The
Oprah South African Leadership Project provides cross-cultural
immersion and international exposure through travel
and study in South Africa for Morehouse College students.
In the future, it will involve an exchange of students
between Morehouse and South Africa, and will encompass
ethical leadership training and community service
in both Atlanta and South Africa.
May 24, 2005
 Black
Christian activists who demonstrated against apartheid
found solace in their beliefs. Many times, their churches
and youth groups were leaders in the anti-apartheid
movement.
It was after apartheid that they reached a crossroads.
As
whites fled their neighborhoods and churches for the
suburbs, and people of color began to move into neighborhoods
where they were once banned, black clergy wanted to
take a different kind of gospel to the impoverished
black townships. The message would still be based
in the biblical tradition, but now would reflect the
economic, social and political needs of South Africa's
black population.
"We
need to liberate our own psyche," says Eddie
Makue, deputy general secretary for the South African
Council of Churches (SACC), of apartheid's lingering
legacy. "We need to liberate our minds because
apartheid taught us that we were inadequate."
Today, Makue welcomed Morehouse College and Butler
University groups to Khoto House, which literally
means "House of Peace." It was once a safe
haven for anti-apartheid activists and is now home
to a number of different businesses and organizations,
including SACC.
Four
black men—all South African leaders of the Christian
faith—gave different perspectives on what it
meant to live as a Christian during apartheid and
what they're doing today to level the playing field
for South Africa's blacks. But the difficult question
is how does one go about bringing a remedy to the
mental and spiritual implications of apartheid?
"How
do you repair the damage done? How do you repair the
image of a child's mother being picked up at two o'clock
in the morning and dragged into the police station
or witnessing a parent's death?" asks Makue.
 The
Rev. Desmond Lesajane heads the Ecumenical Service
for Socioeconomic Transformation (ESSET), established
by SACC specifically to help churches look at economic
matters. Lesajane notes that the biggest challenges
that face South Africa are around issues of economics.
"There
must be something wrong with an economy that has been
growing steadily for the past 20 years while the amount
of poverty is rising," he says. “The rich
are getting filthy rich and the poor are getting poorer."
Lesajane says South Africa's unemployment rate hovers
at 29 percent, a figure South Africa President Thabo
Mbeke questions as much as he does the issue of poverty
in the country. But, counters Lesajane, there are
two economies: the first, a formal established one
run by whites; the second largely rural and operated
by blacks. While the first economy is dominated by
large corporations, the second economy exemplifies
what Lesajane calls "the casualization of labor"
or an informal labor market such as the men who wash
cars when they stop at robots, which are what South
Africans call their traffic lights.
Molefi
Tsele, SACC general secretary, is concerned that,
though the government is moving in the right direction
in correcting wrongs of the past, race and economics
are the last frontiers that stand in the way of South
Africa's full recovery. But race and class aren't
just political issues, they also are issues of morality.
"Morality…is
humanity, it is compassion," Tsele says. "At
its core, it is good neighborliness."
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