|Khaeb Shaun MacDonald

Johannesburg - For the indigenous people of South Africa, paying attention to global events, and particularly the developments on matters pertaining to indigenous peoples, is an absolute necessity.

There are clear examples of progress made abroad, which should undoubtedly be emulated locally.

For example, a resounding call by Canada’s indigenous people for the Catholic Church to repeal the Doctrine of Discovery – a 15th century order by the church giving permission to explorers to claim the land of indigenous people across the globe.

A recent event that made international headline news was the recent visit, last month, to Canada, by Pope Francis. As the incumbent head of the Catholic Church, the pope’s mission was to apologise for the gruesome revelations that came out of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

The purpose of the Canadian TRC was to provide those who were directly or indirectly affected by the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools system with an opportunity to share their experiences.

The TRC has called for the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history.

Why then did the pope find it necessary to visit Canada, and continue the focus on reconciliation? Well, these state-funded residential schools were run by the Catholic Church, and abuse meted out on indigenous children at these schools by Catholic missionaries was rampant.

This was admitted by the Canadian government, which reported that “some 150 000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend (missionary schools) in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes, native languages and cultures and assimilate them into Canada’s Christian society”.

Colonialism, as history tells us, happily works and walks hand in hand with religion.

This is also true to the history of South Africa’s own early history of colonisation, continuing for hundreds of years, and with the ramifications thereof, evident to the present day.

Within the Xam and Khoe nations, pastors, priests and apostles are aplenty. Communities such as those on the Cape Flats, in Cape Town, have throngs of indigenous peoples who vigorously defend the religion of those who colonised us in South Africa.

It is not surprising that a people so far removed from the root of their indigenous spiritual centre of origin and therefore their unique cultural practices, now exhibit a mindset that unquestioningly accepts the doctrines and teachings of the Western Christian churches as their solemn truth, which shows how the role of the church has been to replace indigenous wisdom with Western doctrine and practices.

There have been instances over the past few years that specifically speak to the role the church plays. A more well-known case in point would be the submissions from the church on land expropriation without compensation (LEWC). Generally, there were no submissions from the church that the indigenous peoples of South Africa must have the lands of which their ancestors were dispossessed, returned to them, in their entirety.

Why would the church not consider this, when many churches were built on land, including where the churches established missionary stations, given to them by colonial regimes?

Another instance of the role of the church is the court case lodged by the community of Elim, in the Western Cape. Elim was established as a missionary station. The court case was necessary because of the practice of the Moravian Church.

A common practice was that the church would avail, for lease, land under their custodianship, and benefited from the proceeds of letting out such land. The community challenged this, as those proceeds rarely empowered or uplifted the host community.

In February 2022, the court ruled in favour of the community. A massive victory for indigenous peoples.

However, as a collective, the church needs to step up. From our perspective, there is no attempt to focus on restorative justice, or reconciliation. As is the case with the so-called “white minority”, the church is determined to hold on to its ill-gotten power in our society.

In fact, we can now reflect how, at South Africa’s TRC, in the mid-1990s, a man of the cloth, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was used as the face of reconciliation. The South African TRC wholly avoided the matter of the indigenous peoples.

Following the assurances made by Pope Francis, will the Catholic Church in South Africa, in the spirit of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), promote the culture and languages of the indigenous peoples? Will the Moravian Church act on the court judgment and progressively engage with the indigenous peoples residing in these “missionary stations”? Will the current archbishop play a more effective role, in relation to reconciliation, than his predecessor?

The church has much to answer for. Sadly, as great a concern is that we have a Constitution that allows for the church to exclude the indigenous peoples, because the Constitution itself also excludes indigenous peoples.

Toa tama |khams ge (The struggle continues)

|Khaeb is the provincial leader of civil rights organisation Indigenous First Nation Advocacy South Africa (Ifnasa)

#pope-francis

On this day in history, March 15

On this day in history, March 13

On this day in history, February 5

Indigenous peoples and the church