CHAIRPERSON: I will ask the last witness for today, Reverend, I will ask Reverend Thema to come forward and give us his testimony. Tata, I know even yesterday you have been here. It has been really, really a long wait for you. I would ask you to stand before the Commission. I will ask you to stand.
REV THEMA: (Duly sworn in, states).
CHAIRPERSON: I will ask Joyce Seroke to assist you in giving your testimony.
MS SEROKE: We apologise for this long wait, but I am sure you will bear with us with the long testimonies we have had before you. We have received your well throughout statement and I would like us to confine ourselves to the Churches perspective, particularly regarding the 1976 unrest. Reverend Thema it is interesting to remember that the architects of apartheid justified this horrific system with passages from the Bible whereas the Churches and many religious groups were unanimous in declaring this system ...
CHAIRPERSON: Let us have order please. Let us, order, order please.
MS SEROKE: ... whereas the Churches and the religious groups were unanimous in declaring it a heresy. Would you just briefly tell us the role of the Churches, particularly, your Church, the role that they played in dismantling this
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system and the work that they did to give strength to the young people during the 1976 unrests.
INTERPRETER: The speaker's mike.
REV THEMA: Honourable Members of the Commission and dear fellow Africans, I have experienced June 16th in a different manner. On June the 16th I was in the United States for studies and the following day, the 17th, I was a guest of the General Senate of the Reform Church in America. At that Senate it leaked through the media that Soweto was on fire and that is how the New York Times and other newspapers portrayed June the 16th. Then, of course, the point I would like to make with this remark is that June the 16th validated the utterance of the South African people and the world by saying South Africa was a police state. It came very clearly that South Africa was a police state.
Secondly, it was just coming after some literature and pictures and films portraying the brutality of this police state, the role of the police state in South Africa through pictures like The Last Grief to Timbaza. It also validated the truth of the brutality of the white race of South Africa. That was June the 16th how we saw it, but I would like to say as a Church man, I am a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church.
You know very well that the Dutch Reformed Church was said at that time to be the National Party prole. I, personally, perceived that we would not go anywhere in this country in as far as freedom and justice is concerned before we dealt with the Dutch Reformed Church on this point because the Dutch Reformed Church had believed, like others I think, that they were the chosen people of God and designed to come and own South Africa and scripturally we
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refuted that because it alleged, on the other side, that others who were not white were not the people of God. That is how we started to fight against apartheid. Of course in order to come to that we had difficulties with the Church structures because financially the black Churches were financed by the white Church and in order to deal with this matter we had to create our Church organisations of Christians like the confessing group called the berating the grail and then from there we also worked hand-in-hand with other Reform Churches, the Congregationals and the Prespitarians to form an alliance of black Christians in South Africa to fight apartheid from within the Churches.
Of course that led, for an example, to presenting our matter to the World Alliance of Reform Churches in 1982 in Ottawa where we demonstrated, beyond doubt, that apartheid was a heresy and seeing kind of caused also a crime to humanity. This is how the Church, how we played our role in, sort of, bringing around the understanding of what apartheid is. Then at the same time we had a stance, a Christian stance to fight this standing all that of Church unity because if we allowed disunity in the Church it was making allowance also for disunity in the larger community in the nation. At the present moment we were able to bring the coloured and the blacks together to form what we call the United Reform Church. We are still fighting this fight within the Church, to bring in the white people. More or less, this is what happened and what happens in the Dutch Reformed Church.
Of course after 1976 we continued, as you have heard from the other people here, struggling to get our place within the community. The only thing we could do as
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Churches was to be supportive, to support the Church organisation, I mean the student organisations, the community organisations and others by way of disseminating of collecting and processing information and disseminating this information in the community. At the same time by way of making ourselves available for memorial services and other, all types of services and to make our Churches available for the students and other organisations to hold their meetings.
You still remember there was a time when the Churches were told no longer to allow people to hold meetings or services, community services in the Churches. We rebelled against this and continued to allow the communities to come to these. Then, of course, this also led to a point where at some stage, miraculously, a place like Soweto and of course even other places, were virtually passed by the prison Pastors. Most of us were arrested, charged, more especially under the Riotous Assemblies Act and we were fined and paid, the fines were paid and on top of that we were given suspended sentences for five years. This is how we saw the Church participating in this whole thing, but I think I have to come back to say why did we do this? We regarded apartheid as a system, not as just a thing that occurs at one time, that was designed to disinherit, dispossess and to dehumanise black people. To do that the Government had to have a machinery, inter alia, they actually created a problem, even for this present day, by converting the police force in this country into a military force.
Remember then that it means South Africa had to go through a period, virtually without a police force, but with SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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a military force. That is how the principles of justice and the Laws and regulations governing law and order were negated because they had nobody to take charge of as the police were militarised with uniform and everything. Of course that also resulted in one thing. It is not just a militarisation of the police, it also meant the turning the entire community into criminals. If, for an example, like I have set in Soweto, we had a point where we had almost all Ministers serving suspended sentences. It meant we were faced with a community or communities with criminal Ministers which implied criminal congregations which meant criminal society. We were criminalised therefore it was easier for these people, for these police of these forces to deal with criminals and not with people. These are some of the things that we as Pastors and people in the Churches had to try and interpret to the people and show the people what we were and what we are.
Then, of course, our thrust of our mission was humanisation to tell the people that, regardless of all these things, we are not criminals, we are God's people, we are the people like any other person and we encouraged people to stand up. We were aware of the brutalisation, the killings, the murdering of the people, people disappearing. Up to this day they have disappeared, we cannot trace them and some of our people here also have substantiated this by saying there were helicopters by night getting to places like Dorenkop, Avalon, unloading corpses which were buried and, of course, at that time also there were some reports of people being buried alive by this army. Of course there were, you can understand that they were not seeing people, they were seeing criminals. I think time is gone. This is
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what I would like to say. Thank you.
MS SEROKE: Thank you Reverend Thema. Before you go I would like to ask you one or two questions. When your white counterparts in the Dutch Reformed Church tried to silence you as black Priests within their own Church, that you were meddling in politics, you should go on preaching the Gospel, how did you interpret your Gospel to these people?
REV THEMA: Well, our Gospel to them was just to say we are created by God just as he created them. That people are people and God is God, we are all one people. We have to become one. Hence, we strove for unification of the believers, the people of God and, yet, on the other hand they resisted this.
MS SEROKE: When the repression intensified, as it intensified the more the people lost their faith and did not believe that there was a God for black people. How did you try to restore this faith to the people, particularly the young people who started shunning away from the Churches at that time in 1976 and so on?
REV THEMA: We did have some discussions, I think, Professor Piet Meiring if he can remember, in one of these big meetings of the Dutch Reformed Church, someone speaking about the God of the Afrikaners and we disputed that. We did not know the God of the Afrikaners, we knew of God the Father of Jesus Christ and that God is God of all humankind. Then, of course, came black theology with interpretation of the Scriptures and, of course, because it differed it presented Christ differently from the whites whose theology was a, sort of, theology of the pie in the sky and in black theology we were speaking of Christ who must be involved here and now with the people. This was some of the things
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and, of course, as we spoke about these things our young people came behind us and, I think, at that point we saw the young people be more interested in Church because they were hearing of Christ not who hangs and hold parties in the clouds, but Christ who was involved in their family lives, in their personal lives, in their community life, in the congregations and everywhere.
MS SEROKE: Thank you very much Reverend Thema. I will refer you back to our Chairperson.
CHAIRPERSON: I will start off, Professor Piet Meiring.
PROF MEIRING: Brother Thema, thank you for your testimony and things you have told us about. We have lived through them together. Many of the things I wanted to ask you have already answered. One thing that remains in my mind is that I have heard that in your congregation, especially, you were able to really retain the young people. You touched on that just now in the last remarks you made, but can you tell us a little bit about that? It must have been a very difficult thing to be a Minister in 1976 in Soweto, especially for a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, but you were able to hold the young people to your congregation and how did you do that?
REV THEMA: You will remember that I started by indicating that when June 16th broke out I was in the United States. I had left South Africa on the 14th of September after cutting the sword of the Mission House in the Square in Orlando East. Everybody knows that and then when I came back I found that house being almost complete. Instead of getting into it, for an example, I remained for an extra year living in a three roomed house in our Orlando community because that house was a house of refuge for the students,
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the young people who were being harassed by the police at their homes. So they could go there and take refuge there. At the same time the students, I think, understood our role. Just to mention one.
For an example, when for the whole night, in the very house, I was already living in that house. The National Student Bodies came and held a conference in my house. The coloured students and the indian students had come to ask the black students why are you not involved in our struggle? It is during the riots in Eldorado Park and other places. Of course, the black students asked them, where were you when we were involved in the struggles? They said, the coloureds and the indians said, no, we did not understand what was happening. The black students said, we understood and we understand exactly what is happening to you and then, of course, the debate culminated in, can we join you in, what is this, Congress of South African Students, COSAS. The black students said, no, we welcome your request to come and join us, but it is not an opportune time for you to come in. We are heavily stepped by the system. Most of our leaders are in prison, we are on the run, we are in disarray and if you come in now, you only introduce yourself to the brutalities that you cannot stand for. This was said in my own house.
Remember at the same time that at that time we speak about the students. After October 1977, when we woke up on the 19th of October to find everything gone, the Press, leaders detained, people burned, I became the Chairman of the Sowetan Action Committee. Of course, I handled the country until the people were released a year later and during those times most of the people involved were the
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students, were the young people. Some of them, today, are Ministers. On my Committee I had people like Popo Malefie and some of them are killed like Elesetsie Mosala and all those. That is how the young people, in actual fact, came to my side and understood my role and beyond that I was also the founder Chairman of AZAPO.
At that point I was pulling this whole country, unifying the forces. I did not have the problem of this one pulling that way and that way. I still remember in the AME Church speaking about the united organisations of South Africa and, of course, we were all pushing for a common enemy. All these things led the people, the young people and the community people to understand my role and, of course, at the end when the people were released, when they came out, for those months I was warned and then I, also, recommended that we should have the civic aspect of the political organisation. Then we came up with the Committee of Ten and then we had Committee of Ten taking over the civic political, being in charge of the civic life and AZAPO being in charge of the political life.
Until we got the conflict between AZAPO and UDF which was a misfortune because it was, we do not know exactly how we were infiltrated and people could come up with this thing. Then, even when we came to that, I was the mediator between AZAPO and UDF. That is how the people were on my side.
CHAIRPERSON: I would just like to thank you for your perspective. This is a challenge especially for young people to realise that there are many people who ran a race before them and who have survived, who are today able to celebrate and tell the story. We hope what you did, the
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struggles you waged within the Church will be continued especially during this critical time of our life, that is the reconstruction of people's minds as well. We thank you very much Reverend Thema.
REV THEMA: Can I make a, just if I could make a contribution towards the future. I would like to make this observation that if our Government could take cognisance of the fact that we have no police culture. If from the 1950's the law enforcement agencies were eroded we may not have the hope of having a foreseeable, of having peace in the foreseeable future and I would like to say, perhaps, to overcome this problem we should start with launching a real fundamental training of the police and our approach should not be just an ordinary approach. We should involve even ethicists from universities in this training because at the moment even the highest, the top men in the police force, in the security forces, they have no cultural security nor of law and order and those people are, by definition, not police. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.
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