SOUTH AFRICA has meant a lot to Sojourners over the years. In the 1980s, I was invited to come to South Africa by key church leaders there, including Beyers Naudé, the first white minister defrocked by the Dutch Reformed Church for opposing apartheid; Desmond Tutu, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town; theologian and preacher Alan Boesak; and Frank Chikane, a Pentecostal minister who came up through the ranks of the movement to lead the South African Council of Churches.
They became my “comrades,” as they say in South Africa, for six weeks that happened to fall during Lent—it was a powerful season for me of seeing and feeling the pain of that beloved country while looking for the hope that comes from people who make costly commitments. Together we worked on a strategy between South African and U.S. church leaders to end apartheid.
Ten years later I returned to witness the victory of that hope in the miracle of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as South Africa’s first black president, and later came back for an international reunion of anti-apartheid activists. Those formative years in the South African movement for freedom helped give me my theology of hope—which I learned means believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.
This August, I returned to South Africa for a speaking and book tour, and I decided to bring my family to show them the country that had changed my life. I had come originally as a young man, blessed to be thrust into this historic struggle with a heroic generation of South African leaders. This time, I came as an older man, blessed again—by making deep connections with a new generation who are finding their own agenda and mission for helping to build a new South Africa.
They are taking on the urgent mission of overcoming poverty and confronting the economic inequality that still plagues South Africa—with the gap between rich and poor even greater now than during the days of apartheid. We wrestled with those issues all along the tour and engaged in strategic conversations about how to turn political liberation into economic equity, opportunity, and justice. This “rainbow generation” is convinced that the churches should lead the way. My new relationships and ongoing conversations were once again a great encounter of hope for me in South Africa.
The other great sign of hope was their agenda of overcoming gender violence, which has become so alarming in South Africa and across their continent. Having my wife and partner Joy Carroll on much of this tour became very helpful. She spoke on Women’s Day in Durban to an enthusiastic audience. Joy recounted the familiar phrase, “Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Then she added, “But enable a woman to own the pond, and she will feed the whole community!”
Women in every audience were ready to lift up their voices for change. At every stop, we said that the fight against gender violence can only be served by a church that practices gender equality. I watched both younger and older women rise to that calling, and I saw men starting to embrace it as well. I found these very hopeful signs.
Throughout the country, I told the story of the young prisoner I met in Sing Sing prison in upstate New York who told me about “the train” that begins in neighborhoods like his and ends up at prisons like Sing Sing. “You get on that train when you’re 9 or 10 years old, and you end up here. ... But I’ve been converted, and when I get out I am going to go back and stop that train!”
That story—from my dear friend and brother Rev. Darren Ferguson, who is now back home in New York City working to stop that train—spread all over South Africa, and young South Africans asked, “What are the trains in South Africa that we need to stop?” It was an inspiring conversation, and I eagerly await to see where a new generation will take it.
The scripture that often came to mind in South Africa was Hebrews 11, recounting our biblical heroes who acted again and again “by faith” and “of whom the world was not worthy.” It is so easy to add the names of so many South African heroes to that list.
But the text says these heroes of faith have not yet received what was promised to them, and that depends on us—how we now respond by faith. They become our “cloud of witnesses” and our cheerleaders sitting in the stands watching us “run the race that is set before us” on the dirt of the fields of struggle, continuing to act by faith. I could feel the investment that the older generation of South African leaders has in the younger ones—and watching that generational transition inspired my own faith again.
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