South Africa

For many years, today's date in U.S. calendars seemed to be an odd, cynical juxtaposition of politically and socially-inflected observances: Presidents' Day, right in the middle of Black History Month. One the one hand, white powerful men were being honored at the same time as those who had fought enslavement, dispossession, and imprisonment at their hands. That is, it felt an oxymoron until the dramatic election of Barack Obama. The new issue of The New Yorker magazine brings us back to the thrilling feelings many of us felt one year ago at Obama's inauguration -- when Rev. Joseph Lowery closed the momentous program with a stirring invocation -- through an extraordinary photo spread honoring African Americans leaders (or their descendants) of the civil rights movement.

“I do daily perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and re-creates. That informing power or spirit is God. I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see in the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, God is light, God is love. God is the supreme good.” Mahatma Gandhi

Laying Ghosts to Rest for an Audacity of Hope

Tortured, traumatised but not broken: the South African spirit and vision of hope

[Ed. Note: This speech by the Rev. Michael Lapsley, SSM was delivered on September 17, 2009 at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. Rev. Lapsley, the founder and director of the Institute for the Healing of Memories in Cape Town, South Africa, will be the keynote speaker at the Fellowship of Reconciliation's luncheon banquet and peace boat cruise on Sunday, October 11, 2009 in New York City. For more information about the Oct. 11 event and to purchase tickets, click here.]

I would like to dedicate my speech to the women and men of Stellenbosch who were slaves and to all who fought against slavery.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, nearing the end of a three-week trip to the country. I'd started in Cape Town, attending the 100th anniversary service of St. George's Cathedral -- the site of many anti-apartheid vigils and a sanctuary space for anti-apartheid activists during those traumatic years. Then I traveled to Durban to attend the World Conference Against Racism, joining an amazing gathering of thousands of people representing governments, NGOs, and people's movements from across the world. Unfortunately, the U.S. government boycotted the conference, so it was left to activists like me to "represent" the U.S. voice there.

The news from Zimbabwe, for the first time in many months, offers a modicum of hope. This week we heard that the ruling Zanu-PF party, led by Robert Mugabe, had provisionally agreed to a power-sharing proposal that would bring the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvingarai, into the government. This is a very shaky moment, with many opportunities for violence or other obstacles to emerge.

Today is the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela, the long-time leader of the African National Congress and the first president of a democratic South Africa. He is to me -- as to so many millions of people -- one of the greatest heroes of the past century. I will proudly wear my Mandela t-shirt today!

Born in the late 1960s, I went to high school and college in the 1980s, and was swept up in the anti-apartheid movement that had taken over the peace and justice activist scene during that era. At home, my family's Episcopal Church had a sister relationship with an Anglican parish in the (then-)Diocese of Johannesburg helped lead me to deep involvement on campus (at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut).