South African bishops back Dutch apartheid split

THE CATHOLIC bishops of South Africa have supported a statement by 123 white Dutch Reformed leaders asking for an end to apartheid.
"With all my heart I say 'thank God' for the 123 ministers and officials of the Dutch Reformed Church who have so clearly and courageously proclaimed their Christian witness," said Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, speaking on behalf of the Southern African Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Archbishop Hurley is president of the conference which includes the bishops of South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.
The statement by the Dutch Reformed leaders has caused widespread controversy in South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church is the largest white religious body in the country, with 1.5 million members, and its members dominate the National Party which heads the white-minority government. The church has separate black, mixed-race and Indian branches, three other race groups defined by South African law.
A social order built on racial separation "is unacceptable because it alienates the nation's races," said the Dutch Reformed leaders' statement. They criticized laws which prohibiting mixed marriages and which require the races to live apart. "The laws which have become symbols of this alienation cannot be defended scripturally."
Laws forcing relocation of blacks, the payment of lower wages, inadequate housing and poor education "cannot be reconciled with biblical demands for justice and human dignity," the statement added. Five of the signatories were white Dutch Reformed ministers living in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
Other Dutch Reformed leaders criticized publication of the statement and said it should have been privately circulated for internal church debate. J.H.P. Serfontein, a religious journalist on the South African newspaper Rand Daily Mail, called the
statement "a passionate scriptural challenge of the most sacred belief on which the structure of Afrikaaner nationalism has been built for more than 40 years."
Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, said unrest would continue until all South Africans shared in political power.
In a report to the council, Bishop Tutu, a black, called for the abolition of restrictions on black movement within the country, detentions without trial and banning orders.
Banning orders are government decrees restricting the public activities of people or organizations considered a threat to national security and usually include severely limiting the area in which the banned person can move.
One person under a banning order is Fr Smangaliso Mkhatswa, secretary of the Southern African Conference of Catholic Bishops. Last May the government extended the banning order of Fr Mkhatswa, a black, for another three years.
The extension was protested against by 1,000 parishioners from four churches in black townships. They called it an example of moral and spiritual starvation and asked the government to prove that the priest was guilty of a crime.
The decreee extending the banning order said the action was taken because "you (Fr Mkhatswa) engage in activities which endanger or are calculated to endanger the maintenance of public order." It did not say what the activities were.
In August 1976 he was arrested and detained until the end of the year for allegedly disturbing public order. A five-year banning order was issued against him on June 4, 1977. He was arrested again in October 1977 after protesting the banning of 16 community organizations and was held without trial until March 1978.
The Catholic bishops have defended his actions and asked the government to lift the banning order.