Into the Crucible of Fire

ST. GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL was packed to overflowing. A rally had been planned to launch the newly formed Committee to Defend Democracy, a committee hastily put together by church leaders to protest the South African government's recent assault on democratic groups. But just hours before, the meeting was banned, along with the three-day-old organization itself. Quickly, a service was called to take place in the cathedral at the same hour the banned mass meeting would have been held.

Despite government efforts to obstruct communication, word of the service had gotten around. Police roadblocks had been set up to keep the young people from the black townships from getting to the church service in downtown Cape Town, but many made it anyway, surging into the sanctuary like a powerful river of energy, determination, and militant hope.

There was no more room to sit or stand in the church. People were everywhere--in the aisles, the choir lofts, and the spaces behind and in front of the pulpit. People of all human colors waited for the worship to begin and the Word to be preached. Outside the cathedral, the riot police were massing.

It was our first day in South Africa. The March 13th cathedral service provided a dramatic introduction to our 40-day sojourn in this land of sorrow and hope. Indeed, the notes struck in St. George's that day would be the recurring themes in the weeks that followed.

"The battle is on!" thundered Rev. Allan Boesak in his bright red-and-black robe, "but Jesus Christ is Lord!" Applause and shouts of affirmation rang out as the preacher exclaimed, "The government of South Africa has signed its own death warrant. No government can take on God and survive. That is the good news for the people of South Africa and the bad news for the South African government!"

Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached that, even when all looks hopeless, "We must assert, and assert confidently, that God is in charge." He was fiery and strong as he told the white rulers who enforce the brutal system of apartheid, "You are not God, you are mortals. It is God whom we worship, and God cannot be mocked. You have already lost. Come and join the winning side!"

The "recessional" for this service turned into a chanting stampede of young people singing freedom songs. The conflict between the church and the state in South Africa had escalated.

THE RECENT ROUND OF confrontation began two weeks before when, in an unprecedented display of unity, 25 church leaders, along with 500 clergy and laity, marched to the South African Parliament in Cape Town, carrying a petition that demanded the restoration of the right of peaceful protest. The February 29 "Parliament March" was in response to the South African government's action on February 24 to effectively ban 17 organizations which had been leading the struggle against apartheid and to restrict the nation's largest labor federation from political activity.

With the government's silencing of major organizations such as the two million-member United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the church leaders felt compelled to act in a new and unified way. Their action was met with water cannons and arrests. And it set into motion a chain of events that dominated the attention of the country for weeks and signaled a new stage in the struggle for freedom in South Africa, one in which the churches would play a central role.

Like all conflicts, this one is very personal for those involved. The Boesak home was our home base for the almost six weeks we traveled throughout South Africa.

Extraordinary events were occurring almost daily for the Boesak family, but somehow, by the grace of God, the stuff of ordinary human and family life continued, and, in fact, became the saving grace.

Two nights before we arrived, a brick had been thrown through the living-room window. The next morning, death threats over the phone began in earnest; they would continue regularly through the first two weeks we were there.

LATER THAT WEEK Allan invited me to accompany him to Pretoria for the Federal Council Meeting of the Dutch Reformed Church, which takes place every two years. It was with the help of the white Dutch Reformed Church that the idea of apartheid was originally conceived and given religious justification. Membership in the highest circles of Afrikaner power and the Dutch Reformed Church are virtually synonymous.

The Federal Council meeting brought together delegates from the four branches of the Dutch Reformed Church--black, so-called colored, Indian, and white--whose strictly separated racial constituencies mirror the divisions that define virtually everything about South African life and society. The white Dutch Reformed Church has been the ruling church, creating dependent and subservient branches to enforce racial segregation and maintain white control.

In recent years, however, that control has been seriously challenged by the increasingly independent and spiritually revitalized black churches in South Africa's Dutch Reformed "family." In particular, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church has mounted a powerful theological attack on apartheid as a false and secular gospel which is completely contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

At its historic Ottawa meeting in 1982, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (the 70 million-member world communion of which all of South Africa's Dutch Reformed Churches were a part) dramatically acted in declaring apartheid a heresy, expelling the white Dutch Reformed Church and electing Allan Boesak as its new president. In 1986 Boesak was elected moderator of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa, whose confession, which all members must sign, names apartheid a sin against the gospel and a heresy in the church. The dynamic and prophetic role undertaken by the black churches and the entrenched resistance of the white Dutch Reformed Church set the stage for the Federal Council Meeting in March.

THE ATMOSPHERE WAS TENSE and politically charged as the top leaders of all the branches of the Dutch Reformed Church gathered to discern the meaning of the gospel in South Africa today. In response to the service in St. George's Cathedral, the white Dutch Reformed Church had just issued an attack against Allan Boesak and Desmond Tutu, denouncing them as taking a "wicked path," questioning their role as church leaders, accusing them of personal and political ambitions, and blaming them for promoting "lawlessness and revolution."

The Dutch Reformed Church's attack was front-page news in both the Afrikaner and English papers, and, as has often been the pattern, set the climate and provided the theological rationale for subsequent government attacks on the same church leaders.

At no time during the entire council meeting was any concern expressed by white Dutch Reformed Church members, either publicly or privately, about the threats against Allan Boesak and his family.

A long table separated the black delegates from the white. The black delegates had to walk out the first day before the whites agreed to deal with their agenda concerning the crisis in the country.

The discussion which finally ensued the next day was extraordinary. Most of the black church agenda items concerning the division of the church, the destabilization of neighboring African countries by the South African government, detentions, bannings, and the state of emergency never came up. The discussion never got that far.

The white Dutch Reformed Church delegates pointed to the "reforms" reflected in their church statements and in government policy. Some argued that the "ugly part" of apartheid should be removed but that "separate development" could be a positive thing.

Professor Johan Heyns, moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church, passionately proclaimed, "We are here as blood brothers in Jesus Christ!" A Dutch Reformed minister added, "It was never the intention of separate development to hurt anybody."

The church had the right intention in choosing its path, he contended. "We are a privileged people because of having the gospel and our lifestyle. We wanted to help all peoples." That help wasn't "paternalism," he argued, but "guardianship." He claimed the whites had "made provisions for the needs of people so they will be happy where they are and not put them all in one bunch." The man's obvious sincerity was even more alarming than his words.

Allan Boesak rose to give the closing argument for the black churches. He expressed gratitude for the clarity of the debate; the white Dutch Reformed Church had clearly described apartheid as "our policy." He continued, "The Dutch Reformed Church says we need more time....We have no more time. You cannot defend the indefensible. There is no such thing as the 'nice face' and 'ugly face' of apartheid. Only people who have not suffered can speak of positive sides and good intentions."

THE DEBATE MOVED ON to the issue of status confessionis, the proclamation that apartheid is not just politically wrong but is a sin and a heresy and that opposition to it must have the theological status of a confession of faith. Here, the debate became most intense.

Many argued that the heart of the gospel is at stake as well as the unity of the church. "Apartheid is a denial of the work of Christ on the cross which was to bring us together," said a delegate from the black churches. "It is a crisis of faith which brings us to confession."

Allan Boesak looked across the room at his white colleagues and said, "The time has come to call apartheid by its true name--a sin--and to dismantle apartheid. The Dutch Reformed Church must do it with the same energy as they used to establish apartheid, and we must help them. We understand the pain of the Dutch Reformed Church in hearing these things. We don't enjoy this.

"Is the Dutch Reformed Church willing to look its history in the face? Is the Dutch Reformed Church willing to look its victims in the face? Professor Heyns said today, 'We are blood brothers.' I want to believe that with all my heart. But you don't treat blood brothers the way you have treated us, the way you have treated the people of South Africa.

"We keep coming back to you again and again. We say this in love and charity, and we will stay with you as long as we can."

The impassioned plea stirred the room. But the white delegates of the Dutch Reformed Church were able to derail a clear vote on the heresy statement by manipulating both parliamentary procedures and a call to prayer. The meeting ended for the evening, and on the final day, many of the black church delegates elected not to return.

I WENT INSTEAD with Allan to Johannesburg, where we met with Frank Chikane, the general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC). Building on the foundations laid by his predecessors Desmond Tutu and Beyers Naude, Chikane's energetic and dynamic leadership has enabled the SACC to become the main vehicle through which the churches' resistance to apartheid is now being organized.

Most of the country's mainline Protestant churches are members of the SACC, including the Dutch Reformed Church branches, with the obvious exception of the white Dutch Reformed Church. The membership of these churches, like the population of the country, is 80 percent black, and in recent years, the leadership has also become increasingly black. That new leadership, with the bold direction of people such as Chikane, Boesak, and Tutu, is creating a new climate in churches historically known for their passivity or occasional protest but little real resistance to apartheid.

Frank Chikane was still talking about the surprising and exciting unity of the church leaders on the day of the Parliament March. The plan now was to mobilize the masses in the membership of the churches to join with their leaders in a new campaign of nonviolent resistance. Using the Parliament March as an example and tool, church-sponsored seminars on strategies for nonviolent resistance were being planned for 24 local areas around the country. Chikane believes the church leaders have opened the door and legitimized the commitment to resistance. He firmly believes the congregations will follow.

The SACC has undertaken so many services and projects it has almost become an alternative government for the people of South Africa who have no government, but instead endure a state which is their predator. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are needed each month to support thousands of families of detainees. That assistance poses such a threat to the government that it continually seeks to undermine it. One such effort involved the creation of a counterfeit brochure by the security police. Identical in format and typeface to an official SACC brochure, this version states that SACC support money goes toward "petrol bombs, tyres for necklaces,...condoms for AIDS etc."

The government was also threatening to cut off, through legislation, crucial foreign financial support to the work of the South African Council of Churches. Without that support the many relief and development projects supported by the SACC would also be in great jeopardy.

The youth division of the SACC is deeply involved with the young people in the black townships. The militant township youth, who provide so much energy to the struggle against apartheid, are finding new hope in the churches, mainly because of the public leadership of people such as Boesak and Tutu.

Sometimes frustrated with the churches, many had drifted away, but the new role being undertaken by the church leaders has convinced many not to give up on the churches but instead to participate and criticize from within. In township after township, we met young people who were excited about the arrests of church leaders on the Parliament March. We rarely found black young people who felt the church to be irrelevant. Rather, many want the church to give them support and provide a strong base for their lives and their freedom struggle.

We joined in a special service at the SACC, offering thanksgiving for the stay of execution of the Sharpeville Six, who were to have been hanged that morning. Six young people had been given the death sentence for merely being part of a crowd that killed a local official. They were convicted under the law of "common purpose," sentenced to death even though there was no proof they had anything to do with the violence of the rioting crowd. International pressure brought a temporary reprieve.

During the service we sang a beautiful but sad song in Zulu, the words of which meant, "What have we done to deserve all this suffering? Our only sin is the color of our skin."

We joined hands at the close of the service and sang "We Shall Overcome." I felt the strength and suffering of a freedom struggle that transcends time and place and thought to myself how pleased Martin Luther King Jr. would have been. The worshipers danced and sang their way out of the chapel, feet stomping, fingers pointed upward, and offering one last Zulu song whose words meant, "Don't let your heart be troubled. Do not worry. We have the victory."

A NEW ATTACK ON Desmond Tutu came in a letter from P.W. Botha, carried widely in the newspapers. The state president was responding to the petition presented to the government on the day of the Parliament March. That petition affirmed the "principles of nonviolent direct action," and said, in part:

By imposing such drastic restrictions on organizations which have campaigned peacefully for the end of apartheid, you have removed nearly all effective means open to our people to work for true change by nonviolent means....Your actions indicate to us that those of you in government have decided that only violence will keep you in power; that you have chosen the "military option" for our country....

We regard your restrictions not only as an attack on democratic activity in South Africa but as a blow directed at the heart of the churches' mission in South Africa. The activities which have been prohibited are central to the proclamation of the Gospel in our country and we must make it clear that, no matter what the consequences, we will explore every possible avenue for continuing the activities which you have prohibited other bodies from undertaking....

We have not undertaken this action lightly. We have no desire to be martyrs. However, the Gospel leaves us no choice but to seek ways of witnessing effectively and clearly to the values of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ...."

In his letter Botha challenged:

The question must be posed whether you are acting on behalf of the kingdom of God, or the kingdom promised by the ANC [African National Congress] and the SACP [South African Communist Party]? If it is the latter, say so, but do not then hide behind the structures and the cloth of the Christian church....If [the church] brings its spiritual power into secular power-play, and the message of Christ into disrepute, then it becomes a secular instead of a sacred spiritual subject, thereby relinquishing its claim to be church.

IN EAST LONDON the next week, we stayed with a Dutch Reformed Mission Church pastor who had been detained. In South Africa, imprisonment is becoming an inevitable consequence of genuine Christian ministry. So many people have been to prison here, especially the young people. For young blacks, detention normally means beatings and torture as well.

There are so many stories--the child who didn't come back, the man detained over the weekend of his father's funeral, the wife who had to tell her detained husband that their baby died of malnutrition. They say that in Stalin's Russia, every family was touched by the repression. That is true now of South Africa; virtually every black family is touched by detention, disappearance, police violence, injury, torture, or killing.

During a visit to Duncan Village, a black township near East London, we were detained and interrogated for about an hour. A young man who lives in the township and was taking us around was picked up with us. Surrounded by soldiers and guns, a menacing security police officer threatened our 24-year-old companion who had just recently been released from 10 months of detention. He looked his intimidator in the eye, pulled his New Testament out of his pocket, and courageously said, "I am a Christian."

We arrived back where we were staying in Buffalo Flats, a so-called colored area. The afternoon had been hot and tense, and I walked out on the little balcony behind the house to catch the cool breeze. I looked across the Buffalo River, over the huge ravine which separated us from the affluent white area of East London.

I could see the beautiful, white homes in the distance and wondered about the people who live there. How many have ever seen the black township of Duncan Village from which we had just come? How many could even imagine it? How many would even believe that the terrible poverty and repressive violence we just saw were true? Not very many, I was afraid.

How many even have questions and care enough to find out what's happening in their own country? If they would find out, and act, it would be costly to them. Perhaps that's what whites secretly know. The system works by offering whites a mixture of privilege and fear designed to sustain white ignorance.

Apartheid is designed to keep people separate. That part, at least, seems to be working.

The presence and power of evil is palpable here. You can feel it, and it makes you shiver. Yet, alongside the power of the evil, one feels the vibrant hope of the people.

There is so much defiance and determination from so many. They are so young and so strong. It is a weak system that requires such overwhelming force to maintain it. It is crumbling, from constant pressure and internal moral decay. The inevitability of the defeat of apartheid seems utterly clear.

Joyce called me inside. P.W. Botha was on television denouncing the church leaders. Frank Chikane, in his capacity as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, had written Botha a letter which responded to the government's attack on Desmond Tutu and other church leaders. The letter (which, of course, wasn't reported by the South African press) said, in part:

We feel that this unprecedented attack on the clergy may be paving the way for a state clamp down on the church and its witness to the truth. The church throughout the ages has borne the brunt of such attacks while governments have come and gone. We therefore pledge ourselves to the gospel of Christ against the forces of evil of this country and we commit ourselves to working for the ushering in of a new order of peace and justice for all, irrespective of the consequences.

Now Botha was on television in angry reply to Frank Chikane:

I grew up in an environment where the Lord was served, where the love of God, His Church and His Word was transferred to me, and which cherish in my heart to this very day. That is why I strive to conduct my personal life, and my service as State President, according to the principles of the Christian faith. This government has in the light of the message of the Bible, gone out of its way to serve the people of this country....

It is therefore disturbing that you and others, who claim to represent the Church of Christ and the Word of God, act in the irresponsible way that you do. You do not hesitate to spread malicious untruths about South Africa here and abroad. You should be fully aware of the numerous misleading statements concerning local support for sanctions and for the ANC, alleged atrocities by the security forces, the treatment of youths, and the fabrication of false testimony for especially the overseas media. You love and praise the ANC/SACP with its Marxist and atheistic ideology, landmines, bombs, and necklaces perpetrating the most horrendous atrocities imaginable; and you embrace and participate in their call for violence, hatred, sanctions, insurrection and revolution....

It is alarming that God, and the Church of God which I also love and serve, can be abused and insulted in this manner; that individual members of the clergy who claim to be messengers of God, are in reality messengers of enmity and hatred while parading in the cloth, and hiding behind the structures of the Church....In the name of God and in the spirit of true Christianity, I call upon you to be messengers of the true Christian religion, and not of Marxism and atheism....

It is a well-known fact that South Africa is a country which cherishes and safeguards freedom of religion....Can you quote one single instance from the Word of God in which it appears that Christ advocated violence against the State; or led a demonstration against the State; or broke a law of the State?

Immediately following Botha's attack was a special report by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on the persecution of religion in the Soviet Union.

THE NEXT DAY WAS Palm Sunday, and I had been asked to preach. A few hours after our incident in the township, a military casspir (a large, armored personnel carrier) slowly drove past the house where we were staying--a typical tactic of intimidation, we were told. I was also warned that there would be police informers in the congregation the next morning. That, too, is common in South Africa.

The text was how Jesus set his face for Jerusalem, knowing what would be waiting for him there. We were about to enter Holy Week. I was struck with the realization that much of the South African Church would not merely be remembering the momentous events of Holy Week but, in fact, living through them in the midst of their own situation.

The next day's newspaper headlines in the Cape Town newspapers read "Boesak Fears Assassination." In his Palm Sunday sermon, Allan Boesak had told his congregation about all the threats but challenged them to remain faithful and believe in God's promises. A special delegation from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches had come to offer international support for Boesak and the embattled black Dutch Reformed Churches.

Earlier in the week, an Anglican delegation, including a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, had arrived to demonstrate worldwide Anglican solidarity with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Meanwhile, Botha had gone on television again to give his reply to possible legal action against him from the Anglicans for his attacks on Tutu. "I would like it! I would like it!" Botha shouted to a cheering crowd of white Afrikaners.

The same week The New Nation was banned for three months by the government. Sponsored by the Catholic Bishops Conference, this independent newspaper had been one of the last free voices among South Africa's heavily censored press and government-controlled media. During this Lent and Holy Week in South Africa, hardly a day went by without public confrontation between the church and the state.

OUR HOLY WEEK WAS SPENT MOSTLY IN townships and squatter camps around Cape Town. Crossroads, the squatter camp well known for its resistance, looks like a war zone now. The people there have suffered such violence for so long. Resistance to the government policy of forced removal is very high and very costly.

A theological student took us from one area to another, tracing the history of the government's efforts to move black people farther and farther from white areas. The Group Areas Act may be the most heartless and cruel policy of apartheid. We never met black people who were living where they were from--all had been removed by force from their homes.

Before the Group Areas Act, black, so-called colored, Indian, and even some whites lived together quite successfully. Now all that has changed.

Black people are always on the move in South Africa. There is no rest and there is no home. The pain of just seeing it is almost too much to bear. To experience it would be much worse. As we saw, heard, and felt the sheer weight of human suffering caused by this diabolical system, the words rose up from my soul, "Apartheid was conceived in hell."

A Holy Week strategy session on Tuesday in Bishopscourt at the residence of Archbishop Tutu brought together 25 people. The discussion soon focused on whether the churches were ready to follow their leaders into serious nonviolent resistance. Theologian Charles Villa-Vicencio pointed out how domesticated many in the churches still are and that, while a church-state conflict was escalating, there was still a real struggle ahead within the churches.

Most agreed, however, that the churches were ready as never before and the government would not succeed in isolating the church leaders. The time to act was now, and next steps were planned to take the issues into the heart of the churches while publicly confronting the government's policies. The "campaign," as people referred to it, was everywhere gaining momentum since the Parliament March and would now be carried to regional and local levels.

On Wednesday, on the way to the township of Lavender Hill, we passed a school bus with all of the children being held outside and surrounded by a large group of police. Such sights are very familiar in South Africa.

In Lavender Hill we met Jan de Waal, who helped to start a community center here in one of the most overcrowded townships. A conversation ensued about white South Africa. De Waal spoke of the tremendous indoctrination whites are subjected to. If whites choose to join in the anti-apartheid struggle, they experience tremendous rejection from their own community, friends, and even family. Virtually all the whites we met who were seriously involved told us the same thing.

Beyers Naude, South Africa's best known white dissident, told us later in Johannesburg that he was not optimistic about white involvement in the struggle. "You must be willing to risk your income your security, and your very life. You have to be prepared to be ostracized by your own people and walk by faith with God. Until they come to that point, whites will be unwilling."

"The difference between liberals and radicals," said de Waal, "is more than analysis. It's the difference of involvement." Whites involved in the struggle live as foreigners in their white areas, with almost all their social contact in the black community. Jan de Waal's own involvement has, among other things, cost him the sight in his right eye as a result of being struck by a police baton during a protest march.

At the New World Center in Lavender Hill, the church is used for everything--morning day care, community noon meal, after-school programs, evening church activities, Sunday church, and meetings dealing with community and political issues. It was a stark contrast to the beautiful, stately, and usually locked white Dutch Reformed churches we saw everywhere we went in South Africa.

It was just on the outskirts of Lavender Hill where the juxtaposition of a wretched squatter camp and an incredibly opulent white area just two minutes away dramatically brought home to me the truth about South Africa. Rather than being an abnormal and ugly aberration, South Africa is really an extreme parable of our entire global system.

It is literally the First World and the Third World living side by side in the closest proximity--with the one literally killing the other for the sake of its own wealth and privilege, and the other suffering and dying, just out of the sight and hearing of most of its executioners. This bleeding land is a microcosm of the oppressive dynamics which now govern the world order.

ON EASTER SUNDAY, April 3, Allan Boesak preached to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., who died 20 years earlier on April 4. He spoke passionately about what the martyred American prophet means to him and to South Africa. King is everywhere around Allan Boesak--his home and office are full of pictures, books, tapes, and mementos. Boesak is self-consciously a disciple of King and makes regular reference to him and the freedom movement he led. Now more than ever, Allan Boesak and other South African church leaders are reflecting on King and the relevance of his radical nonviolence for the next phase of South Africa's history.

Later in Easter week, we met with Nico Smith in his home in Mamelodi, a township outside Pretoria. Like Beyers Naude, Smith left the white Dutch Reformed Church to join the black church; he is one of the very few whites who have chosen to live in a black township.

"The greatest problem in our country," said Smith, "is that too many people have accepted Christ--the 'mystical Christ,' the Christ of personal experiences and inner emotions. Seventy-five percent of the white people accept the mystical Christ, and in the meantime, the devil is Lord of the country and in their lives, too."

The false gospel preached by the white South African churches "immunizes people to the real gospel," he explained. "When you put the false gospel into their veins and minds, they resist the real gospel. When they hear the real thing, they believe it is dangerous and they must fight it."

Whites can't believe or understand what's happening in their country, Smith said. "When they say 'I don't believe it,' it's another way of saying 'I don't understand it,' which is another way of saying 'I don't know about it,' which is a way of saying 'I'm not responsible for it.'"

Few whites have taken responsibility--or given up their privilege. A youth in Mamelodi told us, "The whites don't believe in our 'one man, one vote.' They believe in 'one man, one pool'--and they use their vote to keep their pool."

We spent a day in Soweto with Frank Chikane and his family. Their house had been petrol-bombed in 1985.

Chikane had a conservative evangelical upbringing, similar to my own. We reflected on the times the strength of such a history can be drawn upon, especially when in jail. His humbly told story of how detentions, torture, and an underground existence ultimately led to his appointment as General Secretary to the South African Council of Churches (while he was still in hiding from the government) was a moving testimony of faith to the promises of God.

He took us around Soweto, the black township of two million people that is actually larger than neighboring Johannesburg. Soweto is an awesome spectacle of humanity: groaning under the pain of the present but pulsing with the hope of South Africa's future. We went back to Soweto often.

One incident in Soweto will remain with me for a long time. We were back in Soweto for a detainees' support meeting. The large hall was jammed-packed with people from the township, especially those who had been detained and the families of detainees. A militant spirit soon took over as the young people made it their meeting with their chants, fiery speeches, and freedom songs.

Thirty thousand people have been detained since the state of emergency was imposed on June 12, 1986--10,000 of them under the age of 16. Add to that the assassinations, disappearances, random killings, little children shot down in the streets, and no one brought to justice for any of these crimes--what else but the cross could bear the overwhelming weight of such suffering and pain?

Near the end of the support meeting, all eyes focused on a group of children about to perform on the stage. Some were no older than 8 or 9, the oldest about 14. They were very good as they acted out little vignettes of township life--some humorous, some serious, and all very militant.

The concluding dramatization was the longest and most substantial. It opened with a scene of township unrest and the painful sight of a black policeman brutalizing black people. The crowd booed.

The second scene took place at night. In shadows, the black policeman came to the door of one whom he had brutalized. "Please, I've fallen out of favor with my white superiors. I have nowhere to go. Will you take me in? Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you!" replied the man at the door. "Only God could forgive you! I will not. Now get away from my house!" He slammed the door.

As he moved back into his home, he began to talk to himself. "But wait, Jesus tells us that we must turn the other cheek and forgive those who persecute us, even our enemies....I must go to him."

When the man came out of his house into the street, he saw that some township young people had found the police traitor and were about to "necklace" him by lighting a gasoline-filled tire around his neck. The man jumped in between the youth and the policeman. "No, wait! We must not do this! Yes, this man has been an instrument of our oppression, but also of his own. Jesus tells us to forgive those who persecute us. We must forgive him because he is really our brother. He must be welcomed back and restored to us again. He can join with us in the struggle." The man said, "I was so stupid to be used by the whites as an instrument to kill my nation." They released him.

The next scene was one of protest. All were in the street with placards. Among them was the former policeman. The riot police opened fire--the forgiven policeman was hit and lay dying in the arms of his comrades. "I never knew the liberation struggle until I joined it," he said. "I never knew the bullet until I felt it in my flesh."

In the final scene, they buried their long-lost and new-found brother. At the funeral they knelt and stood, heads bowed and hands raised offering prayers for Africa. "Lord, we are tired of bullets," they prayed. "Please give us peace and freedom." They ended with the Lord's Prayer.

Tears came to my eyes. The audience was quiet and then slowly began to clap, to cheer, and then to sing freedom songs. "God bless Africa," they sang.

IF WHITE SOUTH AFRICA rejects this revolution, I thought to myself, it maybe the last chance they will ever have. It's not just the church leaders, it's a nation, and a people, and a movement whose faith reaches right down to the grassroots. That faith is now being rediscovered at a critical moment of South Africa's history. The seeds of radical Christian faithfulness sown by a courageous minority over many years may now finally be ready to bear much fruit. But the cost of that faithfulness will be high.

The South African government has banned democratic peaceful protest and proven that it really wants violent confrontation. The military option is the natural preference for a regime whose only legitimacy is the power of the gun. It is into that political vacuum and crucible of fire that the churches are deciding to walk and to choose the path of nonviolent resistance.

During the last few days of May, the South African Council of Churches convened a convocation of more than 200 church leaders. The group voted to launch a new campaign of nonviolent action to remove the system of apartheid. That decision culminates a series of momentous events which began with the Parliament March on February 29 and together signify a new day for the church and a new stage in the South African freedom struggle.

The church is becoming the church in South Africa. The process of "becoming" is never easy, and this is no exception. The May convocation showed that there are still differences among church leaders regarding perspective, pace, and preferred strategies, which need to be overcome. But there is more unity than ever before.

The choices between negotiation and confrontation are now clearly in the government's hands. Black leaders have always been willing to negotiate if the white government is prepared to discuss real change, but so far, negotiation has been a smokescreen for a surrender to white power.

The intransigence of the white South African government, the suffering endured by the people, and the momentum of the situation make more confrontation inevitable. What kind of confrontation there will be and what kind of new South Africa will emerge are the real questions now. In finding answers to these questions, the role of the South African churches will be absolutely crucial.

THE WHITE GOVERNMENT'S policy to destroy all dissent has not been ineffective. The military predominates as an overwhelming steamroller that seeks to crush every challenge to white control. Against such enormous power, creativity and courage will be the most needed characteristics of any opposition.

To fight the apartheid regime on its own terms is to court disaster. The ever-present temptation to submit to despair and revenge can only lead to certain defeat. Mere rhetoric and constant reaction will be no substitute for clear strategy and fresh initiatives.

The potential power of nonviolent resistance to mobilize moral authority, popular participation, and the human resources of the majority could open up new possibilities at a most critical time. It is apparent that many South African Christians are counting the cost of such a commitment.

During times of protest in South Africa, candles are lit in windows to show solidarity and hope; and the police come into people's homes to blow the candles out. The children make jokes about the South African government being afraid of candles.

On our first day in South Africa, in St. George's Cathedral, Desmond Tutu began his sermon, "In the enveloping darkness, as the lights of freedom are extinguished one by one--despite all the evidence to the contrary, we have come here to say that evil, and injustice, and oppression, and exploitation embodied in the very nature of apartheid cannot prevail."

Forty days later, after witnessing the power of the church all over South Africa, I believed more than ever the words from John's gospel: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."