75 Years Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference
Where the SACBC is today
This year the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) turns 75. For the occasion, Günther Simmermacher asked its president, Bishop
Sithembele Sipuka (pictured) about the SACBC’s achievements and challenges. Günther Simmermacher: What do you regard as the accomplishments of the SACBC in its 75-year history? Bishop Sipuka: From a pastoral perspective, I wish to note the enormous contribution of the missionaries who were at the helm of leadership and constituted a significant proportion of the personnel when the SACBC started 75 years ago. They designed methods of evangelisation. The Lumko method was the most prominent and successful one, but there were others as well. They also built the infrastructure for evangelisation, including schools, hospitals, pastoral centres, the Lumko Institute, printing press for prayer and liturgical books, farms, vocational centres and, of course, churches. This continued later under leadership that is incrementally becoming local. Lumko was maintained, and various departments to advance evangelisation were established. With time and mainly due to decreasing numbers of missionary personnel from overseas and a decline in international funding, many of these evangelisation institutions closed down. However, schools and clinics, which continue to provide excellent service and good influence, are continuing. When HIV and Aids erupted, and the South African government adopted a denialist approach to the challenge of Aids, the SACBC provided the most viable care to people infected and affected by Aids, and became the best non-governmental institution in the Conference area to offer comprehensive support and care to HIV-infected people. The last two pastoral plans of 1989 and 2020 were informed by the pastoral situations of the three countries of the
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For much of its 75 years, the SACBC had to contend with apartheid… Although at concrete levels and in some particular situations, the Church was influenced by official racism of the time — for example, in some congregations and dioceses, local black vocations were not accepted, and when they were, discriminatory attitudes and practices were meted out against them. But at the official level, the Church maintained a sustained prophetic stance, particularly in the 1970s and ’80s. When the Bantu Education system was introduced [in the 1950s], the SACBC resisted and kept its schools open. But besides that, nothing much was done by the Church about the struggle. Perhaps this was because most of the Church’s leadership was composed of missionaries from outside, some of whom did not fully appreciate what was going on or were reluctant to risk getting too involved and face deportation. However, from the 1970s, this changed. While it was illegal to have black and whites trained in one
What exactly is the SACBC?
he Southern African Bishops’ Conference comprises 28 ecclesiastical territories — five archdioceses, 21 dioceses and one vicariate — in South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. It is an association of local ordinaries (other than vicars general), their coadjutors, auxiliaries and other titular bishops who perform special work entrusted to them by the Apostolic See, or by the conference itself. The SACBC is headed by a troika, which serves once-renewable three-year terms. The current president is Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha, with Archbishop Dabula Mpako of Pretoria and Bishop Graham Rose of Dundee as vice-presidents. The bishops’ conference is primarily a consultative body and its resolutions
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Conference, and the implementation process is discussed and monitored by the SACBC. In 1989 the bishops issued a pastoral plan titled “Community Serving Humanity”. It sought to encourage ownership of the Church by the laity by living out their daily Christian call to pray and to engage on social issues from the biblical and social teaching of the Church perspective. Another milestone was the second pastoral plan, “Community Serving God, Humanity and Creation”, which we launched in 2020. It focuses again on creating well-informed Catholics about their faith and responding to social and environmental issues.
The Southern Cross
outside the cases mentioned below have no binding force on the ordinaries or their subjects, except in so far as individual ordinaries consent to support them. Decisions of the SACBC are binding only when prescribed by common law, or specified by a special mandate of the Holy See, or in response to a petition from the conference. The latter are made by a two-thirds majority of those present, and are reviewed by the Holy See. The SACBC is empowered to set up departments for the fostering of special objectives and activities in accordance with clearly defined terms of reference
but without legislative power. Their work is directed by the administrative board which acts as the standing committee of the SACBC. It includes the troika, episcopal heads of departments, and the cardinal. Based at Khanya House in Waterkloof, Pretoria, the day-to-day running of the SACBC and its departments is directed by the general secretariat. The current secretary-general is Fr Hugh O’Connor, with Sr Phuthunywa Siyali HC serving as associate secretary-general. Both were interviewed in the January 2022 issue of The Southern Cross (see inset image).
