South Africa's Moment of Truth?

The Kairos Document released in 1985 by South African church leaders posed "a challenge to decisive action" to the country's church, its Christians, and implicitly all of its people. It called for repentance, conversion, change, and ceaseless confrontation of the "evils" of apartheid. But how many have taken it up? Have we missed the moment of truth, the moment of grace--the kairos--or does it still await us?

The country's first democratic elections have been set for next April, no doubt a political milestone. But while the politicians have haggled, most South Africans have watched from the sidelines, sitting out this strange dance of national negotiations. People feel detached, even alienated, from the political "leaders," if they deign to call them that. Many "liberal" white South Africans are leaving the country. Others just tune out the daily news--more violence, more deaths.

The white right wing feels totally betrayed by government and has announced its total opposition to the April elections, including a "full-scale mass action campaign" to begin this fall. Many of the black majority--particularly the youth--distrust the political process, and for them "decisive action" means stayaways, boycotts, torching homes and vehicles, or worse.

Following its activism in the late '80s, the church retreated in the first three years of the decade, giving its initiative for the National Peace Accord, baldly put, into the hands of business leaders and politicians. Though in the last few months--with the Anglican Church's call for national disarmament and the recent announcement of a multifaith panel to monitor the forthcoming elections--religious leaders have shown signs of their old assertiveness.

Though the negotiations process grinds out political change, spiritual change--the moment of grace, of repentance and conversion, of kairos--seems to elude most South Africans. Relationships in this country have been grossly damaged, even perverted, by apartheid, and there is much healing to be done, transactions of repentance and forgiveness.

As stated in the Kairos Document, forgiveness cannot be genuine until true repentance has been made. In the eyes of the majority, it hasn't. Sadly, the relations of "oppressor" and "oppressed" largely remain, though all South Africans have been oppressed by apartheid, and "the poor" are also those poor in spirit.

The state, of course, has been openly delegitimized; apartheid and the current government are going. None, or few, try to justify biblically an unquestioning obedience to the government. It is hoped that South Africans will hold up the same measure to the next government, whether it be the African National Congress (ANC) or some sort of coalition. There are encouraging signs; when ANC President Nelson Mandela recently called for the voting age to be lowered to 14, he was derided by people across the board for his irresponsible political opportunism. State president F.W. de Klerk was rigorously challenged by various parties (though mainly the ANC and its allies) for what was perceived as his "interference" in the selection of the new South African Broadcast Corporation board.

"Law and order," upheld by state theology, has been turned on its head. Largely through codes of conduct stipulated in the National Peace Accord, the security forces have been taken to task for failing to control violence and, in many cases, for instigating or aggravating it. Participants in the local and regional peace committees, police, and army representatives now negotiate with the ANC and more extreme left- and right-wing groupings for the sake of security at political meetings and marches.

Not long ago the ANC and its allies dissuaded the security forces from renewing states of emergency in several major cities, arguing that it would cause untold havoc. Yet township residents still hold police responsible for much of the local violence, and security remains elusive as long as the "separate armies"--including Inkatha's and several others, and perhaps even the right-wing commandos--remain unintegrated.

CHURCH THEOLOGY came under fire in the Kairos Document for its guarded criticism of apartheid, for preaching reconciliation, nonviolence, and the justice of reform--not the justice of social and political restructuring. The Peace Accord, which grew out of a gathering of church leaders at Rusterburg in mid-1991, is perhaps unfortunately named--"peace" is a loaded word in South Africa. Granted, although the Peace Accord's purpose is, simply stated, "to bring an end to political violence in our country," its structures are addressing long-term socioeconomic development and reconstruction--critical to any stable peace.

Violence is legitimate in the minds of many desperate South Africans, black and white. For the country's many white right-wing groupings--and they are multiplying--violence seems a justifiable defense against majority rule and loss of self-determination. The two largest right-wing groups have mobilized their private armies, vowing to fight to the death rather than "submit" to an ANC government. Smaller commando groups continue to gather around the country.

The less radical of the right-wing groups have had ongoing talks with government and the ANC about prospects for an Afrikaner homeland, or volkstaat, in a new political dispensation, but the volkstaat proposals are treated like a herd of white elephants. If the new constitution does not in some way protect minority rights, however, the right-wing may unleash a violence much more ruthless and subversive.

Surely along South Africa's roller-coaster road ahead there lie many moments of grace, of kairos, and opportunities for dialogue, for reconciliation with ongoing constructive confrontation, for reconstruction, for true repentance and forgiveness, for real relationship.

We cannot, of course, leave everything to the politicians; it is the citizens of this country who will save it, if all are allowed to be full citizens. In them, in each other, we must hope, as the Kairos Document invites us. That remains the challenge here: to live, and act, out of hope, defying the easy slide into despair.

Melissa Baumann was director of the Cape Town-based Cross Times Trust and coordinator of the Mediation and Conflict Management Project for Journalists when this article appeared. Her husband Hannes Siebert was a trustee of Cross Times Trust and director of the Media & Mediation Fellowship.