Archbishop Thabo Makgoba
Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture
‘Constitution and Covenant’
7 November 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests, it is an honour to be here this evening. Thank you for your invitation.
It is a privilege to contribute to critical debate around key issues within contemporary South Africa; and I am grateful to The Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust for all that it does in promoting such open discussion.
And it is a particular privilege to receive this invitation when fundamental questions around our constitution, our democracy, are so much in the spotlight.
Now, if you invite an archbishop to speak, you must not be surprised if he begins by quoting the Bible.
‘Be Subject to the Governing Authority’
St Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, instructed: [quote] ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authority’ [quote] (Rom 13:1).
Given the nature of our past governing authority, this has not always been an easy verse to handle!
But fortunately, any good Bible expositor knows the saying that ‘a text without a context is a pretext’.
