Come join us, bishop invites

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 6

Come join us, bishop invites

NZPA-Reuter Soweto Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, returned to his congregation in a Soweto village church and said that black people would free themselves of apartheid. “We are going to be free, and we ask our fellow South Africans who happen to be white, please, if you think you can stop us from being free, you are going to be stampeded, you are going to be overrun, and we don’t want you to be overrun,” he said. Bishop Tutu, wearing a garland of red carnations, took part in a thanksgiving service for his award at the church in South Africa’s largest black township, Soweto, a satellite city for Johannesburg, where he regularly conducts services. "Come join us, come join

the winning side,” he said. Bishop Tutu, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, has campaigned for an end to apartheid. His award was hailed world-wide and by black leaders in South Africa, although the Government has said nothing. Referring to the award, he said: “God has acted decisively. There is nO doubt at all the world has said we are on our way to victory, we are on the way to freedom ... even when our enemies move armed in Hippos (Aroured police trucks) ...” The Rev. Winston Ndungane, an executive member of the council, told the congregation: “Apartheid will go as (surely as) the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening.”