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The Southern Cross, September 11 to September 17, 2013
HISTORY
Pope in Southern Africa BY GÜNTHER
SIMMERMACHER
P
OPE John Paul’s visit to the frontline states in September 1988 was dominated by the one country he didn’t want to visit: South Africa. Inevitably, politics cast its ugly shadow over the whole visit—and the pope was acutely aware of the trip’s political nature. On the flight to Zimbabwe, his first stop, the pope told reporters that he could understand why South Africa’s oppressed might favour violence, though he couldn’t justify it. Addressing the bishops of South Africa in Harare, he encouraged the Church to pursue a negotiated settlement “through a dialogue sustained by prayer” as the only peaceful solution. In Gaborone, John Paul offered firm support for apartheid refugees in Botswana, a country he described as a “ray of hope” for Africa. He had similar words for Zimbabwe, eight years into independence. Praising the country’s reconciliation efforts, he said it should serve as a model for the rest of the continent. In time he’d change his mind. Fifteen years later he gave vent to his disillusionment with President Robert Mugabe’s rule in a scathing public dressing-down of Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the Vatican. Politics also dominated the run-up to the pope’s visit to Mozambique, where relations between the ruling Frelimo and the Catholic Church were chilly because the Church insisted that the 13-year-old civil war with the South Africa-backed Renamo should be ended by negotiations. John Paul adopted a conciliatory tone in public, but urged the country’s bishops to work for a negotiated peace. That peace would come in 1992, thanks to a settlement brokered by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic lay movement. In Swaziland, 20-year-old King Mswati III did all he could
South Africa’s foreign minister Pik Botha escorts Pope John Paul II through Jan Smuts Airport after the papal flight made an emergency stop in Johannesburg during the Holy Father’s visit to Southern Africa in September 1988.
Pope John Paul II’s very strange day A hostage drama, a precarious flight and an unexpected stop in Johannesburg turned September 14, 1988 into one of the strangest days of Pope John Paul II’s long pontificate. GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER looks back at all the drama 25 years ago this week.
P
OPE John Paul II visited 129 countries in his 104 international journeys, but surely no day was as bizarre as the one when he was forced to land in Johannesburg en route to Maseru, 25 years ago this week. The pope’s visit to Southern Africa from September 10-19, 1988 was controversial long before it began. It included Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique—but not South Africa. For many South Africans the reason for that omission was obvious: the country was subject to international boycotts in the struggle against apartheid, and a papal visit might have been seen as legitimising the regime and encouraging the boycott busters. Other South Africans took the opposite view: the pope should come on a pastoral visit to his flock in South Africa, and, if he wanted to, take the opportunity to speak out against the injustice of apartheid. The debate was fierce, and in the months preceding the papal trip, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) sought to calm tempers by ascribing the exclusion of South Africa from the papal itinerary to issues of scheduling. The pope’s purpose in coming to Southern Africa was at the invitation of the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (Imbisa), to address the region’s bishops at their plenary in Harare, Zimbabwe. The wheels were already in motion for that when in June 1987 John Paul cleared the way for the beatification of Fr Joseph Gérard OMI, the apostle of Lesotho’s Catholic Church. With the beatification, the programme was indeed too full to include a visit to the Church in South Africa which would include the main centres. Far better to do oneday and half-day trips in bordering countries, especially as two, Botswana and Swaziland, were within the territory covered by the SACBC. What the bishops were not saying too loudly, probably to keep the controversy at bay, was that they in fact had not even extended an invitation to the pope. Feelers about a possible papal visit had been put out as early as 1982. As talks went on, the South
African government was asked if it would welcome the pope (it would), but nothing further came of it. Bishop Wilfrid Napier of Kokstad, today the cardinal archbishop of Durban, had actually explained the bishops’ position a year before the papal visit in Inter Nos, the bishops’ newsletter. He noted that it would be “incongruous and unacceptable in the present situation” to have the pope being protected by the same security forces that visited “terrible repression” upon the people. Bishop Napier saw political capital in a papal boycott: “The refusal of the pope to come to South Africa…is a much more devastating blow to PW Botha than if the pope had come to South Africa and denounced apartheid.” The bishops doubtless wanted to spare John Paul embarrassment when they told him in 1987 that a visit would be inadvisable. Reportedly a Vatican official had told Vatican Radio that Pope John Paul was “horrified at the prospect of being escorted and protected by [State President PW] Botha’s brutal police”. For the apartheid regime’s foreign minister, Pik Botha, only the bishops were to blame for the pope’s exclusion of South Africa. His statement on the visit betrayed hurt feelings—but his spirits were soon to be lifted.
H
aving visited Zimbabwe and Botswana, Pope John Paul, his aides and the pool of journalists covering the visit were departing Gaborone for Maseru in Lesotho in an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 707. Just after take-off, the weather turned bad, and later storms in Maseru knocked out the airport’s navigation beacons and radio signals. The pilot had already opened the aircraft’s flaps in preparation for descent when he decided against landing. The aircraft now had too little fuel to return to Botswana, so the flight was re-routed to Johannesburg —and with that Pik Botha got to meet the pope on South African soil after all. The foreign minister and a big entourage were already at what was then Jan Smuts Airport when the 707 landed. A beaming Mr Botha welcomed a visibly uncomfortable pope, who broke with custom by refraining from kissing the tarmac. The South African government was going to grab the opportunity to demonstrate its organisational mettle in the spotlight of the world’s media. Things swiftly moved into gear to get the pope and his fellow travellers safely to Maseru. A motorcade of 25 cars, led by the pope in a bullet-proof silver BMW, took off from Kempton Park towards Lesotho, escorted by ambulances, helicopters and the security whose notional
protectection had previously horrified the Holy Father. At the border, the pope and his party were placed into the care of Lesotho’s ruler, Major-General Justin Lekhanya, a friend of Pretoria. The caravan rolled safely into Maseru, having missed a major drama, one related to the pope’s visit, by just minutes. The previous day, members of the anti-Lekhanya Lesotho Liberation Army had hijacked a bus packed with pilgrims on their way from Qacha’s Nek to Maseru for the papal Mass, holding the 71 passengers hostage. Their demand was to meet the pope, in the mistaken expectation that he would help topple Lekhanya. The pope was, in fact, not even told about the hostage drama. After a 26-hour stand-off, a gun battle erupted on the pavement outside the British High Commission in Maseru between the rebels and a South African commando, called in by Lesotho’s military council. Eyewitness accounts differed on who shot first. When fire ceased, three hijackers and two hostages, one a girl of 16, were dead. Eleven men and nine women, including two nuns, were hurt and hospitalised. Mahanoe Makhetha, the 29-year-old organiser of the pilgrimage, lost both legs. The papal motorcade had passed the scene only half an hour earlier. When Pope John Paul heard of the tragedy he was dismayed. He asked to be taken to the Elizabeth II hospital, where the survivors were
being treated. At the Mass the next day, the pope expressed his distress at the tragedy. “I have come to Southern Africa as a pilgrim of peace, carrying a message of reconciliation,” he said. “I am saddened to learn that others on their way to join me in this pilgrimage have been the victims of a hijack that caused such anguish and ended in bloodshed.”‘ Pope John Paul eventually made it to South Africa, on a one-day trip
to steal the show. He arrived 15 minutes late for the papal Mass— apparently a sign of respect— with two of his four wives. After the venal king had himself satisfactorily adored by the crowd of 10 000 in Manzini, it was the pope’s turn. He pointedly told the crowd that polygamy was wrong and called for the protection of civil rights for women. Pope John Paul celebrated eight Masses on his trip, delivering 34 talks and homilies, including one to youth in each centre he visited. A recurring theme was the rights and values of the family as the basis of social order. He also made a point of making ecumenical gestures in a region were Catholicism is a minority. In Bulawayo he led an ecumenical prayer service in the city’s Anglican cathedral. The Lesotho leg of the trip was overshadowed by the hostage crisis (see lead article) and by the terrible weather. Less than 10 000 people turned up for the papal Mass at which the pope beatified Fr Joseph Gérard, the Oblate of Mary Immaculate missionary to whom most of the country’s Catholics, 44% of the population, owe their faith. The pope attracted the biggest crowd in Gaborone, near the South African border. Some 50 000 attended the papal Mass in Botswana, including an estimated 10 000 from South Africa. Botswana also saw a delicate situation when security collapsed at the airport as spectators, dancers, journalists and an exuberant group of flag-waving Poles surged around the pope. Mostly, the crowd numbers were disappointing: only a small fraction of the expected hundreds of thousands of pilgrims turned up for the Maseru Mass. Explaining the small crowds, organisers said that the local Africans could ill afford to take time off work to see the pope, and had to contend with inefficient and unsafe transport which many could not afford anyway. in 1995. He never returned for a full visit. And while Pik Botha was a gracious host who at virtually no notice organised safe passage for the Holy Father, the regime didn’t like the Catholic Church any better. Almost a month to the day after the pope set foot on South African soil, on October 12, security agents of the apartheid government bombed Khanya House, the Pretoria headquarters of the SACBC.
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