Freedom's Distant Shores: American Protestants and Post-Colonial Alliances with Africa

Chapter 7 American Evangelists and Church-State Dilemmas in Multiple African Contexts

143 American Evangelists and Church-State Dilemmas in Multiple African Contexts In 1985 Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the “Moral Majority,” visited South Africa, where he met with South African President P. W. Botha and other government officials and pro-government community leaders. Although his visit occurred at a time when anti-apartheid activism was at its height and reports of terror and injustices against black South Africans were provided daily, Falwell assessed that racial progress was being made in South Africa and apartheid was “gradually being put off the scene” by the South African government . He also condemned the imposition of sanctions on South Africa as a means of bringing about change in the country (although this strategy was widely supported within the United States and South Africa at the time). Instead, Falwell announced his intention to invest in South African gold krugerrands and in companies doing business in South Africa, and pledged a million dollar campaign by the Moral Majority to encourage other Americans to do likewise. In addition to his failure to meet with South African anti-apartheid leaders during his visit, Falwell characterized Desmond Tutu as a “phony,” stating in a news conference after his visit that Tutu was “no more a spokesman for the black majority than I am.” Although Falwell later apologized for calling Tutu a phony, his antipathy for South African anti-apartheid activists was extended in subsequent months to R. Drew Smith Chapter 7 144 American Evangelists and Church-State Dilemmas Nelson Mandela, whom he dismissed as a communist and a terrorist requiring careful watching. Falwell also urged a boycott of the HBO cable station for airing a dramatized biography of Mandela’s life.1 Support for the white minority government in South Africa during the late 1980s also came from fellow American televangelist Pat Robertson. Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, devoted significant network airtime to interviews with white South Africans and pro-government black South Africans, as well as to “pleas for viewers to pray for stability” in South Africa. Robertson also dispatched Ben Kinchlow to South Africa (the black cohost of the “700 Club”) to conduct an interview with South Africa’s foreign minister that focused on the negative consequences of imposing sanctions on South Africa. A few years later, with apartheid having given way to majority rule in South Africa, Robertson moved on to other controversial Africa involvements . The Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko, when faced with opposition in 1992 from pro-democracy activists and armed rebel groups, turned his soldiers loose on thousands of persons participating in a peaceful, prodemocracy rally. Estimates were that Mobutu’s soldiers shot and killed up to 250 protestors. Three weeks later, Robertson made an appearance on Zairian national television, where he hailed Mobutu as a “fine Christian and a democrat .” Robertson maintained his support of Mobutu through 1995, lobbying the Clinton administration and Congress to reverse Mobutu’s U.S. travel ban while arguing that Mobutu had reformed his ways. Unknown to many people at the time was Robertson’s engagement in diamond-mining operations in Zaire for a number of years as part of a mining and timber contract with Mobutu. By 1995, the operation was declared a failure and Robertson pulled out.2 Not long after Robertson’s retreat from Zaire, he transferred his mining and timber operations to war-torn Liberia, entering into a business and political alliance with Liberia’s warlord-turned-President, Charles Taylor. Robertson signed a mining agreement with Taylor in 1999 that granted mining concessions to Robertson’s mining company and a 10 percent equity interest in the company to the Liberian government. Robertson also began making public defenses of Taylor, whose troops or armed proxies were believed responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Liberia and in neighboring countries: “This man Taylor is not the monster everybody makes him out to be,” Robertson stated.3 He also defended Taylor on religious grounds, proclaiming that Taylor “definitely has Christian sentiments” and arguing that the U.S. sanctions against Liberia and withholding of military support for Taylor’s government “were undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country.” 4 A number of Robertson’s Evangelical colleagues in the United States publicly distanced themselves from Robertson’s support of Taylor. One Southern Baptist leader R. Drew Smith 145 remarked: “I would say...