5: Arrival at Rustenburg

5.1 Did the comments received on Kerk en Samelewing 1986 result in a revision of the policy document?

5.1.1 ...

5.1.2 ...

5.1.3 The revised document, Kerk en Samelewing 1990, reiterated that "the church may not prescribe political models to the government, but it will, by virtue of its prophetic function, continue to test every existing and proposed political model against Biblical principles and norms" [translation] (par 275).

5.1.4 A fairly comprehensive resolution was adopted on apartheid (par 278-288). It reads:

• "In the evaluation of apartheid the church is confronted with strong and emotionally-laden differences. While a part of the white population considers it a just way to protect the identity and the best interests of the different polulation groups in the country, others perceive it as a racist and oppressive system which protects and promotes the interests of the white minority to the detriment of the majority of the population. Consequently, numerous churches condemn it as unchristian and sinful. Apartheid is condemned by states and political institutions worldwide as a form of racism and a transgression against humanity.
• "The Dutch Reformed Church realises that the ideal and policy of apartheid took form and shape over a long period in our history. There were also honest and noble intentions by those concerned to achieve the optimal development of all population groups within the framework of their own cultural traditions.
• "It would also be unreasonable to brand as wrong and bad everything which took place within the political structure of apartheid and to deny the positive developments achieved in various fields.
• In principle the right and freedom of peoples to preserve and promote their own cultural and other values are acknowledged as integral to human rights, provided that the rights and freedom of others are not affected thereby, and the biblical demand to love one's neighbour and to accept one's fellow man are not negated.
• "The Dutch Reformed Church, however, acknowledges that for too long it has adjudged the policy of apartheid on the abovenamed grounds too' abstractly and theoretically, and therefore too uncritically. The Dutch Reformed Church had not sufficiently perceived that apartheid as a system had inter alia in its struggle against integration also received an ideological and ethnocentric basis. The right and freedom to remain true to one's own cultural heritage was extended to become a political ideology of apartheid as a system for the protection of the white minority's own interests to the detriment of others. Love for one's own often took the shape of racism and was expressed in legal and structural terms.
• "While the Dutch Reformed Church over the years seriously and persistently sought the will of God and His Word for our society, the church made the error of allowing forced separation and division of peoples in its own circle to be considered a Biblical imperative. The Dutch Reformed Church should have distanced itself much earlier from this view and admits and confesses its neglect.
• "Gradually it became clear to the Dutch Reformed Church that the policy of apartheid as a political system in practice went much further than the acknowledgment of the right and freedom of all peoples and cultural groups to stay true to their own values. Apartheid began to function in such a way that the largest part of the population of the country experienced it as an oppressive system which through the forced separation of peoples was in reality favouring one group wrongfully above the others. In this way the human dignity of one's fellow man became adversely affected and was in conflict with the principles of love and righteousness.
• "Any system which in practice functions in this way is unacceptable in the light of Scripture and the Christian conscience and must be rejected as sinful. Any attempt by a church to try to defend such a system biblically and ethically must be seen as a serious fallacy, that is to say it is in conflict with the Bible.
• "The Dutch Reformed Church wants to state clearly that it condemns all forms of discrimination and the suppression of peoples and wholeheartedly desires that all will be free to share in the privileges of the fatherland and will receive reasonable and equal opportunities to acquire prosperity and riches.
• "The church has, above all, compassion for the poverty and suffering of large numbers of people in our country and declares that it is prepared to co-operate in an ecclesiastical way in attempts to relieve the present need and to make it possible for all people in our country to have a better future.
• "The church, however, is convinced that a satisfactory political solution is necessary for the social problems which exist at present, and therefore urges all political leaders to co-operate in a responsible way to find a political dispensation which will ensure freedom, justice and a decent existence for all."

5.2 Was the Dutch Reformed Church parroting the decisions taken in 1990 by the then Government?

5.2.1 The resolutions by the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church as set out above followed eight months after the speech on 2 February 1990 by the then state president, Mr FW de Klerk, when he unbanned several political organisations and thereby announced the end of the apartheid era in South Africa. It might seem that the Dutch Reformed Church was following in the tracks of the National Party with its decisions on apartheid, amongst other things. However, it is a fact that the Dutch Reformed Church had, as indicated, already clearly articulated its views in this regard in 1986, and they were taken further in 1990. In addition, the recommendations on changes which were to be proposed in respect of Kerk en Samelewing 1986 had already been finalised on 6 November 1989, some considerable time before the sitting of the synod scheduled for October 1990. It would therefore be unfair to allege that in taking these decisions the church was merely failing into line with what the government of the day had already done.

At the same time, there was broad concurrence, and also interaction, as thinking on societal issues developed, and it is true that certain convictions were arrived at more or less simultaneously at various levels of the Afrikaans community.

5.3 On whose initiative was the Rustenburg Conference of Churches convened?

5.3.1 The Conference of Churches at Rustenburg took place in November 1990. In some respects it was an event comparable to the Cottesloe conference 30 years before. The initiative for such a meeting of South African churches came from the state president, Mr FW de Klerk, who was following up a suggestion from Prof Heyns, moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church General Synod of 1986. In his 1989 Christmas message De Klerk said that he would like to hear what the churches jointly had to say to the government and the country about the situation in South Africa. It soon became obvious that his involvement in convening such a conference would be a problem for some churches. He then stepped back and a committee of Christian leaders was formed under the chairmanship of Dr Louw Alberts and Pastor Frank Chikane. They succeeded in getting representatives of 80 churches in South Africa to the conference in the Bushveld. The four official delegates of the Dutch Reformed Church were Prof PC Potgieter, moderator of the General Synod of 1990, and Drs P Rossouw, DJ Hattingh and FM Gaum. Two Dutch Reformed Church academics, Profs JA Heyns and WD Jonker, attended the conference as speakers.

5.4 How did the "Rustenburg confession" of the Dutch Reformed Church come about?

5.4.1 At the end of his speech, Jonker, of the Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch, declared: "I confess before you and before God not just my own sin and guilt, and my personal responsibility for the political, social, economic and structural injustices under which you and our entire country are still suffering, but 1 also venture to do so vicariously on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church, of which 1 am a member, and for the Afrikaners. 1 am at liberty to do so because at its last General Synod the Dutch Reformed Church declared apartheid a sin and acknowledged guilt for its own omission, in that it did not long ago warn against apartheid and distance the church from it." [translation]

After Jonker's speech, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of the Anglican Church said, of his own accord, that he accepted the confession of guilt and had no doubts about its sincerity.

5.4.2 Potgieter, leader of the Dutch Reformed Church delegation, told the conference the following day: "The delegation of the Dutch Reformed Church wishes to state unequivocally that we fully associate ourselves with Prof Jonker's statement on the position of this church. In fact, he was conveying the decisions of our General Synod in Bloemfontein. We would like to see the Synod's decisions as the basis for reconciliation with all people and all churches.

"The question of restitution after confession has also been raised. The minutes of our Synod show clearly that we have already begun a process of restitution, both in our relationship with our own Family of Dutch Reformed Churches and in our relationship with South African society as a whole." [translation]

After Potgieter's declaration Tutu went to the podium, as he had the previous day, and said that he had been subjected to a great deal of criticism for accepting Jonker's confession of guilt. He had been asked what authority he had to do that.

Some church figures also felt that the guilt of the Dutch Reformed Church could not be forgiven so easily, he said. But he had no doubts: if guilt was confessed, the Lord would forgive - and Christians should forgive one another similarly. Up to seventy times seven, said the Lord Jesus.

5.5 ...

5.6 What was the reaction in Dutch Reformed Church ranks to the "Rustenburg confession"?

5.6.1 The Rustenburg conference caused great disquiet in ecclesiastical ranks (just like Cottesloe three decades earlier) and this led to a special meeting of the General Synodal Commission. The GSC criticised both Jonker and the Dutch Reformed Church delegation to the Rustenburg conference because in their statements they "had not referred to the full context of the synod's decisions" and explained: "This could have caused confusion amongst members." [translation]

5.6.2 In its statement after the meeting the GSC reiterated the resolution on apartheid by the General Synod and said: "The General Synod came to the conclusion that in the light of the Scriptures and Christian conscience, apartheid - and this would also apply to any other system which functioned similarly in practice - was unacceptable and, being sinful, should be rejected. The GSC wishes to point out that the General Synod was judging apartheid within a qualified context and rejected the apartheid thus defined as sinful." [translation] (Die Kerkbode, 14 December 1990)

5.6.4 As a result of the prominent media coverage given to the Rustenburg Conference of Churches and what followed, these events became, in the public mind, the time and place of the Dutch Reformed Church's confession of guilt for apartheid, rather than the General Synod a few months earlier, where it actually happened officially. In a certain sense the Dutch Reformed Church's "journey with apartheid" ended with the "arrival at Rustenburg".

5.6.5 A leading article in Die Kerkbode of 16 November 1990 described the confession of guilt as follows: "For the Dutch Reformed Church the confession of guilt at the General Synod of 1990, and its communication to the Rustenburg Conference of Churches, was a moment of liberation.

"Now everyone who needs to know does know: the official Dutch Reformed Church acknowledges that apartheid is a sin and confesses that its part in enforcing and upholding apartheid was wrong.

"Confessing one's guilt is never easy: not to God, nor to one's husband or wife or child, nor to another people or another church. But, as long as it is done in the name of Christ, one will always receive forgiveness from God and, fortunately, often from other people as well - and even from other churches. This happened last week at Rustenburg in a moving, unforgettable way. The fact that Archbishop Desmond Tutu - often regarded, on account of his highly controversial statements, as an archopponent of the Dutch Reformed Church - played a part made it all the more remarkable.

"The Dutch Reformed Church knows that confession of guilt inevitably leads to restitution - the putting right of the wrong that was done. The church already began to attend to that with some of its resolutions at the General Synod of 1990. This will continue in future. Meanwhile, we shall also continue to thank the Lord for the many good and right things done by the Dutch Reformed Church in the past, things which truly served to honour and glorify His Name." [translation]

5.7 Were ecumenical doors flung open to the Dutch Reformed Church after the Rustenburg conference?

5.7.1 Although many churches were willing - and eager - to hold bilateral discussions with the Dutch Reformed Church after the Rustenburg Conference of Churches, one important ecumenical door remained closed: that to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), which still upheld its suspension of the Dutch Reformed Church's membership. In March 1993, however, the WARC sent a delegation to South Africa to consult with South African member churches and with the Dutch Reformed Church in Johannesburg.

The purpose was "to obtain first-hand information about the process of unification which has started in the family of Dutch Reformed Churches ... Above all, the papers and discussions addressed themselves to the question of whether or not the Dutch Reformed Church has complied with the requirement of the WARC general council in Ottawa, 1982" (Milan Opocensky: Introduction to Farewell to apartheid?, p 5).

5.7.2 The Dutch Reformed Church delegation (Profs PC Potgieter, JA Heyns and PGJ Meiring and Dr FM Gaum) reacted at the end of the consultation with a statement which attempted to bring fresh clarity on the Dutch Reformed Church position on apartheid. This statement, which was endorsed by the General Synod of 1994 (Handelinge [Proceedings] of the General Synod 1994, p 443), includes the following:

• "The DRC has acknowledged that apartheid, as it was theologically justified and supported by the DRC, has largely contributed to a situation of unequal, unjust distribution of economic resources, which has led to the serious discrepancy in income, standard of living, unequal education and training between White and Black. The DRC has above all, compassion for the poverty and suffering of large numbers of people in our country and declares that it is prepared to co-operate in an ecclesiastical way in attempts to relieve the present need.
• "The per annum expenditure of the DRC for subsidising the ministry of the other members of the DRC family, rose from R17 405 397 (1986) to R22 743 429 (1990) to approximately R26 280 000 (1992).
• "There has been a notable willingness within the Family of Dutch Reformed Churches to work together in addressing especially the enormous poverty and unemployment in SA. An assignment of the 1982 General Synod of the DRC, to strive towards a mutual Diaconate across its own borders, seems to be suddenly viable ...
• "Many congregations of the DRC throughout SA are involved in the creating of informal settlements and they are busy helping the people to escape from their 'poverty culture' by means of food and clothing and even legal assistance. The consulting rooms of the social workers of the DRC are open to all people in need. A lot of effort goes into the training of volunteers in the initiating of community development.
• "The DRC is committed to the dismantling of the system of apartheid in both church and politics. In our frequent discussions with political leaders we are candid about it and we have handed our General Synod's 'Declaration of Christian Principles' to, amongst others, Pres FW de Klerk, Mr N Mandela and Dr M Buthelezi.
• "Lastly, we want to assure this consultation that the DRC is committed to the unity of the DIRC family. We agree with the statement that this is the acid test whether the DIRC has finally distanced itself from the racism of apartheid and we are willing to be part of this process."

5.7.3 At that stage, however, the WARC was not yet persuaded that the suspension should be lifted. (The matter will again be on the WARC's agenda at its general assembly in Debrecan, Hungary in August 1997.)