Resolution on Apartheid (General Conference Mennonite Church, 1986)

Resolution on Apartheid (GCMC, 1986)

We give thanks that in the ministries of our church we have members serving among our black sisters and brothers of southern Africa, enriched by their fellowship and gratified by close cooperation with their churches.

Our workers share with us the tragic plight in South Africa of blacks oppressed by a system of apartheid, intensified in recent months by the cruelties of the state of emergency, with police harassing Christian congregations and indiscriminately violating human rights.

We request the General Secretary to arrange for drafting letters in the name of the conference to be sent to the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of United States, appealing to them to use their powers to influence the Republic of South Africa to dismantle without delay the walls of apartheid.

We call for our governments to implement additional ways of communicating non-violently the urgent moral necessity of living with blacks as equals. We hear the biblical summons to "release captives and set prisoners free."

In the preparation of these letters we encourage consultation with mission boards and MCC serving in southern Africa.

Further, we ask that copies of these letters be sent to the South Africa Council of Churches and other church bodies in South Africa.

Listening committee/CARRIED