wfn.org | Mandela Asks WCC to Make Africa's Development Its Next Goal

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16-December-1998 
98427 
 
    Mandela Asks WCC to Make Africa's 
    Development Its Next Goal 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Nelson Mandela today made a passionate appeal 
to the World Council of Churches to give the same solidarity to the 
struggle for development and the entrenchment of democracy in Africa that 
it gave to liberation movements fighting white rule in southern Africa. 
 
    Accompanied by Zimbabwean president Dr. Robert Mugabe, to the music of 
the Imilonji KaNtu Choral Society, a choir long associated with the African 
National Congress, President Mandela received a rapturous reception from 
more than 3000 participants at the celebrations. Nelson Mandela has long 
had the support of the ecumenical movement and of major churches, and 
today, as on previous occasions, he expressed his deep gratitude to the 
WCC. 
 
    His visit was by far the most electrifying event of the WCC's eighth 
assembly, which ends tomorrow. 
 
    The guest of honor at a ceremony today marking the 50th anniversary of 
the WCC's foundation, President Mandela praised the WCC for "activating the 
conscience of the world for peace and on behalf of the poor, the 
disadvantaged and the dispossessed." 
 
    One of the most controversial programs of the WCC's 50-year history has 
been its Program to Combat Racism, launched in 1969, and the special fund 
from which humanitarian grants were given to liberation movements in 
southern Africa. The grants were frequently criticized 
because they were made directly to liberation movements engaged in armed 
struggle. 
 
    "Your support exemplified in the most concrete way the contribution 
that religion has made to our liberation, from the days when religious 
bodies took responsibility for the education of the oppressed because it 
was denied to us by our rulers, to support for our liberation struggle," 
President Mandela, one of southern Africa's foremost anti-apartheid 
champions, told the gathering. 
 
    "To us in South and southern Africa, and indeed the entire continent, 
the WCC has always been known as a champion of the oppressed and the 
exploited. 
 
    "On the other hand, the name of the WCC struck fear in the hearts of 
those who ruled our country during the inhuman days of apartheid," 
President Mandela, who was imprisoned from 1962  until 1990 for his 
struggled against apartheid, told at the WCC assembly. 
 
    "To mention your name was to incur the wrath of the authorities. To 
indicate support for your views was to be labeled an enemy of the state." 
 
    President Mandela, who was inaugurated as South Africa's president on 
May 10, 1994, after 
the country's first non-racial elections, told the assembly that "the 
eradication of poverty and underdevelopment" was central to the challenge 
of the new millennium. 
 
    "My own continent of Africa dreams of an African renaissance in which, 
through reconstruction and development, we will overcome the legacy of a 
devastating past and ensure that peace, human rights, democracy, growth and 
development are a living reality for all Africans." 
 
    President Mandela's visit to Harare for the WCC's 50th anniversary 
celebrations was announced only on Friday Dec. 11. Originally his deputy, 
Thabo Mbeki, had been scheduled to participate. 
 
    Linking the struggle against apartheid with the struggle for 
development, President Mandela  told the assembly: "Thirty years ago you 
launched a program that broke new ground and set new directions for the 
future. 
 
    "You moved beyond the affirmation of the right to resist on the part of 
oppressed, to the risk of active engagement in the struggle to end 
oppression. 
 
    "Today the WCC is called upon to show that same engagement in the new 
and more difficult struggle for development and the entrenchment of 
democracy." 

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