vision for the future, as well as its specific plans to achieve that vision, are wholly inadequate. A boycott of these elections would send such a message in the hope that the Government would reassess its position."
There has been specific pressure directed against Archbishop Tutu in the election confrontation. Police took possession of the transcript of a sermon preached by Tutu in his Cape Town cathedral; the sermon called for an election boycott. However, no further move was made by the government. It is believed unlikely that they will take any direct action against Tutu because of his prominence worldwide. They have stated that they do not want to give religious leaders "the publicity or claim to martyrdom they were so avidly seeking."
South African church leaders, however, are well aware of an undercurrent of violence in the election controversy. Many believe that the bomb blast that devastated the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches in late August was timed to disrupt organization of the election boycott. A week before the blast, the Pretoria headquarters of the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference were raided by police searching for pamphlets urging the boycott. On October 12, against a background of growing tension, a fire (believed to be arson) gutted two floors of the Pretoria headquarters of the Catholic Bishops' Conference.
All of these events and issues form the background for the urgent meeting American church leaders will hold in New York on October 25.