Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginary : The Case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

[PT 12.3 (2011) 363-395] Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317Xdoi:10.1558/poth.vl2i3.363 Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719

CIVIC SACRAMENT AND SOCIAL IMAGINÂMES IN TRANSITION:

THE CASE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN CHURCHES AND THE

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

Stephen William Martin'The King's University College

9125 50 Street NorthwestEdmonton, AB T6B 2H3

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on a seminal moment within South Africa's Truth andReconciliation Commission (TRC): the appearance of the African InitiatedChurches (AICs) before the Commission in 1997. It demonstrates howthis moment brought into relief divergent contestations of the public withinSouth African Christianity in three ways: first, by sittiating the TRC withinthe liturgical performance of a reimagined South African nationality, makingit a "civic sacrament" of reconciliation; second, by highlighting the forma-tive role churches themselves played within this liturgy, deploying theolog-ical language to create a healed, secular body politic; third, by displayingthe different social imaginary of the AICs—a social imaginary which inter-rupted the TRC's liturgical recreation of time and space, as well as challeng-ing the historical relations between church and state in South Africa. Thepaper concludes with the question posed in this "interruption," a questionthat challenges the broader church with regard to fulfillment of the liturgynot in the secular nation-state, but in that City which is to come.

Keywords: African Initiated Churches; apartheid; church and state; liturgy;South Africa; Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Introduction: Ten Years AfterÎt was a little over ten years ago that I found myself in East London, SouthAfrica, at the faith community hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation

1. Stephen William Martin is an Associate Professor of Theology at The King's Uni-versity College, Edmonton.

2. I write this as a Canadian who was privileged to be present in South Africa duringits transitional years (in 1990, then from 1993 to 2000). I've been away for a long time, and

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364 Political Theology

Commission (TRC). As a Canadian doing doctoral studies in South Africa,I had already gotten used to the fact that South Africa was a very differentkind of place than what I was accustomed to. The TRC reinforced thatimpression. After all, how many government-appointed commissions inNorth America feature an archbishop, decked in a purple cassock andpectoral cross, presiding over public meetings (broadcast live on publicradio and television) with a distinctively theological air and ethos? Howmany government commissions in North America even bother with thechurches—^whether in secularist Canada or in the United States, wherethe wall of separation between church and state is a constitutional articleof faith?

So here I was, listening to leaders of churches and other faith commu-nities speaking about their sufferings under apartheid, their complicity inpromoting or permitting an ethos in which abuses of basic human digni-ties were rife, and their commitments to contributing to a transformedethos in which such abuses would not repeat themselves. That the hear-ings were punctuated with hymns and prayers (mostly initiated by theChair) was strange enough. But the strangest moment of all came on thesecond day. As I wrote in my journal:

...the hall was energized with anticipation. Bishop Barnabas Lekganyanewas to appear before the Commission. At lunchtime the hall filled withmembers of his Zion Christian Church. Though representing some of thepoorest in South Africa, all were dressed impeccably, the emblematic Star ofDavid proudly displayed on their chests. As we entered after the break theroom was exploding in song and bodily movement. What a change fromthe formalities of the previous day! The day had been interrupted; the spaceclaimed by an otherness. I felt a guest in someone else's home. And then...the news that the Bishop would not come today, but rather would testify thenext morning. The space emptied, returning to "normal." The next day thehall filled again while outside a stretch Mercedes pulled up with the Bishopinside. The media, who had been focusing on the impending testimony ofrepresentatives of the Dutch Reformed Church—something that could

so do not presume to spakfor South Africans, or even necessarily to South Africans at thisstage. Much of my theological formation took place there, and since returning to Canadathat formation has continued, albeit in a somewhat different direction. I have grownincreasingly uneasy with the idea that the church needs to "fit itself into" the space createdfor it by state or civil society As I've been wrestling with this question, I've been lookingover my shoulder to see whether that dis-ease is borne out in South Africa as well, in thatregard, I'd like to acknowledge William Cavanaugh, Michael Budde, Stephen Long, and theother members of the Calvin Seminars in Christian Scholarship seminars in "Worship andPolitics" (2006) and "Liturgical Identities" (2007) for further unsettling me, and turningme back to the resources of classical theology for engaging culture and reconstructing thepolitical.

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Martin Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginaries in Transition 365

mark a turning point in the narrative of reconciliation—were now attendingto the arrival of this "dignitary." Wlio was he? And what was the meaning of hisappearance before the Commission, both for the churches and for the society?^

I want to say three things in response to the questions posed back then.First, using the critical work of William Cavanaugh on "secular" litur-gies, I want to demonstrate that the TRC can itself be read as a crucialmoment in the liturgical performance of a re-imagined South Africannation. Coming after the moments of gathering in the 1994 electionsand proclamation in the 1996 Constitution, it represented in the wordsof South African human rights activist Kader Asmal, a "civic sacrament"of reconciliation.'' Though conceived in a pragmatic necessity for politi-cal compromise, established by Constitutional mandate, and officiallysanctioned by an Act of Parliament, the TRC became far more than astructure for bureaucratically managing the question of amnesty. It repre-sented a boundary between old and new, between anticipation in struggleand realization in fulfillment. It instantiated a new ethos, and canon-ized a new ethic by which the past would be evaluated, and subsequentactions valorized or condemned. As the TRC represented an authenticand legitimate liturgical act of reconciliation for the South African bodypolitic, I explore, second, what happens when churches—who understandthemselves to be the liturgically and sacramentally constituted body ofChrist—participate in such a national liturgy. After all, the same forces thatshaped South African society had also shaped the structures of churches,just as churches had alternately opposed, legitimated, and suffered underapartheid. And churches had, in their own self-examination, developed anapproach to reconciliation that influenced in profound ways the TRC'sown sense of mission. The answer to this question necessitates making adistinction in the way churches engaged the TRC by returning, thirdly,to that moment of interruption I spoke of above. With the assistance ofthe seminal (though largely forgotten) work on the African independentchurches^ done by Robin Petersen, I will examine the testimony of the

3. Personal recollection, written shortly after the hearings.4. Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation through Truth,

2nd edn (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996), 49. For Asmal, the "civic sacrament" representedan opportunity for the oppressed to participate in the making of the new nation throughforgiving the oppressors. I would argue that it could also function as a sacrament for theoppressors through their being forgiven.

5. These are sometimes also called African "initiated" or "indigenous" churches, asthey are neither derived from Western "mother" churches, nor were they ever under thecontrol of white setders or missionaries. Sometimes misunderstood as "syncretistic," theyrepresent a distinctively African form of Christianity. I will hereafter simply refer to themas AICs, and will introdtice them in more detail below.



independent churches before the TRC. This moment demonstrated, Iwill argue, a radically different engagement of the new South Africa andan interruption of its Westphalian nation-building program. It contraststhe performances of the mainline and evangelical churches'" before theTRC and raises questions about the liturgy's final moment: commission-ing. What kind of body politic is the new South Africa to be? What is itsrelation to the body of Christ? The African Initiated Churches (AICs), Iwill conclude, challenge the rest of the church to hold before the worlda set of practices that point to the fulfillment of liturgy not in the nation-state, but in that city which is to come.

Civic Sacrament:The TRC as Liturgical Marking of Space and Time

The New South African Social ImaginaryToward the end of the twentieth century, scholarship had reached a broadconsensus on the distinctive modernity of the nation-state.^ In their his-torical development, nations displaced other forms of community—mostnotably the universal church in its local manifestations. Nations wereconstructed acts of the imagination which created a new sense of time (that"we," despite our plural origins, all tell the same story) and space (that thenation's origin in secular time is tied to the simultaneous occupation ofa specific geographical territory in the present). Following this logic, thenation creates the state to structure its relations, and then civil society tomediate between the individual and family in private space and politi-cal structures.** And so we see the classic structure of public and privatesectors, mediated by a collection of institutions, including churches, thatboth protect the legitimacy of the state and provide "a haven in a heartless

6. By "ecumenical and evangelical churches" I mean those churches that aredescended from either European setders or missionaries. When I talk about "ecumenicalchurches" alone, 1 will refer broadly to those mainline churches aligned with the SouthAfrican Council of Churches (SACC) during the period under consideration. The SouthAfrican Catholic Bishops' Conference, while theologically and ecclesiologically distinctivefrom the churches of the SACC, shared much in their political and social role under Apart-heid. See the important study of Tristan Anne Borer, Challenging the State: Churches as Politi-cal Actors in South Africa, 1980-1994 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,1998).

7. For example, Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1980 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, \990y, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refections onthe Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (London and New York: Verso, 1991 [1983]).

8. A helpful alternative genealogy of the rise of the state may be found in William T.Cavanaugh, "A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and theRise of the State," Modern Tlieology 11, no. 4 (October 1995): 397-420.



world" for individuals. This is the taken-for-granted mythos of modernsociety. The history of the nation-state describes a progressive movementfrom diversity, chaos, and (often) violence, to unity, order, and internalpeace.**

The nation-state model was exported by Europeans to the coloniesand mobilized to manage an even greater complexity—especially in SouthAfrica. Indeed, what made the white unity realized in the 1910 Unionof South Africa necessary was the situation of a white minority manag-ing a black majority that was beginning to grow in its political awareness.It was, as Norman Etherington has demonstrated, within the missionstation "melting pots" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,that an imaginary of "being African" was mobilized.'" The independentchurches we will examine later formed an important part ofthat process.By contrast, both Afrikaner "Christian nationalism" and the mainlineEnglish-speaking churches' advocacy of colonial nationalism reflect aChristianity that functioned as the animating "soul" of the nation-state'sbody politic." This was the proper way of relating religion and politics.The state ideology of apartheid, dating from 1948, created a whole seriesof "nationalisms"—along with pseudo-states called "homelands"—amongblack South Africans in order to justify white power.' "South Africa" was

9. Recent work by Anthony Marx has criticized Anderson's way of relating nation,nationalism, and state. He argues that Anderson shares the liberal assumption that prior tothe rise of the state, the early nation could exist apart from "institutional action," and thusagree as a matter of consensus to create the state to govern it. Faith in Nation: ExclusionaryOrigins of Nationalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 15. Marxargues that the nation is in fact created by the state in order to give its bureaucratic manage-ment of diverse solidarities and loyalties legitimacy (22). The state requires a "nation" in thesame way as the body requires a "soul. " Marx however agrees with Anderson that the mostimportant solidarity displaced by the state (and nation)—and therefore its greatest rival—isreligion (25-29). This is not to say that religion cannot serve an important purpose in pro-viding a "spiritual" unity to the nation, which indeed it did in South Africa, as we'll soonsee.

10. Norman Etherington, "Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise ofSouth African Black Nationalism," International Journal of African Historical Studies 9, no. 4(1976): 592-605. We can trace an African national imaginary as far back as the Presbyerianminister Tiyo Soga in the 1860s. Tiyo Soga, "What is the Destiny of the Kaffir Race?" TtieKingwiltiamstown Cazette, May 11, 1865.

11. For more on this, see Stephen W Martin, Faith Negotiating Loyahies: Exploring SouthAfrican Christianity through a Reading of the Theology ofH. Richard Niebuhr (Lanham, MD: Uni-versity Press of America, 2008), chs. 1-2.

12. During the apartheid era (stretching from the election of the National Party in1948 to the adoption of the Interim Constitution in 1993), the country was divided into10 different "Bantustans" or "homelands." An "African" as defined by the state could notbe a citizen of "South Africa," but belonged to one of the 10 "nations." He or she was only



declared a white country with black "guests," serving in fact as a cheaplabour force. Apartheid was thus, in the baldest sense, a strategy of "divideand rule." But within those disenfranchised, an "imaginary" nonethelesscontinued to develop,'^ partly enabled by the very Christianity that alsowas used to support apartheid. This imaginary was articulated as a kind ofcounter-nationalism, one not amenable to control by the state.

The story of the clash of these two imaginations is well-known: agrowing anti-apartheid movement engages in protest against the unjustlaws of an illegitimate state. Resisting the constructed and legitimatedidentities given by apartheid, they discover a solidarity across lines ofcolour, ethnicity, and religion. This solidarity leads them to "perform" anew nation in defying laws and social codes.''' As one of my colleagues atthe University of Cape Town used to say, long before the state unbannedthe liberation movements," they had unbanned themselves in refusing torecognize the legitimacy of the state. One day in 1989, Archbishop of CapeTown Desmond Tutu addressed them as "the rainbow people of God.""^

permitted to reside temporarily in "South Africa" (through the holding of a dompass or pass-book). This artificial creation of "nations" (complete witb embassies in major South Africancities) required the creation of fictional "nationalisms," some of which would have beenmatters of comedy if the social impact wasn't so severe. For one such example, see JanetHodgson, "Ntata kaNdodaNtata: Orchestrating Symbols for National Unity in Ciskei,"

Journal of Tlteologyfor Southern Africa 58 (March 1987): 18-31.13. I'm using the term rather loosely (at this point) to connect both witb Anderson's

notion of "imagined community" as a new construction of simultaneity in space and originin secular time, and Charles Taylor's more recent idea of "social imaginaries" whicb createthe possibility for shared practices and generate new institutional forms. See Charles Taylor,Modern Social Imaginaries, Public Planet Books (Durham, NC and London: Duke Univer-sity Press, 2004).

14. The use of "performance" in this context reflects tbe work of William Cavanaughon cities as performances which contest space as they enact a narrative or dramatic construalof tbe world. William T. Cavanaugb, "From One City to Two: Christian Reimagining ofPolitical Space," Political Tlteology 7, no. 3 (2006): 299-321. While his work is specifically onSt. Augustine's City of Cod, I adapt it here for purposes that sbould bopefully be evidentbelow.

15. Tbe practice of banning persons, organizations, and publications was institutedthrougb tbe Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, and allowed the apartheid govern-ment an extraordinary measure of control over dissenting voices. Banned persons wereunder virtual bouse arrest, forbidden to meet witb more than one person at a time, and pre-vented from speaking publically. They were not allowed to be quoted, nor was tbeir imagepermitted to be displayed. Banned institutions were made illegal, their assets seized, andany foreign funding cut off.

16. Tbe phrase was coined as early as September 1989. The occasion was a marchin Cape Town organized by the cburcbes and civic leaders. Tbe previous Saturday, policesprayed another demonstration witb purple dye, then arrested those so marked. Inside thecity ball. Tutu said to tbose gathered, "They tried to make us one colour: purple. We say we

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A new imagined nation was being birthed on the very fringes of the state.It insinuated itself into the cracks of apartheid through mixed assembliesand worship, defiance of segregated beaches and other petty apartheidlaws, mobilizing symbols, such as the banned image of Nelson Mandela,and guerrilla-type street art and theater. This new nation, however, wouldnot be satisfied until a new state was born—or at least until the old statewas transformed through democratization.

I want to suggest in what follows that the opening performance of "therainbow nation" took place in a series of acts closely paralleling the firstthree movements of the Christian liturgy: a/ erm^ the community, listen-ing to a proclaimed word, and confession and reconciliation." I will describethe birth of the new South African nation-state in terms of the first threeof these moments. I discuss the fourth movement, commissioning, in theconclusion.

Performing the Neu/ NationGathering the people: the 1994 election. The images are still fresh in our mind:snaking lineups outside voting booths, with blacks and whites hithertoliving in separate symbolic universes now freely mixing; the dignified,ninety-year-old African man voting for the first time in his life; andDesmond Tutu, perhaps a little less dignified, dancing as he placed hisballot in the box. This was more than just an election: it was an act ofincorporation. After the election there was a new body politic present.Not suprisingly. Nelson Mandela received the majority of votes. Part poli-tician, part freedom fighter, part international icon, Mandela embodied

are the rainbow people! We are the people of the new South Africa." Desmond M. Tutu,Tlie Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution, ed. John Allen (New York:Doubleday, 1994), 188. Tutu was saying that "the new South Africa" was being born onthe streets as people marched together, capturing the multi-racial character of the protests.Robert Griffiths points out a further theological import of the idea: the image of Rainbowin Tutu's language has specific meaning with reference to the Covenant with Noah in Gen-esis 9, where God promised to never again destroy the world with a flood. Robert GrifFiths,"The Christian Discourse and Culture of Reconcilation in Contemporary South Africa,"Revue Alizés 24 (2004), http://laboratoires.univ-reunion.fr/oraclc/documents/380.html.

17. For a brilliant exegesis of these liturgical moments and their constituting of aframe for theological ethics, see Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, "Christian Ethics asInformed Prayer," in Tlie Btackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Stanley Hauerwas andSamuel Wells (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 3-12. The other side of the coin is exploredin a 2005 issue of Littirgy. Here, a series of authors reflects on the "secular" liturgies of"America." See especially the essays by William T Cavanaugh, "The Liturgies of Churchand State," Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2005): 25-30; Daniel M. Bell Jr., "Justice for All: Confessionand Sin," Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2005): 31-36, and the Introduction by Stephen Long, "'...AndGod Bless America'."

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the meaning of the new South Africa. It was Mandela who was the focalpoint of the imagination of the rainbow people—and I mean "imagina-tion" quite literally, as no one outside the prison system had seen himin twenty-seven years, and as his image based on old photographs hadbeen banned. It was Mandela who entered prison as a young revolution-ary, and emerged a dignified, elder statesman committed to pursuing anon-violent resolution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts. Itwas Mandela who had forgiven his enemies for the sake of reconciliationbetween oppressor and oppressed.

And it was Mandela who, appropriately, intoned, in his first ofFicialspeech after being elected, a new myth. It began with a "fateful conver-gence" of Africa, Europe, and Asia; "fateful" because the power of Europeallowed it to dominate Africa and Asia (the latter represented by Malayslaves brought to the Cape as laborers). But now, Mandela presented thepossibility of "a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contin-gency into meaning" in the making of a single nation.'" Since the "we"who struggled to make this single nation included former enemies, thiscollective act of incorporation transcended the differences of the past, andconstructed a project looking to a radically different future. The centerof that project was heralded as "The Reconstruction and DevelopmentProgramme"'"—the keynote of the ANC's platform, but also a repre-sentation of the collective aspirations of the new "we." Indeed, as IvorChipkin argues, the RDP was nothing more than a vision of the "good"society being brought into being. "

18. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 11.19. Nelson R. Mandela, "Address at Cape Town on the Occasion of His Inauguration

as State President" (1994), http://www.info.govza/speeches/1994/990319514pl007.htm.20. Announced during the ANC's 1994 election campaign, the RDP was "a compre-

hensive approach to harnessing the resources of our country" aimed at "revers[ing] the crisiscreated by apartheid. Only an all-round effort to harness the life experience, skills, energiesand aspirations of the people," it stated, "can lay the basis for a new South Africa." Its six basicprinciples were: "an integrated and sustainable programme," which included national, pro-vincial, and local governments, parastatals, and civil society; "a people driven process" aimedat empowerment across race, class, and gender barriers; the establishment of security forcesaimed at "peace and security for all"; a programme of "nation-building" that would allowSouth Africa to be a responsible participant in the region and in the world. But the latterwould require a linking of reconstruction and development that would relativize growth bynorms of sustainability and redistribution. Finally, the document suggested a broad democ-ratization process that would "transform both the state and civil society" African NationalCongress, 'Ttte Reconstruction and Development Programme, http://www.polity.org.za/polity/gov-docs/rdp/rdpl .html. Chipkin claims that those who find fault with the particular policies ofthe RDP miss its function as articulation of the new imaginary, designed to produce a new



Proclaiming the word: the 1996 Constitution. If Mandela intoned a newnational myth after the election, it was his soon to be named succes-sor, Thabo Mbeki, who articulated a national mythos in his speech at theratification of the new Constitution two years later. ' Entitled "I am anAfrican," its romanticist vision rivals (and perhaps supercedes) that of anyof the nineteenth-century European poets of nationalism. This vision notonly imagined a unity across historical origin and ethnic identity in SouthAfrica, its invocation of the Ashanti and the Berbers reached beyond theborders of the nation-state to embrace the entire continent. Let me quoteextensively from this remarkable speech.

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the greatexpanses of the beautiful Cape—they who fell victim to the most mercilessgenocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose theirlives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who,as a people, perished in the result. Today, as a country, we keep an audiblesilence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit thehorror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a crueloccurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to beinhuman again.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on ournative land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East.Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence.The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are areminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhuk-hune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the sol-diers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the causeof freedom. My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victo-ries that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned fromIsandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as theBerbers of the desert.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helenaand the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of asimple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, adream in ruins...

South African citizenry. Ivor Chipkin, Do South Africans Exist?: Nationalism, Democraq', and theIdentity of the People (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2007), 152, 154.

21. Thabo M. Mbeki, "Statement of Deputy President TM Mbeki, on Behalf of theAfrican National Congress, on the Occasion of the Adoption by the Constitutional Assem-bly of'The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill 1996'" (Cape Town, 1996), http://www.info.gov.za/aboutgo vt/orders/new2002_mbeki.htm.



I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose beingresided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, whotaught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me thathuman existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary conditionfor that human existence.

Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contestthat assertion, I shall claim that—I am an African. ^

A remarkable feature of the speech was its embrace of a history ofsuffering (including the travails of Boer women and children in Britishconcentration camps),^ as well as struggle; an articulation of lament, aswell as hope: "The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutesan unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africannessshall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origins." Whileaware of the "persistent shadow of despair" cast over the continent (thiswas, after all, just two years after the Rwandan genocide), Mbeki waxedbold at the end: "Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest,however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we havebeen caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity ofthe people, let us err today and say—nothing can stop us now!" '' Mbeki'span-African sentiments would receive further articulation in his construct"African Renaissance," and in his championing of the New African Devel-opment Initiative (or NEPAD).

But there was a certain ambivalence in Mbeki's nationalist mythos.Chipkin observes two notes being sounded by Mbeki at the same time:in the first, an African identity constituted in a common geography ("Iowe my being to the hills and valleys, the mountains and the glades, therivers, the deserts, the trees and the flowers..."), a common history ("Ihave seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people,engaged one another in a titanic battle..."), and a common experience ofhope ("none dare contest that assertion..."). That experience is howeverdefined in terms of the brutal suppression of dignity and the oppressionof colonialism. Here is the second note: that "Africans" are those whoshare a common heroism in the face of historic abuses. Are these Africansnot being defined differently? Is the "we" of "my people" now divided? Isthere an implicit call to whites to "join us" in participating in an Africanidentity? And what of those who come from a different history, or even

22. Mbeki, "Statement."23. Here Mbeki's African imaginary transcends that of Soga's in the nineteenth cen-

tury, which identified Africa with "the race of Ham." Soga, "What is the Destiny of theKaffir Race?"

24. Mbeki, "Statement."



from the same continent, but outside South Africa? ^ The ambivalencesin Mbeki's speech highlighted the ambiguities underneath the discourseof the rainbow nation and, importantly, with regard to the very subjects ofthe Constitution. Such fissures anticipated the project of the TRC, whichwould begin its work the following year.

The Constitution gave contours to the state that would sustain theessence of the nation. At a conference sponsored by the NGO Justicein Transition in 1995, theologians had already hailed it as a documentworthy of study in grassroots interpretive communities. *" Publishedunder the title. One Law for One People, the Constitution would soon takepride of place on bookshelves next to the family Bible and prayer-books."However, while it was certainly a model constitution that would be theenvy of nation-states around the world, it also replicated the Westphalianideal of the bounded nation-state, with policed borders and legitimatedviolence to enforce them. This too would represent a challenge to thevision of reconciliation and the embrace of a common African humanityat the heart of Mbeki's vision and at the moral center of the Constitutionitself This will be further discussed below.

Civic sacrament: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When placed along-side the act of gathering of the elections, and the act of hearing the newword proclaimed of the Constitution, the sacrality of the TRC as themoment of reconciliation comes into even sharper focus. This "sacra-ment," embodied in chairperson Desmond Tutu (the same person whohad "named" the new nation during its travails of birth), underscored thethreshold of the new time and the new space within which that nationwould constitute itself Tutu was himself a liminal figure: the spiritualrepresentative of Southern Africa's two million Anglicans, the face of theanti-apartheid movement to the world, and now the visible representa-tive (and representation) of this quasi-juridical commission tasked with

25. Chipkin, Do South Africans Exist? 100-102. Cbipkin notices tbat Mbeki's alterna-tion between "I am an African," and "I am a South African," adds to the ambivalence of bisnationalist construction. While it seems benign, the fact that this ambivalence was neverresolved is at least partly to blame for the recent (2008) xenophobic attacks in tbe country.See also Ivor Cbipkin, "The Curse of African Nationalism," Mail and Quardian Online,June8,2008, http://mg.co.za/article/2008-06-05-tbe-curse-of-african-nationalism.

26. Researcb Institute on Christianity in South Africa (RICSA), "Report on Chris-tianity, the Secular State and Constitutionalism Conference, Somerset West, November1995,"fotirnatofTlteotogyforSotithern Africa 94 (Marcb 1996): 80-81.

27. Jean Comaroff and Jobn Comaroff, "Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism,and ID-Ology: Citizenship and Difference in Soutb Africa," Social Identities 9, no. 4 (2003):451.



mediating reconciliation between former belligerents on the one hand,and their victims on the other. Tutu embodied the very thing the Com-mission aimed to make possible for the nation. He was a priest, "living onthe border of the holy," '* mediating the visible world of actuality and theinvisible world of possibility.

Tutu's presence as official Chair (and unofficial chaplain) of the TRCsuggested that the Commission could be something more than a bodydeciding on amnesty applications, as the "lawyers" wished it. '' It sug-gested a confessional for individuals seeking absolution or healing fromtheir terrible pain and loss. Indeed, as the Commission's life unfolded,this other dimension became more pronounced in specific liturgical prac-tices. I want to frame these practices by describing how the Commissionas a whole reinscribed the time-space of the new nation, re-placing thebodies of the victims in a new body politic, taking up the many stories ofsuffering and oppression into a larger drama, and legitimating a particularethic of struggle which became the benchmark for evaluating the past.

The time of the TRC was a time in-between past and future. It markeda boundary of transition, a time of grace. Here was a time for repentanceand renewal, a time when the law would allow for amnesty (and so heralda time to forget), but also a time in which the past could be rememberedin an orderly and disciplined fashion. This extraordinary, kairotic, timewould, finally, project into the future an interpretation of the past—theshared story of the imagined community of the rainbow nation.^" Thestories of pain, suffering, and violation would be incorporated into thecorptis of the imagined community, taken up into a larger narrative andthus made meaningful. In this, even "victims" of arbitrary acts of violencecould be transformed into "heroes" of the struggle.^'

28. L. William Countryman, Living on the Border of the Hoty: Renewing the Priesthood of Ait(Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999).

29. Piet Meiring, "The Bartiti versus the Lawyers: The Role of Religion in the TRCProcess," in Looking Back, Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commis-sion of South Africa, ed. Charles Villa Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd (Cape Town: Univer-sity of Cape Town Press; London: Zed Books, 2000), 113-31.

30. Here I use "Kairos" in the classic sense of a time of judgment and grace, as "amoment of truth." Robin Petersen develops the concept of "Kairos" in fruitful new direc-tions, especially with reference to the AICs. See Robin M, Petersen, "Time, Resistance, andReconstruction: Rethinking Kairos Theology" (PhD dissertation. University of Chicago,1995). 1 will return to Petersen's analysis below.

31. "Bishop Dandala of the MCSA noted at the hearings that churches can help peoplemove from understanding their family members and friends who suffered under apartheidas 'victims' to celebrating them as 'heroes'. This is something that could be a tremendoushermeneutical and symbolic resource; but it also requires pastoral sensitivity, lest one par-ticular framework of dealing with their past be imposed on people." Research Institute on

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This time of grace was also marked within the hearings themselves—though not without controversy. According to Piet Meiring, those repre-senting the "legal" interpretation of the Commission (that it was a bodyprimarily concerned with gathering testimony for amnesty applications)objected to the "religious" framing represented in the opening prayer.Tutu had agreed to open instead with a moment's silence. However,shortly after the first time this happened Tutu stopped the proceedings,unable to continue without voicing a prayer. ^ The meetings followed afairly constant rhythm, pausing at noon for silence and the "Prayer forAfrica," ^ then closing the proceedings with prayer. Within this ritual time,the testimonies were structured in a further act of incorporation: this time,the specific stories of suffering were taken up into the grand narrative ofreconciliation. The suffering body was redeemed within the new bodypolitic. So were the perpetrators who had caused the suffering.

While having its administrative headquarters in Cape Town, the Com-mission's hearings were on a pilgrimage through the country. Thus theTRC also marked space. It visited the spaces of sacrifice and suffering, ''and sought to represent in its redemptive pilgrimage the whole imaginedspace of South Africa. Indeed, as the Commission criss-crossed the terrain,it was mapping the new South Africa as built on the pain of the old.

But tvithin the Commission's hearings, space was also deliberatelymarked. Whether meeting in church basements, community halls, orcivic centres, the hearings followed a consistent architecture: the Com-missioners sat behind a dais, directly facing the gallery. At right angles tothe dais and the gallery sat the witnesses. When victims were testifying,and their torturers were present, the victims sat on the gallery's side, ableto face their adversary (by turning slightly) but also able to look into thesympathetic face of the Chair. The gallery, itself, purportedly represented

Christianity in South Africa (RICSA), "Faith Communities and Apartheid: The RICSAReport," in Facing the Truth: South African Faith Communities and the Truth and ReconciliationCommission, ed. James R. Cochrane, John W de Gruchy and Stephen W. Martin (CapeTown: David Philip, 1999), 62-3.

32. Meiring, "The Baniti versus the Lawyers," 113. Later we will see silence as a tacticin the submissions of the AICs.

33. Attributed to Fr. Trevor Huddleston:God bless AfricaGuard her childrenGuide her leadersand give her peaceFor Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

34. Hence its beginning in East London, one of the prédominent centers of struggleand associated with struggle icon Steve Biko.

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"the new nation" (though in reality very few whites came to the hear-ings, except as witnesses or applicants for amnesty) bearing witness tothe spectacle. But those in the gallery were never simply spectators. Thegallery was more like the congregation of a church, participating in thehearings through gestures of cheering, (and occasionallyjeering), singing,and weeping. ^ This was another marker of the Christian genealogy of thehearings, and another marker of its nature as a collective performance.

Indeed, David Chidester has accused the narrative of the Commissionas reflecting the either/or apocalyptic language of the radical theology ofthe 1980s, particularly as represented in TPie Kairos Document.^'' While thismay have been contextually appropriate then, the Commission's reduc-ing of the complex interactions of the past into three "subject positions":victim, perpetrator, or opponent of human rights abuses, belies living intoa different situation after the conflicts of the past." Each of these threepositions called forth a corresponding response of the Commission: ifyou were a victim, you received sympathy; if you were a perpetrator, youwere given an opportunity to repent and recommit yourself to the newbody; if you were an opponent, you were commended and challenged tocommit to transforming your opposition to the old regime to critical soli-darity with the new. The proscribed actions that were to flow from theseassigned responses gave the TRC a meta-ethical import, such that otherinstitutions seemed to derive (or sustain) their legitimacy in accepting itscategorizations. This would become especially evident in the faith com-munity hearings, to which I now turn.

35. Of course, the "audience" was much larger than those assembled at the meet-ings. The first hearings were broadcast live on television, and all the hearings were avail-able on radio. It's questionable, though, how the TV and radio audience fit the space of theCommission.

36. The Kairos Theologians, Challenge to the Church: The Kairos Document (GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985). The Document set up a typology of three kinds of theologi-cal relation to the apartheid government: "state theology" merged the agenda of the nationalsecurity state with the maintenance of the Christian faith, constituting a theology of overtlegitimation; "church theology" claimed that the Christian faith should not be captured byan ideology of left or right, and should foster a "third way" theology of reconciliation; "pro-phetic theology" (the position espoused by the Document) was a theology of solidarity withthe liberation movements, and of radical opposition to the apartheid state. The situation inthe country in 1984-85 (the State of Emergency effectively proclaiming martial law in thenon-white areas) was such that no "third way" was tenable. One was either in solidaritywith the liberation movements, and faithful to the call of the gospel, or one was overtly ortacitly in league with the state.

37. David Chidester, "Stories, Fragments, Monuments," in Facing the Truth: South Afri-can Faith Communities and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ed. James Cochrane, Johnde Gruchy and Stephen Martin (Cape Town: David Philip; Athens, OH: Ohio UniversityPress, 1999), 135-7.



Tending to the Soul of Society: The Churches, the TRC,and the State Churches Facing the TRC

The churches in their submissions to the TRC identified themselves inthe categories of victim, perpetrator, and opponent of abuses. ** Some-times this was simply a reflection of the fact that as the majority of churchmembers were black, the church in South Africa was bound to be a suf-fering church—and therefore replete with victims. But churches also rep-licated in their ecclesial structures the structures of the state. Sometimesthis was explicit, as in the Dutch Reformed and Apostolic Faith Missionchurches, which segregated along race lines. ' At other times, it was moreimplicit, as in the Anglican church which, despite its catholic ecclesiology,consisted in rich, white parishes and poor, black parishes.* Churches alsoopposed apartheid, even to the point of the ecumenical churches takingthe lead in the anti-apartheid movement after the state had banned thepolitical organizations."" Besides Tutu, some of the ecumenical churches'leadership was seated on the dais as the churches gave their testimonies.Indeed, when one AIC leader looked at the panel, he said he thought hewas back at Khotso House (the headquarters of the SACC).''

So churches played an important role in the Commission itself Notonly did mainline, ecumenical churches supply many of the commission-ers, they had been thinking about the question of dealing with the pastsince at least 1989.'' So prevalent was Christian theology in the languageof "truth and reconciliation" that the Commission itself was accused ofhaving a "Christian bias" by both Muslim and secular groups.''''

But when the churches faced the TRC, they found themselves in arather ambiguous position. Not only were they subordinating themselvesto something they had helped bring to birth, they were doing so as deeplyambiguous and broken bodies. Measured by the higher morality rep-resented by the Commission, the churches had failed to do enough tooppose the horrific violations that took place, often in the name of Chris-tian civilization. They functioned—and even prospered—in an ethos offear. Indeed, it is arguable that more conservative churches benefited from

38. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 34-58.39. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 39-40.40. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 40-41.41. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 55-6.42. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 67.43. A brief overview of this process may be found in James R. Cochrane, John W.

de Gruchy and Stephen W. Martin, "Introduction," in Facing the Truth, ed. Cochrane, deGruchy and Martin.

44. Griffiths, "Christian Discourse and Culture of Reconcilation"; RICSA, "FaithCommunities and Apartheid," 67.



the climate of fear, rendering the swart gevaar ("black danger") as a specifiesof the larger rooi gevaar ("communist danger"), thus ensuring that theirmembers remained loyal to the state, but also picking up new membersfrom ecumenical churches who were disenchanted with what they sawas improper "politicization" of the gospel."^ Thus the churches appearedwith a dual identity: as representing the suffering body of Christ and asdeeply flawed institutions of civil society, analogous to those other flawedinstitutions (the media, the medical and legal professions) who likewisehad to give account for the past.

Overwhelmed by the moral categories of the TRC, the churches' own"native," identity-forming practices were barely evident."" When pressedas to what they would do in the future to create a climate of reconciliation,churches responded with ideas about "special liturgies," though therewas little sense that ordinary liturgies contained a logic of réconciliation.""Perhaps this reflected the sentiment of the 1985 Kairos Document, whichspoke of the powerlessness of traditional liturgical acts to represent theemerging new imaginary, and commended instead more overt politicalaction on the part of the churches in solidarity with the liberation move-ments.""* Perhaps it reflected an inability or an uncertainty about howto represent themselves in the newly imagined public. Either way, theywere deeply in trouble in their identity as churches. A vague commitmentto "values" as members of "civil society" lacks the kind of robust andprophetic ecclesiology that would ground their commitment to reconcili-ation in the ecclesial practices familiar to their members."*' Indeed, such

45. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 47, 48. See also Roger Arendse,"Right Wing Christian Groups," in Facing the Trtitli, ed. Cochrane, de Gruchy and Martin,91-100.

46. 1 refer specifically to baptism and eucharist. In the space of three days of con-tinual testimony, the Uniting Reformed Church made reference to the segregation of theeucharist in 1857 as part of the framework making apartheid possible; the SACC spoke ofchurches celebrating the eucharist in prisons, expressing gospel values; David Wanless ofthe United Congregational Church said that reconciliation was at the heart of the Christianeucharist; and Michael Nuttal, Anglican Bishop of Natal, invoked the eucharist in the con-text of reconciliation. These were exceptions to the rule.

47. "The URCSA noted that reconciliation liturgies would transform acts of worshipinto acts of reconciliation." RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 63-4. This state-ment raises questions about how worship was in fact seen, if not already marking a com-munal act of reconciliation.

48. Tile Kairos Document, 49.49. This is, of course, a controversial claim. That the question of how churches ought

to represent themselves in public was a matter of serious debate during the mid-1990sis born out by the papers of the Multi-Event 1999, organized by the Research Instituteon Christianity in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. For an overview of this,



"values" language simply reinscribes the Weberian tripartite mapping ofprivate, public, and mediating spheres—a dead end for churches strug-gling to move beyond the trappings of modernity whether in the globalnorth or the global south.^" Quite simply, the churches, once "trapped inapartheid,"^' now seemed trapped in the modern project of legitimatingstatecraft as the machinery of social transformation.

So the South African ecumenical and evangelical churches up to thetime of the Commission found themselves in a situation where they had toacknowledge that the same social forces that shaped apartheid society hadshaped their own structures, and even their own practices to a significantextent. And yet, at the same time, many of them could look with prideon their role in bringing apartheid to an end. The very Commission theyfaced was created in large part from theological ideas that had been honedin the debates about the liberation struggle. When they spoke publically,they adopted without question the discourse of the Commission—a dis-course that was oriented to making sense of the past, but less effective inconstructively leaning into the future. Putting it briefly: "we had won."But now what?

see Stephen W Martin, "Emerging Themes in Religion and Public Life: The Multi-Event1999," Grace and Truth 16, no. 3 (December 1999): 13-24. For a criticism of the "values"and "civil society" identity of the church in South /Africa, see Neville Richardson, "What'sGoing on in the Church in South Africa?" in God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hau-erwas, ed. L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Hütter and C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell (Grand Rapids,MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 229-53; Neville Richardson, "A Call for Care: HIV/AIDS Chal-lenges the Church,">»ma/ ofTlieologyfor Southern Africa 126 (July 2006): 38-50.

50. Describing what he calls "the dominant tradition of political theology," Daniel Bellclaims that modernist ways of seeing the church identify it as an apolitical space concernedwith values, bearing witness to a presence stimulating movements for change (liberationtheology) or taking political responsibility (public theology). In the here and now "salvationtakes social and political form in the success of statecraft, whether construed in terms of theuniversal recognition of human rights, the spread of liberal democracy, the strengthening of'the American experiment,' or the establishment of some kind of democractic socialism."Daniel M. Bell Jr., "State and Civil Society," in Tlie Btackwetl Companion to Political Tlieotogy,ed. William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Scott (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 433. This descriptionfits well the self-understanding of the churches before the Commission. As an alternative.Bell urges an ecclesiology that "reclaims theology as a fully social, political, economic real-ity"; conceives of Christianity "not as the apolitical custodian of abstract moral values like'love' that have to be translated into politics but, rather, as a social, political, economic forma-tion (an ensemble of technologies of desire)"; and recognizes that "the Christian mythos findsits political correlate, not in the state—even one ordered toward the common good—but inthe Church as the exemplary form of human community." Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Ttie-ology After the End of History: Tlie Refusal to Cease Suffering (London: Routledge, 2001), 72.

51. Charles Villa-Vicencio, Trapped in Apartheid: A Socio-Theological History of the English-Speaking Churches (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press; Cape Town: David Philip, 1988).



Of greater concern was the fact that one part of the church had learnedto position itself against the state in support of the liberation movement—which was now in power. Another part of the church had learned toposition itself as a resource to the state in opposition to the liberationmovement. Like so many institutions under apartheid, the body of Christcontinued to bear those marks of loyalty and disloyalty. How would thechurch move into the new era without uncritical solidary to the state onthe one hand, and without positioning itself at such a critical distancefrom the state that the state only heard "chirping from the sidelines" onthe other?

Contesting the Commission: The AICs and the TRC

But the identity of the South African church is not exhausted by theecumenical and evangelical churches which trace their origins to Euro-pean settler and mission Christianities. According to statistics from the2001 census, of 35.8 million Christians in South Africa, 14.2 million, ashade under 40 percent, belong to African "Independent" ("Initiated" or"Indigenous") Churches.^^ While there are different ways of subdividingAICs, scholars agree that the most important differentiation is to be madebetween "Ethiopian" churches—Âfrican versions of mission churches—and "Zionist-Apostolic" churches. The former take their name from aprophetic reading of Psalm 68,'^ and represent a first wave of Africanself-assertion in the late nineteenth century; the latter arose as Africans

52. http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/RSAPrimary.pdf In 1996, AICs made upjust over 36 percent of Christians. English-speaking ecumenical churches numbered 18percent in 1996, but fell to 17.8 percent in 2001. The Dutch Reformed Churches haveexperienced a drop from 11.8 to 8.4 percent during the same period. Pentecostal and char-ismatic churches, by contrast, have grown from 7.3 to 9.5 percent. For more detailed sta-tistical analysis, see Jürgen Hendriks and Johan Erasmus, "Religion in South Africa: The2001 Census Data,"fournalofVieologyfor Southern Africa 121 (2005): 88-111. There is somecontroversy among scholars as to whether AICs and independent pentecostal/charismaticchurches should be classified together, as they share some historical commonalities. SeeM. L Daneel, "AICs: Historical Roots and Ecclesial Interconnections," in All Tilings HoldTogether: Selected Essays by M. L. Daneel (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2007),13-15 and Allan Anderson's reflections on pp. 385-6 of the same collection. The figuresquoted above exclude pentecostals.

53. "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast receivedgifts for men; yea, [for] the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell [amongthem]... Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands untoGod" (Ps. 68:18, 38 KJV). Ethiopia was also a symbol of resistance to colonialism, maintain-ing its independence from European domination during the time of South Afr'icm blackpolitical awakening.



appropriated early twentieth-century revivalist preaching, especially thatassociated with John Alexander Dowie's Christian Catholic ApostolicChurch in Zion. Both Ethiopian and Zionist-Apostolic types of churchwere considered politically dangerous by South African officials duringthe first half of the twentieth century, due largely to the fact that theyrepresented Africans outside the control of established state and religiousstructures, and constituted a challenge to the identity of Christianity as thesoul of a white-dominated society.5'' As Ethiopian churches were not rep-resented at the TRC, I will in what follows focus on those churches calledby some of their members iiKonzo zoMoya (churches of the Spirit)."

David Chidester suggests three ways in which AICs have provided alter-native centers of religious power for their members: first, by representinga source of power (the Spirit) greater than that of the political order towhich government and mission churches were beholden; second, by cre-ating "an alternative spatial order" through "Zion centers of sacred purity,healing, and protection"; and third, by creating "an alternative temporalorientation by referring back to ancient, biblical religious life, but also bylooking forward to the immanent return of Christ that would establisha new kingdom on earth."^^ The millenarian spirit infused a number ofAICs in the 1920s, including Enoch Mgijima's Israelites, who waitedat their sacred site of Ntabelanga—a settlement with houses, a place ofworship, schools, and court—for an apocalyptic war which would bringan end to white rule. In 1921, 800 white policemen attacked the 3,000members of the Israelites, killing 183." The repression was so successfulthat, by the end of the 1920s, these radical apocalyptic movements haddied out in favor of others who sought redemption in "the creation of aseparate, alternative sacred order that accommodated itself to white politi-cal domination in South Africa, yet provided powerful spiritual resourcesof healing, purity, and protection from a hostile world. " ' Paradigmatic

54. For an account of how the state sought to reign in the AICs through bureau-cratic management, see Johan W. Claasen, "Independents Made Dependents: African Inde-pendent Churches and Government Recognition,"/onriiii/ of Tlieology for Southern Africa 91(June 1995): 15-34,

55. In turn, many members of AICs call the "established" churches iicawe zomthehto(churches of the law or churches recognized by government). Hennie Pretorius and LizoJafta, "'A Branch Springs Out': /Urican Initiated Churches," in Christianity in South Africa: APolitical, Social & Cultural History, ed. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Cape Town:David Philip; Oxford: James Currey, 1997), 211.

56. David Chidester, Religions of South Africa (London: Routledge, 1992), 124.57. Chidester, Religions ofSotith Africa, 126-7.58. Chidester, Religions of South Africa, 131. The question of "accommodation" is a live

one, and will be examined below.

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of this is the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), the largest of the AICswith just under five million members. Ignatius Legkanyane founded thechurch in 1910, with its sacred site at "Moria" near Polokwane (formerlyPietersburg) in the north of South Africa. This sacred space—currently apilgrimage site for members who each Easter make the trek there—hasrepresented "a sacred center that stood apart from the political center ofPretoria and the economic center of Johannesburg in the ZCC's spiritualgeography of South Africa."- '

The ZCC is a multi-ethnic church with congregations dispersedthroughout South Africa. A different kind of AIC is the Nazareth BaptistChurch, or iBandla lamaNazaretha. Founded by Isaiah Shembe in 1911,the amaNazaretha has its base within Zulu ethnicity, and its sacred centerin rural Ekuphakameni, near Durban. But there are also commonalitiesbetween the two churches, especially in terms of the moral markers thatseparate them from other South Africans: dietary restrictions, clothingand grooming practices, and abstinence from alcohol, gambling, andassociated activities. Like other AICs, both churches are holistic in theirunderstanding of salvation, embracing healing and communal integralityas part of their liturgy and lifestyle.

As the century wore on, AICs gained a reputation for being generally(though not universally) uninterested in engaging the government onhuman rights issues."' Most controversial was the ZCC, which invitedPresident P W Botha to address pilgrims at Moria in 1985, the heightof the State of Emergency''' The speech, which was broadcast live onstate television, resulted in reprisals by anti-apartheid cadres against ZCC

59. Cbidester, Religions of South Africa, 135. A tourist website informs potential visi-tors this way: "Tbe worship of tbe lord over Easter is zealously attended, and membersuse whatever mode of transport they can find to get there—some come by donkey cart,otbers by bicycle, bus, car, taxi, train and on foot. Spoornet apparently runs a number of20-coach high speed passenger trains the 380 kilometres between Johannesburg and Polok-wane, whilst the church hires thousands of 100-passenger buses for its members. Tbis istbe time of year to avoid the Nl and the RlOl from Johannesburg, as they are congestedwith participants wbo spend tbree days worshipping in tbe open, as the building at Moriais ill-equipped to cope witb the numbers of people that swell its ranks." http://www.sa-ven-ues.com/attractions/limpopo/zion-city.htm.

60. There are exceptions, including tbe cburcbes allied witb the Council of AfricanIndependent Churches (CAIC). CAIC is a member of the SACC.

61. Petersen argues that Botha's appearance was more contested tban prophetic tbeol-ogy gave credit for. Indeed, it was "a clever abduction of white symbolic power." Legkanyane(1) spoke after Botba (making the Bishop, ratber tban the President, tbe keynote speaker),(2) went twice as long, and (3) was applauded more vehemently than Botba. Petersen con-cludes tbat Botha was tbere but on Legkanyane's terms. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, andReconstruction," 3-4.

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members.''^ Most significantly, it left open questions about the extentof the ZCC's alleged collusion with state structures. For its part, theamaNazaretha were rumoured to have tics to the Zulu nationalist Inkathamovement.

Which brings me to that moment I described at the beginning of thisarticle: the appearance of the AICs—and particularly Bishop Legkanyane—before the Commission. When Tutu tried to set Bishop Lekganyane up toanswer questions about his involvement with the previous government,he was met with silence on the Bishop's part. Indeed, Lekganyane didnot speak at all during his "testimony." He sat silently, smiling, whilehis assistants spoke for him. And when the Evangelist Mpanze of theamaNazaretha spoke, he insisted (in English) on giving his testimony inZulu as a gesture of solidarity with his constituents. Most striking of allwas the fact that neither Mpanza nor Lekganyane's spokespersons offeredany apology for their activities under apartheid. In this, they were uniqueamong the churches that testified.'' More importantly, they therebyrefused to identify with the "civic sacrament" represented by the TRCitself Rather than giving an account that could be mapped along thelines of victim-perpetrator-opponent, Lekganyane and Mpanze "told"the story of their churches as insinuated into spaces on the margins ofSouth African society, both during and after apartheid. In doing this, theylimned an alternative location for the church to the settled "places" ofthe ecumenical and evangelical churches.*^ But more than this: they alsointerrupted the very liturgy of the Commission itself with a series of (inRobin Petersen's terms) "gestures of refusal." I want to explore these interms of (re)negotiating time, (re)negotiating space, and (re)negotiatingethics.*^

When to Speak: Negotiating TimeI've spoken of the ritual time of the TRC in terms of internality and exter-nality: the management of time in the structuring of the hearings them-selves, and the management of time in relating the hearings to the time of

62. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 4.63. CAIC did issue an apology, though Petersen's account of their own "gestures of

refusal" (including being forbidden by ancestral spirits to write down their submission)makes them closer in their engagement of the TRC to the other AICs than to their ecu-menical partners. R. Petersen, "The AICs and the TRC: Resistance Redefined," in Facingthe Truth, ed. Cochrane, de Gruchy and Martin, 120.

64. For the ideas of "space" and "place" utilized here, see Michel De Certeau, TitePractice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), xvii-xx.

65. In what follows, I acknowledge a general debt to Robin Petersen's analysis in "TheAICs and the TRC," 114-25.



the new South Africa. Both of these were met with "gestures of refusal."^*Not only did Lekganyane's silence leave Tutu dead in his tracks, nearlyspeechless himself, but the fact that he turned up in his own time can beread as a refusal to abide by the schedule of the Commission. Lekganyanecame "in his own time," and his representation was "in his own way"

The liturgical time of the Commission was also challenged in therefusal of the ZCC and the amaNazaretha to map their histories accordingto the timeline of apartheid. This was unlike the ecumenical and eventhe evangelical churches, who clearly periodized their engagements withapartheid according to the various stages in the enacting of the legisla-tion, and in African resistance to it. The AICs seemed to understand theirsacred time in an almost parallel fashion to what we could call "secular"time. The key moment for each was the calling of the respective prophet(Engenas Lekganyane in the case of the ZCC; Isaiah Shembe in the caseof the amaNazaretha). This constituted a unique sacred origin.

Robin Petersen speaks of this construction of "time" by the AICs asdeeply resistant of the "homogeneous, empty time" of the modern, secularnation-state: an understanding of temporality that makes all times equivo-cal. It also contested the understanding of Tlie Kairos Document: that thesocio-political crisis of the 1980s meant a present "moment of decision"—a time in which normal church and liturgical practices were suspended,or at least reinterpreted in light of their contribution to the liberationstruggle. The AICs suggest a new understanding o(Kairos as "the creativeand regenerative principle of mystical time, the time of origins, and thetime of a continual return to the roots in order to regenerate the present. "''The AICs represent "messianic time"**—a time in which a sacred time oforigins interrupts and reorients the present.

The understanding of time by the AICs does not, however, merelysignal an archaic worldview. The fact that homogeneous time representsthe founding time of both modernity and modern capitalism, Petersensuggests, means that alternative constructions of time represent a remap-ping of time as resistance to capitalism.*'' Following the work of James C.Scott, he reads the practices of the AICs as encoded, "hidden transcripts"of resistance to capitalism.'" Consider, for example, the orientation ofthe annual calendar to the pilgrimage time to Moriah. Or consider theorientation of the weekly calendar to the time of worship, where ordinary

66. Petersen, "The AICs and the TRC,".120.67. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 106.68. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 24. The phrase is actually Walter Benjamin's.69. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 258-9.70. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press, 1990).



time is transformed into a time for the creation of a new communitas.^Ûnfortunately, I can't develop Petersen's analysis of the AICs in moredepth here. I will however return briefly to the nature of this communitas.

Where to Speak From: Negotiating SpaceIn the way that space was mapped by the Commission, the ecumenicaland evangelical churches followed suit. The sites of struggle and sufferingwere transformed into sites of truth and reconciliation by the presenceof the Commission. In the case of the AICs, space was differently nego-tiated through an alternative sacred geography. ^ Instead of Sharpevilleand Soweto, Cape Town and Pretoria as points of orientation, the ZCCspoke of rural Moria and the amaNazaretha of rural EkuPhakameni. Whilespatially distant from the "trees under which (for instance) the follow-ers of Shembe met," these sites of pilgrimage remapped South Africa forthe AICs. Where in the consciousness of the ecumenical and evangeli-cal churches, power radiated from the civitas centered in Cape Town andPretoria, for the AICs, commwnito-forming power radiated from (in anoutsider's perspective anyway) obscure rural spaces north of Pretoria andoutside of Durban."

Within the space of the hearings themselves, the most spectacular"mapping" took place in the "taking over" of the gallery by the ZCCmembers, whose singing and dancing transformed that space into aworship context. I spoke above of my own experience of feeling like aguest in someone's home at that moment. Perhaps a contrast could bedrawn between this and Tutu's interruption of the testimony of the Apos-tolic Faith Mission delegation to encourage the audience to join him ina hymn. Nervously the audience (which at that time consisted mainly in

71. "The centrality of this day [is] seen in the manner in which it is fundamentallymarked off from the time of the workplace by dress, lengthy rituals which defy the clock(both in their fluid start time as well as their open-ended closing time), and the continuingcommunity formation after the formal rites." This resistance is symbolically coded in theremoval of the watches (and purses containing money) of those present and the placing ofthem on the altar during worship. "Abstract time is thereby subordinated to sacred time, toritual time, and an attempt is made to bring it back under human control." Petersen, "Time,Resistance, and Reconstruction," 262-3.

72. As already noted, where the ecumenical and evangelical churches spoke from asecure place, the AICs insinuated themselves in what theologian Emmanuel Katongole calls"wild spaces." "Christianity, Tribalism, and the Rwandan Genocide: A Catholic Reassess-ment of Christian 'Social Responsibility'," Logos: Ajournai of Catholic Tlioiight and Culture 8,no. 3 (2005): 83-4.

73. The distinction between civitas and communitas derives from Victor Turner's TlieRitual Process. See the extracts in Paul Bradshaw and John Melloh, eds. Foundations in RitualStudies: A Readerfor Students of Christian Worship (London: SPCK, 2007), 74-85.

© Eqttinox Publishing Ltd 2011.


journalists) joined in. The "positional marginality"'''' represented by theAICs needed no such cues and displayed—even though the middle-classsuburban "megachurch" where the meetings were being held was not a"place" to which they belonged—ease and spontaneity.

Communitas and Struggle; Ethics through EthosIt is within this positionality that the AICs have constructed a communitasin the face of community-eroding structures of capitalism.^^ Eor theirpart, the ecumenical and evangelical churches were inclined to press thestate for access to the fruits of the market economy, seeing the problem aslack of access to such resources and the solution as redistribution drivenby statecraft. Thus the domination of the market is supplemented byethics. Petersen argues that the AICs engage the market by interrupting itsdomination through ritual. For example, "the stress on healing [in Africanchurches] contests the domination of the body-seen-as-commodity, bothin labor and in the various forms of medical technology which treat thebody as a cipher separated both from the nexus of social relations withinwhich the person is invested and even from the self""* And so we heardin the ZCC submission a description of the ways the church helped itsmembers in redistribution of resources,^' in the establishment of educa-tion funds, and in the provision of health-care through church-run clinics.Another example of this implicit resistance is in the communitas "markedby the wearing of uniforms, the forms of ritual dance, the communalsinging, and the very practical mutual aid of the members." These displayresistance to "the social isolation endemic to the rule of the abstract timeof the commodity,"'** and did not take into account the "time" of "during"or "after" apartheid. The AICs had need neither for state authorization,nor legitimization, nor economic assistance. The ecumenical and evan-gelical churches spoke of their "programs" and "studies" which were held

74. Petersen, "The AICs and the TRC," 121.75. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 266.76. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 265.77. Jean ComarofF, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: Tlie Culture and History of a South

African People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 235-6, describes a ZCC ser-vice where during the offering (and in contrast to other churches) each member bringsforth his or her offering, declares how much it is, and what it is to be used for, and danceswhile placing it in the basket. Commenting on her analysis, Petersen suggests this is aform of resistance to money as the ultimate "free-floating signifler," ritualizing money andthus sanctifying it. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 230. This contrastssharply with the typical Protestant view of the "offering" as the "legitimation of the role ofmoney, of the 'natural,' taken-for-granted quality of commoditization." ComarofT, Body ofPower, Spirit of Resistance, 235,

78. Petersen, "Time, Resistance, and Reconstruction," 266.



to contribute to the process of social transformation headed by the newstate. ' For the AICs, their "program" was simply to "be the church."""

In these three ways, I suggest, the AICs interrupted the liturgicalperformance of the TRC. They contested questions of time and space,challenged the moral framework by which resistance and complicity weredefined, and displayed a different source of authority and authorizationin culture. Given the role of the TRC in establishing the new SouthAfrica, their interruption of the TRC was also an interruption of the wayChristianity—legitimate (and legitimating) Christianity—^was positionedin the emerging nation-state. Even while the ecumenical and evangelicalchurches were finding themselves absorbed into the new South Africanimaginary, the AICs were showing how to contest that imaginary notsimply by saying different words, but by resisting the very terms underwhich the thing called "church" (or "faith community") was expectedto understand itself They were, in a most profound sense, a "contrastsociety"**' that pointed to the "Zion" that called them into being.

"Commissioning" the New BodyThe transition from apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa can helpfullybe mapped, I have argued, as the liturgical performance of a new nation.Like the first three movements of traditional Christian liturgies, it tookplace as a succession of acts: gathering, listening, and reconciling.

The elections of 1994 gathered the new nation through an act ofincorporation. South Africans of all races lined up beside each other tomark a ballot, an act of individual will merging into the collective. Tocommemorate what the people had just done. Nelson Mandela gave thefirst articulation of the narrative the people had inaugurated. The liturgycontinued with the Constitution of 1996, which gave the new nation itsmandate and legal shape. It constituted the sacred word that identified theconditions under which the nation would retain its identity as a liberatedpeople. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a crucial thirdmoment in the liturgical performance of post-apartheid South Africa,and represented an authentic and legitimating "civic sacrament" of rec-onciliation. Part of this was due to the fact that churches and theologiansplayed an important role in conceptualizing and directing it. But whenrepresentatives of the churches—the liturgically and sacramentally consti-tuted body of Christ—appeared before the TRC, they played a differentrole: as characters, sufferers, saints and sinners, in the carefully scripted

79. RICSA, "Faith Communities and Apartheid," 58-65.80. Richardson, "Wbat's Going on in the Cburcb in Soutb Africa?" 248.81. Gerhard Lohfmk,Jestts and Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984).



drama of the new nation. Power to legitimize, "to bind and to loose," wasdisplaced onto the Commission. This was true, at least, for the ecumeni-cal and evangelical churches. However, the AICs refused to incorporatethemselves into the liturgy of reconciliation, at least in the terms laid outby the TRC. This suggested, I have argued, a different engagement of thenew South Africa. The way the time and space of the new South Africahad been constructed in the liturgy to that point were contested by a radi-cally different view of sacred origins, of sacred geography, and of supremeauthority on the part of the AICs. Their rules of engagement operated ata more fundamental, "world-viewish" level. And yet they also spoke inconcrete terms of the ways their communities created a stage on whichtheir members—the poorest of the poor—could enact human dignity in adehumanizing society.

Careful readers will have noticed that there is a fourth movement inthe liturgy that I haven't spoken about: the act of commissioning. In contrastto what it was before the gathering in the liturgy, what is the new SouthAfrica called to be after the liturgy? What's the analogue to "going forthto love and serve the Lord"? Did perhaps the handing over of the finalTRC Report to President Mandela constitute that moment? Or has theboundary yet to be defined?

The liturgy of the new South Africa was a performance for one time,though its mapping continues to be reflected in the time and space of thenew South Africa. A sacred calendar marks the seasons in terms both ofthe history constructed in the transition and the beginning of its liturgy.December 16—a day sacred to African (founding of the ANC), Afrikaner(Day of the Vow), and Zulu (Dingaan's day) nationalists is termed, "TheDay of Reconciliation." It's also the day the TRC was launched. Theuprisings and bloody repressions identified with Sharpeville (1961) andSoweto (1976) are also national holidays. The former is now celebrated as"Human Rights Day"; the latter as "Youth Day" The anniversary of theelections, 27 April, is commemorated as "Freedom Day"

But the space of the new South Africa has conformed to the Westphalianideal of the bounded nation-state, with jurisdictional districts connectedto state power like spokes to the hub of a wheel.** On the edges of thenation-state, African solidarity is interrupted by policed borders, bordersthat replicate those put in place by the colonial powers.** The economy

82. Though some of the most interesting contestations are taking place where the map-ping of the terrain in terms of the political and legal system on the one hand, and traditionalor tribal domains on the other, are in conflict. Comaroff and ComarofF, ""Reflections."

83. Peter Vale, "Sovereignty, Identity and the Prospects for Southern Africa's People,"in WItat Holds Us Together: Social Cohesion in South Africa, ed. David Chidester, Wilmot James,and Phillip Dexter (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council; London: Global, 2004),



has taken a neo-liberal turn, with state resources privatized and economicgrowth seen as the prime engine of social change.'*'' The policy identifiedby Mandela in his speech after the election that identified the hope ofthe new South Africa was "the Reconstruction and Development Pro-gramme" (RDP). As Mandela's successor Thabo Mbeki began the shift inthe mid-1990s South Africa to the ideology of economic growth, the RDPwas displaced onto the "soul."**' So where reconstruction once referred tothe material economy, it now refers to spiritual "values.""*

Hence ethical norms are now split between the state, which setsthem for bodies, and institutions of the private sphere, which sets themfor individuals in their inner selves. The ecumenical and evangelicalchurches currently find themselves positioned analogous to this in a"soul of society model"—with the state appealing to them as funders of"moral reconstruction" or "moral regeneration."**' This indeed recallswhat the churches said they would do in the TRC hearings in supportingreconstruction and reconciliation. However, negotiations have becomemore complex—and more tensive—in light of the government's inac-tion on the HIV-Aids crisis, ongoing poverty, and human rights vio-lations in neighboring Zimbabwe. At its 2001 general conference, theSACC declared a shift from critical solidarity with the new state to what

39. At the time of writing, the state is in conflict with the Central Methodist Church inJohannesburg offering sanctuary to Zimbabwean refugees, even as the state seeks policiesof appeasement with Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. The reason given? Zimbabwe is a sov-ereign state. Westphalia triumphs again. In my view this is far from the radical imaginary ofthe late 1980s, which freely renegotiated boundaries in the name of justice. For a disturb-ing report on xenophobia in post-Apartheid South Africa, see The South African MigrationProject, A Perfect Storm: Tlie Realities of Xenophobia in Contemporary South Africa (Cape Townand Kingston, ON: IDASA and the Southern African Research Centre, 2008).

84. For an account of this transition, see Tom Lodge, Politics in South Africa: From Man-dela to Mbeki (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002).

85. Gerald O. West, "Thabo Mbeki's Bible," Paper presented at the American Acad-emy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, San Diego, November2007, 15-19.

86. The policy framework called GEAR which replaced RDP "anticipat[ed] quite adifferent jooii society to the concept of such a society that originally informed the RDP"Chipkin, Do South Africans Exist? 153.

87. Jacob Zuma, "Address by the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa onthe Occasion of the Anglican Women's Fellowship Conference, Kempton Park" (Johan-nesburg, 2003), http://www.info.govza/speeches/2003/03061711461004.htm; Jacob Zuma,"Address at the Launch of the Moral Regeneration Movement" (Bisho, 2003), http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2003/03092209461008.htm; Mark Chapman, "Pluralism and MoralRegeneration: Building Community in South African Perspective," Joiinia/ ofTlieologyforSouthern Africa 119 Only 2004): 4-14.



it called "critical engagement."*'*' Several of its member churches becameinvolved in the Treatment Action Campaign to extend anti-retroviralsto HIV-positive South Africans. A further new level of contestationemerged in 2004 between TRC chair Desmond Tutu and PresidentMbeki over Tutu's strong criticism of the government, at the same timeas Mbeki's Moral Regeneration Program was getting into gear."'' TheSACC itself has also issued sharp criticism of the state's easy relation-ship with Robert Mugabe, and its failure to act decisively in policingxenophobia.*

What of the AICs? Just as the AICs participated in public rituals, buton their own terms, so do they continue to engage the construction oftime and space by the new South Africa—also on their own terms. Theycontinue to represent those without a secure "place" in the new SouthAfrica. As Barbara Bompani has shown with reference to AICs in Soweto,these churches continue to present an important channel of advocacyfor those left behind by the grand ship of state, bypassing the establishedinstitutional avenues of politics. She claims that they provide an importantavenue of moral formation and moral agency for citizens who find them-selves marginal in new society.' ' Indeed, the AICs point to a way of beingpolitical that is local and particular. As Archbishop Ngada of the AfricanSpiritual Churches Association says, "I think that to be political, to somepeople, is to put a tie around the collar, sitting in an office and bringing allthe media around." By contrast, he continues, "we are not interested inorganizing ourselves into political parties, but we are, as ive have for so manyyears, organizing ourselves as Africans.'"' AICs are not only advocating foraccess to services on behalf of their members, but continuing the practicesof mutual support and aid they spoke of during the TRC hearings. Butthis is not a second step, after the liturgy, for them. As Bompani explains,"the township, with its myriad problems and challenges, is very much a

88. Barbara Bompani, "'Mandela Mania': Mainline Churches in Post-Apartheid SouthAfrica," Tliird World Quarterly 27, no. 6 (September 2006): 1145.

89. Sapa, "Mbeki Slams Tutu," News24.Com, November 24, 2004, http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Mbeki-slams-Tutu-20041126. The pun on "gear" isunintentional.

90. The reasons for the attacks, the Council puts as the concentration of "political andeconomic power in the hands of a tiny elite, unaccountable to democratic structures, whilstrobbing the poor of the means to meet their most basic needs," http://www.sacc.org.za/newsO8/alexandr.html

91. Barbara Bompani, "African Independent Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa:New Political Interpretations,"Joiirna/ of Southern African Studies 34, no. 3 (September 2009):665-77. My thanks are due to Dr. Bompani for sending me an earlier draft of this article.

92. Quoted in Bompani, "/frican Independent Churches," 668, 672. Emphasisadded.

© Eqtiinox Pttbli.shing Ltd 2011.


part of religious rituals and services." The liturgy is part of a "fluid conti-nuity between the religious community and its social environs," facilitat-ing a politics not of parties, policies, and procedures, but of contesting andclaiming the promise of citizenship.'^

While this broadening of the political significance of AICs is a promisingdevelopment, my interest is more theological and ecclesiological. I haveargued that the praxis of the AICs is founded on something even morefundamental than politics, old or new. It is founded upon and sustained bywhat Cavanaugh calls "a theopolitical imagination":' '' an imagination thatmaps culture and community along an axis that contests "secular" ways ofmaking space and dividing time. In our global context, this imaginationis not merely a different way oí seeing the world. It shows us what it is topractice resistance to the mappings of time and space that provide the con-ditions for "savage capitalism" itself,' ^ the very thing that South Africa hasbeen slipping back into, in spite of the promise of its gathering, listening,and reconciling.

The final commissioning boundary of the new South Africa cannotclearly be identified because the liturgies that constitute nation-states arenecessarily incomplete. For a theological perspective, this is a functionof their existence "during the world," as Charles Mathewes puts it.*"" Nofinal resolution to the brokenness of history is possible apart from thefinal coming of the Kingdom of God. But this doesn't make the stanceof the church passive or reactive; rather, the church is called to be con-structively subversive of secular imaginings oí the polis, not just talkingabout a new way of being, but embodying it. The church has too oftenallowed the nation-state to dictate where it "fits," allowing itself to beco-opted into the nation's "immanent" story. Even where the churcheshave made a significant contribution to promoting reconciliation, it isbut an anticipatory foretaste of the great reconciliation in Jesus Christ.The AICs at the TRC thus provided a powerful example for the rest ofthe church—in South Africa and elsewhere—to follow. Following itsown mapping of space and time, the church interrupts the course ofsecular liturgies and points to their fulfillment not in the nation-state,but in that polis yet-to-come.

93. Bompani, "African Independent Churches," 676-7.94. William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political

Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002).95. Bell Jr., L/fccraiion Ttieology After the End of History, 10.96. Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2007), 17-18.



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Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginary : The Case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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