The South African anti-apartheid cathedral that’s now a pro-Palestine hub

Cape Town, South Africa – At the corner of a main intersection in the heart of Cape Town’s city centre stands the oldest cathedral in Southern Africa.

Every Wednesday for more than 52 weeks, a sombre crowd has gathered on the stone steps outside the towering Gothic building, many with placards and Palestinian keffiyehs, as they call for an end to Israel’s more than yearlong war on Gaza.

“We are all suffering from secondary trauma watching the brutality, but we find peace in each other,” said Imam Rashied Omar, a Muslim religious leader at the Claremont mosque just south of the city.

Beside him on the stairs of St George’s Cathedral is a multicultural mix of antiwar demonstrators – including Christian and Jewish activists. Megan Choritz from South African Jews for a Free Palestine, an organisation working towards a just and peaceful end to the conflict, also joins the vigil every week.

“We have been meeting for more than 50 weeks … We have been consistent, no matter the rain, to show our solidarity for the people of Palestine,” Omar told Al Jazeera.

“It means a great deal to me,” added the 64-year-old who was an activist during apartheid and is also coordinator of a Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding programme at the University of Notre Dame.

Chants of “Free, free Palestine” merge with the passing lunchtime traffic of vehicles and people. Cars hoot in solidarity with those at the vigil while a few homeless people who sometimes sleep on the steps of the cathedral look on.

Makeshift posters serve as a reminder of the brutal violence being meted out by Israel and the more than 42,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since last October.

Peace and protest are nothing new for this iconic site in South African history.

St George’s, an Anglican church also known as the People’s Cathedral, has been a symbol of sanctuary for decades – making it a natural site of unity and hope amid despair for pro-Palestine protesters today.

During racist apartheid rule, the cathedral kept its doors open to people of all races. And at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s – when it was under the leadership of late Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu – it stood up to the hostilities of the white minority regime.

Pro-Palestine supporters outside St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town [Crystal Orderson/Al Jazeera]

Omar has been an activist since 1976 – the year Black South African schoolchildren took to the streets to protest against racist education laws and the apartheid regime opened fire in response, killing dozens, especially in the country’s townships.

Under apartheid, Omar says he attended many demonstrations, marches and prayer meetings at the cathedral, alongside other anti-apartheid clergy including the Reverend Allan Boesak, the most recent former Dean of the Cathedral, Father Michael Weeder, and the late Archbishop Tutu himself.

A great lesson Omar said he learned from Tutu is that injustice in whatever form must be fought against.

Tutu, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, was the head of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated human rights abuses by the apartheid regime.

During his life, the archbishop publicly likened Israel’s actions in Palestine to the oppression Black South Africans experienced under apartheid. He remained a vocal critic of Israel’s occupation until his death in 2021 at age 90.

“The cathedral represents the social justice struggles in the anti-apartheid era,” Omar told Al Jazeera. “And the fact that in the post-apartheid era, we can continue the legacy of a People’s Cathedral, of standing for issues of social justice – whether it is for the people of Palestine or whether for the people of Sudan or DRC – that is really the legacy of the late archbishop.”

Omar – whose mosque was one of the religious institutions in Cape Town providing solace and faith for anti-apartheid activists – said St George’s played an important role in raising the wrongs of apartheid and continues to be a voice of moral justice today.

People queue to pay their respects to the late Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu at St George’s Cathedral, in December 2021 [File: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP]

Anglican priest Father Edwin Arrison, who was mentored by the late Archbishop Tutu and was also a member of his team, holds the cathedral close to his heart.

“The cathedral was really a home and ‘safe space’ and of course a ‘brave space’ for those of us who were the activists,” he told Al Jazeera.

Arrison, a Black priest, cut his teeth in the anti-apartheid movement and was a preacher on the Cape Flats in Mitchells Plain in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the height of civil unrest. For activists in Mitchells Plain, an impoverished non-white area on the outskirts of the city, churches were often the safe space for activists being targeted by the apartheid police.

Arrison said as a young activist studying to become a priest in the turbulent 1980s, the cathedral was a sanctuary for him and many others. “We found community and encouragement there, especially in the darkest moments.”

As the president of the Interchurch Youth Group he was also detained and imprisoned in 1985 for 66 days and in 1986 for 71 days. In 1985 he was arrested again and taken to Victor Verster prison where he was held with other anti-apartheid activists. Nelson Mandela was held at the same prison years later.

Now Arrison is part of the South African Anti-Apartheid Conference Steering Committee, which was constituted by the different Palestine solidarity groups in the country and aims to work to dismantle Israeli apartheid.

A history of justice

St George’s – or the original Anglican church that was first built on the site – initially opened its doors on Christmas day in 1834.

The current building, which includes a towering interior, bell tower and intricate stained-glass windows, was designed and built by the British architect, Herbert Baker, known for being the go-to architect for the British colonists, including Cecil John Rhodes. The cathedral was built out of sandstone from Table Mountain and the first stones of the foundation were laid in 1901.

At the time, art historians said of Baker’s work: “For his churches, Baker generally favored a slightly pointed, round-arched style with buttressed walling ranging from wholly rough-hewn stone to contrasting combinations of stone and white render…” according to the art website, Artefacts.

Baker designed a “classic Gothic cruciform building”, it added. Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century. The cathedral also includes a beautiful courtyard garden with a labyrinth.

Ten years ago, the cathedral building was recognised as a provincial heritage site by the Western Cape Heritage Authority. “The church’s played a significant role in protests against apartheid and the struggle for liberation during the 1980s in Cape Town as well as the intangible heritage associated with the role different clergymen attached to the church played in this respect,” the heritage authority said at the time.

St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town [Jerome Delay/AP]

The most recent former dean of the cathedral, Father Weeder, who retired this year after serving there since 2011, spent much of his final months at St George’s overseeing the vigils for Palestine.

Weeder too was active in the anti-apartheid struggle after being ordained as a priest in 1985. During his tenure at St George’s, the war in Gaza became a central issue.

In November 2023, he led a fast for Gaza in what he described as a cry for a sustained and permanent ceasefire. He also travelled to Bethlehem during Christmas, to commemorate with Palestinian Christians.

But that means he has also borne the brunt of hate messages on his social media platforms from those opposed to his stance on Palestine.

Desmond Tutu’s legacy

Father Weeder worked closely with Archbishop Tutu during his tenure as the dean. He said this was a gift that was given to him.

The most famous face of St George’s and the first Black archbishop of South Africa, Tutu led many protests and marches against the scourge of apartheid from the cathedral’s steps.

One of the most significant demonstrations was the September 1989 “peace march” at the height of apartheid. It is estimated that close to 30,000 people, led by Tutu, marched peacefully through the city centre, in what was one of the largest marches since the 1960s.

Apartheid police fired tear gas and water cannon filled with purple-coloured dye – a tactic to help them later identify and arrest attendees – on the protesters. As people sought to escape the onslaught of police brutality, many found refuge in St George’s, which was at the time surrounded by several police vans.

One of those who attended the march and fled into the cathedral was anti-apartheid activist, Patricia Annette Fahrenfort. She said she “almost collapsed” from the tear gas and deluge of purple rain outside, before running for cover.

“We ran into the church and knew it was a safe place,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But I still vomited inside because of that purple rain and who knows what kind of chemicals were in it,” she added, calling the building “our sanctuary from the police”.

According to the Sunday Times Heritage Project, outside the cathedral a protester climbed onto one of the police vehicles and turned the cannon’s purple jet on the police. Fahrenfort said the dye also stained most of the surrounding buildings. The following day, graffiti appeared in the city proclaiming “The Purple Shall Govern”, a play on the common phrase at the time: “the people shall govern”.

Late Desmond Tutu was the first Black archbishop of South Africa [File: Sumaya Hisham/Reuters]

Decades on, in a now free South Africa, St George’s displays various stained-glass windows commemorating different icons. One at the entrance honours Tutu, whose ashes have also been interned at the cathedral.

In the window, Tutu is positioned in front of an African sunburst. “The sunburst represents the dawn of a new era, signifying hope, enlightenment and a bright future for South Africa and its people,” Weeder said in April, at the unveiling of the window.

“The window serves as a tribute to Tutu’s legacy and his role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa,” he added.

‘Symbols keep hope alive’

Upon walking the stairs of the cathedral, different inscriptions are on display. “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies,” says one. “Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning,” says another.

Father Peter-John Pearson, who is the director of the Catholic Bishops’ Liaison Office and a priest at the main Catholic cathedral in the City, regularly attends special events, including the vigil for Gaza, at St George’s.

The cathedral represents “an incredible kind of continuity”, he told Al Jazeera. “It’s a spirit of continuity for so many struggles and it represents an expression of struggles that is anchored here.”

Pearson said the “energy”, or the spirit of activism, found in St George’s is something that many people then take back home with them – to communities across Cape Town, South Africa, and the continent.

“I love it, over the decades you see the energy has landed; it lands for the people of the Cape Flats, for the people in Palestine, in Eastern Congo and Sudan. People are passing here that represent all those strands of struggle and this is the place that represents it and weaves it together and it brings hope to the oppressed.”

“Symbols keep hope alive,” Pearson said, adding “this place, it anchors hope.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks at St George’s Cathedral [File: Jaco Marais/Pool via Reuters]

Many others agree that the cathedral is an eternal symbol of resistance and perseverance – something linking its history, its present and its future.

On local issues, it is a place of conscience – and has hosted public demonstrations, such as prayer vigils during the Jacob Zuma presidency, when corruption was at its height in South Africa.

Looking beyond the country’s borders, its role as a beacon of hope and activism is evident in the current calls for freedom and justice in Sudan, the DRC, and Palestine.

“In all my time of being an activist of over 45 years, I have never experienced something like the consistency of the group,” Omar told Al Jazeera on the steps outside St George’s, talking about the “tender moments” the multicultural mix of people have found standing up for Palestine together.

Talking about their unity and camaraderie, he said after the weekly demonstrations end, people gather inside the church to share stories with one another – stories that help many heal from the secondary trauma of a war that has stolen so much.

“We find healing and solace in each other,” he said.