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October, 1979 - New National BLACK MONITOR
International...
Focus on The Churches and
Violence in Africa
—ln the World Council of Churches:
Issue of “Institutionalized Violence"
When the World Council of Churches
met in Kingston, Jamaica under the leader
ship of its black General Secretary, Dr.
Phillip Potter, some months ago, all was
not “sweetness and light.” One of the
stormiest battles in the history of this es
teemed group took place over what was
seen initially as the issue of African Aid.
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Specifically, the World Council of Chur
ches had developed what was called a Pro
gram to Combat Racism. This program was
designed to make grants to “organizations
of oppressed racial groups supporting vic
tims of racial injustice whose purposes are
not inconsonant with the general purposes
of the World Council of Churches —to be
used in their struggle for economic, social
and political justice.”
So far so good. But during August of
1978 one grant of $85,000 for charitable
relief work was awarded the Patriotic Front
of Zimbabwe, the principal black resistance
organization which spearheaded the protest
designed to bring about black majority
rule, when a white Rhodesian government
official complained that by such involve
ment with the perceived enemy of the white
minority lan Smith regime, the World
Council of Churches should be renamed
“Murder Incorporated,” white churchmen
'throughout the world began to shower a
hail of disapproval on the World Council's
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ManitorMlcroscDue
A Close-Up View Os Third World Events -
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Program to Combat Racism. And thus a
full-scale confrontation was born.
Such traditionally moderate voices as
those of the Christian Century and Salva
tion Army raised questions, with the Salva
tion Army even suspending its membership
in the World Council of Churches in order
to study the issue further.
So far as blacks and other Third World
peoples are concerned, at issue in the World
Council of Churches’ impasse was a wide
spread and deep-seated emotional inability
to recognize, understand and otherwise deal
with the phenomenon of institutionalized
violence. Neither the Christian Century nor
the Salvation Army could understand that
violence had been built into the oppressive
institutions such as those against which the
Patriotic Front had mustered protest.
Perhaps, even as with the Martin Luther
King, Jr. protest of the 1960’s in the United
States, advocates of liberation who oppose
institutionalized violence might do far
better to assiduously apply the term “coun
ter-violence” to responsive acts of initial
violence. While both violence and counter
violence may involve the same instruments,
ethically these processes are as different as
night and day. One, counter-violence is
ethical in its initiating spirit, in that its
impetus is toward liberation from oppres
sion. The other, institutionalized violence—
such as the “de-education” and de-human
ization in our urban schools and the de-per
sonalization in all neo-colonialist systems —
is essentially unethical in that it is devastat
ingly and persistently destructive of the
human spirit. r
Have iron given to Operation PUSH, OK. SCLC. NAA CP or the local Urban League this month?
Setting the record of traditional church
support for institutional violence in a much
clearer light, one staff member of the
World Council of Churches’ Program to
Combat Racism (PRC) explained: “(The
Program to Combat Racism) is a concrete
action offering moral support to those en
gaged in the struggle for racial justice. It
helps to counter in a small way the chur
ches’ long record of participation, actively *
or by silence, in the violence of the status
quo maintained by white establishments
throughout the world for centuries.”
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ffliFW
“The decision (to create the PCR) is a
sign for those who have become increasing
ly skeptical about the ability of churches to
make any real contribution to the building
of a more humane world. The action (of
forming the PCR) is an indication that the
World Council of Churches is becoming
truly a world body. No longer is the world
Christian community controlled by the
thinking and programs of the white
churches in the affluent nations.”
At the meeting of the World Council in
Jamaica, it was decided to continue the
controversial Program to Combat Racism
and to give the opposition a larger voice in
deciding where grants should be made.
Driving home the centrality of the concern
for definition, one associate of the Africa
office of the National Council of Churches
noted: “(The) criticisms reflect the reality
that the church has not yet come to terms
with the meaning of structural violence,
which is most clearly seen in the racist
regimes of southern Africa. Traditional
Christian debate on violence centered on
the simplistic notion that violence was
overly overt, willful, combative or aggres
sive, such as war. There was no analysis in
corporating the violence of state repression.
There is still a continuing debate in the
World Council of Churches over how to
understand violence and whether violence
on the part of the Patriotic Front is coun
terviolence to the racist violence of the
(former) Smith regime.”
Perhaps those in America need to be re
minded that the idealistic Declaration of
Independence laid down a gauntlet calling
for counter-violence as a means of liberat
ing the colonies from the structural violence
to the human spirit in British colonial op
pression.
• • •
In Namibia: A Case History of Structural
Violence
sent to the Houston, Texas-based Southern
Africa Christian Alliance, our readers
should gain a close-up feeling of how insti
tutional or structural violence operates
under the South African control of Nami
bia. The words are those of the recently
installed Anglican Bishop and Council of
Churches President James Kauluma.
“As we began to settle in, the history of
deportations was repeated again...when
our vicar general at the time, the Rev. Ed
ward Murrow, and his wife Laureen, were
given seven days to leave the country. This
was done under a revival of the 1920 Proc
lamation No. 50, which empowers the
authority to expel persons who are consid
ered “undesirable.”
»
Included in this deportation was the Rev.
Heinz Hunke, a Roman Catholic priest.
This art of deportation by the representa
tive of the South African government in
Namibia was deplored by the churches and
other people in general, and letters of pro
test against the deportation were sent to no
avail.
“Father Murrow was the fourth Anglican
church leader to have been forced by the
South African government to leave Nami
bia; the first was Bishop Robert Mize in
1968, then Bishop Colin Winter in 1972 and
Bishop Richard Wood in 1975.
“For the whole month of October confir
mations and pastoral visitations throughout
the northern region of the diocese were
being carried out.. .Over 300 persons were
confirmed (at Oshandi)... We came to feel
sharply the medical needs of the area
(which was occupied, with some church
property destroyed, by the South African
army).. .we saw many sick people with no
medical care, while the mission clinic,
which used to be supplied with medicines
from the now-closed St. Mary’s Mission
Hospital and visited regularly by nurses,
stood empty nearby...
“It must also be said that the work of the
church in Namibia continues in the midst of
the tensions of war. In many areas where we
went, we encountered numerous road
blocks and questioning by the South Afri
can soldiers. Such tension of war has be
come a daily experience at St. Mary’s Mis
sion, where gunfire is often heard not far
away, and South African soldiers come to
draw water and question mission staff
about (resistance fighters), their political
••••••••••••• (Continued on page 18.)