"The Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God." (Micah 6:8)

While the Eloff Commission took time and energy from many of the SACC staff, the normal programme work continued. The SACC was not only making its statements and giving verbal expression to its opposition to apartheid. It was also committed to much activity at grassroots level.

In the new arrangements there were three programme clusters, Development and Service, Church and Mission, and Justice and Society. Within these clusters a number of divisions co-ordinated their work to ensure there was as little duplication as possible and that all necessary issues received attention.

Dependant's Conference, of the Justice and Society cluster, provided assistance to the families of those detained, not only financially but through the organisation of support groups, arrangements for visits to prisons, and giving released detainees grants and advice to help them find work or establish small businesses. Legal aid was arranged for those who had to stand trial for their political opposition to apartheid and/or their breaking of one or other of the myriad of petty laws surrounding the system. In Cape Town a building, Cowley House was obtained to use as a rest house for family members visiting prisoners on the infamous Robben Island.

The Inter Church Aid programme, of the Development and Service cluster, was a conduit of funding and advice for the heavy demands of small development projects throughout the length and breadth of the country. Priority was given to projects in the rural areas and especially those places where whole communities had been moved into what were often barren and arid areas with very few, if any, facilities. Many creches, pre-schools, adult learning centres, water projects, gardening schemes, and other projects owe their existence to the assistance of Inter Church Aid.

Other Divisions in the Development and Service cluster included the Women's Desk which dealt with the many issues that were important to women in the turbulent times where the place and the voice of women received scant regard in both Church and nation. Home and Family Life arranged conferences, workshops and counselling to help face the breaking of family life through detention and the migrant worker system.

The Church and Mission cluster included a Youth Division which attempted to create co-ordination among the many youth organisations within the Churches, help face the education crisis, and arrange youth conferences. As well as seeking to bring black and white youth together to face the issues of the nation, it also organised a "Pilgrimage of Hope" during 1981 to Israel, Switzerland and Taize which gave international contact with the world Christian family for the large group of 144 young people involved.

It also included a Choir Resources Unit, a Division of Theological Education, an Ecumenical Education Officer, and, of course, the Mission and Evangelism Division which was busy with conferences and seminars and many personal visitations to Churches and Church groups to encourage ecumenical co-operation in mission.

The African Bursary Fund (ABF) was in the cluster of Justice and Society. It provided High School and University bursaries for deserving candidates. Throughout its life, up to the present, it has had to face the dreadful task of choosing from among the thousands who apply for assistance, those among whom it can share its never completely adequate resources. The ABF did not only grant bursaries but kept in touch with students, arranged meetings of students to examine ways of using their learning for the benefit of society, and offered counselling of students as they dealt with the sometimes traumatic experience of University life. The Division that received most attention in the eyes of the public was Justice and Reconciliation. It was this Division that dealt with the different crises that would face the people. These included a ministry of care for refugees from Mocambique, work amongst migrant workers, alcohol and drug abuse, spiritual and practical concern for those who were relocated, and a task force on resettlement.

It also continued to organise Conferences and Workshops for theological expression on the situation. Theological expression that was often seen as political interference. It provided, along with the Mission and Evangelism Division, the theological framework out of which the SACC made its decisions, formulated its statements, and created its programme priorities. The Churches were often challenged through the excellent and thoughtful papers and presentations that came from Justice and Reconciliation. It was, and is, the power house of the Council's attempts to provide guidelines for an alternate society.

The Division became a focal point for the many Church people who wished to consider with others what the Christian faith meant for South Africans, especially black South Africans, during those years.

The Kairos Document

The SACC did not, however, have a monopoly on theological group study. An independent document was published in 1985, The Kairos Document. Although often referred to as an SACC statement, the Kairos Document was the work of a number of people from different Churches. The 156 persons who signed the document did so in their own personal capacity with mention of their own Church affiliation. No one actually signed on behalf of the SACC.

The Kairos Document was presented as A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa. It was an important statement on the challenge of the faith to the system of apartheid. It captured much of the spirit of the Church in the eighties as it stood against the racism of the political structures. It critiqued what it called a "State Theology" and a "Church Theology" before proposing a new Prophetic Theology.

It ended with a "Challenge to Action" that was very much the prevailing mood among many as the opponents of apartheid moved from words to actions. "Christians," it said, "if they are not doing so already, must quite simply participate in the struggle for liberation and for a just society." It called for a transformation of Church activities which would turn from providing "comfort and security" to the individual to serving "the real religious needs of all the people and to further the liberating mission of God and the Church to the world."

It went on to acknowledge the role of the many "people's organisations" that were now springing up throughout the country and suggesting support for such. But it was its comment that the Church "will have to be at times involved in civil disobedience" which received the greatest attention especially from its critics.

The Kairos Document was followed months later in December 1985 with the Harare Declaration which took the essence of the Kairos Document, amplified it, and issued it from a much wider international, especially Southern African, number of people and agencies.

It is interesting to reflect how far the South African Christian community had moved from the original timid comments and lack of action to the daring and outspoken words and calls to action of the eighties. And all of this despite the many verbal attacks on the Churches, especially the SACC, which also suffered the harassment of police raids on the premises, the seizure of some staff members' passports and the detention of others.

In November 1980 the Council, along with a number of Churches and Church and community organisations, moved to the larger premises of Khotso House in De Villiers Street, Johannesburg. This was a time of celebration, a time when the work and witness of the Council was acknowledged by member Churches, community organisations, and international partners.

The House was officially opened immediately following the 1981 National Conference. The service was a joyful occasion complete with a masterly description of the Council and its vision from its new President, the Rev P Storey, and comments from a number of overseas guests.

One of the German visitors, Dr Runge, said, "May this House of Peace be a place where the suffering people of South Africa will find comfort and encouragement for, and participation in, the necessary change of the political and economic structures. May it be a place where God's love of his own creatures will become effective. Khotso House should be the prototype of the life in a new South Africa, where all men and women should work together in the shaping of the country's future under God's promise of a new heaven and a new earth."

Peaceful Change

The fulfilment of much of that hope for Khotso House was centred in the programme divisions. The Eloff Commission and the many attacks upon its work and witness were unable to stop the continuing activity of the Khotso House community, especially the SACC, in generating peaceful change.

For the Programmes to operate efficiently there was greater need for Regional Councils which could keep in touch with local needs and minister to local crisis situations. The Dependant's Conference relied heavily upon the work of Regional Council based field workers in their care of dependant families. There was, therefore, because of the increase in the use of the detention laws in the early and mid eighties, a mushrooming of the number of regions from eight to twenty.

The Regional Councils provided the place where the local Churches could meet together and plan their service of the community in the name of God. Some of the Regions had the full support, encouragement, and participation of the local Churches. Others were more heavily dependant upon the central SACC office for both direction and support.

There were problems of accountability and a lack of organisational ability in some Regions. Did a Regional Council report to its local constituency or to the SACC central office? Was its agenda of activity set by the SACC National Conference or the local Churches? If the local Churches created a programme that implied finance, who supplied the funding? These were questions that were asked for many years in the middle of a situation of such activity in the struggle against apartheid, which was often a struggle to survive for Regional staff, that they could never be resolved without another crisis situation arising to create new questions.

It is only in recent years that the Regional Councils have organisationally become branches of the SACC, but with great emphasis still on the participation of local Churches in the day to day affairs and choosing of priorities. A delicate balance of accountability and programmes.

Reform and Repression

And so the work and the witness continued through the difficult days of the early eighties. There are those who say that the reform plans of the Government began in those years and that the pursuance of programmes such as the call for sanctions and the Standing for the Truth Campaign were not necessary. These comments underline the different experiences of the black and white populations of South Africa through those years. The experience for most black people was of increased oppression and tighter measures of control on all areas of life, leading eventually to the declarations of a State of Emergency in 1985 and again in 1986.

True there was the removal of the infamous Pass Laws and then the Mixed Marriages Act. But these were surrounded by many other rules and regulations that meant that life was much the same for the majority of the population and it was the white population at home and the conservative population overseas that were impressed. The Pass Laws were removed and then followed by so many regulations to ensure "orderly urbanisation" that the Black Sash advice offices, which had expected to be released from so much work when the Pass Laws were scrapped, became even busier.

The removal of the Mixed Marriages Act, which removal by the way was opposed by Bishop Mokoena, created further confusion because laws affecting living areas, schooling, voting rights, and public amenities were not changed.

That the scrapping of these acts was not actually intended to change the overall strategy of apartheid was evident in the explanation of the then Minister of Internal Affairs, F W de Klerk, that such scrapping would not affect the good order and system of separate communities in educational, social and political spheres.

True there was much talk about the end of apartheid and a new process of detente and dialogue. The detente and dialogue seemed, however, to be directed to international rather than national audiences. For many years after Foreign Affairs minister, "Pik" Botha, told foreign media in June 1982 that, "Long ago it was said that by 1978 the flow of black labour from the homelands to the cities would be reversed. We do not believe this any more. We must admit we made a mistake." people were still shunted around like cattle and the relocation policy rigidly enforced.

One area that did make a difference related to the Trade Unions. Grudging recognition was given and, although they were surrounded by many rules and regulations that attempted to make them a simple talking shop for workers to meet with management to discuss local disputes, they became a force to be reckoned with. There seemed to be no realisation of the deeply politicised nature of the working place in general and the effect this would have on the Trade Union movement. The statements that any opposition to Government was the work of a few radicals among what would normally be a passive work force were shown to hold no truth at all as the workers flexed their muscles and began to create collectives of power.

The power that the Church was to demonstrate in its opposition, alongside the Unions and others, to the apartheid Government was discussed, probed and expressed at the Council's 'National Conferences.

Power to the People of God

In 1979, the Rt Rev Bruce Evans, Bishop of Port Elizabeth, addressed the National Conference on the subject of "The Church and Power." In it he talked about the balance between the social and personal Gospels that was necessary for the power of God to act through God's people. He quoted Stanley Jones', "The personal Gospel without the social is spirit without body, a ghost; the social gospel without the personal is a body without spirit, a corpse."

"Evangelism is not the answer to this country's needs," he said, "unless it is an incarnational evangelism that ... speaks out of a fellowship of community that lives out the implications of the Gospel." Bishop Evans ended by pointing to the task of the Church to "loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free, share food with the hungry, provide the poor with shelter, clothe the naked, and receive every other human being as being one's own flesh and blood." (Isaiah 58) and to the way such activity is accomplished when we "repent of our sins, expose ourselves to the cost of following Christ, and open our lives daily to the Spirit of love and power."

Two years later at the 1981 National Conference, Dr John de Gruchy was to point to the need for the supporters of the liberation movement in the Church to ensure that they relied on God's word and sought God's Spirit or face the danger of "becoming indistinguishable from any other political movement."

It was this kind of constant reminder that helped the Council maintain that necessary balance, the "wary path between", in personal and social Gospel. A balance that none would claim to have been complete throughout all its work and witness, but a balance that has provided the vision for what the Council should be about and the blueprint in its planning. Those who would claim that the Council has only worked out of a social gospel without any sign of the personal, need simply to look at Bishop Evans' quote from Stanley Jones. The SACC was, and is, certainly no corpse!

Bishop Tutu in an address to that same National Conference of 1981 pointed to the Bible as the inspiration of the struggle against racism. In a speech filled with that special charisma that belongs to his person, Bishop Tutu held aloft the Bible and said, "It is from this we get our mandate." He spoke of the Bible as the most subversive, radical and revolutionary book which "if you wanted to keep us in bondage you should not have given to us."

It was a speech of great power which in terms of his ministry through the SACC was equal to the "I have a dream" speech of Martin Luther King. It had about it the spontaneous spirituality that was, and remains, the hallmark of much of his ministry.

Evictions, Poverty

Another notable presentation at the 1981 Conference was given by Mr Popo Molefe. In an address entitled "The Church and the Worker", Mr Molefe pleaded for the Church to stand by the workers and the plight of "blacks in situations of rising rents and the rocketing cost of living which are not commensurate with wages, resulting in evictions and abject poverty."

Another important aspect of this particular address was that Mr Molefe expressed the need for a united democratic movement to bring together the different groups that were in opposition to the Government. Despite claims by the Government in the "Delmas Trial" that the concept of the, later to be organised, United Democratic Front emanated from the ANC in exile during 1982, the records of the National Conference of 1981 show that it was very much in the minds of people in South Africa itself at that stage.

It was also at this 1981 National Conference that the mention of the two words "apartheid" and "heresy" were put close together. Speaking about the homeland policy and the relocation of many people from their traditional homes, the Conference agreed, "that this policy is contrary to Christ's teaching."

No wonder the Sunday Express newspaper said after that particular National Conference that it was time for the Government and white people to "listen, for the voices are getting louder."

The National Conferences of the following years continued along the same lines, enlarging the number of activities, strengthening each other in words and worship, and in challenging both Government and Church.

1982 was a time for President, Rev Peter Storey, to proclaim that the "false god (of apartheid and minority rule) is failing." That Conference also had to begin to deal with the Eloff Commission, and, in its very final hours, with the arrest of Mr John Rees.

Of much greater significance for the DRC in 1982 was the Ottowa Conference of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) where there was no doubt that apartheid was a heresy, where Ds Allan Boesak was elected President, and where two of the South African family of Dutch Reformed Churches were suspended from membership. The irony of a black President of the international organisation of the Church of the oppressive Government was not lost on many.

The 1983 Conference was forced to spend much energy on the Eloff Commission and what it could mean for the Council and the Churches. It spoke out against the proposed tri-cameral constitution which would allow for three Houses of Parliament but completely exclude Africans from any say in the nations affairs, it elected Dr Manas Buthulezi as President, and it passed resolutions in support of "domestic disinvestment" and "Christian withdrawal."

The "post-Eloff" 1984 National Conference was filled with concern for the relocation situation that still affected the lives of so many. The plight of the three and a half million dispossessed people provided much pain and concern for the delegates and the General Secretary. Archbishop Tutu says that it became a priority to concentrate on the forced removals and all that these implied, especially "making blacks into aliens in the land of their birth as apartheid's final solution." That Conference also turned its attention to militarism and the requirements for conscientious objection.

The Nobel Prize

It was the final months of 1984 that provided celebratory drama around the Council.

On October 16th, during a period of leave from the SACC and of study and lecturing at the New York based General Theological Seminary, Bishop Tutu received a visit from the Norwegian Ambassador to inform him that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bishop Tutu hurried home to share the moment with family, friends, colleagues and staff. During a short time of only four days he was received at the airport by huge crowds of singing and ululating people, spoke at a Khotso House day long celebration, celebrated with the people of Soweto at a special service in his own parish of St Augustines, and spent some time with family and friends before jetting back to finish his time in the USA.

The prize, Bishop Tutu insisted, did not belong to him but to the suffering and oppressed people of South Africa. Looking back at the award he says that it was an "endorsement by the world community of the justice and rightness of our cause."

It was a triumphant conclusion to his service as General Secretary of the Council for within days he was resigning from that post to take up an appointment as Bishop of Johannesburg. A special service of farewell was arranged during which he received the blessing of the whole Khotso House community and was taken by a hymn singing crowd along the street to the St Mary's Anglican Cathedral.

Permission? No one cared to ask for permission. The world was on our side and no laws about processions or large public gatherings were going to stop the celebrating. The sweet scent of victory was in the air.