Paulo Freire for South Africa – some reflections

As followers of Jesus we
affirm the humanity of all.  In the words of Irenaues, “Man fully
alive is the glory of God”.  Freire see our
vocation as humanization – helping people to become fully human; this includes
the oppressed and the oppressor. 

In order for the
oppressed and the oppressor to become a new humanity, a “third way” has to be
explored.  This way is a different space than the ones occupied by
the oppressor and the oppressed.  It therefore, looks different than
the lives of the white oppressors and of the black oppressed in our
post-Apartheid South Africa. 

Freire comments that the
dehumanization of the oppressed will have some concrete effects,

Because it is a
distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads
the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In
order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not in
seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn
oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of
both.

In our post- Apartheid
South Africa the beneficiaries of Apartheid and the oppressed of Apartheid are
both dehumanized.  Both parties need restoration.  Freire
boldly states that the oppressed has the challenge to struggle against the oppressors
in such a way that they:

     –  Don’t become like the oppressors.

     –  Restores the humanity of their oppressors!

He states it bluntly,

This, then, is the great
humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves
and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit,
and rape by virtue of their power; cannot find in this power the strength to
liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the
weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt
to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the
oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false
generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have
the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must
perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of
this “generosity” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is
why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat
to its source.

There is a difference
between true and false generosity.  False generosity is a kind of
giving that gives goods that are received through oppression and through
current injustices.  The “fount” is unjust.  It takes what
belongs to the poor and then gives a portion back, and then calls it
generosity.  The church Father Basil the Great identified this kind
of generosity when he once challenges his church saying that what they are
giving away as charity is what they stole in the first place.  Basil
showed them how “false” their generosity was.

True generosity happens
when the sources of injustice are challenged.  In Freire’s words,

True generosity consists
precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.
False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life” to
extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these
hands — whether of individuals or entire peoples — need be extended less and
less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work
and, working, transform the world.

In my humble opinion,
this false generosity is at the heart of most outreach in churches (and a lot
of time myself).

The oppressed cannot
identify these “causes which nourish false charity”.  It has to be
identified by the oppressed. 

In plain language- a
group of beneficiaries of Apartheid cannot sit in an all-white discussion and
identify how to be truly generous.  The main reason why we cannot do
this, is because our rationalizations for our false generosity are shared
rationalizations.  Years of collective rationalizations have become
so common-sense for us, that it would take outsiders to puncture our paradigms.

The rich, beneficiaries
of Apartheid have to become students.  We have to become apprentices
of the poor. We have to listen. Learn.  Freire describes it,

“This lesson and this
apprenticeship must come, however, from the oppressed themselves …”

Yet, this apprenticeship
will not come by chance.  It will come through a decision of the
oppressed themselves.  They have to decide that they have an enormous
role to play.[1] 

But what do we do when
thousands of our black brothers and sisters believe that they don’t have a role
to play?  When their self-image have been destroyed to such an extent
that they can see no way forward? Do they know how desperately we need them to
teach and show us?

[1] “They will not gain this liberation
by chance but through the praxis of their quest for it, through their
recognition of the necessity to fight for it.”