Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society

The Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society, commonly known as SPRO-CAS or Spro-cas, was a South African Christian research and social-action project active from 1969 to 1973. It was jointly sponsored by the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa and directed by educator and publisher Peter Ralph Randall.

The project arose from A Message to the People of South Africa, an ecumenical statement issued in 1968 that challenged the theological foundations of apartheid and argued that Christian loyalty could not be subordinated to race or nationalism. SPRO-CAS brought together approximately 150 academics, clergy, lawyers, educators, economists and other participants in six commissions examining the church, economics, education, law, politics and society.

The first phase, subsequently known as SPRO-CAS I, conducted research and published reports analysing the principal institutions of apartheid society. Its findings moved beyond appeals for improved race relations and called for a fundamental redistribution of political power and economic resources.

A second phase, SPRO-CAS II (formally the Special Project for Christian Action in Society) operated during 1972 and 1973. It attempted to translate the earlier research into action and was divided into black-led community programmes and a white conscientisation programme. The Black Community Programmes, initially associated with SPRO-CAS II, became an important organisational expression of the Black Consciousness Movement under figures including Bennie Khoapa and Steve Biko.

SPRO-CAS also contributed to the establishment of Ravan Press, which was initially created to publish project reports and later became a major oppositional publishing house. The project completed its formal work in 1973, but its community programmes, publishing initiatives and methods of Christian social analysis continued through the Christian Institute, the Black Community Programmes, Ravan Press and other organisations.

Background

Christian opposition to apartheid

During the 1960s, most white South African churches remained cautious in their criticism of apartheid. Some Afrikaans Reformed churches offered explicit theological support for racial separation, while English-speaking churches often condemned particular injustices without developing a comprehensive alternative to the social and political system.

The Cottesloe Consultation of 1960 had challenged racial discrimination in church and society, but the withdrawal of the Afrikaans churches from its conclusions weakened organised ecumenical opposition. The establishment of the Christian Institute in 1963 created an independent forum through which clergy and lay Christians could examine the relationship between Christianity, race and political power.

By the late 1960s, the Christian Institute and the SACC had concluded that general statements condemning racial prejudice were inadequate. They sought a systematic examination of the institutions through which apartheid operated, including law, education, political representation, economic ownership and the churches themselves.

A Message to the People of South Africa

The immediate theological stimulus for SPRO-CAS was A Message to the People of South Africa, issued by the SACC's theological commission in September 1968. The document rejected the identification of Christianity with nationalism and argued that reconciliation in Christ was incompatible with permanent racial separation.

The message asserted that Christian faith required more than improved personal attitudes between members of different racial groups. It challenged the political, economic and ecclesiastical structures that maintained white domination and called upon Christians to examine their participation in those structures.

The SACC and Christian Institute subsequently agreed to sponsor a project that would apply the theological principles of the message to major areas of South African public life. Invitations to participate in the project were issued under the names of Bill Burnett, then president of the SACC, and Christian Institute director Beyers Naudé.

Establishment and organisation

SPRO-CAS was established in mid-1969. Peter Randall, who had previously worked as assistant director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, was appointed director.

The project began with a small central office, a director and a secretary. It had no guaranteed long-term funding and was originally expected to complete its work during 1971. Randall later described its establishment as a venture undertaken without preliminary feasibility studies or pilot projects.

Six commissions were created to study:

• economics;
• education;
• law;
• politics;
• sociology and social relations; and
• the church.

Approximately 150 people served as commission members or consultants. Participants were selected for their academic or practical expertise and their acceptance of the need for social change in the direction of justice and reconciliation. The commissions also consulted people outside their formal membership.

Although SPRO-CAS was sponsored by Christian organisations, its commissions were not limited to clergy or theologians. They included academics, social scientists, lawyers, economists, teachers, political commentators and community activists. Contributors represented a range of ideological positions, from liberal reformism and Christian social democracy to Black Consciousness and the emerging South African New Left.

SPRO-CAS I

Research programme

The first phase of SPRO-CAS was designed primarily as a study project. Each commission collected research, commissioned papers and considered alternative arrangements for South African society.

The commissions were asked not merely to document discrimination but to examine the implications of applying Christian principles to the central institutions of national life. The intended outcome was a set of recommendations for what the project described as a more just social order.

The commissions operated independently and did not always reach unanimous conclusions. Their membership reflected substantial disagreement over the character of South African society, the importance of racial and cultural identities, the role of capitalism and the form of a future political system.

Some participants favoured conventional liberal integration and a common non-racial society. Others considered forms of federalism or territorially based pluralism. More radical contributors argued that neither liberal reform nor modified separate development addressed the concentration of power, wealth and land in white hands.

Occasional publications

Before issuing the six commission reports, SPRO-CAS published working papers and preliminary studies as a series of occasional publications. The first was Anatomy of Apartheid, published in November 1970. It examined the political structure of apartheid, its cultural and economic foundations and the relationship between separate development and modernisation.

The second, South Africa's Minorities, contained studies of Indian South Africans, Afrikaners, English-speaking whites and coloured South Africans. Its contributors included sociologist Fatima Meer, W. A. de Klerk, C. O. Gardner and M. G. Whisson.

Other occasional publications addressed political change and economic inequality. The project sought to distribute research beyond universities and church committees and to encourage wider public debate about alternatives to apartheid.

Commission reports

Between 1971 and 1973 SPRO-CAS issued reports from each of its six commissions:

• Education beyond Apartheid, the report of the Education Commission;
• Towards Social Change, the report of the Social Commission;
• Power, Privilege and Poverty, the report of the Economics Commission;
• Apartheid and the Church, the report of the Church Commission;
• Law, Justice and Society, the report of the Legal Commission; and
• South Africa's Political Alternatives, the report of the Political Commission.

The education report criticised the unequal and racially fragmented education system and examined alternatives to Bantu education. The economic report documented disparities in income, employment, property and access to resources. The legal report examined the relationship between apartheid legislation, state power and the rule of law.

Apartheid and the Church criticised segregation within Christian institutions and the failure of churches to confront the structures of apartheid. It argued that churches could not credibly proclaim reconciliation while maintaining racial separation in worship, membership and decision-making.

The political commission considered competing models for constitutional change. Its final report distinguished between a common society based on equal citizenship and proposals for multiple ethnically defined states. Although commission members disagreed, the report was increasingly critical of plural-state proposals that could preserve white power under a modified form of separate development.

Intellectual development

The project developed during a period of rapid change in South African oppositional politics. The emergence of the South African Students' Organisation and Black Consciousness challenged the assumption that white liberals should formulate solutions on behalf of black South Africans.

Biko and other Black Consciousness thinkers were initially critical of the SPRO-CAS commissions. They argued that a predominantly white-sponsored project was likely to seek an alternative acceptable to white society rather than one defined by the aspirations of oppressed people.

The commissions were also challenged by Marxist and New Left critiques of South African liberalism. Writers including Rick Turner argued that racial inequality was connected to the distribution of economic power and could not be resolved solely through changes in personal attitudes or constitutional rights.

Turner's The Eye of the Needle: Towards Participatory Democracy in South Africa, written in connection with the SPRO-CAS process and published in 1972, proposed a decentralised and participatory socialist society. His work influenced debates within the project over labour, economic ownership and democratic participation.

Historian Alf Stadler later characterised SPRO-CAS participants as "anxious radicals": people moving beyond conventional white liberalism but still uncertain about the political means, social forces and institutional forms through which fundamental change could occur.

SPRO-CAS II

Shift from study to action

By 1971 the sponsors and staff of SPRO-CAS were considering how the commission findings might be translated into practical programmes. The second phase was launched in 1972 as the Special Project for Christian Action in Society. Some later sources, including the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, refer to it as the "Special Programme of Christian Action in Society".

SPRO-CAS II represented a significant shift from research and recommendation towards organisation, education and direct action. Its aim was to help people recognise their position within apartheid society and develop the capacity to change it.

The project rejected the assumption that a single multiracial programme controlled by white church organisations could adequately serve both black and white participants. Following discussions involving Randall, Biko, Khoapa and others, SPRO-CAS II developed separate but related black and white programmes.

Black Community Programmes

The black component developed into the Black Community Programmes (BCP), directed initially by Bennie Khoapa and closely associated with Biko and other Black Consciousness activists.

The BCP sought to enable black communities to identify their own needs, mobilise their own resources and develop independent leadership. Its work included community health, literacy, education, leadership training, cultural activity, publishing, self-help projects and small-scale economic development.

Projects later associated with the BCP included the Zanempilo Community Health Centre near King William's Town, community-based home industries and the publication of Black Review and other Black Consciousness texts.

The BCP was initially funded and administratively supported through SPRO-CAS, but became an independent black-controlled organisation in 1973. Its separation from the original project reflected the Black Consciousness principle that black communities should determine their own priorities and control organisations operating in their name.

The programme was banned by the South African government with other Black Consciousness organisations on 19 October 1977.

White conscientisation

The white component of SPRO-CAS II became known as the White Conscientisation Programme. Its principal national organiser was Horst Kleinschmidt, with regional staff and programmes operating through Christian Institute offices.

The programme drew on the concept of conscientisation associated with Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. It sought to persuade white South Africans to examine how they benefited from apartheid and to move from expressions of sympathy towards organised resistance and solidarity.

Activities included study groups, public meetings, publications, workshops and engagement with churches, students and professional groups. The programme encouraged white participants to accept personal and material consequences for opposing apartheid rather than limiting themselves to verbal condemnation.

Regional approaches varied. The Cape Town programme was linked closely to the Christian Institute office led by Theo Kotze and included activists such as former National Union of South African Students president Neville Curtis. The office combined education with support for detainees, political defendants and their families.

The programme faced opposition from conservative churches within the SACC and from some Christian Institute members who believed it had moved beyond the organisations' appropriate religious mandate. Because the Christian Institute was an individual-membership body and was less constrained by member denominations, SPRO-CAS II became more closely associated with the Institute than with the SACC.

Publications

SPRO-CAS issued a numbered series of eleven publications between 1970 and 1973. The first four volumes presented working papers prepared for the project's commissions; these were followed by six commission reports and a final co-ordinated report.

The numbered series comprised:

1. Anatomy of Apartheid (1970);

1. South Africa's Minorities (1971);

1. Directions of Change in South African Politics (1971);

1. Some Implications of Inequality (1971);

1. Education beyond Apartheid (1971);

1. Towards Social Change (1971);

1. Power, Privilege and Poverty (1972);

1. Apartheid and the Church (1972);

1. Law, Justice and Society (1972);

1. South Africa's Political Alternatives (1973); and

1. A Taste of Power: The Final Co-ordinated SPRO-CAS Report (1973).

Other publications associated with SPRO-CAS and its second, action-oriented phase included:

• Rick Turner's The Eye of the Needle (1972), a discussion of participatory democracy and an alternative social order;
• Black Viewpoint, edited by Steve Biko and published by the SPRO-CAS Black Community Programmes in 1972;
• Cry Rage!, a collection of poetry by James Matthews and Gladys Thomas, published by SPRO-CAS Publications in 1972; and
• Outlook on a Century: South Africa, 1870–1970, edited by Francis Wilson and Dominique Perrot and published jointly by SPRO-CAS and Lovedale Press in 1973.

The publications ranged from commission reports and social-science studies to political philosophy, Black Consciousness writing, poetry and historical anthologies. In a later account, SPRO-CAS activist Horst Kleinschmidt described publishing as central to the second phase's effort to translate the recommendations of the research project into anti-apartheid education and action.

A Taste of Power

Peter Randall's A Taste of Power, publication number 11 in the series, was the final co-ordinated SPRO-CAS report. Its first part brought together the conclusions of the six commission reports and material produced by the Black Community Programmes.

The report argued that South African society required radical change involving a fundamental redistribution of power and resources. It called for power to be reallocated so that the black majority could participate effectively in political decision-making and receive a more equitable share of the country's resources.

A second theme of the report was that black South Africans had begun to initiate change themselves rather than waiting for reforms controlled by white institutions. Its analysis connected racial segregation with inequalities in education, the economy, law, politics and the churches, and presented apartheid as a system maintained through unequal access to power, land, resources and opportunity.

Ravan Press

The volume and political sensitivity of the SPRO-CAS publications created difficulties in securing commercial publishers and printers. Randall later described bookshops' reluctance to stock titles, printers' fears of prosecution and uncertainty created by South African censorship laws.

In 1972 Randall, Naudé and Danie van Zyl established Ravan Press. Its name was formed from elements of their surnames: Randall, van Zyl and Naudé. The press initially provided an independent vehicle for SPRO-CAS publications.

After the project ended, Ravan developed into a broader oppositional publishing house. It published fiction, poetry, history, social analysis and political writing by authors whose work was frequently excluded from mainstream South African publishing.

Ravan's later authors included J. M. Coetzee, Miriam Tlali, Sipho Sepamla, Wopko Jensma, Njabulo Ndebele and Chabani Manganyi. The press became one of SPRO-CAS's most durable institutional legacies.

Criticism and internal tensions

SPRO-CAS was criticised by both defenders and opponents of apartheid.

Government supporters and conservative church figures accused the project of using Christian language to promote liberalism, socialism, Black Consciousness or political revolution. Its criticism of unequal power and wealth was treated by some opponents as evidence of Marxist influence.

Black Consciousness activists criticised the racial composition and assumptions of the original commissions. They questioned whether a white-sponsored ecumenical project could produce a genuinely liberating alternative and rejected forms of integration in which white participants retained control over funding, organisation and policy.

Radical scholars criticised some early reports for treating South Africa primarily as a collection of racial and cultural groups rather than examining the class relations and economic structures that sustained apartheid. Stadler argued that the project identified extensive injustice but remained uncertain about the political agency capable of creating the society it proposed.

There were also disagreements within individual commissions. The Political Commission debated liberal common-society models, federalism, plural states and more radical democratic alternatives. Conservative participants sometimes dissented from the final direction of reports, while left-wing critics considered the recommendations insufficiently transformative.

The creation of separate black and white programmes during SPRO-CAS II was partly a response to these criticisms. It acknowledged the Black Consciousness demand for autonomous black organisation while assigning white participants the task of confronting white power and complicity.

State scrutiny and legal proceedings

SPRO-CAS and its sponsoring bodies became subjects of increasing government surveillance. In 1972 the state-appointed Schlebusch Commission began investigating the Christian Institute, the National Union of South African Students, the University Christian Movement and the South African Institute of Race Relations.

The commission met in private, did not disclose all of its evidence and did not permit the organisations to cross-examine witnesses. Christian Institute and SPRO-CAS figures refused to testify because they regarded the process as procedurally unjust.

Randall, Naudé and other Christian Institute personnel were prosecuted for refusing to give evidence. Randall and Naudé also faced proceedings arising from the publication of material written by a person subject to a banning order. The prosecutions and commission investigation intensified pressure on SPRO-CAS during its final period.

Randall's passport was withdrawn in 1972, restricting his ability to represent the project internationally. Offices connected with SPRO-CAS and the Christian Institute were subjected to police searches, surveillance and interference with publications and correspondence.

SPRO-CAS itself was not among the organisations banned on Black Wednesday in 1977 because it had formally ended four years earlier. Its principal institutional successors, however, were directly affected: the Christian Institute and the Black Community Programmes were both outlawed, while numerous former participants received banning orders or were detained.

Conclusion and legacy

SPRO-CAS completed its formal programme in 1973. The research phase concluded with the commission reports and A Taste of Power, while the action programmes were transferred to successor organisations.

The Black Community Programmes continued independently until their banning in 1977. White conscientisation work was largely incorporated into the regional activities of the Christian Institute. Ravan Press continued publishing beyond the end of apartheid.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later identified SPRO-CAS as an important stage in the movement of South African churches from theological statements against apartheid towards sustained social analysis and programmes of action.

SPRO-CAS also connected several strands of opposition that were often treated separately: ecumenical Christianity, Black Theology, Black Consciousness, the New Left, community development, student politics and independent publishing.

Its first phase demonstrated the capacity of Christian organisations to mobilise professional research against apartheid. Its second phase exposed the limitations of white-controlled multiracial reform and created space for autonomous black programmes. The project's development therefore reflected the wider transformation of anti-apartheid politics during the early 1970s.

Political scientist Klaas Woldring described the two SPRO-CAS projects as a sustained attempt to formulate both an analysis of apartheid society and practical strategies for change. Although their organisational life was brief, their reports and successor programmes influenced church debates, community activism and visions of a post-apartheid society.

Archives

The organisational records of SPRO-CAS are held by the Historical Papers Research Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand as collection A835. The collection includes commission correspondence, minutes, working papers, reports, publication records and documentation concerning SPRO-CAS II.

Digitised SPRO-CAS publications are available through the South African History Online and Digital Innovation South Africa archives. JSTOR's Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection also includes a dedicated SPRO-CAS collection.

See also

• A Message to the People of South Africa
• Christian Institute of Southern Africa
• South African Council of Churches
• Peter Ralph Randall
• Beyers Naudé
• Steve Biko
• Ravan Press
• Rick Turner
• Black Consciousness Movement

Further reading

• Hadfield, Leslie Anne (2016). Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. .
• Macqueen, Ian M. (2018). Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. .
• Stadler, Alf (1975). "Anxious Radicals: SPRO-CAS and the Apartheid Society." Journal of Southern African Studies. 2 (1): 102–108. .
• Walshe, Peter (1983). Church versus State in South Africa: The Case of the Christian Institute. London: C. Hurst. .
• Woldring, Klaas (1977). "The South African SPRO-CAS Study Projects on Christianity in Apartheid Society (1969–1973)." Publius. 7 (1): 41–57. .

External links

• SPRO-CAS collection in JSTOR's Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa
• Anatomy of Apartheid at South African History Online
• South Africa's Minorities at South African History Online
• Discussion of SPRO-CAS in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report