Interview

During his visit Bishop Huddleston kindly agreed to be interviewed by the Peterite editorial team:

How did you first get involved with the struggle against apartheid?

I was sent out to Africa. I belonged to a religious community, the Community of the Resurrection. When I was a novice, it was war-time, and I was professed in 1943. At that time we had five houses in South Africa, and I was sent out to look after the whole area which is today Soweto. We had several churches and a large number of schools, and so it was a very big assignment. But I lived with the community and I had their support, and many of them had been out there for quite a while and knew a lot about it. So I was in a sense thrown in at the deep end, because I had never been to South Africa, but I knew quite a bit about it because of the work of the community there. I was placed in a very interesting area, because what is now Soweto is the most politically active part of the whole country, so I had to come to terms with it very quickly. And apartheid was the dominant issue. You couldn't avoid it, because the apartheid laws were so restrictive and destructive that people were really suffering. And these were my parishioners, so naturally I had to decide how to take action. That was how it all began.

What was the situation in South Africa before the present Nationalist Party came to power?

That's a very important question, because the present government in South Africa has been in power now for forty-two years unbroken. When it came to power I had already been in the country for five years. The war was over, the government of South Africa under General Smuts was on the winning side, and there was a tremendous feeling that there would be a move in a liberal direction. After all, the war had a lot to do with racism — Nazism was racism — and there were large numbers of refugees from Hitler's Germany in the white community, many of them Jews. They were distinguished people, doctors and so on, who had come to settle in South Africa, but they then found racism mere. Smuts, who was really the architect of the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, had been outside his own country for a long time during the war as a member of the war cabinet in Europe and then at the United Nations framing the charter. But the expected move in a liberal direction never came, and meanwhile the Nationalist Party had been preparing very carefully for the election. You've got to remember that those people who came to power in 1948 were all pro-Nazi. They had been interned during the war as actively supporting Hitler, so their racism wasn't just local. They came to power, actually, with a leader, Malan, who, looking back, was, pretty moderate. He was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, and within that context he was a reasonable person, but not in terms of his political views. And so the whole thing moved into a different gear altogether. Up till then, in the five years before the Nationalist Party came to power, there was a whole battery of laws which separated black from white, particularly the pass laws — which were the most vicious part and continued so until about three years ago — but when the present government came to power, they embarked on massive enforcement. In the first place, they expanded the security forces tremendously, so that they had control. Then they passed various laws, like the mixed marriages and immorality act, which made it a crime to marry or cohabit. But the worst of all, apart from the group areas act, which was already really in force because of the background to apartheid which defined eighty-seven per cent of the land in South Africa as white, was the Bantu Education Act. This prescribed a totally separate education for black children. They had of course never been able to go to white schools anyway, but this embodied in law an inferior form of education. It was quite openly admitted. In the debate in parliament, Verwoerd, who imposed this law said, "We've got to show the native people that they are being educated for certain forms of labour". The phrase he used was that "there are green pastures in which they have no right to graze". That was the Bantu Education Act, which has been ever since the cause of rebellion amongst the young and increasingly amongst their parents. It has led to the fiercest battles, and I can honestly say that I knew it would. When that law was passed, the then Bishop of Johannesburg and I, who had control of the church schools, closed all the schools, sooner than accept the education act. We were the only diocese that did this, and it caused a lot of rumpus, because we were accused of throwing thousands of kids on the street. It was true, but nevertheless we preferred to do it that way, and I think we've been proved to be right, because the Bantu education act has led over the last six years to the student body being at the very centre of the rebellion. Mandela said this in his first speech, in Cape Town. He paid great tribute to the young, because in effect they were saying to their parents, "You told us that if we were obedient and went to school, we would have the opportunities you didn't have. You've deceived us. It hasn't happened". And they had this great walk-out from the classrooms in 1976, when thousands of kids all over the country just walked out of their classes, refusing to accept this education. For weeks they were met with massive force: six hundred were killed, even young kids of twelve. And when the new constitution was passed by President Botha, de Klerk's predecessor, and it prescribed a tri-cameral parliament — one house for the whites, one for the coloureds, one for the Asians — with a complete right of veto in the white house and totally excluding the black majority, then the schools erupted

Many of the young blacks in South Africa have never known Nelson Mandela outside of prison. How much is he just a symbol to them, and how much is he a reality who can actually affect South Africa today?

He's both, of course. All the time he was in prison he was a reality, albeit a distant reality. His name increasingly over the years stood for everything that they were determined to achieve in terms of ultimate freedom. I think this is where the international community and the anti-apartheid movement generally had a great effect, because the world was waking up all the time to the realities of apartheid and therefore even if you were a black African in an imprisoned society — which is really what it is under apartheid — you couldn't be prevented from having world news, although under the state of emergency the government has controlled the flow of news. It's only since de Klerk's speech last month that periodicals which have been banned for years have been able to speak freely again — it's rather like Gorbachov's Soviet Union in that respect. Nevertheless, Mandela was a symbol of what they all stood for, simply by being what he is. But the African National Congress operated from outside the country under Oliver Tambo, who was Nelson Mandela's partner in law. They were the first black lawyers to practise in South Africa. Tambo happened to be a schoolmaster in a school for which I was responsible, so I have known him intimately for over thirty years. And he's been the closest to Mandela of anybody, even though he hasn't been able to correspond or meet with him. He's the person that Mandela relies on now more than any other to brief him on the way things have gone. The African National Congress had to go underground, of course, and so thousands of young blacks became refugees — otherwise they were being picked up, imprisoned and tortured, continually. It's very difficult to understand how somebody locked up in prison could be such a powerful figure, and everyone was waiting to see even what he looked like. I could remember him as a young man, but I couldn't imagine what he would look like after thirtyfive years. It was an extraordinary experience, I must say, to see him. Those years, particularly the really tough years on Robin Island, had an enormous impact on him.

The release of Nelson Mandela is a symbol of reform by the Nationalist government. How much of the reform is real, and how much is superficial?

That's the key question. At the moment not a single apartheid law has been repealed. Apartheid is still absolutely in place, in exactly the same way as it was when Mandela went to prison. So there's a long way to go, but on the other hand it's dangerous to talk of a long way to go, because that gives the government the opportunity to procrastinate over vital reforms. My fear is that the same thing will happen in South Africa as happened in Namibia. After all, it's twelve years since the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 435, which declared that the South Africans must withdraw their troops forthwith from Namibia, and the United Nations must appoint a council to supervise free elections. And South Africa agreed to that, and then delayed at every point. So it has taken twelve years, and they want the same thing in South Africa, no doubt.

Finally, do you think apartheid can be removed purely by negotiation?

Yes, I think so. That's the one hope. I believe absolutely that there are only two alternatives. Either you end apartheid by negotiation, or apartheid is ended by bloody revolution, which would be an appalling scenario. If it came to that, I don't think the international community would allow the white minority to just smash the majority by force. They could do it, because they have got sophisticated arms, but in another sense they couldn't do it, because I'm sure that the movement is as irreversible — rather more so — in South Africa as it is in Europe. It's people's power, really. I think negotiation is not only possible, but essential, and I'm sure that de Klerk and those members of his cabinet who are supportive of him will win through. I say I'm sure, and of course nobody's sure of anything in this situation, but I think there's every chance. And certainly Mandela has already shown an enormous grasp of statesmanship. It's quite incredible really, when you think he has been locked away for so long.

Thank you very much for talking to us.

Interview by Simon Gildener and Matthew Williams.