Certain churches have agreed to restore land rights, but some wonder whether they will uphold this decision, Ann Eveleth reports
In 1854 Sir George Cathcart told the Duke of Newcastle that portions of Eastern Cape mission land should be sub-divided for cultivation “as the native residents become gradually fit for it”. This statement, so evocative of 19th-century paternalism, was repeated and treated seriously by church leaders last week.
A representative for the Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation, Molefe Tsele, told a conference on the effective utilisation of church land nearly the same thing when he argued against calls for South African churches to give up the more than 7% of land they are estimated to control nationally.
“Our challenge is for the church to bring education about stewardship of land; coupled to this education should be the spirituality of land … the theology of land,” he said.
Tsele’s proposal – while ostensibly aimed at ensuring land transfers are coupled with training and infrastructure – was a far cry from the kind of commitment Land Affairs Portfolio Committee chair Chief Patekile Holomisa sought from delegates to the joint National Land Committee and South African Council of Churches conference.
Arguing that European missionaries had actively supported colonial forces in their quest for land from which to “civilise” local inhabitants, Holomisa said: “We expect the church to set an example to the others who hold land which is watered and fertilised with the blood and bones of our forebears who fell in the wars of dispossession, by restoring even those land rights that were taken before the 1913 [cut-off date for land restitution].”
In the end, the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference and the council resolved to short-circuit the lengthy land claims process and restore land rights to those dispossessed along the road to Christianity.
Participants pledged to conduct audits of their substantial holdings, to become responsible caretakers of land and to offer ongoing support to communities living on the land.
But land committee representative Matlhodi Malope pointed out that churches had made similar resolutions as early as 1984: “Besides confessing in different conferences, there has been no major action to show remorse or repentance from the church.”
Malope added that many churches had resisted land reform by evicting claimants or prospective redistribution beneficiaries from their land, closing schools and other facilities on which they relied and selling the land out from underneath current residents.
Former ombudsman Eugene Roelofse, who has completed a manuscript titled And the Priests Passed By, argued that churches were responsible for more than mere land- grabbing, as many priests remained silent while farmworkers faced abuse by employers.
Roelofse was alerted to several cases of farmworker abuse in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a Methodist minister with a black congregation. “There must have been hundreds of other pastors attending to congregations of farmworkers, but only a few of these men of the cloth raised their voices in protest.”
Even worse, argued the former Dutch Reformed church member, was the role played by Afrikaans churches to which the farmers belonged.
Citing one of the 20-odd cases from his book, Roelofse said Dutch Reformed Dominee Francois Myburgh testified in mitigation of sentence for farmer Roelof du Toit in 1978, following his conviction for chaining 13- year-old Willie Pieterson to a pole for two days after the youth allegedly stole some sweets.
Du Toit was “easy-going and unruffled”, Myburgh told the court. Du Toit’s son, convicted of beating farmworker Hendrick Jacobs to death for rescuing Pieterson, was “a deacon and a man who acted with calmness”.
Roelofse said dominees “routinely” testified in defence of farmers accused of such deeds.
Last week’s land conference also criticised the lack of participation from Afrikaans churches. Only Dutch Reformed Ecumenical Service head Willie Botha attended, and he was unable to take the church into any restitution commitment – or even to say how much land the church owns.
“Our problem is that the land is owned by individual congregations. Whatever individual dominees did or were doing, we can’t take responsibility for individuals,” said Botha.
He said his church was, however, “looking at the issue” of church land and that it would be on the agenda of the next general synod in October 1998. “At least I was there [at the conference],” he said.
The other Afrikaans churches, including the Dutch Reformed church and the Afrikaans Protestant church, were not.