Submitted by Revs. Des van der Water and Steve de Gruchy
on behalf of the UCCSA

The United Congregational Church of Southern Africa is one of the 'English speaking' or 'main-line' churches in Southern Africa with a membership of about 300 000 belonging to 360 local churches in five countries served by just over 300 ordained ministers. Rough estimates in 1996 suggested that the church is made up of about 50% coloured, 48% black and 2% white, and that the local congregations speak ten different languages making this a truly multi-national, and multi-cultural church.

The UCCSA came into being during the apartheid era as a union of the Congregational Union of South Africa (CUSA), the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the Bantu Congregational Church of the American Board (BCC). The year in which it was formed, 1967, saw the passing of the Terrorism Act., the most totalitarian legislation ever enacted in South Africa, and the new Church lived in the shadow of that legislation and sought to find its role against this background.

Social and political issues were, however, not new to our heritage. We number amongst our forebears some of the greatest missionaries of this sub-continent who, notwithstanding their failings, were uncompromising in their stand for justice, freedom and equality. Rev. John Philip, the first representative of the LMS in southern Africa once wrote:

'If a minister is guilty of dereliction of his duty in advocating the cause of the oppressed, or in relieving the necessities of the destitute, I plead guilty to the charge.' [As quoted in Joseph Wing, "Water from the Rock", Gales of Change (Geneva: WCC, 1995),1), 46.]

In this tradition stood Theophilus van der Kemp, Robert Moffat, Newton Adams, Aldin Grout, David Livingstone, John Mackenzie, James McCord, Albert Jennings and more recently, Joseph Wing. And out of this missionary foundation has sprung a generation of South African ministers and church leaders in the UCCSA, who are not uncomfortable with engaging in the hard nosed realities of political and social life as a reading of numerous church reports and statements will clarify.

Chief Albert Lithuli, the then President of the ANC and the first South African to receive the Nobel Peace prize, was a 'deacon in our church and he embodied and symbolised the tradition of justice, freedom and equality. His witness is revered within the UCCSA and his is the first name on our 'Roll of Honour'.

As we will show below apartheid had a devastating effect upon the life of the Church and the community it served. Every year the Assembly of the UCCSA, its Executive committee and its Secretariat spent hours discussing and debating the policy and seeking ways to oppose it and to overcome its effects. [The records of this opposition can be found in the minutes of the Annual Assembly and Executive Committee meetings, the regular bulletins published by the secretariat and the statements that were sent to local churches and released to the public. This material is available at the UCCSA Secretarial office in Brixton, Johannesburg].

The official history of Congregationalism in South Africa published in 1970 puts it:

'The full gamut of apartheid legislation, including the removal of coloured voters from the common roll, the Group Areas Act, the Bantu Education Act, the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill and a mass of other restrictive and repressive measures, has disrupted the work and witness of the Churches and caused deep distress to the majority of those who compromise the congregational family in Southern Africa. Two great Congregational institutions, Adams College and Tiger Kloof, became victims of the Bantu Education Act, but worse than the loss of schools was the loss of homes, the break up of family life and the humiliating injustice to which so many Africans and coloureds were submitted.' [D. R. Briggs and J. Wing, The Harvest. and the Hope, (Johannesburg: UCCSA, 1970) p. 289.]

Since the policy of apartheid was implemented the UCCSA [We shall use the term UCCSA to also encompass the founder churches (CUSA, LMS, BCC) prior to 1967] took the position that apartheid was wrong and evil in and of itself, and not just in terms of its results. In this regard the UCCSA allied itself to the Cottesloe Consultation report (1961); the Message to the People of South Africa (1967), the WARC declaration that 'Apartheid is a sin and its theological justification a heresy' (1982), and the Kairos Document (1985). Whilst suffering under the effects of apartheid policy (see below), the Church always maintained the position that the very philosophical roots themselves were unchristian, unbiblical and evil.

In a 1980 Memorandum for Consultation on Human. Relations with other churches including the NGK on the basis of their report Human Relations and the South African Scene in the Light of Scripture, the UCCSA made the following statement:

1. that it denies the unity of all people in creation;
2. that it classifies a person and determines his place in society solely on the grounds of colour;
3. that it has caused and is still inflicting untold human suffering and misery.

Not only did the UCCSA reject the philosophical and theological roots of apartheid, but it sought to challenge the policy itself. The memorandum quoted above for the Consultation on Human Relations went on to identify the aspects of apartheid that the UCCSA felt needed to be changed.

1. Racial Classification;
2. Social and residential separation;
3. Pass Laws;
4. the indiscriminate and enforced eviction of whole communities;
5. the confiscation of freehold property rights for Blacks in urban areas;
6. differentiated education;
7. the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act

Throughout the 1980's the UCCSA did not waver from these demands and continued to challenge every piece of apartheid legislation.

The UCCSA did not only offer criticism, it constantly offered a positive option to the state as it called on the apartheid regime time and again to convene a national convention representative of all the leaders of South Africa including those ill prison and those in exile. This call was also included in the memorandum quoted above:

The call for this national convention appears throughout the Church documents and letters to the government during the 1970's and 1980s. In response to the Uitenhage massacre in March 1985, the statement from the UCCSA again included this vision for a resolution of unrest.:

3. A TRANS-NATIONAL CHURCH

The UCCSA is a trans-national church that spans five countries in southern Africa: Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia,, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is important to be aware of this as the church has had to deal with a social reality that is broader than just South Africa. However, this in itself has given the church first hand experience of the fact that the gross human rights violations under the apartheid regime had a terrible impact upon our neighbouring countries.

Our church life in Mozambique was devastated by the civil war initiated by Renamo, and which was to a great extent supported by the South African government. Zimbabwe suffered terribly through a civil war in which the white minority government of Ian Smith received moral support from the apartheid regime. Namibia was held as a vassal state by the South African military throughout the entire apartheid period to the detriment of its peoples and church life, and Botswana suffered greatly through cross-border raids and economic limitations.

In May 1983, the Church and Society Department., after deploring bomb explosions in. Pretoria and Bloemfontein went on to say:

In May 1986 following just such another cross border raid the General Secretary wrote to the UCCSA Synods of Botswana and Zimbabwe:

Besides the violence and destruction the policy of apartheid caused to our neighbours, there was also a deliberate policy of destroying Christian fellowship across the borders. Many times we could not gather and worship God as a united church because the apartheid government denied visas to members of the church from countries other than South Africa.

It is clear that the two apartheid acts that had the greatest detriment on the institutions of the UCCSA in South Africa were the Group Areas and Bantu Education Acts. The Group Areas act literally destroyed the church and its buildings in a number of places. Our church in Graaf Reinett for example - our oldest in the country (1802) was closed to its coloured members who were moved into the new coloured township. This pattern was repeated throughout the country as people were uprooted from their homes, forced into new townships, and then saw their beloved buildings sold or destroyed. The UCCSA estimates that both itself and its local congregations spent millions on rebuilding churches in the new areas through the emergency building fund launched in 1968. This waste of money severely damaged the ability of the church to use its finances for new and creative work.

It needs also to be said that this destruction of churches and church life was not just a financial disaster but a historical, cultural, emotional and spiritual one. For example, our church at Majeng in the Northern Cape, founded by William Ashton and built of stone in 1874 was destroyed by the bulldozers of the department of Bantu Affairs in 1975, when the people who had lived there fore more than a century were declared trespassers in their own homes. [UCCSA Secretarial bulletin, May 1975]. The people living around the Moffat Church in Kuruman were also forcibly removed so that the worship of God and the reading of the Bible in the very mother church of the Batswana was silenced.

The then General Secretary of the UCCSA, Rev. J. Wing wrote:

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The Bantu Education Act was aimed precisely at the dignity afforded pupils by Missionary Education. Many of our church schools were forced to close, and the education of black youth was undertaken by the state leading inevitably to the events of June 16, 1976. Perhaps the most symbolic of these was the destruction of Tiger Kloof school, the flagship of the LMS educational endeavour in southern Africa. This school which counts the two presidents of Botswana amongst its alumni, along with countless other leaders in the community, was closed and left derelict. In their response to the closing of Tiger Kloof the LMS made a statement which included the following:

Other schools supported by CUSA and the BCC suffered similar fates. The UCCSA continued to oppose the policy of Bantu Education, and was amongst those churches that warned the National Party government prior to June 1976 that there was the likelihood of a huge reaction to their apartheid education policy. Later, after innumerable school boycotts and the demise of formal education in the black communities, the UCCSA joined with other churches to call on pupils to return to school in 1987. [A Call to Pupils and Students to Return to School in 1987, Mimeographed paper signed by representatives of 9 denominations including CPSA, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and UCCSA].

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Given the impact of these acts upon its life and witness, the forerunners of the UCCSA were unequivocal in their rejection of both of them. After 1967 the UCCSA took up the matter and joined with its ecumenical partners in the South African .Council of Churches in opposing the effects of these acts in Assembly resolutions, letters to the then Prime Minister and President, and delegations to the relevant authorities. For example, in response to the Draft Education and Training Bill (1979) the Church noted:

1. An educational system for all races. allowing an equitable distribution of educational resources and the ultimate integration of educational institutions.
2. A measure of decentralisation in the educational system based on regional rather than ethnic division.
3. A commitment to the free and compulsory education for children of all race groups. [Church and Society Report to the 1979 Assembly.]

We cannot end the record of the effects of the Bantu Education Act and the Group Areas Act without referring to the expropriation of the Federal Theological Seminary. The Seminary was established in 1963 at Alice in the Eastern Cape and involved the Anglican, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian churches. This seminary offered degree status to its graduates "to circumvent the totally unacceptable edict of the South African government that degrees could only be taken by black people at one of the ethnic universities and also to affirm the principle that the church has the right to determine the content of the training given to its ministers." [J. Wing, "Water from the Rock", p.39].

In 1974, when the seminary had consolidated its position in theological training, the apartheid government issued an expropriation order, giving it just three months to vacate the land and buildings - land which had been donated by the Church of Scotland. The financial, emotional and physical stress laid upon the students, staff and church at large was immense, and it is true to say that this order was one of the most vicious acts of the regime directed specifically at the churches and their policy of developing articulate black leadership. Compensation for this remains a concern of the UCCSA.

The UCCSA spoke out unequivocally against the various attempts of the apartheid regime to create a pseudo-democracy by forcing black people into 'homelands', and by giving coloured and Indian people a junior role in the Tricameral parliament of the 1980s. Both of these policies faced the church with serious problems as man), of the leaders of these new apartheid institutions were members - if not ministers - of the UCCSA.

The UCCSA made it clear in resolutions, letters and public statements that it opposed the division of South Africa into bantustans, whilst continuing to provide pastoral care and oversight to the people in these areas. Again we can quote from the Memorandum for Consultation on Human Relations (1980)

1. because South Africa is one nation and its territorial integrity should be maintained;
2. because the allocation of 87% of the total land area for Whites, and only 13% to the homelands is an unfair distribution of land;
3. because black South African can't be deprived of their citizenship without their consent and be forced to become citizens of and even take up residence in a state which is not the land of their birth;
4. because people are uprooted from areas in which they have lived for generations and literally 'dumped' in an inhospitable new homeland area without work or any means of subsistence.

The UCCSA continued to vigorously oppose the policy of forced removal and resettlement which was part of the homeland policy. The 1983 Assembly passed the following resolution:

In a later bulletin the General Secretary wrote:

The advent of the Tricameral parliarrient posed a serious challenge to the UCCSA as two of its former Chairmen, Revs Alan Hendrickse and Andrew Julies led the Labour party in accepting a role in the House of Representatives. The UCCSA acted swiftly to distance itself from this involvement with apartheid and passed a resolution which led to the removal of these individuals from the roll of Ministers. Throughout this process the UCCSA's opposition to apartheid was of paramount concern. The 1984 Assembly resolution read as follows:

1. to publicly dissociate itself from the -actions of these ministers;
2. to urge these ministers to resign from the ministry of the UCCSA

A similar resolution was adopted at the same assembly calling on ministers who accepted public office in the homelands to resign.

The UCCSA maintained a consistent opposition to the security legislation of the apartheid regime. This legislation was used on occasion against ministers and leading lay members of the church, as well as against ordinary members of our local churches. Ministers such as Ben Ngidi, Cyril Hartland, Martin Macabe, Gerald de Klerk, Colin Jooste, Fred Hufkie, John Thorne, Charles Martin, A Mtshalala, T.W. Mooi, Abe Maart, Robin Petersen, amongst others were detained without trial on occasions. On each occasion the UCCSA expressed its utmost opposition through press statements, letters to the regime and delegations together with other church leaders. Writing in June 1986, the General Secretary noted:

The UCCSA also issued many statements -against the violence perpetrated by the regime in the name of 'law and order'. In the light of the Uitenhage massacre ill which police massacred 1.9 people (March 21, 1985) the UCCSA statement included:

1. To ensure that the police exercise a protective and not a provocative role in the maintenance of law and order and adopt a low profile when processions, funerals and memorial services are taking place.
2. To withdraw the presence of the South African Defence Force from all Black townships.
3. To allow the clergy free access to their people in the affected areas for the purpose of giving pastoral care and administering the rites of the Church.

Within the minutes and reports of the UCCSA stands a clear and unambiguous rejection of the Terrorism Act, the Internal Security Act and the Riotous Assemblies Act. The Church also spoke out strongly against the banning of people:

In July 1985 the UCCSA issued a statement on the State of Emergency which included the following:

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Apart from opposing the various Acts of the regime, the UCCSA also took a clear stand in defiance against the regime itself. One of the earliest crises within the life of the new church was its support for the World Council of Churches (WCC), and its Programme to Combat Racism (PCR). This programme was characterised by the apartheid regime as "Church support for terrorism", and although tremendous pressure was bought to bear upon the church it never wavered in its support for both the WCC and the PCR. At the 1970 UCCSA Assembly, the following resolution was adopted:

1. that the WCC is responding to a serious racial situation which calls for responsible Christian action
2. that the desperate methods adopted by liberation movements are the products of a system in which men and women are denied effective participation in the state which governs every aspect of their lives;
3. that the action of the WCC is a judgement on the church's ineffectiveness in seeking justice, freedom, and human dignity for all people;
4. that desperate people, even when the resort to violence, are still the concern of the Christian church. [Minutes of the fourth UCCSA Assembly held in Paarl 1970].

By 1978 this matter continued to concern the church. In response to queries from within and without the UCCSA, and in defending the UCCSA's decision to retain its membership of World Council of Churches, the Church and Society department wrote:

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Membership of the WCC led to a small split from the denomination - to form the Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches, a group which linked with other church splinter groups funded by the regime to oppose the SACC - as the "Infogate" scandal made clear. [See the report of the Church and Society Department to the 1979 Assembly for comment,-, on the Information Scandal].

As part of its opposition to apartheid, the UCCSA was comfortable with the development of black consciousness and black theology. At the 1977 Assembly we affirmed that "Black Consciousness upholds the dignity of Blackness and the refusal to be de-personalised by White attitudes and policies which reduce Black humanity to a minimum." The UCCSA was extremely critical of the banning of black consciousness organisations by the regime.

Within the country the UCCSA supported ministers defying the Mixed Marriages Act, [see the Church and Society Department report to the 1984 Assembly, pp.11f.] and accepted that Civil Disobedience was appropriate in the face of other unjust laws. The church also proposed a non-racial birth register for those parents who did not want their children registered under the racial categories of apartheid:

The Assembly advised parents not to register the births of their children in such a manner that they are placed in a racial category. Until such time as the law changes, this is still the official position in South Africa regarding the registration of births. [UCCSA Assembly minute 86/A/30]. Due to lack of support from other churches a proposed non racial register never materialised.

Perhaps one of the most vivid illustrations of civil disobedience was the march by church leaders after the detention of Rev. John Thorne the UCCSA minister in Bosmont, Johannesburg. The Rev. Joseph Wing made a statement in which he noted that:

Perhaps one of the most sustained acts of opposition was the constant support for the principle of Conscientious Objection, Objectors themselves, and the End Conscription Campaign (ECC). The issues of civil disobedience and conscientious objection clearly raised issues within the white churches to do with lawlessness and

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patriotism. In responding to the 1974 Hammaskraal resolution on Conscientious Objection - the first such resolution in South Africa's history - the then General Secretary, Rev. Joseph Wing wrote to the churches of the UCCSA:

The UCCSA never wavered from this position, and at a later-stage refused to have anything to do with the Board for Religious Objection so that the church was not seen to be co-opted into the political ambit of the SADF. [1983 Assembly Minute based on section 2(b) 4 (d) (i) to (iv) of Church and Society Report]. Another sign of the UCCSA's support for CO was that the first person to be sentenced for being a CO, Peter Moll found a spiritual home within the UCCSA after he was ostracised by the Baptist church to which he belonged.

The UCCSA also threw its support behind the sanctions and dis-investment campaign aimed at dislodging the regime. Whilst there was uncertainty within in the life of the denomination as to the hardship that this would cause, there was a recognition that international pressure against the state was a necessary evil to bring about the abhorrence of apartheid. The report of the UCCSA Task Force on Sanctions examined the matter with great depth, and Assembly adopted its recommendations which included:

The UCCSA continued to encourage its members to participate in non-violent opposition to the apartheid regime. For example, on the 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, the churches of the UCCSA were asked to participate in a "Day of Prayer for South Africa":

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The UCCSA was also the only church to make a clear and unambiguous stand in favour of the Kairos Document which was produced midst the horror of the 1985 State of Emergency. The Assembly in 1986 accepted the critique of the churches, and set about a programme trying to meet the challenge of the Kairos Document.

1. that Assembly accepts the challenge and message of the Kairos Document, believing that it prophetically and perceptively represents the cry of the oppressed of our land to which we need to respond, and
2. that Assembly therefore, responds to the catl to action of the Kairos Document by appointing a task force to review the mission, ministry and structures of the UCCSA in the light of the Kairos Document.

This process has engaged the church over the past 10 years.

The UCCSA was always mindful of the fact that whilst it had to challenge the laws and policies of apartheid, it also had a ministry to the victims of apartheid. There was a constant concern for refugees and for those who faced hunger and starvation.

It is estimated that there are over five million refugees in Africa at present; There are 50 000 refugees in South Africa. There are over 1.00 000 in neighbouring territories. They need food, shelter, clothing, work and security. They also need pastoral care and constructive outlets for their energies and aspirations.

Many of our own sons and daughters in the UCCSA are refugees and our special concern for them should deepen our concern for the millions who find themselves in the same position far from home and friends. [UCCSA Bulletin, No 91, May 1984]

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8. VIOLENCE AND OVERTHROWING THE REGIME

One of the issues raised by the Kairos Docurnent concerned the use of legitimate violence against the apartheid regime. This was a thorny issue that the church struggled over. Given the Gospel's call to 'love of ne ighbour' and the ambiguity of the life of the church in South Africa, the church found it unable to call upon its supporters to take up arms against the state. Nevertheless, there was an understanding and appreciation of the desperation that would drive people to this position.

In 1974 in response to the WCC's Programme to Combat Racism, the UCCSA adopted the following statement, and through the years it never deviated from it

Whilst the UCCSA was concerned about the loss of innocent civilian life in guerrilla attacks, it never allied itself with the hysterical reaction against 'terrorism' that the apartheid government orchestrated.

The UCCSA was also well aware of the double standards involved in speaking about peaceful protest and yet supporting its members who were in the SADF, and supplying chaplains to that institutions. As part of its response, the UCCSA sought to supply pastoral care to those involved in the liberation movements. A report to the 1986 Assembly indicated the necessity of making contact with political movements outside the country (i.e. ANC, PAC and SWAPO). [Church and Society Department Report, March 1986] The Assembly voted to make such contacts and at the 1987 Assembly in Gaborone the Executive committee met with representatives of the ANC. In response to this the General Secretary wrote:

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As the above record will indicate, the UCCSA maintained a consistent and clear rejection of apartheid at the level of Church resolutions and statements, and has perhaps one of the proudest records of South African churches in this regard. Nevertheless, there was a huge gap between the official resolutions and the life of the local churches.

It is to the shame of the UCCSA that in many places the apartheid that the national government introduced into society was mirrored in the church. A sad illustration of this is that in 1949, just one year after the policy of apartheid came into being the Mission church at Kuruman split into racially separate churches. The resolution read:

By the time the UCCSA came into being in 1967 there was a concerted effort to reverse such racial separation, but to some extent the damage had been done. To this day the coloured and black women's organisations remain separate, a situation which has caused much concern to the wider church, but which struggles to find resolution.

The UCCSA was not unmindful of the fact that there was something hypocritical about condemning apartheid in the state and yet being a racially divided church itself. Resolution after resolution was passed, and church programmes were introduced to enable black, coloured and white members and churches to be integrated - with little success. Even attempts to move ministers into cross-cultural and cross-racial settings were not pursued with much vigour.

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It is with shame that the church must confess that for all the evil of apartheid, 10 am on a Sunday morning remained the most segregated hour in the country! This was noted in a report to the 1980 UCCSA Assembly:

We can think of many reasons for this, including the geographical divide brought by the Group Areas Act, and the normal desire of people to worship God in their home language and culture. Nevertheless, when the church needed to witness to the gospel in the face of apartheid it did very little in the way of ordering its own life and worship so that it could be a sign of the Kingdom midst the turmoil of the world. Thus the lofty and clear statements against racism, oppression, injustice and exploitation seldom became a reality in the day-to-day life of the church.

As early as 1976, following the Uprising in Soweto the UCCSA issued a pastoral letter which called its members to the following act of penitence:

• that the Church has not always been the instrument of justice and reconciliation;
• that the Church has often been identified with the old order and not with the demand for the new;
• that the Church has paid 'lip service' to the need for radical change whilst failing to initiative change, except at the level of the higher courts of the Church and a few other minor areas which touch only the periphery of human relations in Church and State;
• that, as Christians, we have failed to model our lives on the 'Kingdom of God and his righteousness' (Matt 6:33)"

Almost ten years later there seemed to be little change in the life of the church. In the light of the critique of the Kairos Document the General Secretary raised the following concerns. This statement gives a good insight into both the failings of the Church and the church's own awareness of this failing (at least at a leadership level).

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1. The Challenge to the Church contained in the Kairos Document is reminding the Church of the need to move from statements to meaningful action.
2. The time has come for the Church, and particularly the local church, to become involved in action programmes which impinge directly on economic and social conditions. The Church on the whole has an obsession with itself and its own needs. This means that most of the Church's resources, both in terms of money and personnel are utilised in promoting its own domestic activities.
3. In a denomination like the UCCSA, which stresses the centrality of the local church, there needs to be a deeper concern regarding deprivation, oppression and injustice within the context of the life of the local church and the community in which it is set.
4. The Kairos Document is challenging the UCCSA to revise its priorities.
5. The Kairos Document is challenging the UCCSA to _examine the difference in Black-White perceptions within the context of its own life and to avoid covering them up with the veneer of occasional Christian fellowship.
6. The Kairos Document is challenging the UCCSA to face up to and riot avoid serious political differences in its own ranks, for fear of destroying the peace and unity of the Church. [As quoted in the unfinished Doctoral thesis of Rev. Des van der Water. In this thesis he examines the response of the UCCSA to the Kairos Document in great detail]

The Pastoral Plan for Transformation, initiated by the UCCSA was an attempt to deal with some of these concerns, but whilst there were many changes brought to bear on the UCCSA through this programme, it would be true to say that many of these concerns have remained in the life of the UCCSA even to the present.

10. THE WAY FORWARD

The UCCSA wishes to place on record its respect for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its hard work. Yours has not been an easy path to trod, and your lives have been changed forever by the testimonies you have heard. Please be assured of our prayers and support for your task that is so crucial to the future of our land.

We are thankful to God that the work of the early missionaries, their institutions and the many people of this country who have given their lives in faith to Jesus Christ

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have at the same time given to our country and our diverse cultures a most incredible capacity to embody the values of the Gospel even in secular society: mercy, forgiveness, justice, perseverance and hope.

We want to celebrate our fathers and mothers in the faith who stood firm against the most incredible injustice, who laboured tinder a heavy burden of oppression, who shed tears at innumerable funerals of their sons and daughters, and who paid the price for their love. In doing so, we must state that our record would be incomplete without mention of the most amazing legacy bequeathed to as by our first General Secretary, the late Rev. Joseph Wing, whom the record will show to have been one of the most principled and dignified church leaders in South Africa in the apartheid era, and whose letters, reports and statements about justice, peace and unity rank with the highest testimony of the church universal.

With the benefit of hindsight we need to also to be honest with ourselves and with the country and confess that for all our statements., sermons, letters and reports about the evils of apartheid, we really did so little to rid our beloved land of the tyranny of the apartheid regime. We did so little to bind up the wounds of those who were victims of the system, and to labour with them for justice. We so of ten relied on the one or two who were willing to stick their necks out, and as a church and as a people we were scared and anxious to be bold in our prophetic witness. We apologise to those for whom we abandoned in their difficult plight, and to the nation for failing in our moral responsibilities as the people of God.

In many ways the revelations of the Truth Commission have not come as a shock to the ministers and members of the UCCSA. Our membership is overwhelmingly, made up of those who were victims of apartheid. We knew all along that these things were happening, and this is why we said what we said and did what we did. Nevertheless, we recognise the profound impact the truth will have on the future generations of our country. There are sins to be forgiven, wounds to be bound up, hatreds to be reconciled, buildings to be rebuilt, pupils to be taught, leaders to be held accountable. This is the task of the Church of Jesus Christ. We are a small church with few resources, yet we acknowledge this calling and commit ourselves to nurturing this truth, healing the nation, and building a culture of tolerance and justice so that our children and their children may never again suffer the evil which has so plagued our life in this nation.