Shaun Benton
An extraordinary kaleidoscope of different religious faiths in Cape Town joined forces to mark Reconciliation Day yesterday, by visiting three places of worship in the city centre.
And to emphasise the remarkable religious tolerance achieved by Capetonians in 16 years since democracy, a Muslim academic gave an address in a church, a Christian professor gave an address in a synagogue, and a Jewish judge spoke in a mosque.
Speaking to about 150 people crowded into the small mosque in Long Street – which opened in 1807, making it the second-oldest mosque in the country – Judge Dennis Davis said the grouping was an example to the turbulent Middle East.
“Reconciliation is about serious existential change on all sides of the fence,” said Davis, who was warmly introduced by the Imam of the Palm Tree Masjid as a controversial but always welcome advocate of human rights.
“Unless people like me, as a Jew, can start seeing the humanity of ‘the other’, you’re never going to get to a real process of reconciliation there [in Israel/ Palestine],” said Davis.
Yesterday’s “terrific” experience put South Africans together “faith to faith and face to face” – at least for the day – with their budding sense of nationality overcoming religious identities.
“It illustrates to me precisely what is possible when people have some sense of unity of purpose – and the unity of purpose is that none of us are here as Jews, Christians and Muslims as such; we’re here as South Africans.”
While people come from different backgrounds “we all know that we’re all in this boat together and if one of us is going to start drilling a hole in the boat, all three of us are going to sink”.
Earlier, Professor Jonathan Jansen, who is also president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, spoke at the synagogue”– Gardens Shul in Company Gardens next to Parliament, which opened in 1849.
Jansen warned that although South Africa now has a vast array of laws countering racism, it would be “a mistake” to believe that legislation was enough.
On a racial level, he said, South Africa is still a “deeply divided society – socially, psychologically and economically”.
Latest South African Reconciliation Barometer data by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) shows that since 2003, there has been “a slight increase” in the number of people “who find people of other races hard to understand”.
However “this should be balanced against an increased approval for integration in inter-racial marriages, schools, being employed by someone of another race and neighbourhoods”.
Dr Sa’diyya Shaik, lecturer in Islamic Studies and Feminist Theory at the University of Cape Town, told the “temporary pilgrims” gathered at St George’s Cathedral ?that a “powerful and painful economic apartheid” is still gripping the country.