In Good Faith: Canadian Churches against Apartheid - Review

Ecumenical Review, The, Oct, 1998 by Baldwin Sjollema

Renate Pratt, In Good Faith: Canadian Churches against Apartheid, Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfred Laurier Univ. Press, 1997, 366pp.

Canada has a record of belonging to the more progressive Western democracies. It has shown this on issues of foreign policy, development cooperation and human rights, and not the least in its commitment during the long period of the struggle against apartheid. However, no one should be under any illusion that its support for the abolition of apartheid was a foregone conclusion.

Governments rarely act progressively unless they are forced to do so by public opinion. And public opinion makes itself felt largely through non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the churches. That is what happened in Canada, when churches were among the first to protest publicly against their country's support for apartheid.

For nearly twenty years, the Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of Christian churches, was one of Canada's leading anti-apartheid advocates. Its first coordinator, Renate Pratt, writes a strong and moving account of how the churches had to learn to break their silence and to pressure government and powerful business forces to listen to the voices of black people in South Africa, asking for sanctions against Pretoria.

What strikes one in Pratt's account is how she describes the very close ties with her colleagues in Southern Africa throughout this period as the basis of the work of the Taskforce: the continuing exchanges of views between trade unions, community organizations, churches and liberation movement. These exchanges had far-reaching implications for ecumenical relations between Canada and South Africa. In Canada the churches' endeavour to bring into harmony their social teachings with their responsibility as investors sharpened their awareness of the social impact of corporate activity, and their own shared responsibility as co-owners of these enterprises. The churches through their Taskforce examined closely the frequent convergence of corporate and government positions favourable for the apartheid system, exposed contradictions in these policies and negotiated the necessary changes -- taking at face value the fact that all parties abhorred apartheid and wanted to end it by peaceful means.

The struggle was long and fraught with tensions between the NGOs and the government. For a very long time it failed to acknowledge the importance of the liberation movement. Though Nelson Mandela was praised, the ANC of which he was the leader was either ignored or denounced for its ideological stance. Earlier Oliver Tambo, who was the ANC's president and the outstanding unifying force during the most difficult years, was treated with disrespect.

Pratt describes in detail how time and again the Taskforce, as part of the international anti-apartheid movement, had to make well-documented interventions at the highest government and business levels to further economic sanctions in support of the defiant resistance in South Africa. And she rightly concludes that "next to the defiant resistance in South Africa, economic sanctions were the most important reason why that resistance led to negotiations that ended apartheid and to a democratically elected majority government and not to a protracted and unresolved civil war" (p.346). Churches in Canada, as elsewhere, made a sizeable contribution towards this goal and on the way -- not unimportantly -- had constantly to question themselves as to why and how, in good faith, they should be involved. This book is to be seen as an important contribution towards the overall picture of the worldwide ecumenical commitment of the churches to justice and peace in South Africa -- and it is to be hoped that churches in other countries will follow Canada's example.

Baldwin Sjollema was the first director of the WCC's Programme to Combat Racism. He was subsequently in charge of the Anti-Apartheid Programme of the International Labour Office (ILO).