Human Rights and the Mining Industry

The keynote address to a Human Rights Dialogue held by the Minerals Council South Africa, with Anglo American and Global Compact Network South Africa, on on 17th March 2022, ahead of South Africa's Human Rights Day: 

Good morning to you all. Thanks for being part of this event. You all have busy lives and work schedules, and your time is appreciated. 

Thank you in particular for joining this workshop on human rights. But you may well ask, what has a religious leader got to say about human rights? Sure you should be hearing from a lawyer or a legal philosopher? My answer is straightforward: respect for human rights is as central to religious faith as it is to any part of life. Our late Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu used to put it this way: whether you are a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew or a Buddhist, not one of these faiths has a low doctrine of human beings. And if you are a person of no faith, you almost inevitably follow what they called the Golden Rule: that you should treat other people as you wish to be treated.  

A homily for Ash Wednesday 2022

A sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

Transfiguration Sunday 

Trinity Wall Street, New York

27 February 2022

Readings: Exodus 34: 29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3: 12-4:2; Luke 9: 28 - 36

May I speak in the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of our lives, Amen.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, dear people of God,  it is wonderful to be back with you, and a special honour and privilege to have been asked to share with you the Word of God in this momentous weekend as we celebrate the institution of the Revd Phil Jackson as your Rector. Many thanks to you, Father Phil, to your leadership team and to the whole community for this invitation. Thank you also to those who have worked hard on the preparations for the events of this week. Phil, on behalf of my Diocese of Cape Town and my Province, of Southern Africa where we are experiencing the burning heat of summer right now, I bring you our warmest congratulations. 

Archbishop Thabo calls for prayers for peace, fasting, and indaba over Ukraine crisis

 I am writing to you from New York, where I will attend today the Institution of the Revd Phil Jackson, the new Rector of Trinity Church Wall Street, the original Anglican parish on the island of Manhattan. Tomorrow, on Transfiguration Sunday, I will preach at Trinity before returning home for Ash Wednesday.

Trinity have booked me into a hotel close to the church and overlooking the site of the World Trade Centre, the destruction of which turned parish life upside down on and in the months that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Looking out of my hotel window, it is misty, cold and rainy. Through the rain I can see the man-made waterfalls which plunge into the twin pools of the 9/11 Memorial, two dark pits left by the destruction of the twin towers and what they represented. As I contemplate the scene, I share a prayer for those who died, those who suffered and those who are still suffering because of those attacks and because of what precipitated them.

Turning to the television, I watch CNN and see the coverage of the devastation in Ukraine as well as the mental and psychological devastation of Russia. I shiver at the prospects of fighting on the site of the Chernobyl former nuclear plant, where already military hardware is reported to be releasing radioactive dust into the air.

As the world watches, we too share in the devastation, ultimately helpless to act in the face of more destruction and more death, able to respond only with rhetoric. I pray for Ukraine and Russia and in particular all their people. Surely we need a high-level peace initiative? A ceasefire? Dialogue? And in the worldwide church we need an indaba theology, an ubuntu ethic, and action based on indaba and ubuntu to inform our interventions to end this sad war and the frightening prospect of nuclear escalation.

I support Pope Francis's call for prayer and fasting on Ash Wednesday, and I call on Anglicans across Southern Africa to pray for Ukraine and Russia, to join others in praying, and to join calls for real indaba for the sake of those who suffer. 

Unite to Save South Africa - The State of the Nation - The People's Voice

An address by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba to a civil society gathering at St George's Cathedral the day before South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his annual State of the Nation address on February 10, 2022:

Thank you for inviting me to give the remarks to this important intervention in our national life. 

Firstly, I want to say that nothing gives me more hope for our future than the stellar line-up of contributors to tonight's event. Each one of you, in your own way, has prodded us into being active citizens, not only in your words this evening but many of you by your sterling witness over the past decade. 

Homily preached at the interring of the ashes of Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu

The ashes of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu were interred at St George's Cathedral in a private family service on January 2. Archbishop Thabo laid the ashes to rest in front of the high altar of the Cathedral in a 30-minute service beginning at 6 am.

After the week you have all been through, the emotions that have tumbled through your minds, the worry that all of us shared that we will pay adequate tribute to this, our father and grandfather in God, I am reminded of one of the stories that uTata used to tell. You all know it: the one about the preacher who went on and on and on, then said, “What more can I say?” And quick as a flash, someone at the back said: “Amen”.

Today, there is little more that I can say. So let me limit this to a few words about a gift that has not enjoyed enough attention: his capacity for self-reflection and his gentleness. After his first sabbatical at Emory in Atlanta, over Christmas and New Year in 1992, uTata came back in self-reflective mood to speak to the Synod of Bishops. There he said that now the political leaders were out of prison, and back from exile, his role as an interim leader was over and he hoped to take a lower profile. He went on to say that he was concerned that during the struggle years, he had been too abrasive, too self-righteous, too harsh in his judgements.

When he retired in 1996, he said something similar, apologising in that huge farewell in the Good Hope Centre for any hurts he may have caused.

And although he was famously strict with us, his clergy and his staff, he was gentle in his admonition. If you forgot to put on your clerical collar, he would just say, “Father, you are under-dressed.” He said it with humour but he meant it. If you were late for a meeting, there was a tap on his watch, and the question: “Don’t I pay you enough to buy a proper watch?”

My own treasured memory, as one who was chosen by him to go to theological college, is of the early years of my ministry. I was a priest at St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the parish in which he was ordained deacon and priest, and in which he was installed as Dean, consecrated as Bishop of Lesotho and then enthroned as Bishop of Johannesburg. It was a very special place for him, the church whose 7am Eucharist he regularly attended. Hence it was with special trepidation that after oversleeping I arrived late for Mass, my pyjama trousers peeking out from under my cassock. The gentleness with which he both chided and forgave me is stuck firmly in my memory.

Then, just a few years ago in Milnerton, I recall his prayer during the Eucharist that we should become more loving, more caring, more patient people to one another.

It was also so with you, each member of his family. Both he and Mama agonised over you when you were struggling, celebrated your achievements. But I have to say that there was anger too, not with you but with those who made you suffer because you were his family. Famously, when you, Mama, were arrested by the Johannesburg Traffic Department, carted off to John Vorster Square, and handcuffed to a door handle. For what? For renewing your car licence late. He was furious. Would the wife of the moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church have received such treatment? he asked.

And I think he felt guilt too, sometimes wondering if he had been too strict with you as children. It is not easy to be the child of a global celebrity: If you do well, some people say, well what do you expect with those advantages, and they don’t give you adequate credit for your achievement. If you make a mistake, you are judged more harshly than others because of your perceived advantages, which may not even exist.

uTata, your husband, your brother, your dad, your granddad, your in-law, your cousin, was a full human being, comfortable in his own skin, with all the emotions, the anger, the pain, the laughter, the seriousness and the light-heartedness which comes from being a fully rounded person.

But you know that already, so let me finish my words to the family with an admonition of my own, in the spirit in which he delivered them. At times of stress in the struggle, and at times in the stress of the early 1990s when people were killing one another, and the clergy were under huge stress and strain, he would say: be gentle with one another; and be gentle with yourselves.

To the nation, contemplating Desmond Mpilo Tutu’s legacy beyond his earthly life, let us use this opportunity to turn a new page. Let us commit ourselves as a church and society to the radical, the revolutionary change that he advocated, based on the demands of the Bible. Let us live as simply as he lived, exemplified by his pine coffin with rope handles. Let those of us who have resources pull in our belts, that others can eat enough to fill their stomachs. Let us re-order our society to end inequality and create equal opportunities for all. And why don’t we rename the Cape Town International Airport the Desmond Mpilo Tutu International Airport?

God bless you and keep you.

The Most Revd Thabo Makgoba
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town