No church in South Africa is exempt from the duty to confess its actions under apartheid, according to Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and now chairman of the nation's official Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which is investigating gross human rights violations committed during the apartheid regime.
Archbishop Tutu was speaking on 17 November, at the start of three days of TRC hearings for religious organisations. Representatives of Christian churches and related organisations, as well as leaders of the Jewish, Hindu and Muslim faiths and African traditional churches, travelled to the coastal city of East London to give testimony to the TRC about how they had suffered under apartheid and how they had fought or supported it. They also put forward suggestions for national reconciliation.
Representatives of some churches told the TRC this week that they had in word or deed opposed apartheid, but had not done enough to support their beliefs. Others admitted they had been blinded by the regime's propaganda, and had not made any concerted effort to oppose the heresy of apartheid because the anti-apartheid activists were "Communists". All had to some degree tolerated apartheid practices in their own structures, they said.
Archbishop Tutu said on 17 November that those confessing were not supposed to confess the sins of others, nor justify themselves. "You are meant to say what went wrong with yourself," said the Nobel Peace laureate. "South Africa is a very religious country. Religion is not necessarily a good thing and not necessarily a bad thing."
Initially, the TRC, which began its hearings in May last year, heard admissions of abuses from individual perpetrators, but then began special hearings for groups.
During last week's hearings, Archbishop Tutu, who was one of South Africa's pre-eminent anti-apartheid clerical leaders, personally apologised for "Christians' arrogance".
At the start of the second day of hearings, at which Jewish, Hindu and Muslim representatives testified, he said: "I would want to, and I am sure all my fellow Christians would want to, apologise to members of the other faiths for our arrogance as Christians.
"For so long, we behaved as if we were the only religious faith in this country, when in fact from the year dot we have been a multi-faith society."
Non-Christian faiths had, for instance, received almost no airtime on radio and television, he said.
"We claim arrogantly, a claim that is difficult to justify, that this is a Christian country. I've never known what is meant by that, unless we are merely claiming that the majority of the country are Christians.
"The experience we have had in the world is that those who have claimed to be these [Christian countries] have not usually excelled.
"Christians do not have the monopoly on God. To acknowledge the reality of the existence of other faiths does not mean you, as a Christian, need to compromise on the tenets that you hold dear," Archbishop Tutu told those present.
Anglican Church Apologises to Archbishop Desmond
The Anglican Church in South Africa last week apologised to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for failing to support him in the apartheid days of 1980, when he called for economic sanctions against the South African government.
The Rt Revd Michael Nuttall, speaking for the Church, made the apology at the start of the three-day hearings. Bishop Nuttall said that, though the Church had earlier condemned apartheid, it came out in favour of sanctions only in 1989.