Manavhela, G.F.
Factors with a religious or semi-religious background are powerful and influential tools in history. Therefore it is interesting to note how religion and theology has played a major role in society and in the politics of the human race of all times and in most countries. This study will highlight just one example: the development and implementation of Apartheid in South Africa.
Christianity became a powerful influence in South Africa, often uniting large numbers of people in a common faith. In the twentieth century, however, several Christian churches actively promoted racial divisions through the political philosophy of Apartheid. The largest of these denominations was the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk - NGK), which became the "official religion" of the National Party during the Apartheid era.
The Dutch Reformed Church arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century, after Calvinist reforms in Europe had entrenched the idea of predestination on the Synod of Dordtrecht in the Netherlands in 1619. The church gained recognition as the dominant religion of the state in 1651, and the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC), as an extension of the state in Southern Africa, established the first Dutch Reformed Church at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.
Church members in South Africa generally resisted the liberal trends that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century, but rifts occurred in the church in 1853 with the formation of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (also translated, the Dutch Reformed Church), and in 1859, with the formation of the Gereformeerde Kerke van Suid-Afrika (the Reformed Churches of South Africa). The NGK is generally referred to as the Dutch Reformed Church, but the two newer churches can both be referred to as Reformed churches.
All of the Reformed churches share similar Calvinist doctrines and Presbyterian organization. Their doctrines assert that God is eternal, infinite, wise, and just, and the Creator of the universe. He has planned the life and the fate of each individual on earth; the "chosen" are saved. The Bible - both the Old Testament and the New Testament - is the final authority on religious matters.
The presbyterian organization of the Reformed churches means that the functioning of each congregation is governed, in part, by that community and its elders, whereas decisions concerning policy and discipline are generally handled by regional synods. A general synod is responsible for the denomination as a whole. In South Africa, a national synod and nine regional synods oversee the operation of the Dutch Reformed congregations.
As black Africans and people of mixed race converted to the religion, church members debated the question of racial separation. Pressure for racially separate congregations increased, and the issue was complicated by the demands of some black church members for their own churches and congregations. In 1881 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (Sendingkerk) established a separate coloured church. In 1910, when black South Africans made up about 10 percent of the NGK community, the synods established the NGK in Africa, as it became known, for black Africans. An Indian Dutch Reformed Church was formed in 1951.
Racial separation only became widely accepted in the church in the early twentieth century, when many Afrikaners came to believe that their own survival as a community was threatened, and when the belief in racial separation was gaining acceptance among white South Africans in general. Social and spiritual survival became intertwined in church philosophy, influenced in part by the early twentieth century persecution of the Afrikaners by the British. Church leaders refused to condemn Afrikaner rebellions against the British, and their followers gained strength by attributing divine origins to their struggle for survival.
In the current day South Africa all ethnic groups are still each in its own way dealing with the legacy of Apartheid, a comprehensive system of forced racial segregation imposed on the population by the Nationalist government prior to 1994. This system and its ideology cannot be understood without looking into its philosophical, political, social and religious roots, which dates back many centuries to when South Africa was Christianised.
Apartheid1 is a politico-religious term that existed as a formal system of laws from 1948 to 1994 in South Africa, but has its roots in developments from the centuries before. It was mainly used by people from European descent. Literally, “Apartheid” is a commonly known Afrikaans word. “Apart” means “separate”, in other words things and people that do not belong together, in this case in terms of colour, race and origin. “-heid” is an Afrikaans suffix which means “-ness” or “-hood”. Apartheid was a systematic program that influenced all aspects of people’s social, political and religious relations. In a general sense, white South Africa used the Apartheid approach in defence of what they believed to be their country. It was a system that maintained that people of different colour, race and culture should stay separate, each group on its own. In this case, whites and blacks had to be separated by any means and under all circumstances. White South Africans had to live their lives without interference by blacks. Whites were considered as superior, and should not be disturbed or troubled by anyone. They viewed black people who opposed this system as communists or anarchists. Whites with this attitude considered blacks who rebelled as a serious threat to their lives and their accumulated wealth, and many other aspects as well. Although South Africa was a wealthy country, its prosperity was largely based on the whites’ activities of building the country. Apartheid preserved all that was good for whites only, for instance, jobs were reserved for white people, there was strict segregation of living areas, and whites also had the upper hand politically, which gave them the power to keep order and stability.
In order to maintain this standard of living, the regime was purely and only white, while the society was multicultural. Therefore the Apartheid government had to promulgate and impose racial laws that would prohibit non-white people from entering into power. The government segregated them by restricting them to areas that were defined as their ‘homeland’.
Against this background, white South Africans feared blacks because they were afraid that if blacks ruled the country, then there would no place for them. Some authors stress the ideological character. Loubser2 defines Apartheid as a utopian, totalitarian system intending the unilateral separation of the black and white races in South Africa. Other scholars do not define Apartheid in terms of a utopia, but more as a pragmatic defence of power and prosperity. Therefore Vorster defines Apartheid in more political terms. He argues that Apartheid is a political system that existed in South Africa where people were separated on the grounds of color, race and ethnicity into separate states and communities.3
Apartheid is a closed, totalitarian system of ideas, which had in mind the total separation of the black and white races in South Africa, and which endeavored to make its influence felt over the whole spectrum of human activities. This was a practice in which all the different aspects of life were so intertwined that it had a highly ideological character. The idea was to entrench the system of complete racial segregation on all levels of society. The purpose of Apartheid was based on dividing, separating and ruling people according to their skin color. Whites stood on their own (English and Afrikaans), and the blacks were further divided according to their own language and locality, in other words each ethnic group on its own. They were confined to a certain geographic area where they belonged. At grass roots level, Apartheid was the result of white reaction to foreign cultural influences. When a culture comes into contact with another, it is natural for groups not to mix, but to withdraw into their own ranks. However, usually this tendency is balanced by natural curiosity and economic necessity compelling people to cross boundaries.
South Africa is still wrestling with the heritage of Apartheid on a social, economic, political and cultural level. One of the aspects that have not yet been resolved completely is the involvement of the Dutch Reformed Church and other denominations of Dutch decent in the Apartheid politics, especially the theological justification.
Ever since the promulgation of racial laws in South Africa, which actually began long before 1948, the heritage of Apartheid existed. After 340 years of white dominance, South Africa is still wrestling with the heritage of Apartheid on social, economic, political and cultural level. The political turn in 1994 cannot immediately erase a paradigm that has been internalized in human beings for many generations. The Apartheid system developed over a long period of time indeed. It developed in different phases. It goes back as far as 1652 when the VOC established a Dutch refreshment station at the Cape. As a result of this establishment, the Dutch Reformed Church4 was implanted some years later in the Cape. This church became strong and it influenced and shaped the theology of many white people. It exercised its Christian mission within the new colony. Gerstner contends that: “Reformed church life and theology played a formative role in the development of South African culture and society”.5 It contributed greatly to the formation of a distinctive identity among white settlers and to their conviction of superiority.
The Christian faith was brought into South Africa along with the settlement of the VOC. The settlers in the Cape took their faith seriously. As the colony expanded, so did the DRC, but its growth was almost totally confined to the white settler community.6 The mission should have been to win the Cape for Christ, then South Africa and the whole of the continent. This would have meant that all cultures and races would have been part of this mission. The DRC to a larger extent did not fulfil such a mission. Instead of incorporating and breaking the barriers between black and white, they did not considered the blacks as fellow human beings who should be united in Christ, and this is a very serious problem until this day. The fact that the DRC did not understand the faith as all human beings unified in Christ has not been addressed explicitly, and it sheds a specific light on the evaluation of its theological justification of Apartheid. The system was not only influenced by economy and politics, but also to a great extent by theology. It seems that this theology was heretic from the very beginning, not only because of its effects, but from its very foundation, namely that the good message of Christ for all human beings, united as his own body, was not the focus of theology in DRC.
It is remarkable to see how theology played a major role in the political situation, which advanced in the development of the Apartheid system. Theology was used to justify this system of Apartheid in one way or the other. The relation between the church and state strengthened this ideology. The church was influenced by the state and vice versa. The church and the state were at one stage inseparable as entities; the state became as involved in church matters as the church was in state matters. The state played a major role in church life, and hence the strong relation between church and state. During this process, the idea of Afrikanerdom developed, and it was completely attached to the church. Theology became a catalyst of this system. The link between Apartheid politics and Apartheid theology is not that strange when one considers the link between Afrikanerdom and Reformed churches since the 17th century in South Africa.
An investigation into the religious roots of the development of Apartheid will assist in understanding this mechanism.
Notes
1 The definition of Apartheid is very broad, and therefore the political definition will somehow be slightly different from theology and many other disciplines.
2 AJ. Loubser, Has done a very thorough survey in the whole area of Apartheid in South Africa in an article: ‘Apartheid theology: A contextual theology gone wrong?’ (In Journal of Church and State, 38:321 – 337. 1996).
3 J.M. Vorster, Kuyper and Apartheid Theology in South Africa – another perspective. In: Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, XXVIII/2, (2001), 56.
4 Hereafter DRC will be used to denote the Dutch Reformed Church.
5 J.N. Gerstner, A Christian monopoly: The Reformed church and colonial society under the Dutch rule. In: R, Elphick, & R Davenport (eds), Christianity in South Africa: A political, Social & Cultural history. Cape Town: David Philip, 1997: 16.
6 J.W. De Gruchy, Liberating Reformed Theology. Grand Rapids (Michigan): Eerdmans, 1990: 2.
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