Category: South Africa

Anglican Church of South Africa Declares Israel an Apartheid State 

The Anglican Church of South Africa: PSC Resolutions declaring Israel an apartheid state and on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The following resolutions were approved by Provincial Standing Committee at its 2023 meeting on Wednesday.

On Israel as an Apartheid State

1. Whereas:

a. Many global human rights bodies including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have now declared Israel an apartheid state;

b. The SACC National Executive Committee has now also declared Israel an apartheid state;

c. The Dutch Reformed Church Western Cape synod has now also expressed its opinion that Israel should be declared an apartheid state and has asked its church’s National synod to consider this at its October 2023 Synod;

d. Most Palestinian civil rights bodies consider this to be true;

2. This PSC Resolves to:

a. Endorse the position taken by the SACC national executive committee declaring Israel an apartheid state;

b. Respectfully request the Archbishop to inform the Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East of this decision;

c. Pray for our Anglican brothers and sisters in Palestine and to express our solidarity with them;

d. Express support for the upcoming global anti-apartheid conference on Palestine to be held in Tshwane in November 2023.

Source

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba issued the following statement on the decision by Provincial Standing Committee to declare Israel an apartheid state.

“As people of faith who are distressed by the pain of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – and who long for security and a just peace for both Palestine and Israel – we can no longer ignore the realities on the ground. We are opposed not to the Jewish people, but to the policies of Israelis’ governments, which are becoming ever more extreme.

For Christians, the Holy Land is the place where Jesus was born, nurtured, crucified and raised. Our hearts ache for our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine, whose numbers include Anglicans but are rapidly declining. People of all faiths in South Africa have both a deep understanding of what it is to live under oppression, as well as experience of how to confront and overcome unjust rule by peaceful means. When black South Africans who have lived under apartheid visit Israel, the parallels to apartheid are impossible to ignore. If we stand by and keep quiet, we will be complicit in the continuing oppression of the Palestinians.

If we are to celebrate peace for Palestinians and security for the Israelis in in our time, we need to pray and work for the land we call holy, for an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and for full recognition of the Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination.

We yearn for peace and the wholeness of God to be made manifest in Palestine, in Israel and among their neighbouring countries. I pray the prayer we adopted at the last meeting of the Provincial Synod, the ruling body of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa:

Lord God,
Bless the people of the Middle East;
Protect their vulnerable children;
Transform their divided leaders;
Heal their wounded communities,
Restore their human dignity,
and give them everlasting peace. Amen.”

Source

Brian Brown: Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel?

An interview with the Revd Brian J. Brown. Brian is a South African-born Methodist minister – banned for 13 years by the Apartheid regime – who shares his hope and quest for justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians that both may share the indivisibility of freedom and equality in one democratic state.

In exile Brian held appointments in the British Council of Churches and the Methodist Missionary Society where he continued to pursue the apartheid-related justice issues he describes in his autobiography, ‘Born to be Free: the Indivisibility of Freedom’. This interest led to study of the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time of growing emergence of Israel’s government as an undemocratic, settler-colonial, and apartheid regime.

In ‘Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel?’ Brian analyses Israel as replicating what he calls Grand Apartheid; the violent dispossession of land, nationality and human rights by one ethnic group of another. Save that this time it is Palestistian rather then Black people who suffer apartheid’s illegal occupation, domination and disempowerment. The book’s comparative analysis of two apartheid states is backed by accounts of Israeli and International Human Rights organisations whose legal analysis presents Israel as practising a crime against humanity, the Crime of Apartheid.

Jewish and Palestinian narratives engage with each other, whilst the book’s Christian option for the oppressed and marginalised is presented unapologetically. Related themes of Zionism (Jewish and Christian), Interfaith dialogue, apartheid as heresy, anti-Palestianism and antisemitism are treated. Most importantly, the voices of those who live between the river (Jordan) and the sea (Mediterranean) are heard. For Jews and Palestinians alike, their freedoms remain indivisible.

To find out more about Brian’s book and buy a copy, visit: https://apartheid-southafrica-israel.com

Bishop Richard Llewellin on EAPPI, South Africa and Apartheid

In this interview Bishop Richard Llewellin talks about his experiences of serving his curacy in South Africa under the apartheid regime and the parallels with Palestine today. (apologies for the quality of the audio).

In this interview Bishop Richard Llewellin shares his experiences with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine (EAPPI). EAPPI is an international programme coordinated by the World Council of Churches. It brings people from around the world to the West Bank to serve for three months as human rights monitors. For more information see https://eappi.org

Bishop Richard was ordained in 1964 and was a curate at Radlett. After serving a second curacy at Johannesburg Cathedral, and being expelled from South Africa by the apartheid Nationalist government of the day in 1971, he was then successively the Vicar of Waltham Cross, the Rector of Harpenden and a canon of Truro Cathedral before being ordained to the episcopate as the suffragan Bishop of Street Germans (1985-1992). 

He later became the suffragan Bishop of Dover (1992-1999) and was subsequently appointed Bishop at Lambeth and Chief of Staff to the Archbishop by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held until 2004. In retirement he was appointed an honorary fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University.

Bishop Richard is a member of the Peacemaker Trust Board of Reference and  Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Global Apartheid and Systems of Exclusion: Allan Aubrey Boesak

We are pleased to publish, with his permission, a paper delivered by Dr Allan Aubrey Boesak at the Chile Conference on Palestine and Latin American Churches on 5 November 2022. His presentation was entitled Global Apartheid and Systems of Exclusion “This Wall Has No Future”


“Every time right minded Black South Africans have the opportunity to visit Israel/Palestine, they come away with a profound sense of shock, and it is the shock of recognition, of profound disorientation, of relived trauma: this is apartheid. It is the sense that something as irrelevant as the colour of one’s skin or what is called “racial identity” has condemned you from birth. It is the onslaught upon your dignity through discrimination, a thousand humiliations every day in every imaginable situation, and the relentless, deliberate process of dehumanisation. 

      It is the sense not only that your very life is being threatened at every turn, but that your life does not matter. It is the ongoing tragedies of dispossession through land theft and forced removals, destruction of property, and devastation of communities, legalised and legitimised by the law and enforced by the violence of the state. It is the myriad ways in which one is told that one has no place in the country of one’s birth. And it is always the violence: systemic, structural, physical, pervasive, and permanent. 

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Revd Prof Allan Boesak Joins Convivencia Alliance

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The Revd Prof. Allan Aubrey Boesak, one of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid campaigners, Professor of Black Liberation Theology and Ethics, University of Pretoria, and President, The Sankofa Institute for Pan African Leadership and Prophetic Ministry, has endorsed the Convivencia Declaration. In his letter to the Conveners he wrote,

I think this is an excellent, and absolutely necessary initiative at a time when the Israeli state is more violently and criminally desperate than ever before, but simultaneously when solidarity with and support for the Palestinian cause seem to finding new allies, despite, and perhaps because of the persistent assaults on Palestinians and their allies within and without the Jewish community.

Yes, you are right.  We have long understood that the religious and biblical justification claimed by apartheid constituted a denial and perversion of the most basic tenets for faith and should be declared a heresy. In 1982 the world church joined us and it turned out to be one of the most efficacious actions taken against apartheid. Because we recognise such frightening similarities in the Israeli apartheid State and its pernicious ideologies and actions, I have been arguing for some time now that Christians, at least, should think of the support of Christian, Evangelical, Zionist biblical and theological justifications in the same way. I think this is an important part of the battle and a crucial avenue to pursue. In the World Communion of Reformed Churches we are working towards the same goal.

The Convivencia Alliance also recalls for me the United Democratic Front, the political movement that brought our people together across those artificial barriers of race, religion, colour, culture, and class and that was so successful in its mobilization of people in the struggle for freedom and justice in South Africa, and whose political agenda always included Palestine.Anyway, this is my longwinded way of affirming your recollection of our role in declaring apartheid a heresy, a perversion of the gospel and a blasphemy.  I continue to argue that the ability to take a stand in the anti-apartheid struggle in those final stages of the 1980s was the litmus test of our spiritual and political integrity. Such is the case today with the cause of Palestinian justice. So I think that the Convivencia Alliance will be a powerful instrument to put that choice before people at this time. It will be an honour to join others in making a contribution to this worthy cause. Warmest greetings and God’s richest blessings upon you and the important work you are doing, Allan Boesak

Convivencia Alliance

Convivencia Declaration Supporters

Surfers Not Street Children

We are delighted to share the new Surfers not Street Children video.

Tom Hewitt writes, I am so excited to share with you our exclusive new film with world surfing legend Jordy Smith and O’Neill. Both Jordy and O’Neill have been supporting us for a number of years and we are so grateful to them for raising awareness of our vital work and directly helping us. This is the first in a series of fundraising and awareness activities together this year and I am delighted to share it with you. Enjoy!”

Tom Hewitt MBE
Founder and Global CEO

Read more about Surfers not Street Children

In this brief interview, recorded in July last year, Tom Hewitt gives an update on the work of Surfers Not Street Children in the light of the recent civil unrest in South Africa.

A Biblical Critique of Apartheid

What does the Bible say about apartheid? How has the Bible been used to justify supremacism, segregation and racial purity? How is apartheid easily refuted from the Bible? This presentation will provide some answers. The introduction gives a brief historical overview showing the lineage of European supremacism, slavery, segregation and apartheid. It also examines why apartheid has been designated a crime against humanity, and shows the similarities between the South African and Israeli variants.

Download a copy of this presentation here

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Sabeel-Kairos UK: A Christian Response to Israeli Apartheid

During the annual Sabeel-Kairos UK conference held in September, I led a short bible reflection on Apartheid based on Isaiah 56. I also led a workshop for which I prepared a research paper as well as a Bible study for personal as well as group discussion.

The following statement, presented by the Sabeel-Kairos UK trustees with the support of both Kairos Palestine and Sabeel Jerusalem, was endorsed by conference participants.

‘Having considered a Christian response to Israeli apartheid, we affirm that all people are created equally in the image of God; we commend the B’TSelem and Human Rights Watch documents designating Israel as an apartheid state; we repudiate all forms of racism and discrimination; and we recommit ourselves to working for justice, peace and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.”

Tom Hewitt MBE, Global CEO of Surfers Not Street Children

In this brief interview Tom Hewitt gives an update on the work of Surfers Not Street Children in the light of the recent civil unrest in South Africa.

To support their work visit www.surfnotstreets.org

Instagram: @tomhewittmbe

Facebook: Surfers Not Street Children SNSC

Instagram: @surfersnotstreetchildren 


Watch the film ‘Continuance Part 2’ on why 11 time world surf champ Kelly Slater supports Surfers Not Street Children: www.continuancetour.com