South Africa “not failed State, still intact”, Catholic Bishop Responds to Online Critics

In the interview, the Local Ordinary of South Africa’s Klerksdorp Diocese who doubles as the Liaison Bishop for the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO) of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) said, “As Christians, we cannot afford to lose hope and to give into despair.”

He said that Freedom Day provides an occasion to celebrate as it marks the liberation from apartheid regime.

“1994 marked the time when all black South Africans could enjoy a democratic vote for the first time, and could vote for the government of their choice; 1994 marked the time when our country opened to a multiparty democracy”, Bishop Phalana said.

That year, the South African Bishop added, “ushered in a new parliament, where blacks for the first time were to be represented by the people they had chosen as their representatives in various parliaments, both the provincial parliament and also in national parliament.”

“The new dispensation is not to be taken lightly. People died for this democracy. People were in prisons, people spent most of their lives in prison for this democracy,” he recalled, and continued, “People lived in exile while their parents and relatives were buried in their absence, while they were struggling for this freedom. So let us not take freedom for granted”.

He went on to recount the plight blacks suffered under apartheid saying, “Ordinary citizens were suffering under the pass laws. Many were arrested and killed. Young people were killed during the Soweto massacre in 1976. We had so many massacres, the Alexander massacre, Sharpeville massacre, Langa massacre… There were too many massacres, blood was flowing all over. We lived under a very, very brutal regime.”

“Having freed ourselves from the Commonwealth, colonial colonialism, which was mostly sponsored by Britain, by the UK, we were now under the nationalists, Africa under apartheid colonialism. And that period was marked by the oppression of blacks, and ensuring that blacks do not enjoy human rights, that their dignity was undermined”, the 61-year-old Bishop recounted.

The rights of the black South Africans “were curtailed, and they did not have freedom in the country of their birth,” the Bishop who has been at the helm of Klerksdorp Diocese since his Episcopal Ordination in January 2015 said.

“We look at Freedom Day as a day of commemoration. We look at the past, and we realize that we have this experience as South Africans, a unique experience of having to have lived under a very brutal apartheid system, and a very brutal regime, a regime where most of our political leaders were in exile, or in prison,” he told ACI Africa April 28.

Bishop Phalana expressed his awareness of some of the failures of the South African government, including poor service delivery, corruption, unemployment, crime, and poverty.

He encouraged South Africans not to allow the highlighted challenges to overshadow Freedom Day celebrations and asked the people of God not to lose hope.

“We have challenges. But let us not allow those challenges to deny us a moment of celebration, because the victory of South Africa or South Africans was in 1994, when we could all go to vote”, he said. 

Bishop Phalana urged South Africans to exercise their rights by participating in elections “intelligently … not blindly”. He said, “It’s up to you and me to try and save this democracy to try and protect this democracy to ensure that we do not become a failed state. And we can do that by going to vote. Vote intelligently, not blindly.”

The CPLO Liaison Bishop also called upon South Africans to work with the government in finding solutions to the country’s high unemployment rate.

He said, “We also have to help our government to come up with creative ideas of how to create employment for our youth, how to fight abject poverty, how to deal with the issue of inequality among our people, and how to deal with gender-based violence.”

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The Local Ordinary of Klerksdorp Diocese added, “We can really do more; we are not spectators; we have been saved by God, to make a difference in our country to ensure that there is social justice, peace, development, and prosperity. We cannot leave it all to politicians.”

He went on to laud efforts being made by the Cyril Ramaphosa-led government to ensure that children have access to free education, that the poor and unemployed have access to monthly monetary grants, free housing, and medical care.

“The 27 of April must also be a day of prayer, so that we can give God thanks for the freedom that we have. Many of our neighboring countries do not enjoy what we enjoy here in South Africa,” Bishop Phalana said.

He explained, “We enjoy free basic education; we enjoy free basic health care; we enjoy grants and pensions for the elderly, grants for the unemployed working mothers, for their children; we enjoy the peace. While even our neighboring countries do not enjoy peace, we have peace.”

He continued, “I think for those with a short memory, who do not know what living under apartheid colonialism was like, perhaps for them, this means nothing. But for some of us who lived under that, we know what we have right now.”

“The freedom that we have has restored our dignity; our human rights are being respected. And we feel that we belong to South Africa; that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. So, we have every reason to celebrate”, Bishop Phalana told ACI Africa April 28 in reference to the annual Freedom Day in South Africa, marked on April 27.