Naught For Your Comfort

by Trevor Huddleston

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Genres: Africa, History, Biography, South Africa, Christian

Paperback

First published March 1, 1956

Reviews

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm rereading this for the third or fourth time, after a fairly long interval.

Trevor Huddleston was an Anglican priest, and a member of the Anglican monastic order, the Community of the Resurrection (CR). For 12 years, from 1944-1956, he served as the parish priest of Sophiatown, a black suburb in western Johannesburg. While there he saw the coming of the National Party government, and the implementation of its policy of apartheid, which led to the ethnic cleansing of blacks from Sophiatown, which Huddleston opposed.

With Sophiatown going or gone, Huddleston was recalled to the CR mother house in Mirfield, Yorkshire, to be novice master, and many thought that if he had not been recalled when he was, he might have been deported by the National Party government. He was able to return to Africa a few years later as Bishop of Masasi in Tanzania, and when he died his ashes were buried in the Christ-the-King Church in Sophiatown, where he had served.

Reading his book after more than 50 years brought back memories of the apartheid years, and I think it is a good book to read even today. It shows something of the ministry of a parish priest in a black working-class suburb in those days, and both the evil of apartheid, and the failure of most white Christians in Johannesburg to come to grips with that evil.

I commend this book to young South African Christians, especially those who are too young to remember apartheid and what it was like. Huddleston saw the first eight years of apartheid, when it was still being introduced. Though many of our problems today are different, some of them have their roots in that period. Seeds were planted then that grew up into trees. Since the end of apartheid, some of the trees have been chopped down, but still their stumps remain to trip us up.

And some trees have not been chopped down, but are simply under new ownership. For example, Huddleston describes how Newclare (near Sophiatown) was terrorised by a criminal gang called the Russians. But the police would do nothing about the gang. Eventually residents formed a civil guard to protect themselves, but when the civil guard opposed the Russians the police would disarm the civil guard and leave the Russians alone. Eventually people moved out of Newclare, and set up a shantytown on a vacant piece of land some distance away. Tuis was condemned as a health hazard, and the authorities threatened to forcibly remove the people to somewhere far away, like Hammanskraal. The authorities did nothing about the Russians, however, who, in some cases, occupied the houses that had been abandoned by the people living in the shantytown. Eventually Huddleston came to suspect that the authorities were conniving at the Russians' reign of terror, because they would make these places, which the government saw a blackspots in white areas, seem unsafe and less permanent, and would make ethnic cleansing easier when the time came.

And now, as I write, more than 50 years later, fifteen years after the end of apartheid, there are refugees living in the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, which the authorities condemn as a health hazard, and want to remove them, but offers little criticism of Mugabe and his gang of "Russians" who drove them out of their homes in the first place. How much has changed?

Soon after Huddleston left, the ethnic cleansing of Sophiatown was completed. The Anglican Church of Christ the King stood alone in the veld at the top of the hill, and a little way away was the former priory of the Community of the Resurrection, but the rest was ruins and rubble. The place was replanned, and redeveloped as a white suburb. And its name was changed, obscenely, to "Triomf", to celebrate the triumph of ethnic cleansing. Now the name has been changed back to Sophiatown again, but some whites, with nostalgia for apartheid, still call it Triomf.

Yes, read the book if you can. We have different problems today, and sometimes they can seem overwhelming, but it can be encouraging to be reminded of the darkness from which we have come.

[David Kenvyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is still astonishing. I first read it about forty years ago. What it has to say about apartheid is riveting, and caused thousands of people to join the Anti-Apartheid Movement and to campaign tirelessly for the abolition of that evil regime.

But what is more astonishing is that it still describes the way in which people can mistreat others, and how they can justify what they are doing because it is, supposedly, for the best. Huddleston leaves you with no doubt that this is wrong and that if you do not oppose such behaviour you are compliant in it.

This is not an easy read, but at a time when the rich, having caused a world-wide economic crisis, expect the poor to bail them out, it is still a powerful and very relevant book.

[Zareen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Father Trevor Huddleston says, this little volume is not a comfortable read. However, it is very clearly written, informative & thought-provoking,

It seems to me a great shame that the Israeli government is practising in the same way & implementing the full gamut of policies against the Palestinians which shows their total disregard for justice & human rights. There seems to be very similar pattern emerging & it has the stink of evil.

[Richard Bartholomew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a sombre meditation on the nature of apartheid, in which Huddleston deconstructs the political ideology of Hendrik Verwoerd (ironally addressed throughout as "Dr Verwoerd") and exposes the "sub-Christian" theology of the Dutch Reformed Church of the 1950s. It is also an affectionate portrait of Sophiatown, an anomalous black suburb of Johannesburg where Huddleston worked and where - much to the chagrin of the authorities - the black population had freehold rights.

The book is not a memoir of Huddleston's time in South Africa; instead, he uses vignettes that illustrate his themes. However, there is some information about his role as a public figure interacting with other public figures: there are fond references to Michael Scott, Alan Paton and Helen Navid, and an account of his friendly disagreements with Rev CT Wood (of the South African Church Institute) and the Archbishop of Canterbury over the best course of action to take. There's also an account of how different churches responded to government interference with education - Huddleston preferred closure over compromise. Some international figures are also referenced: there's a visit from Yehudi Menuhin, and charitable support from Spyros P. Skouras.

[Megan Doney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread this in Jan 2022. I don’t know if there is a more compelling argument for ‘liberal’ Christians to insist that their beliefs must play a part in politics and social Justice.

[Kay Seipp]

Aldrich Ames. FBI