Statement of Bishop Mvume Dandala, President of the SACC on behalf of the SACC National Executive Committee on the Bredell Evictions of 12 July , 2001 at the KHOTSO HOUSE Chapel

Firstly, I need to agree with Dr Tsele that yesterday was a painful experience, but we are thankful to God for the efforts of the churches just to be there to offer their care an compassion. I need to say quite categorically, from the beginning, that all the efforts by the churches accepted the need for the Rule of Law to be upheld. Everything that the Churches were doing, in their minds emphasised, the need for us as a nation to uphold the rule of law was paramount.

I state this because sometimes people can confuse the need to be compassionate to people with thoughts that people are being empowered to continue to undermine the law. I want to say right from the beginning that the churches were not doing that, the churches were there to be with the people and find or to help find a solution that would prevent any possibilities of bloodshed.

Of course people were talking there about things like,' this will be another Sharpeville' and all that kind of things. We could have chosen to ignore all those threats and if indeed something had happened, I would we live without ourselves. It was important for the church to be out there and do everything it could to assist the nation to handle that situation in as humane a way as possible.

I think there are some specific lessons that have emerged, that in my view this nation is going to have to grapple with:

1. Politicians must not deal with people's poverty and needs in a reckless manner. I believe that anybody who was there could have seen how desperate even the politicians, who had been there with the people, were in a sense supporting everything that was happening there- how much they were in a panic when things were threatening to turn ugly. I guess at that stage it became very clear to them that it is not right to gamble with people's lives and in my view I believe that we as churches to help this nation to put people first. Not even numbers that make up political parties are good enough for people to gamble with the lives of the poor and I would say to all the people it's crucial that we should not to play political games.
Not only do I criticise the PAC for this but also feel that in response politicians of other parties also to tended to hear or to see the PAC factor more at the expense of people. So there was a stalement. In many instances where people could not respond appropriately in case it seen as bowing to the PAC just to care for the people. I am just saying it is important for all our politicians and political parties to hear us when we say "let us strive with everything we have, to go beyond just being governed by anything but the need to care for our people".

2. Secondly, I believe it is important for this nation to learn that we are running the danger of hiding the poverty of our people away and the tendency would be that when you hide something away you then start believing that it is not there. I think that the value of ordinary people coming to the fore, disturbing us constantly with their needs, is just to prod us never to forget the poor that are amongst us. I do not how but I believe that bodies like churches, who have necessarily no political agenda, have to got to work harder in ensuring that the needs of the poor are put forth in a very effective way. One politician said something which I thought was very profound, when he was speaking to and he said "we politicians are taking the gap because the people who should be occupying the space of really, faithfully helping everybody to understand the poverty of our people are not doing it as effectively as they should ". And I do believe, very firmly, that we as churches have got to think again, carefully, not in an ad hoc way but in a properly strategised way. We must find ways of keeping the poverty of our people and the need of our people in front of the eyes of this nation.

Bredell was not simply a political issue, in spite of the all the political noise. Bredell, as the Secretary General has said, was a case of simple people who have a need who are desperate in making their case.

The good example is (and I am saddened by the fact that somehow the media failed to pick this up), the media says, "when the churches offered accommodation, yesterday to the people, the people received that with hostility or rejected it in a hostile way". That's untrue people were never hostile in the way they responded to the churches.

Let me tell you what happened. First thing, after I explained to the people that we have been in touch with the government and the local Council, there seems to be a crisis of land where they are saying that all the land that is here, even though it may look empty actually belongs to some other people and they can do nothing about it. People just wept. I don't understand how tears of pain and need are a statement of hostility. People wept, not only that, one woman who was standing right in front of us started singing the hymn, "Sizo lami Lonke inhlungu nazi zonke emxamlezweni". That hymn essentially says, "see the pain of loneliness, here is pain, here is love on the Cross". They sang that so soberly and I asked is that a statement of hostility.

Why must we allow a situation where the pain of the people be trivialised? If you say 'I am hostile', you mean I have power to be hostile. People were not hostile, they were broken and all the signs, the signs of people were God help us. Then I said, "let's pray". You could have heard a pin dropping when I prayed. Is that a sign of hostility? I say, "NO". Why hide the pain of people from this nation and simply trivialise it by using words like hostility and so on.

That is the second thing that I really want to say. We dare not allow the pain of the people and the genuine desperation to be hidden.And I think this nation need to hear that people are not being politically hostile, people are not being careless or irresponsible. People are just saying, "for how long are we going to continue like this?"

Somebody said, "the most painful thing about this is that people are not asking for a Mercedes Benz, they not even asking for a house. They were simply saying ' just a plot of land where I can pitch a little tent for me and my children'.

Thirdly, I would like to say that the crisis of land hunger and homelessness is not only a tinder box, as people tend to look at it, but it is also a crisis of shame for this nation. I think this nation needs to remember that it is a crisis of moral bankruptcy.

How can we as nation not treat that kind of need as priority number one. So in my view whilst it is absolutely important that we preserve the value of the rand, that's what most people were talking about- what is all this going to do to the rand. I think that is important to hear, we must preserve the value of the rand but let us not do it at the expense of the value of our morality as a nation. And I do believe that we need to hear this, that as we do these things let's very consciously look at ways by which these things can be balanced.

I do believe that when we as churches call for a forum where this issue is going to be discussed we are actually saying, let the people of South Africa come together to think about how to balance their economic needs with their moral needs. I think we need to sit down and talk about this as a nation. Some of the things we were hearing, when we spoke to the Council, they said, we do not have the land. Don't promise people things they will not have. And we kept saying we not promising people land, all we are promising them when we are there as churches is that we are talking with you, so that at least whatever answer comes people must feel that they taken seriously, somebody cares. They are not just there dealt with summarily in the way that conveys a message that we don't care for your pain. We are just saying we are talking and whatever comes out please do know that we are talking.

I did not get the impression myself that many people were charmed with idea that the churches were saying to people that we are facilitating some conversation about possibilities, particularly the possibility of finding some transitional options as we are handling this process. I do want to acknowledge that all the people we were talking with, came through concerned, that the Council has shown a lot of concern but they were saying that there is nothing to offer. The land belongs to the corporate organisations but they told us that the Council told us a story of how they have been trying to acquire some land near Modder . This land apparently had been sold for six million rand to those who are owners now and the Council wanted to acquire this land to settle people and the owners wanted R18 million for that land where they could settle 14 000 people. This is downright immoral - this is the kind of moral bankruptcy I am talking about. I believe that this government must legislate parameters for the sale of land that people cannot charge more than a reasonable legislated amount. If for instance I acquired a piece of land for R6 million, surely they should be able to say something like, according to the law that I will at least get back the money I have paid for that land maybe with a small amount of about 10%/20% but a lid must be put so that people will not barter around with land at a time like this. I believe that is important to be done.

The second thing I believe needs to happen is that those who are owning the land particularly corporate organisations need to hear this that if this kind of compromise can be agreed to or if the government can legislate like this, people must release the land. Failing which the government must expropriate the land within the parameters of what one is suggesting because what do you do when people are just sitting tight and say all the 15 000 people let them go to hell if they cannot not give 100% profit on the money I spent on this land, I am doing nothing, I am not moving. Surely there must be mechanisms to make people like that to release the land. Otherwise we are going to end up with a situation very quickly where there rule of law or where will not be able to defend it when the people undermine the rule of law and I believe that this nation those who have the land have got to think of ways by which these kind of agreements need to be put in place and I believe that these are some of the things that need to go to the forum that we are talking about.

The fourth thing I think one learned from this Bredell situation is that compassion and humaneness go a long way in dealing with people. There were few things that one needs to mention that I think one should salute. We don't know what will happen today but we know what happened yesterday. First in all our dealings with the Minister of Land Affairs at no stage did she come across as not being in agony about the people. All the way as she was talking to the churches, "is there no way in which you can persuade the land hungry so that whatever happens, we all find a way of walking together". All along that has been her attitude and frankly I think we need to commend her for that.

Secondly, I think yesterday the police behaved impeccably. There were many of them. Some people were afraid already talking about this being another old apartheid day, pushing around people with power and the police kept their distance. The people just said, "we will sit back and see them demolish our houses we are not going away but we hope that they will not assault us. The police did step back and once or twice one saw them actually offering help and I think the case of children who got lost last night and how the people reported to the police and the police took this up and helped is a very good sign and I think we must applaud them. That is not a sought of thing that one could ever experience in the past where people are being moved by the police and people could to the police and ask for help. And Last night it was amazing because when people started complaining of thirst, the ministers who were there, went and spoke to the police and said, "Can't we organise water?" and they the police took an initiative and organised 5 000 litres of water to be transported in. It was beautiful. The police were afraid saying, "Are you sure people are not going to damage our trucks that bring this?" The ministers said, "we will talk to the people, the people are not hostile, people understand compassionate things" and overnight we have not heard that their trucks were damaged. So these are some of the things that I believe we ought to be recognised.

The other thing for me was a moving, moving observation that this nation needs to hear. The churches responded well, some of the people went to the churches to spent the night, some churches brought the food, fed the people, brought the blankets and many white Christians went to Bredell and even in the evening there were still white Christians there. This says to me very clearly, if we understand the nature of the crisis we will realise that this is not a racially inspired thing. The causes maybe, that have caused the landlessness, may have been racially inspired but there is a common goodwill among people to respond to these crises. I really do know where I can stand to shout that for people to hear it. White people could have sat back trembling behind doors thinking, "here starts another Zimbabwe" and the pictures of white being chased around the farms could have dominated the conversations of many a household yesterday but not so, people walked to where the pain is and ministered to people as people. I just pray to God that we can move swiftly now and not allow this crisis to be vocalised by one racial group, others fearing that this is a race issue and stand back. Landlessness here is a problem that must be dealt with by all South Africans and this is why I believe that particularly the corporations need to come forward. People get very angry when they hear that land was bought by so and so and most of them were corporations that were owned by white people. They bought that land and today they are not releasing that land, they knew that they wanted to make a killing. Now it has to be seen by this nation that we all move together to reverse that and those people who own that land have got to hear this plea and let's find consensus as a nation that this kind of land will be returned within the framework of what I have outlined in a way where we are all saying we are making a contribution to the welfare of this nation. I found that a very moving experience for me.