Bishop: Daswa will inspire many people
February 2 marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of Benedict Daswa, the Venda man who is likely to be the first South African to be beatified. Bishop Hugh Slattery, the former bishop of Tzaneen, initiated the cause to beatify Daswa in 2000. In a two-part interview STUART GRAHAM spoke to the bishop about the Daswa cause.
SG: If Pope Francis approves the beatification of Benedict Daswa, as he is expected to do soon, people will be able to pray to a South African martyr for the first time. What will be the impact of Daswa’s beatification for South Africa?
HS: Initially I expect it won’t be significant, but it will quickly gain momentum. People will see Benedict as one of their own and will find him an attractive and compelling witness to the faith. They will be very proud of him as a young man who lived his faith at a deep level and joyfully and willingly shared it with others.
Do you feel Benedict’s example as a father, a husband and Christian will influence and inspire people as his story becomes more widely known?
We all need and desire role models who we can admire and try to imitate. For us Catholics, trying to live out our faith in daily life, our great role models are saints.
People will discover in Benedict a holy and humble man, a truly outstanding role model in several areas of life—a devoted and loving husband and father, a very active Church member, a man of prayer, a courageous witness to the faith in public life, a lover of the poor and those in need, an ideal mentor for young people, a competent and committed teacher, a good gardener and a person deeply involved in serving and uplifting his community.
You were the bishop of Tzaneen when Benedict Daswa was killed by a mob on February 2, 1990. Do you remember when you first heard about Benedict Daswa and what impact did his story have on you when you first heard it?
I heard about Benedict as soon as he was killed. Many people met violent deaths around that time in this country. It was a very sad event, but it made no [unusual] impact on me at the time.
However, on the tenth anniversary if his death in 2000, I heard how the local Catholics remembered Benedict by gathering together for a special Mass. They then went to the place where he was ambushed, and his widow placed flowers in the middle of the road. Then Benedict’s death began to have a real impact on me and it crossed my mind that he might have been a martyr for the faith.
Some inquiries among those who knew him well indicated that Benedict was somebody very special and that we should do something about it.
What did you decide to do?
We began to talk about him with some of the local people and among the priests. We hadn’t a clue about what to do or what procedures to follow or where to find the money, et cetera, to investigate his life and death. To get Benedict beatified as a martyr looked like an impossible, or at least a very long-term, project. It seemed more like a dream than a project.
Very few dared to believe that a poor remote diocese like Tzaneen was going to produce the first local African saint. We thought we wouldn’t be around to see all this happen.
Trusting in God we decided to go ahead, to find out what had to be done and get on with the task of investigating his life and death. Since then, the Lord has been very good to us, opening doors and meeting needs as the occasion requires. A strong streak of stubbornness also helped.
Witchhunts, opposition to which got Benedict killed, still take place in rural South Africa. People in Daswa’s home village say the situation hasn’t improved since his murder. Has his death made any difference at all to the way people think about witchcraft and the dark arts?
Witchcraft is something deep in African culture and it is very unlikely that the belief in it is going to change any time soon.
It was surely through some special grace from God that Benedict Daswa was able to put the dark areas of his culture outside of himself, as it were, and see it as anti-light and therefore opposed to his new-found Christian faith.
He saw that in his life as a Christian there was no place for things like witchcraft, sorcery, muti, ritual murder, and so on. He realised he couldn’t stop people believing in witchcraft, but that he could try and challenge witchcraft accusations where no proof is required before a person is found guilty. And so he publicly opposed the smelling out of so-called witches in order to protect innocent lives.
In time, Benedict’s courageous witness will surely inspire many other people to follow his example and intervene at a level of witchcraft accusations by demanding proof of guilt before someone can be banished or killed.
Part 2 of the interview follows next week.
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