In the Easter story, we hear from a number of writers that two days after the execution of their spiritual leader, two or three women visit his tomb to anoint his body, only to find the stone which has sealed it has been rolled away and the tomb is empty.
In a country in which those who identify as Christian make up the majority, this resurrection narrative helps us to draw hope and courage for the future.
This is despite the fact that, looking around us, it is easy to despair. Too many South Africans cannot find a way out of the tomb of poverty to live lives of dignity and hope. We are experiencing a near-biblical vortex of greed and corruption in which the unscrupulous steal from the poor and swallow the hope of ending inequality. Incompetence leads to bad governance, and money that is available to improve people’s lives goes unspent. Too many South Africans are shut up in tombs of community violence, gangsterism and fear, while others are trapped in toxic relationships and live with the horror of domestic violence.
Do our politicians offer any hope? You would think that if they were truly focused on the wellbeing of their constituents they could overcome their differences enough to collaborate in coalition governments to put an end to corruption and provide decent services. But instead they play in-again-out-again revolving doors, changing mayors and speakers the way other people change their socks.
The hope of Easter is represented by the rolling of a stone away from a tomb, and we can seize on that hope in South Africa today by rolling away the stones that entomb our society
The trickle of disconnected announcements on investigations arising from the theft of money from the president’s Phala Phala farm still hasn’t explained satisfactorily why such large amounts of money weren’t banked, and the ANC’s refusal to allow a parliamentary inquiry is reminiscent of the cover-ups of the Zuma administration. If we are to build the nation we want, one based on transparency and honesty, the president needs to give us a single comprehensive account of what happened and why it happened.
The hope of Easter is represented by the rolling of a stone away from a tomb, and we can seize on that hope in South Africa today by rolling away the stones that entomb our society in order that we might have life, and have it abundantly. I like to think that the radical American civil rights leader and gay activist, Bayard Rustin, had this in mind when he wrote that “every community needs a group of angelic troublemakers”.
Who could step up to be the angelic troublemakers of South Africa today? I believe we should be urging the young people of our country to dig deep into the radical roots of the old struggle against apartheid and to take up what I call “the new struggle”, a new struggle for a new generation, a struggle to regain our moral compass, a struggle to end economic inequity, a struggle to bring about equality of opportunity and realise the promises of our constitution.
History is replete with moments when people failed to read the signs of the times and paid the penalty, sitting on the sidelines watching their societies fall apart and become ungovernable failed states. But it is also replete with moments when active citizens, especially young people, seized the day and brought about real transformation. We saw it during the North African spring of a decade ago, when the people of Tunisia rose up and others across the region followed them. We saw its potential when students campaigned for fees to fall in South Africa.
Recently I have been encouraged to see how young people, such as the writer Panashe Chigumadzi, supported by the philosopher Cornel West, have been rediscovering the radical roots of Desmond Tutu and his support for the Black Consciousness Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. I know that some of us fear that talk of revolution implies violence, and most of us deplore the rhetoric which we heard before the EFF’s attempt to shut the country down last month, in which tyres displayed on social media ahead of protests were described as “tools of trade”. But, as earlier generations of South Africans demonstrated in the defiance campaigns of the early 1950s and late 1980s, it is possible to wage a revolutionary struggle in a disciplined and dignified manner, one that is all the more powerful because it is waged peacefully. There is no place for violence in a constitutional democracy.
South Africans do not have to continue on our current path. By adopting the new struggle, we can inspire the multitudes of disillusioned young people who despise politicians, who spurn politics and who won’t even register to vote but instead pursue a rampant consumerism because we have failed to give them a vision which would attract them to public service. Let us urge them to organise in their communities, as well as regionally and nationally. Let us urge them to register with the Electoral Commission and then campaign to rejuvenate our politics.
The resurrection narrative challenges us to work for justice unceasingly. Once we have rolled the stones of our many graves away, we have a commitment to ensure that the poor, the exploited and the misgoverned are never dragged back to tombs, to history’s worst examples of people’s inhumanity to others.
Last week I travelled to rural areas of the Eastern Cape and Lesotho to visit the widows of those killed by police at the Marikana mine in 2012. There, I am pleased to say, a delegation representing Reimagine SA, the Sibanye-Stillwater mining house, the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute and the mine labour group TEBA — supported by kings and local chiefs, especially King Ndamase Ndamase of the AmaMpondo — have implemented a programme to provide various forms of assistance to those widows and their families.
As people of faith we also have a commitment to work unceasingly for peace in the 40 or more places in the world ravaged by war, unsettled by hatred and denied a future by the greed and power lust of a few. I have visited some of those areas of war and violence, notably Ukraine last December. We need to continue calling on all those caught up in conflict to give peace a chance, since the only people who gain from war are those who manufacture and supply weapons. Everyone else suffers to the point of death.
• Makgoba is the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and president of the South African Council of Churches. This is an edited excerpt from his Easter sermon
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