OUR BISHOP

Ambrose Reeves, "our Bishop", as many Africans called him, was Bishop of Johannesburg for eleven years, until the South African Government deported him in September 1960. As a visitor to South Africa during those years remarked, "No good cause, no suffering individual, no frightened victim of some government policy hesitated to seek help from this man, whose great energy and wisdom sparked and guided and challenged. Were there mass arrests, the Bishop would find money to defend the accused; were there students protesting the closing of their universities to non-whites, the Bishop would be there to inspire.Was there a great threat of mass evictions — see the Bishop, he would know what to do - he would get money, or speak out, or soothe clashing points of view."

On December 6 the Bishop was eighty. He was born in 1899 in Norwich, a provincial town in England. His father, a chemist, died when he was a child and as the family was far from prosperous, Ambrose's education came mainly from scholarships which he won more through determination than brilliance. Small, wiry and bespectacled, he was a thoughtful youth and his imagination was kindled by Dostoevsky's novels — a world of suffering and joy, conflict and peace, that reminded him of his common humanity with rogues as well as with saints.

During the first World War, aged seven" teen, he joined up; poor eyesight prevented him from being sent to the front, but his experience of serving alongside soldiers who were often illiterate drew him to ideas of working for social reconstruction based on Christian teaching. After studying history at Cambridge, where he took an increasing interest in matters of immediate social concern as well as international affairs, he deck deaf to become a priest in the Anglican Church.

During the 1920's, whether working in parishes or for the Student Christian Move. meet, he went to the heart of problems —  social, cultural and political. Whenever he moved into a new situation he methodically studied the facts then reflected or agonised until he could see what action to take, and then went right ahead and acted, with boundless energy. His international involvements were widening — in 1926 he studied at the General Theological Seminary in New York, in the early 'thirties his work took him through Poland, Denmark, Bull "aria then, in Geneva, he was liaison officer for the World Student Christian Federation. He was keenly interested both in the ecumenical movement and the Christian Marxist dialogue.

In 1937 he became a rector of a city parish in Liverpool — it was a time of widespread unemployment, then of war, when the city was heavily bombed. With his wife, Margaret van Ryssen, who had been a fellow - worker in the Student Christian Movement, and their 4 children he made a home there and set about the work of reconstruction, both material and spiritual, in Liverpool. As he wrote then: "The Church has to bear the burden of the slums which are the product of industrial civilisation with all the  degradation and vice that they cause ... The Church has to share the shame and the trickery and dishonesty which pass for good business; The Church has to know the anguish of the ruthlessness of Civil War and the futility of international war." It was in the crisis of a dock strike in 1945 that Reeves's understanding of the strikers' case and his ability to work with them helped him succeed in bringing the conflicting sides together. His reputation had by now spread far beyond Liverpool, beyond England, in 1948 he was a delegate to the founding Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, where he was elected to the Central Committee and Executive Council; in the following year, 1949, he was elected Bishop by the diocese of Johannesburg.

It was a crucial time in South Africa; the Afrikaner Nationalists had recently come to power with their policy of apartheid. The world knew little about South Africa's racial policy, though Alan Paton's novel, "Cry, the Beloved Country", and the Reverend Michael Scott's testimonies to the United Nations were, in their different ways, putting that country on the map of international concern.

Reeves, as always, took time to study the background and facts — for instance, the attitudes of the Dutch Reformed Church; indeed, after a year, he considered that the burning issue was not the subject of race, but the "pattern which an industrialised society like ours is to take..." But as law after law was passed to extend apartheid and to silence the protectors, he came repeatedly to challenge the authorities, always baring action of a study of the facts. And he challenged white complacency, especially in his diocese.

The first major confrontation with the Government was over Bantu Education between 1953 and 1955. Missions and Churches had a long history of providing education for Africans, and the Government intended to eradicate what it saw as their subversive influence. Anglican schools included St Peter's in Johannesburg where many black leaders — among them Oliver Tambo —  were educated. Reeves denounced Bantu Education — a system aimed at the intellectual crippling of a whole nation. He declared "Whatever the cost, we must make it plain to the Government, the members of our Church and all the African people that we disagree so profoundly with the policy ... that we cannot be a party to it in any shape or form." Rather than sell the schools to the Government, as the law demanded, he led his diocese in closing them down and refusing to sell. Father Trevor Huddleston CR, (later to be Bishop of Masasi, then of Mauritius and now also Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean), who also played a leading part in opposing the Government, said: "I believe history will vindicate the. Bishop's courageous and lonely stand ... the hardest thing, perhaps in the world, is to stand by the principle to the end ... It is much harder when one is caught up into the deep and bitter suffering of the the people one loves most dearly."

It was indeed a lonely stand for these men - in the Anglican community it was the Diocese of Johannesburg alone that resisted. And the Bishop toured the United States and Britain, addressing mass meetings on what was being done in South Africa. "His stand against Bantu Education, his refusal to collaborate in any way with the Government, " says a present-day leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, "was most remarkable and has earned the respect of young blacks today." It was against the policy of Bantu Education that black students rose in protest in 1976.

Simultaneously, the Bishop was leading the Citizens' Housing League in protests against enforced removals under the Group Areas Act. He protested against the death penalty and its terrible toll of black victims.

And all the time the work of the diocese went ahead. During his yeas there 70 new churches were opened. Yet he was never too busy to attend to an individual in real need -many of them old and the sick in black townships. Meanwhile his home was a centre not only for diverse local committees but for visitors wanting to learn about South Africa; the realities, not Government — or business-organised tours.

Early one morning in December 1956, 155 men and women of all races were arrested in' a country-wide, sweep, and charged with High Treason. On the same day the Bishop agreed to become Chairman of a Defence Fund and obtained money to secure the services of some of South Africa's finest advocates and to guarantee the large sum necessary to enable the accused to be released on bail. This prompt action, and the Fund's subsequent support of dependants of the accused must have been a shocking setback to the State. Committees in other parts of South Africa and abroad substantially supported the Treason Trial Defence Fund but it was the Johannesburg Committee that bore the brunt. Comprised of an academic, an architect, a housewife, a stockbroker, a child psychiatrist and other such diverse people, under the Bishop's bluntly practical chairmanship, the Committee worked hard, meeting each week to take immediate decisions — not only organising year after year the raising of funds but the welfare work involved in the distribution. The Bishop liaised between a Committee of the accused and the Defence team. As one of the accused said: "The Bishop was the moving spirit in rallying many freedom-loving South Africans of all colours, creeds and shades of opinion. This five years of our lives was made bearable by their support."

All the accused were eventually found "Not Guilty".

In the early days of the trial, when a huge crowd of Africans, protesting outside the court at the arrest of their leaders, was confronted by trigger-happy young white policemen who had already fired shots, the Bishop, accompanied by another member of his committee, intervened to avert what could have been an ugly and tragic situation.

Only those who have worked with the Bishop in the thick of the struggle can fully appreciate how the strength, determination and devotion of this small wiry, intensely human man, inspired others. His dry sense of humour was always stimulating.

During the Treason Trial, Africans in Alexandra township, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, began a boycott of buses; too poor to pay a small rise in fare they walked, each morning and evening, the eighteen miles to and from work. Police raids, arrests and other forms of intimidation failed to break their determination. As in Liverpool, the Bishop became intimately involved in the crisis, going between African leaders in the trial and the Boycott Committee, visiting the town ships to see for himself, then helping to negotiate with members of the Bus Company and Chamber of Commerce. The strike was satisfactorily settled: the Africans continued to pay the old fare.

Chief Lutuli, late President General of the African National Congress (who was later to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace) wrote: "In every time of crisis for my people, the Bishop was at hand to advise and assist them in their difficulty."

Towards the end of the 1950's Africans intensified their protests against the most-hated of all the oppressive laws — the Pass Laws. In support of the ANC plans, which also included demands for the raising of African wages and abolition of Bantus. tans, the Bishop brought together a Committee of 14 Organisations ranging from moderate liberals to the far left — an unusual achievement in South Africa. One of the liberals said: "Ambrose Reeves is a superb chairman - not because he is impartial, he isn't, but because he has the ability to drive a meeting on to conclusions... he is relentless in cutting through irrelevancies until a consensus — and it really is a consent sue - is reached'.. While a Marxist remarked: "He was able to stimulate the positive and suppress the negative traits in those he worked with. He was able to stop arguments about philosophical differences and focus attention on burning issues."

In March 1960 the Sharpville massacre took place. At Sharpville location, in the diocese of Johannesburg, a massive crowd of men, women and children gathered peaceably outside the police station. The massacre that followed outraged the world. The moment the Bishop heard the terrible news he went to Baragwanath Hospital to visit the wounded; urgently he arranged for lawyers to take affidavits so that they could claim for damages against the Minister of Justice and the police, and he organised contact with the families of those killed and wounded to help with their problems and welfare needs. Undeterred by police obstructiveness he went on to feed the press with the facts, and to appeal for funds for the families afflicted. (He had, only a few months earlier, helped to arrange for a lawyer to represent Chief Hosea Kutako and the Heroes after a similar shooting by police in Windhoek location in Namibia).

At a time when the Government was rounding up thousands of all races, had declared a State of Emergency and was about to outlaw ANC, the Bishop left for Swaziland - immediately to escape being

silenced by the police and then, when he went on to England, where he had been due to spend long leave, to speak out. His departure caused much controversy — it is significant that those most bitterly critical were white members of his diocese and of the clergy who had most disapproved of him, or resented autocratic treatment, while African and left-wing comment was sympathetic. He resumed to South Africa in September; two days later Security Police—without charge or trial—deported him after tricking his lawyer and diocesan staff so that they were unable to reach him. At rallies thousands protested. The Rand Daily Mail commented: "The Deportation is an event of immense and horrifying significance...Bishop Reeves is a forthright man of God...Quite rightly he sees no borderline between "politics" and "religion". The newspaper pointed out that he had "committed the crime of meddling in politics on the wrong side." It went on: "If he had decided that, in the name of Christianity the Africans should be pushed back into their Bantustans, he would have been tolerated or even acclaimed. But he spoke up for Africans living under apartheid, he enjoyed the confidence of African leaders, he helped end the bus boycott without shooting, he thought the police acted wrongly at Sharpville and said so, and to crown it all, he saw that his views were well known overseas. So he had to be eliminated." (13 September 1960).

Back in England, far from the Church celebrating and supporting this great Christian, it found him an embarrassment. He was eventually offered minor posts that were manifestly unsuitable yet he remained loyal and never spoke publicly about his increasingly difficult position. He kept busy, writing books, travelling widely and lecturing. For a time he worked as General Secretary of the Students Christian Movement, touring universities and trying to push new life into its activity. At the age of 66 he reverted to being a parish priest in Sussex, which gave him time for his many activities: he was President of the British Committee of the Christian Peace Conference, of a local Fabian group and he maintained close links with International Defence and Aid. In 1966 he went on a mission to Vietnam with others who had been active in the struggle for peace and justice, a fact-finding mission into whether or not Hanoi had been bombed by the American air force, and to explore possibilities for ending the conflict. The mission was able to see some American prisoners and bring back letters from them to their families. As always when coming from an area of conflict, Reeves saw members of the British Government and Parliament and, in America, of the Administration and Congress, to convey to them what he had witnessed.

In 1970 he was elected President of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and he immediately applied his characteristic dedication to this work. He had earlier, in 1963, visited the United Nations, and has continued to work closely with the United Nations

Special Committee against Apartheid.- He has travelled widely in Britain, Europe and Africa to promote 'the work of the Anti Apartheid Movement.

In 1972 he retired and with his wife is living in a small town on the south coast of England. Since his time in South Africa there has been no comparable leader of the Church of whom Africans could say, he is "our Bishop".

On this 80th birthday of Bishop Ambrose Reeves the ANC wishes him many happy returns of the day and we are certain that the young generation of South Africans fighting against Bantu Education and Apartheid will always be inspired by his actions which reflect the spirit of honest antiapartheid British citizens.

Published in Sechaba, February 1980