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.
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.
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.
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.
