I was fortunate recently to be able to visit the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, as part of a visit to our partner church of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. Hector Pieterson, aged 13, was one the first students to be killed during the 1976 Student Uprising in Soweto. He has since become a symbol of youth resistance to apartheid. The uprising started on 16 June as a peaceful protest march organized by school students in Soweto. The events of the 1976 Soweto uprising saw township youth take control of the struggle and those events marked the beginning of the end of apartheid.
One of their main grievances was the introduction of Afrikaans, regarded as the language of the oppressor, as a medium of instruction in all African schools. Inspired by the ideas of Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement, they resisted the Bantu Education system, introduced by the apartheid government in the 1950s, which was dubbed ‘gutter education’, being designed to train African people to accept a subservient role in apartheid society.
Hundreds of students joined the protest march planned by the South African Student Movement (SASM), to the Orlando Stadium East where they intended to meet with the authorities to voice their grievances. They carried placards with slogans – ‘Away with Afrikaans’, ‘Amandla Awehtu’ (Power to the People), ‘Free Azania’ (Free South Africa) and sang ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ (God bless Africa), now the national anthem of South Africa.
In Orlando West, police confronted the marchers and ordered them to disperse. Despite the peaceful nature of the march, the confrontation turned violent and was here that a number of students, including Hector Pieterson, were shot and killed. What was a student march, quickly erupted into an uprising, which spread to many other parts of the country. Our ‘Living South Africa Memorial’ is a memorial to this event and to all victims of injustice and violence.
While in South Africa I also saw a performance of ‘Eclipsed’, a play developed and performed by student of the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg. This was an electrifying journey into a major social and political scandal in South Africa, known as Life Esidemeni, brought about when cost savings in contracts resulted in 1,300 people who had been receiving care in from a specialist mental health provider were transferred to the care of their families, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and other hospitals. Over 144 people subsequently died from causes including starvation and neglect.
The drama students drew on testimonies, articles, documentaries, news bulletins, and the commission statements that cross-examined the government officials responsible for this unspeakable tragedy, to devise a powerful physical interpretation of this event and its aftermath. Their re-telling of these events focused on Maria Phehla whose daughter, Deborah, was the first to die just three days after her transfer. The play was a protest at the events which caused the tragedy and the political situation in South Africa that allowed it to occur, but ended with Maria Phehla reminding the Court that all those who died were made in the image of God.
As with the Soweto uprising where young people sang ‘God bless Africa’, these young people were drawing on faith to explore meaning in chaos, scandal and protest. By doing so, whether consciously or not, they were sharing something of the kingdom of God and providing a means by which South Africans could engage with the scandal of Life Esidemeni in order, at least, to ensure those events were not repeated. In this way, the play provided healing space. God is continually calling people around the world in many and varied ways to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.
In our Gospel today we hear of Jesus choosing 12 disciples to spend significant time with him learning his ways and his teaching before sending them out to do as he was doing (Luke 9. 1-6). At a later point in time, he also sent out a further 72 disciples and he had other disciples who supported him through their daily work and incomes they earned. There is no one route to being called or sent by God and there is not one arena in which our calling is lived out. The students of the Soweto uprising and of the Market Theatre Laboratory were called and sent by God, just as surely as were the 12 apostles.
How, I wonder, are we proclaiming the kingdom of God and bringing forms of healing where we are? We might respond that we have not been trained or prepared to do so, yet the students in Soweto and Johannesburg had not been trained for political protests. Their actions came from a compulsion that this was what they had to do. Jesus told his disciples take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. He was saying, make no preparations, just go as you are. At the end of the day, you are enough, and what you say and do, can be used by God, as was the case for the 12 disciples and the students in Soweto and Johannesburg.
Jesus constantly argued that people should not delay in responding to God. Even farewells and burials were no reason for delay as far as Jesus was concerned. The times were such that urgency was required. That same urgency is there in the actions of the students in Soweto and Johannesburg. It is vital to seize the day and act in the here and now. Greta Thunberg and students involved in the School Strikes are further examples from our own day and time, in regard to the urgency of actions in the here and now. ‘Right here, right now’, was Greta Thunberg’s message to the UN, change is coming whether we like it or not.
Whether the imperative is the climate emergency, corruption, oppression, salvation; the times are urgent and the call of God, through the example of young people, is to go. Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority. He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said, ‘Take nothing for your journey’. They departed bringing good news and healing. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
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Michael Kiwanuka - You Ain't The Problem.
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