Activist Review
Religion & Struggle
Review by Clayton Ramey
The Spirit of Freedom: South African Leaders on Religion and Politics. By Charles Villa-Vicencio. University of California Press, 1996; 300 pages, $14.95 paper, $40.00 cloth.

WHAT COULD a dedicated member of the South African Communist Party possibly say about the redeeming character of religion in the struggle for freedom and justice? Quite a bit, indeed.

Consider the words of Cheryl Carolus, a young (39 years old), brilliant and tested South African Communist Party member whom Nelson Mandela referred to s a future African National Congress leader and a possible successor to the present South African Minister of Health. Raised in a Black, working-class family with "ordinary, conservative, family values," she makes this observation about the role of religion in the formation of her socialist political ideology:
Socialism is the logical outworking of the New Testament ethic. I challenge anyone to show me otherwise. Indeed, to the extent that I understand other religious beliefs, I would argue that it is the necessary consequence of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and most other faiths.

But Carolus is not alone in her integration of the dimension of spirituality into her identity as an activist. In The Spirit of Freedom, Charles Villa-Vicencio, Professor of Religion and Society at the University of Capetown, has compiled 21 richly diverse and insightful interviews with some of the remarkable leaders of anti-Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa. They are white, Black and "colored," actively religious and adamantly atheist, young and old, Christian and Muslim and Jew and Hindu. Some, like South African Communist Party leaders Chris Hani and Joe Slovo (both of whom died after the interviews were done) were prominent figures in Umkonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, and openly engaged in armed struggle against the racist state. Others, like Bishop Desmond Tutu (who expresses his genuine admiration for Hani and Slovo despite his differences with communism), embrace the liberating value of the cross in the context of a genuinely nonviolent and nonracialist struggle for social justice.

And there are Ibrahim Rasool and Ela Gandhi. Rasool, a Western Cape religious Muslim of "mixed race" who is also an official of the ANC, speaks in his interview of his political evolution as an activist with the Azanian Students Organization, his fidelity to the ethical and moral groundings of Islam and his determination to interpret Islam in a nonsexist and socially liberating context. Gandhi, a granddaughter of Mohandas Gandhi and a practicing Hindu, has also embraced both the ANC and the South African Communist Party.

In these interviews, Professor Villa-Vicencio has brought us glimpses of the new South Africa through the eyes,and hearts,of some of its most compelling figures. While some of the subjects, like Nobel Laureates Mandela, Tutu, Slovo and Nadine Gordimer, are international heroes, others are less well known. But all of these women and men offer personal stories and insights that give us a clearer vision of the South African freedom struggle.

There is a common thread,suffering,that is woven through virtually all of these interviews: These men and women have suffered imprisonment, physical torture, agonizing separation from loved ones, political repression, and isolation and ostracism from community, especially in the case of Slovo, Beyers Naude and other radically anti-racist whites who broke ranks with Apartheid to embrace the freedom struggle of the Black majority.

But while they speak of sadness and tribulation, there is a spirit of reconciliation that permeates some of the stories. And if you want some serious revolutionary inspiration, read this book, especially the interviews with Albertina "Mama" Sisulu, wife of ANC leader Walter Sisulu, and Frank Chicane, head of the South African Council of Churches, who vividly describes being beaten into unconsciousness during police interrogation.

For secular activists, some of the personal declarations of spiritual grounding in The Spirit of Freedom may seem less useful reading than the meat of political discourse and ideological obsrvations about the South African reality. That’s O.K., because the book (including its short but informative introduction) gives a worthwhile synopsis of some important political elements of the anti-Apartheid struggle. And there are fascinating (and often incongruent) biographical tidbits (like Chris Hani’s early flirtation with the Catholic priesthood and Slovo’s education as a young, religious Jew from Lithuania).

But there is also something empowering about the faith of these activists,even the faith of the atheists,and about their conscious effort to magnify a social gospel of liberation for all the people of South Africa. The Spirit of Freedom is an important contribution to our understanding of that gospel, with political insights and moral lessons that apply both to the living history of South Africa and to our own struggle for nonviolent social justice.

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
January-February 1997: [Unearthing Guatemala’s Disappeared] [Serbia "Will Never be the Same"] [International YouthPeace Week] [Activist News] [Review: Religion & Struggle]

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