Homes in a South African township. Photo: Simon Hariyott / flickr CC.
The life well spoken
Stuart Morton enjoys a story of personal witness in Africa
When a person you know and respect writes an authentic autobiography, which touches on aspects of your own life journey, almost every page holds some fascination that brings both enjoyment and challenge.
This is my experience of Brian Brown’s Born to be Free – The indivisibility of Freedom, subtitled A Methodist Minister’s Quest for Justice and Freedom on Two Continents. I hold these two continents, Europe and Africa, in common with Brian, having spent most of my life in Britain and also being strongly connected to Southern Africa through my Namibian wife, Willemina.
A substantial part of this readable ninety-three chapter book describes the life of a ‘white’ English-speaking South African family whose compassionate and courageous action, and capacity for laughter, helps them to confront the inhumanities of their home country. This was in the post-1948-apartheid era, when biblically justified white privilege was being promoted in a ‘black’ majority country.
Active nonviolence
In Brian Brown’s radical New Testament based commitment to Jesus, he values the ‘concept of becom-ing and… that we are all a work in progress, becoming what God would have us be’. For Brian, and his wife, Marion, this is a commitment to uncovering the scales over their own ‘culturally bound eyes’ and participation towards a broader creativity – that of active nonviolence. Through this book we learn much interesting detail about their active involvement in bringing change, often in important ways that contribute to more widely known historical events.
In 1966, as a church minister in northern Johannes-burg, he challenges the aggressive foul-mouthed police dog handler at his door when, in the white South African community, the police were cracking down on black domestic workers who did not have a ‘pass book’. The Browns had ‘employed’ Johanna Magona to help look after their three children and, thereby, to help to alleviate the poverty that she faced in her own home area.
With great presence of mind, but on insecure legal grounds, Brian demanded the policemen’s number for behaving abusively and asked for a personalised search warrant. On visiting the police office the following day the officer in charge apologised to ‘The Reverend’ for the policeman’s behaviour. Having previously applied on many occasions for a pass for Johanna, one came unexpectedly, for no obvious reason.
Questioning convention
From his questioning of ‘convention’ and his commitment to Gospel values of ‘justice, truth and love’ Brian challenged the mind-sets of his congregations. When he was in his thirties he was invited to join the staff of the Christian Institute (CI), which was pioneered by the Afrikaner of huge spiritual stature, and his soon-to-become mentor, Beyers Naudé.
This challenge to covert and overt racism within the white Christian churches, alongside the raising of the legitimate voices within the Black Consciousness Movement, had parallels with the voice of the Confessing Church in 1930s Germany that opposed Nazism.
It is not surprising that one of the visitors to the CI was Eberhard Bethge, the German biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran priest whose Christian discipleship led him to prison and execution for opposing Nazism.
For the Truth
The power of the CI became too uncomfortable for the South African regime. As administrator of the CI and its Pro Veritate (‘for the Truth’) journal, Brian was ordered down the path of his mentor, Beyers, by being designated as a ‘banned’ South African. Such disturbers of social and political order were only allowed to meet one person at a time, though, in his impish way, Brian found some ways round this.
However, when one of his black visitors also became a banned person, having knowingly risked visiting Brian, the Brown family decided in 1978 that it was time to go into exile. Before the end of that year, the Methodist Church found a first place of refuge in a ministerial position in Yorkshire’s Denby Dale.
From 1980-1990, Brian became the Africa secretary of the British Council of Churches. The strong focus was Southern Africa. With considerable powers of persuasion and his capacity as a networker, he played a part in challenging the churches, including the Quakers, to reject ‘constructive engagement’ with the businesses of South Africa and to enact a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) strategy. The Prisoners of Hope publication, backed by Desmond Tutu, was produced by his office.
The indivisibility of freedom
In 1982, through Christian Concern for Southern Africa (CCSA), which was then chaired by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) Quaker secretary Trevor Jepson, he helped to pioneer the beginnings of the Ethical Investment Research and Information Service (EIRIS). This organisation now has significant global influence. He also appreciated the dedicated work of South African Quaker Hendrik van der Merwe, particularly when Hendrik brought the Africa Liberation movement, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), into dialogue with the South African business community.
Brian also describes his work as Africa secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society 1990–96 and later his work as a tutor in the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, where the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre was the foundational member. The Brown family have, contrary to Brian’s expectations, experienced the demise of apartheid in South Africa and European communism. Such is their commitment to the ‘indivisibility of freedom’ they feel that they remain ‘unfree’ until the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza gain their freedom from occupation by the Israeli government. Shari Brown, Brian and Marion’s eldest child, expressed her personal witness as a participant in the continuing work of the Quaker Peace & Social Witness-managed Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
The book reflects, at its heart, the way the author has maintained a rare constancy on seeking to uphold the Advice & query: ‘Bring the whole of your life under the ordering of the Spirit of Christ.’ To read this book is to learn about the courageously nonviolent responses to the challenges faced by one prayer-led family of the ‘white tribe’ of South Africa after the institution of apartheid in 1948.
Born to be Free – The Indivisibility of Freedom by Brian J Brown is published by ‘Church in the Market Place’ at £9.95. It can be purchased from: www.borntobefreebook.com. ISBN 9780993384110.
