He Calms Conflicts, Saves Lives : For a S. African Bishop, Peace Mission Never Ends

Even before Bishop Simeon Nkoane had finished morning prayers with his staff, his small office here was filling with people, people with almost overwhelming problems, people for whom he represents hope in the midst of South Africa’s continuing crisis.

Samson, a student leader, was sprawled on a couch, barely conscious, apparently suffering from what friends called another of the “seizures” that have afflicted him since his prolonged detention by police earlier in the year. What can be done for him? the friends asked.

Patricia, 23, an activist from the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, was looking for refuge. She said that conservative vigilantes are trying to kill her and other militants. Can Nkoane find her a safe place to stay?

Xoliswa Falati, a community leader from Kwathema, the black township on the outskirts of Springs, 25 miles east of Johannesburg, had come into the office to warn that tensions were again rising there, that residents were angered by the security forces’ tougher policing and that suspected government collaborators and police informers could become the targets of renewed political violence. Would Nkoane intervene?

A half-dozen black youths, determined to realize their slogan of “Liberation now!” and ready to set the world on fire to end apartheid, had accompanied Falati from Kwathema. Could Nkoane talk with them, counsel them?

More calls for help came from outlying communities--from Bethal, where police have cracked down hard on black militants; from Leandra, where black vigilantes have driven many youths out of town; from Standerton, where rival black groups have been feuding; from Daggakraal, where 45,000 residents may again be threatened with confiscation of their land and incorporation into a tribal homeland. Can Nkoane come?

“What can we do?” says Nkoane, a suffragan bishop of the Anglican diocese of Johannesburg. “We must help where we can. Each of these calls for help is enough to make you cry. The pain is so heavy. Yet, we must not give in to despair. Perhaps we cannot do so much, but we cannot throw up our hands in frustration. . . . As Christians, we must act in hope.”

Throughout the turmoil of the last three years, Nkoane has been on a never-ending peace mission, and in the process he has become one of the country’s most important and influential religious leaders.

He has intervened dozens of times to calm confrontations between the police and black communities, he has saved the lives of suspected informers about to be killed by angry mobs, he has rescued youths pursued by right-wing vigilantes.

“Often it was touch-and-go for us,” he recalled during a recent interview in Springs. “At the funerals (for unrest victims) and many other very emotional meetings, the feelings ran so high that strong men quailed. . . . What fearful times we live in!”

Peaceful Change Sought

Despite the reduced level of violence in most of the country in recent months, Nkoane is as caught up as ever in the South African crisis. He works to resolve the often bitter conflicts within the black community, attempts to make whites aware of black determination to achieve full political rights, helps black youths through a crisis that affects them most of all and urges people to maintain their faith in God and hope for the future.

“I am hoping we can promote not just peace but peaceful change,” he said. “Change will come--it must come--and it is important for the people of this country that it come as quickly and peacefully as possible. . . . I fear there will be more violence, greater violence, and I grieve because of it.” He continued:

“The country seems to be on a political plateau today. The unrest has subsided somewhat, but it probably will rise again. I don’t see how the government can say that stability has been restored when it needs the army to enforce its rule and has done so little to respond to the people’s demands.

“Things are quieter, yes, but not settled down. I just hope that, when the crunch point comes, it won’t be too fierce.”

Unrest Moved East

The large area that Nkoane oversees for the Anglican church has been one of the most troubled in the country over the last three years. The black ghettos around Johannesburg’s eastern suburbs were among the first to erupt in anti-government protests in 1984, and the unrest moved progressively east, eventually reaching even remote country towns.

“Every day, we hear of things--the shooting of a youth, the bombing of an activist’s home, the disappearance of a community leader, an attack on a union organizer--and so we know that not only do the problems persist but that the government is dealing with them in the same way,” Nkoane commented.

“There may be more trouble here than, say, Soweto because the whites here are more right-wing and so there are more confrontations when some blacks, especially the youth, refused to be kicked around. . . .

“The drama is quieter today, but just as desperate. The anger is still there, greater and deeper than before. Nothing fundamental has been solved under the state of emergency. People get killed, day after day--maybe not in the same numbers, but people are still dying.

“The only difference between now and two years ago is the lack of spectacular incidents, if that is the correct term,” Nkoane said. “The police are sitting very tightly and firmly on the lid.”

Battered Communities

Using their broad powers under the state of emergency proclaimed by President Pieter W. Botha in June, 1986, the police “have flushed out a lot of the resistance, perhaps two-thirds of the most militant activists,” Nkoane explained. “Most of those youths not in detention have run away. Some are scattered around the country, but others have left the country and joined the liberation organizations (the African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania) abroad.

“Our communities are so battered by all these deaths, arrests, detentions, tortures and trials. People are weary, so weary. Some say they want to go all-out for liberation now, whatever the cost; a few say they doubt it will ever come. Most, though, remain resolute in demanding change--peaceful change, they hope, but fundamental change nonetheless.”

Nkoane, a bishop for five years, is as forthright in his condemnation of apartheid, with its racial separation and minority white rule, as are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Rev. Allan Boesak and South Africa’s other prominent churchmen. In 1985, his outspokenness resulted in two firebomb attacks on his home, which was then in Kwathema.

People Are His Priority

But Nkoane, 58, a member of the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican religious order, sees himself primarily as a pastor and not what South Africans call a “political priest.”

His first concern in a crisis is for the people involved, not their politics.

He grieves for the youths--”those brave, wonderful children”--who have died in the protests of the last three years, and his heart aches for their parents.

He has found himself consoling the families of those killed on both sides of the internecine battles that have flared in the black communities around Johannesburg. His speeches, even at political meetings, tend to be homilies or reflections on personal experiences, not high-flown rhetoric.

After saving a man about to be burned to death by a mob who believed him to be a police informer, Nkoane drove him to a hospital for medical treatment, wondering only a few hours later who the man was and what he might have done.

Crisis Intervention

“As a Christian, I cannot stand aside while a person is killed or brutalized in any way,” he explained at the time, “regardless of who he may be.”

Even when he sees the young white conscripts patrolling townships such as Kwathema, Nkoane tends to sympathize, commenting that “those holding the gun are often more frightened than those they face.”

And so, throughout his huge area of church responsibility, the word is, “Call Bishop Simeon” whenever a crisis arises.

“People come because they know Bishop Simeon will help,” said Meshack Nkabinde, one of his assistants. “In the often tragic situations in which our people find themselves so frequently, the only institution that can help is the church. . . .

“The challenge to us is to do something when everything, in fact, appears quite hopeless. We can’t let the people down--that’s a heavy burden--and we can’t let them fall into despair.”

Special Mission

Nkoane arranged through a physician friend for Samson’s urgent hospitalization that day. Nkabinde found “an interim sanctuary” for Patricia. Visits by Nkoane and Cansi Lisa, another assistant, were arranged for Kwathema, Standerton, Leandra and Bethal, and on Sunday he went to Daggakraal for two confirmation services.

The youths, whom Nkoane regards as his special mission, required more effort.

“Everywhere we feel oppression,” said Monwabisi Mgobo, 22, wearing a T-shirt that said, “10 Fighting Years,” a reference to the 1976 student uprising here. “We have an illegitimate, corrupt government, and this has turned this whole society corrupt. . . .

“Today, they say they want to negotiate--negotiate, not change--but that is language of compromise and defeat. The only political language in South Africa should be action, action now.”

A 90-minute counseling session followed--part astute political observations, part urgings to show “a revolutionary perspective and discipline,” part brotherly advice. Nkoane launched the meeting, and then Lisa, a former prisoner on the penal colony of Robben Island, and Nkabinde, a community leader from Leandra, debated the strategy and tactics for “the struggle” against apartheid.

“These youths are the future leaders of the country, and we try to educate them politically, to rationalize their natural radicalism and to channel it into constructive activities,” Lisa said.

‘Intense Frustrations’

Nkabinde added that they would like to run regular workshops to train the youths as community leaders and to deal with “their intense and maybe dangerous frustrations,” but find it impossible under current emergency regulations.

“They have a deep hatred for apartheid and everyone and everything associated with it,” Nkabinde said. “We worry that this will consume them.”

The Oxford-educated Nkoane describes the young black militants he has known as “intelligent, courageous, beautiful, often quite extraordinary.” Like the priest who inspired him, the legendary Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, now in his 70s but still leader of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, he takes a special interest in youth.

In a prayer he composed this year for the nation’s children, Nkoane wrote: “Loving Father, . . . have pity on the youth of South Africa, who in the quest for freedom and a better future have been shot at, maimed and killed, have fled from their homes and forsaken their country. Sustain them in all danger. Give them your wisdom and protection, and let their every sacrifice yield peace, justice and freedom in their day.”

Although he shies from public attention and prefers to work quietly, Nkoane allows himself to be the focus of community efforts to resolve problems to build momentum, and he has increasingly spoken out on behalf of those whose voice would not be heard.

Today, he is trying to increase concern, particularly on the part of whites, for what he sees as the two most serious social problems in the black community--unemployment and homelessness.

Anger Grows

“The homeless number in the thousands in every (black) township, with most living in shacks in the backyards of other people,” he said. “For 10 years, from 1968 to 1978, almost no houses were built in the townships, and now only about 10% of what we need go up each year. This lack of housing contributes very materially to the problems we have today, to the people’s anger and to the violence.”

Widespread unemployment similarly adds to black anger, Nkoane said. “Even in boom years, there are always a million or so blacks unemployed--imagine a million men without work--and the economy is not growing fast enough to create jobs for the young people finishing school,” he said. “A high school graduate might wait two or three years to get a job stacking cans at a supermarket or running errands at an office. . . .

“There is a real social pathology developing. Without jobs, our people lose some of their self-worth and grow angrier by the day, and without homes, they are losing their sense of being a family. . . . And, when the day comes when we are free, what kind of country will we have if this continues?”