Gutierrez discussed in Gugulethu

Swedish Olle Kristenson interprets Gutierrez’ Liberation Theology when visiting Cape Town
On the 18th of December Olle Kristenson will defend his doctoral thesis on Gustavo Gutierrez in Uppsala. The title of the thesis is: Pastor in Shadow of Violence: Gustavo Gutierrez as a Public Pastoral Theologian in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2009 (Studia Missionalia Svecana CVIII).
Here I am just going to relate the discussions we had last Saturday, 5 December in Gugulethu, one of the most well known townships in Cape Town. First, however, a few comments on the book. No doubt being the leading exponent of Liberation Theology world wide, Gutierrez has already been exposed to various studies and dissertations. Here Olle concentrates on his pastoral side. Still at the age of over 80 he is at work as a Roman Catholic priest while at the same time being a theologian.
“This dissertation deals mainly with the Peruvian context in a time of uncertainty and despair in which people tried to adjust themselves to a situation where terrorist and repressive violence worsened the daily life of the poor”(p.3). The expressed aim is to analyze Gutierrez’ pastoral theological reflection during the last two decades of the 20th century (p.4); he makes use of essays and articles in newspapers and periodicals that have so far not been taken much note of, rather than the academic writings of Gutierrez (p.6).
As method Olle Kristenson uses a kind of discourse analysis and finds that the material scrutinized would fall under four discourses: the radical political, the liberal political, the Roman Catholic theological and finally the pastoral theological discourse (p.34).
A few of our post-graduate students from the UWC came over to Gugulethu for a seminar on Olle’s dissertation, one of them also being the Lutheran pastor there. It was good to be there; Gugulethu still bears marks from the apartheid era; after all this township was purposely built to keep blacks away from the city centres and the suburbs; some kind of normalisation is taking place however, buildings are improved upon, but the place remains sorely overcrowded. We had a very enriching afternoon where the relevance of Gutierrez became clear to all of us.
I ventured to ask two things, one about the liberation element, the other about what the research problem in fact was; both questions were perhaps not really answered, the dissertation seems to be more about Gutierrez’ impressive consistency in thinking critically, in terms of social and political circumstances, while dealing with ordinary, many of them poor, congregants in a pastoral way. And the research problem was probably not a problem, rather the apparent need or justified task to do intensive research into a still untapped area of his thinking and production.
The students needed to be briefed on the political situation in Peru during this time: the fact that the Maoist inspired guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso and Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru used very violent methods in reaching their objectives and the fact that the Peruvian government tended to answer in the same currency: violently. Many people were caught in between, in the crossfire as it were. Gutierrez seems to be the consistent light in this darkness, fearlessly speaking out against violations from either side.
The students’ questions came to focus on two areas, that of the need of reconciliation in a society (South Africa as well as Peru have had truth and reconciliation commissions [TRC], and the students present had recently done a post-graduate course on the South African TRC) and the question whether the second discourse in actual fact should be attributed to Gutierrez.
In a rather extensive response Dr Designate Kristenson (the doctorate will be in his pocket on 18 December) made clear that reconciliation was very central to Gutierrez, but that what transpired in Peru several times provoked his anger. For example, at one occasion the government declared that the perpetrators (the guerrilla) in a massacre of students at a campus would be given full amnesty and that this should be seen as an act of reconciliation.
Regarding the second question I could sense that Olle somewhat evasively answered that one would have to qualify the discourse on the liberal, political, as for example not being a neo-liberal one.
What came through rather powerfully was first of all that indirectly these texts of Gutierrez also speak liberation, as there is a constant need to expose that which is a threat, binding people to a status quo poverty, preventing a life of dignity and freedom to take shape; secondly, a theology as that of Gutierrez would always speak to the church and its need to be reformed.
To challenge the probably well attended ‘disputation’ in Uppsala on 18 December I like to point out that the seminar held on Gutierrez in Gugulethu, Cape Town, was far closer to his Peruvian context than what takes place in Uppsala will be.