Rehana Rossouw
MEMBERS of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in the Cape are reeling after white members of their church voted this week to retain its racially segregated structures.
Following a two-year unity process, the church put to the vote last Sunday a resolution to abolish apartheid in its Cape structures – called conferences – which administer its white, coloured and African congregations. Throughout the rest of the country, the church’s racial structures have merged successfully over the past two years.
Each adventist conference is governed by a separate constitution, and a 75% majority vote was required for a merger. While 94% of its coloured conference voted for a merger, only 69% of white members voted for change.
African adventists met on Thursday to deliberate the merger, but their proceedings are futile as unity cannot be achieved unless all three conferences of the church agree.
The church’s mission in South Africa began in 1887. In 1929 white and coloured believers were separated into the Cape conference for whites and the Good Hope conference for coloureds. A third, Southern conference, was added for African believers.
Not only were churches racially segregated, but separate schools, welfare organisations and administrative structures were established.
The Good Hope Conference has been calling for the removal of racial segregation in the Seventh Day Adventist Church and a merger of its structures at every annual meeting since 1970. In 1994, a Cape merger committee was established to negotiate racial unity. It was motivated by Bibilical principles, human rights and the draft constitution.
The continued segregation of the church also strained its finances and church employees in white congregations earned higher salaries than employees in black congregations.
Staffers serving the African congregations indicated during merger talks that they were prepared to continue earning lower salaries during a transition period.
A lay member of the Cape conference who has advocated a vote against the merger, Dr Bernhard Ficker, denied this week that racism motivated his congregation’s vote.
He said while many members of the Cape conference were in favour of a merger, they believed it would lead to “financial chaos”.
“The merger proposal includes building a new head office for the Cape conference in Port Elizabeth at a cost of R700 000 and people were not prepared to finance this building and pay for the additional staff required,” Ficker said.
“The Cape conference voted by a 92% margin in 1992 to merge with the other two conferences on a model they suggested which did not include building a new head office. This model was totally rejected by the other two conferences. The Southern conference is not prepared to retrench any of its ministers. They will have to be prepared to cut costs if we are all to come out equally, but they feel the ministry is a calling for life.”
Asked why the African conference should retrench ministers in a cost-cutting exercise if they were paid lower salaries than ministers in the white conference, Ficker responded that perhaps none of the ministers should be retrenched.
Ficker said virtually all the churches in the Cape conference were already multiracial, although the majority of congregants were white. The 69% vote in favour of merging indicated that the conference was not racist.
He said the Adventist Church did allow congregants to organise on racial lines. In the United States, where the church is headquartered, black congregations organised themselves into regions.
“Some people prefer to worship on the basis of race. Unfortunately, in our country there is the legacy of apartheid and any group seen to be one-sided is labelled racist,” Ficker said.
“In KwaZulu-Natal, where the church has merged, people have divided again on the basis of language. Some people preferred to worship in Afrikaans in Newcastle and formed their own congregation. They are also being called racists.
“At our high school in Cape Town, black and coloured children worship separately on the campus. The reason for this is that they have a different style. Some people like to clap their hands, others don’t. It is natural that different people worship differently.
“The Good Hope and Southern conferences are holding us to ransom with a merger proposal which is not financially viable. Unfortunately, they need our vote for a successful merger. Calling us racists is not going to help the process at all.”