Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
14 March 2005
Pretoria, South Africa — The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC) has issued a clarification following media reports that racism is rife in the Church in South Africa.
This followed news published on Sunday, March 13, 2005, by the Sunday Times headlined "Racism Shock in Catholic Church".
In a statement SACBC sent to CISA, the Church said that as part of other sectors of post-apartheid South African society, it had embarked on a process "intended to provide safe spaces for people affected by racial division to dialogue openly and honestly about their experiences and to resolve to work together to change such experiences."
"The Justice and Peace Department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC) welcomes the national debate on the state of racial transformation in South Africa that has been generated by the Department's report entitled Race Relations and the Catholic Church in South Africa a Decade After Apartheid that was issued publicly on national Reconciliation Day, 16 December 2004, and reported in the Sunday Times [on Sunday]," SACBC said.
The 2004 report issued by the SACBC Justice and Peace Department is intended "precisely to facilitate such a process in the Catholic Church as [its] contribution to the broad national process of transformation from apartheid."
The Church clarified that "the report arose from an extensive process of dialogue and discernment throughout the church over a period of more than two years" adding that there have been "several reports about the process in the Catholic and other print and broadcast media since December last year."
"Our track record demonstrates that we would be amongst the first to point to behaviour, attitudes, and structures that undermine human dignity inside and outside the church, especially in the Catholic Church and especially in regard to racism. However, the Catholic Church is not unique as a South African institution that must deal with persistent patterns of racial disharmony," the statement said.
The church urged all social institutions in South Africa, given their national legacy of apartheid, to continue struggling to overcome their racially divided past: "We challenge all major social institutions in South Africa to similarly address the sins of racial discrimination, racial prejudice, racial stereotyping, racism, and xenophobia in their structures and practices where these may be prevalent."
Contact: Bishop Mlungisi Dlungwane, Chairperson, SACBC Justice and Peace Department, Tel. (+27) 031-700 2704, or Neville Gabriel, Coordinator, SACBC Justice and Peace Department, ngabriel@sacbc.org.za.
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