Funeral as a platform for politics

As the death tolls mounted and outdoor meetings were banned, church buildings and congregations became centres for protest. Funerals, usually of the young, became the liturgical focus as whole communities stiffened their will to resist. These highly charged political and religious occasions were traumatic for the bereaved, but also for many clergy who were totally unprepared to minister to angry, grieving crowds surrounded and bullied by troops and police...Thousands, and on occasions tens of thousands, gathered to assert their hatred of apartheid, and to honour the victims of police and army bullets, death squads, and prison torture. Hymns and prayers were
followed by freedom songs. Coffins were draped with A.N.C. colours and, always, Nkosi Sikilele'i (God Bless Africa) was sung (Walshe: 1991, 54).



Peter Walshe
“South Africa: Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement.”
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 29 (1, 1991): 27-60