World Plenary 2024 - part six
The Friend reports on the ‘Healing historic and ongoing injustices’ thematic stream of the FWCC World Plenary in South Africa (5-12 August)
For the first session in this stream, David Niyonzima, from Burundi YM, said it was imperative ‘to face and reflect’ on the issues raised. The theme was ‘very interesting’, but can be ‘hard and difficult to digest’. Urging Friends to respect people’s different cultures, he said ‘these dynamics have been here for years’ and are not instantly fixable, but it was ‘a time for listening’.
After a short prayer, three Friends shared prepared ministry on past injustices still affecting their communities. Myron Guachalla, from the Annual Meeting of Friends Central in Bolivia, described his experiences of racism in the Bolivian Quaker church, and workplace. David Niyonzima shared his experience of growing up in Burundi, which had a history of violence due to years of colonialism. This led to his brother being assassinated and David’s name appearing on a death list, forcing him to flee to Kenya. Forgiveness can ‘cut the vicious cycle’, he said.
Friends allowed the gravity of his words to sink in, before Thuli Mbete, from SAYM, described growing up in apartheid South Africa. One experience stayed with her: having to hide, aged five, from the police with her mother’s white employer because it was forbidden for black and white people to mix. There were killings and shootings every day, yet Thuli also encouraged forgiveness.
In breakout rooms, Friends spoke about their own experiences of injustice. Afterwards, one Friend said he was struck by ‘the different harms’ done in colonial systems and enslaved systems, and how this might shape reparations. ‘It’s no good treating everyone equally if they’re not equal in the first place,’ said another. A Friend from Kenya described ‘a spiral’ of past trauma ‘swirling from one generation to the next’. Meanwhile, a Friend in Uganda raised concern about the environmental degradation of oil pipelines. Closing the session, Tanya Hubbard, programme coordinator for Racial & Social Justice at Woodbrooke, said she was ‘moved by the depth of your sharing’.
Hezron Masitsa, of Nairobi YM, introduced the second session as a time to look at how Friends might respond to ‘the pain of the present’. Friends heard two recordings. Rachel Singleton-Polster described her work with the Canadian Friends Service Committee in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Elaine Bishop, a former clerk of Canadian YM, talked about ‘Pay the rent’, a movement in Australia, where settlers voluntarily pay rent to indigenous people. After trying to adopt it in Winnipeg, but being told by the indigenous elders that they didn’t have rent in their tradition, she started ‘Share the Gifts – Honour the Treaties’, which Winnipeg Meeting is supporting. The second recording was from Britain Yearly Meeting’s Reparations Working Group describing its research into the many British Quakers involved in enslavement.
In breakout rooms, Friends considered their own experiences of healing relationships, as well as ‘nourishing hope’. One later warned against financial reparations. ‘I feel so ill-equipped to grapple with this,’ said another. ‘It’s good to know [the acknowledgement stage] is where a lot of us are’. Another spoke about the importance of getting the balance right between ‘our attention to history and towards present injustice’, while another cautioned against ‘a Euro-American desire to say, “it’s our mess, let’s fix it”’. Change can only come when indigenous people are involved, said one Friend, while another highlighted the importance of studying hidden history, which could hopefully change hearts.
A Friend in Aotearoa/New Zealand described how their YM had funded a game teaching the threatened Maori language. ‘Go humbly and assume you can learn something from the indigenous people,’ said another.
The third session began with prepared ministry from Harold Weaver, of the Black Quaker Project. Three steps were necessary, he said. Firstly, acknowledge that Quakers were slave owners and complicit in white supremacy, colonialism and economic exploitation. Secondly, commit to truth telling by creating ‘a clear historical record of events’. The third is to ‘make amends in the present’, going beyond financial reparations and offering all-round rehabilitation. Reparations must ‘centre the voice of the victims’, he said.
Alma Aparece, from the Philippines, talked of how structural changes at the Friends Peace Teams had fostered inclusivity. In breakout rooms Friends considered the Society’s role in ‘being ready to confront the truth of past and current injustice to make amends’. ‘We need to look for allies,’ one Friend offered later, while another distinguished between ‘what is in the reach of Quaker organisations, and what they can urge governments to do’. Supporting the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in acknowledging its history would be another practical step, said another. ‘Are we ready to do this [overall] work?’ queried one Friend. ‘When we had to stand up on the first night, there were a lot of white British faces.’
The question was reflected in the draft minute. Edwina Peart, BYM’s diversity and inclusion coordinator, responded: ‘Are we ready?… Some of us have been ready for a long time.’
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