c. 1996 Religion News Service
EDENVALE, South Africa _ The mere mention of the year she spent in solitary confinement in an apartheid-era prison makes Sister Bernard Ncube’s lively eyes go blank and sends her gazing into a spiritual and psychological wilderness. The memory of that 1987 experience, she tells a visitor, always launches her into the abyss.
Ncube, 61, who today holds the distinction of being the only Roman Catholic nun serving in the South African Parliament, can only liken its effect to what an animal must feel when confined in a cage.”You see that animal behind the bars but his eyes do not really have life,”she said in an interview in her offices in this Johannesburg suburb.”You may think the animal sees you but he is looking past you to another time and place, he has a hollow spirit and a mind that is somewhere else. That was how I was in that cell. My eyes were looking beyond the prison to a distant place.” But Ncube eventually triumphed. Once released from prison, she threw herself into politics and the struggle against apartheid. As a member of the African National Congress, she was elected to Parliament in 1994.
Ncube’s involvement in politics has always been a sticky problem for the Catholic Church here and for the Vatican, which frowns on the idea of politically active priests and nuns.
But she contends that there can be no separation of political and religious life in South Africa.”I cannot leave politics. South Africa isn’t ready for me to leave politics,”said Ncube.”When I am dead I think I can safely leave the political arena, but not until then.” Tough decisions come with the territory for those serving in South Africa’s Parliament. And none is more difficult for Ncube than the vote expected this month on South Africa’s new liberal abortion bill.
Under South Africa’s system of government, individual members of Parliament vote with their party on legislation, unlike Democrats and Republicans in the United States who frequently cross party lines.
The African National Congress, the majority party in Parliament, strongly supports abortion rights and has stated it will support the abortion bill, thus ensuring its passage. Ncube declines to say how she will vote on the issue, but she has joined with other leading clergy here who argue that the ANC should allow an”open vote,”letting its members in Parliament make their own choice on the abortion measure, one of the most liberal in the world.”I totally support the idea of an open vote on abortion,”said Ncube.”I would like to vote my conscience on the issue.” Abortion is a far too complicated question for anyone to answer, she says, much less the ANC.”Even at the Vatican they are debating this question, no one can claim to have the right answer. If I have to, I will go to President Mandela myself and argue for an open vote.” Ncube is accustomed to arguing, whether with Mandela or the leaders of her church.
While the Vatican discourages clergy from getting involved in politics and canon law bars clergy from holding political office, the Catholic Church leadership often defers to the clergy’s immediate superiors to try to come to some agreement.
Ncube solved the dilemma by reaching an agreement with her Johannesburg-based order, the Companions, which effectively made her a member of the laity.”I can no longer participate in the discussions with the other sisters. I’m not really part of the community anymore,”said Ncube, who still wears the traditional garb of a nun.”I get to carry on with politics but the trade-off is that I have no voice in the running of the convent. In essence, I have been laitized.” Ncube continues to be a member of the order but has been”relieved of her responsibilities,”said Sister Mary Modise, superior of the Companions.”Sister Bernard is welcome to come visit us anytime, but she no longer lives with us and no longer has to attend all the prayers. She is still a full member of the congregation, but because she does not participate fully in the life of the convent, she can no longer vote on issues that come before us,”Modise said.
It pains Ncube to be,”excluded,”as she calls it, from the Companions, which she joined in 1955. But she feels just as strongly that the Catholic Church and organized religion has done little to bring about political and social change in South Africa.”It was not the church that brought justice to South Africa,”she said.”It was people who put their lives on the line to defeat an evil system.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Ncube, the second of 11 children of devout Catholic parents, grew up in the sprawling township of Soweto and later taught Catholic school in Kagiso township, east of Johannesburg. It was during her teaching days in the early 1960s that Ncube first began to move into politics.”It is safe to say that my school children forced me into politics,”said Ncube.”In teaching Scriptures the kids would often ask me questions like, `does God love whites and hate blacks?’ They wanted to know why the Catholic schools were segregated and why the white kids’ schools were good and ours were not.” In 1984 she founded an organization called the Federation of Transvaal Women, which aimed to improve political, economic and social conditions for women. It was her work with this group that led her into trouble with security forces. She was arrested briefly in 1986 and again in 1987, and sent to Krugersdorp Prison near Johannesburg, where she spent a year in solitary confinement. Then she was charged with sedition, subversion and assault, but the case against her collapsed when the government failed to supply details of the charges against her.”I am still waiting for them to tell me who I assaulted,”said the rotund nun with a brimming smile.
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Contrary to popular belief, Ncube argues, organized religion did not bring down apartheid, but rather groups of courageous individuals.
Ncube argues that when Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu first stood against apartheid, the Anglican Church as a whole did not stand with him. She also points out that the Rev. Frank Chikane, the former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches and current adviser to vice president Thabo Mbeki, was forced out of his denomination, the Apostolic Faith Mission, because of his stand against apartheid.
But the most compelling example of church inaction during the apartheid era, Ncube said, was the failure of the South African bishops to endorse the Kairos Document. Written in 1985 by an ecumenical group of clergy working outside their churches, the Kairos Document argued that South Africa’s kairos, or moment of grace in which God issues a challenge to decisive action, had come. It encouraged the South African churches to denounce apartheid and actively join in the struggle against the system.”Kairos was never signed by the Catholic or the Protestant bishops in South Africa,”said Ncube.”It was a defining moment. The church had the opportunity to make a stand and failed to take it.” Ncube said that it’s the church’s duty in places like South Africa to become politically involved.”I have the ability as a parliamentarian to address the needs of the common man in day-to-day life, redeeming the nation from the curses of poverty and injustice,”she said.”If the church as an institution would work for social change the way I do, the changes would be enormous and fast in coming.” (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)
Ncube fills her duties in Parliament on the Safety and Security Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. When she is not in session, she runs the Khululekani Institute for Democracy in Edenvale.
Khululekani, Zulu for”to be liberated,”works to educate new parliamentarians about how to be most effective, and educates the public on how they can get the most out of their new democracy.
On a recent Monday, Ncube darted about her cramped office, ordering staffers around, fielding phone calls and running meetings, all the while wearing a huge smile across her face. Ncube is a tireless individual and one who gives the distinct impression she loves what she does.”I have known her since I was a kid and have been working with her since I was 16,”said staffer Lawrence Ntlokoa, 38.”I leave here most days dead tired and she is still running around scheduling meetings and planning for the week ahead. She’s about the strongest, hardest-working person I know.”
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