Episcopal Press and News
Soweto Youth Turn To Church
Episcopal News Service. November 7, 1985 [85224]
SOWETO, South Africa (DPS, Nov. 7) -- In Jabavu, one of the poorest districts of this "temporary" settlement of 1.5 million blacks, one can often hear singing from a large, round, windowless red brick building that looks something like a water tank. It is the Ipelegeng Community Center, run by the Anglican Church.
Soweto burned itself into western consciousness 10 years ago with a series of riots protesting educational inequalities. Today, according to Religious News Service, some three-quarters of the black youths here still will not finish high school. The inequalities in schooling still serve as a tool of the apartheid regime, and the frustrated youths are taking to the streets in larger and larger numbers. The Center is the only one of its kind sponsoring projects to help these young people, according to Archdeacon David C. T. Nkwe.
The center sponsors various self-help projects which "place the emphasis on human dignity," Nkwe said. In a shed near the main church building, using simple tools, five young men busily manufacture coathangers from wire, one by one. They said they could each make about 2,000 a day, which they can sell for about $18.
There is also a candle-making project, programs for career guidance, homework, and adult literacy. An "enrichment program" after school helps students with their math, science and English. A home economics class teaches children how to prepare nutritious but inexpensive meals. The center employs a full-time social worker and runs a jobs placement bureau.
More than 2,000 students, housewives, teachers, trade unionists and other community members use the center every week, Nkwe said. "We felt strongly motivated to put up the center our here, but when we first considered the idea, we battled to get permission from the authorities. They said, 'If you build the center it will create a false sense of permanency.'
Until very recently Soweto was officially a temporary settlement.
"It is up to the government to effect change soon or face the consequences," Nkwe said. "The young people here are very determined... not afraid of death."
Intensifying its efforts to control the unrest and maintain apartheid, South Africa's system of forced racial segregation, the government had crushed much of the black leadership. COSAS, the black Council of South African Students, was banned last August and many of its activists have been imprisoned or have gone underground.
"Youth now identify the Church on the side of the people. It's clear with the funerals. The Church is a symbol in the middle of the struggle," said Steve Sadie, a coordinator of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) Youth Project. The Project is distributing a curriculum inspired by International Youth Year to youth groups in churches that are member of SACC.
"We have always encouraged youth to participate fully on issues on the basis of Christian faith," he said. "With the student boycotts (of classes) for example, we ask, 'what are Christians called to do, what does it mean to be a peacemaker?'"
The SACC has set up 33 crisis centers in the Pretoria Witwatersrand area, offering medical and legal advice to township residents. It provides financial assistance to families of detainees who were formerly breadwinners and will provide resources for an "education Charter" that will attempt to reach some of the estimated 20,000 black students whose educations have been interrupted by the school boycotts called to protest substandard education, the state of emergency and other grievances.
Patty, a 15 year old girl who said she sometimes went to Ipelegeng Center, wants to go to university and become a doctor or nurse, but seems to be frightened by the troubles in Soweto.
"Same don't understand (that there should be peace)...some are doing funny things like throwing stones at cars."
But not far from the center, walking with his friends amid the rubble, smoke and ramshackle homes of this neighborhood, another teenager, David, asked "We are the same blood, just a different color, why do they oppress us? ... How can we fight for freedom when we have no weapons? Only these stones."
Caught up in the struggle of its people, the Church is groping for a solution. The government "has built a spirit of resistance" in the young people, Nkwe said. "You can't compromise the truth. To accept things as they are is bound to dehumanize."