Our dear friend and mentor Zerbanoo Gifford participated in a recent Thanksgiving event at the Westeminster Abbey in London, UK.
Below is a write up by Athravan Sett a young Zarathushti from the UK who accompanied Zerbanoo at this historic event.
Art writes..
At noon on Tuesday 16th July 2024, in Westminster Abbey, a special Service of Thanksgiving was held to celebrate the 30th year of South Africa’s democracy, almost thirty years after Nelson Mandela himself visited the Abbey as South Africa’s first democratically elected President. I remember watching on television from the comfort of my sofa the Abbey host the royal weddings, Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, and more recently the coronation of King Charles III.
I had the privilege of attending the service alongside Zerbanoo Gifford, who was invited as one of the few prominent anti-apartheid campaigners outside South Africa still alive. This was unsurprising – not many people have a testimony from Nobel Laureat Bishop Desmond Tutu on their biography (“An Uncensored Life”). What was surprising to me was the warmth of the reception we received as were whisked away by the event organisers through the long hall, past the gates to sit in the pews usually reserved for royalty, with the robed Master of the Choristers of the Abbey immediately to my left, and HM Queen Nompumelelo Zulu in eyeshot. Addresses were given by the former British High Commissioner to South Africa, the General Secretary of trade union UNISON, South African MPs and the Deputy Leader of the House of Lords. Knowing my interest in the history of South Africa, Zerbanoo said she wished me to experience a unique moment where “freedom can be won by those determined to see justice”.
My interest in South Africa particularly stemmed from my history undergraduate days at Oxford, where my academic fascination with the British empire and its “dominion states” led me to a thesis exploring the 1913 strike in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) in the global story of indentured labour. I advocated that it was much more than simply Gandhi’s South Africa chapter for the indentured (particularly women), nascent Indian nationalism, and the British empire’s internal dynamics. The racist and repressive regimes of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts under which the indentured, native and mixed heritage populations suffered were firm foundations for the white supremacist Afrikaner apartheid states of Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd and others that Mandela would eventually pry South Africa’s freedom from.
Mohau Mogale’s tribute to Nelson Mandela was sung beautifully in Zulu by tenor Innocent Masuku, a finalist in 2024’s Britain’s Got Talent. The song referred to Mandela as “a hero, a king of kings”. The sincerity of the praise and the love for “Madiba” as Mandela is known in South Africa, felt like a modern redemption of the title often associated with the Achaemenid kings, which since the 1800s in English classrooms across the world has arguably become more closely correlated with the hollow hubris of Bysshe-Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”.
Young Zoroastrians are frequently shown examples of successful businessmen (historically often wealthy philanthropists) and are encouraged to style ourselves as entrepreneurs and influential professionals – I sometimes wonder whether this contributed to me becoming a corporate lawyer. Commercial success and philanthropy are certainly beneficial and necessary to the profile, power and longevity of the community. My reading of Zoroastrianism, however and the reading of Zoroastrianism shared by many of the young people I have had the pleasure of getting to know from youth congresses, and social events across the world, including the latest global World Zoroastrian Youth Leadership Forum hosted at the ASHA centre is that “Good thoughts, Good words and Good deeds” also means making hard choices which carry no public acclaim, tax rebates or career opportunities. It may mean fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, the oppressed and the hopeless, without any guarantee of success, and even less guarantee of credit, simply because it is the right thing to do. Stories of such sacrifice exist in our communities, and I wish more weight was given to them so that we could appropriately thank people who have undertaken exceptional endeavours for others, especially those to whom they have no ties but a common humanity and a belief in justice.
Through her work with the South African ANC and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) (now Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA)), Zerbanoo was integral to the movement to boycott, divest and sanction the South African state. The ACTSA’s service celebration materials included contemporary posters such as those encouraging divestment from banks who were financing the apartheid regime, and posters for mass protests being organised in Trafalgar Square and across London.
In June 1985, per her interview for the BBC, Zerbanoo spoke at Trafalgar Square to an audience of 25,000 people alongside Lord Neil Kinnock (then leader of the Labour party) and Oliver Tambo, calling for “full mandatory sanctions against South Africa and for the release of Nelson Mandela”. Mandela is said to have kept photographs of all that spoke that day on the walls of his prison. The late Bishop Trevor Huddleston and Zerbanoo were selected to present the massive “People’s Petition” to Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at 10 Downing Street, who it will surprise few, was unreceptive. Thatcher’s personal philosophy that “there is no such thing as society” could not have been more antithetical to the ubuntu philosophy of the native and aspiring democratic South Africa.
Zerbanoo’s commitment to the anti-apartheid movement brought her into the sights of the Afrikaner state’s secretive centralised “super-security” agency, the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), which terrified both opponents and insiders of the regime, superseding both military intelligence and the state defence department. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report presented to Nelson Mandela in 1998 noted the links between BOSS and extra-judicial killings, the violation of human rights and political and social oppression, especially through its infamous “covert Z division”. The Abbey service prayed for those “who died in the quest for equal rights”. The Afrikaner founder of BOSS, General “Tall Hendrik” van den Bergh brazenly said before the Erasmus Commission of Inquiry in 1979, “I am able with my department to do the impossible… I can today tell you here… I have enough men to commit murder if I tell them”.
Zerbanoo recollected receiving a short telegram in 1985 at the Liberal party’s annual conference in Dundee in Scotland. It was signed BOSS (but probably came from its more PR-conscious successor the National Intelligence Service), stating that she was being watched, and if she did not cease her anti-apartheid activities, she would be “dealt with”. Her response was to read the telegram to the world on BBC “and to tell the thugs running BOSS that if they were watching her they should know that the whole world was watching them too”. Threats of violence were not uncommon in England either – Zerbanoo was on the British National Party’s hit-list and following attacks on her home, required special live-in police protection and armed escort out in public due to death threats and kidnapping threats levelled against her children.
The service at Westminster Abbey was a deeply moving, bittersweet but hopeful celebration of the achievement of South Africa’s democracy movement, with Jewish, Muslim and Hindu community leaders all presenting prayers. During the ceremony great sorrow and distress was expressed over the condition of the Palestinian people, whose protection South Africa appealed for in the International Court of Justice. Many will appreciate the long-standing tensions between the states, with the Zionist Israeli state a substantial ally of the South African apartheid state, and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation a strong supporter of Mandela and the Republic of South Africa.
Speaking to Zerbanoo about her days as an anti-apartheid activist was deeply educational, if not harrowing. She may feel the amount of detail included here is unnecessary, but I suspect this is the sort of modern history all Zoroastrians (but particularly young Zoroastrians) globally want to know about our community’s commitment to justice and our untold impact on the world.
Very impressive of Zerbanoo’s historical contribution and bravery in light of the threats made against her by individuals and Secret Service organization. She surely is an inspiration to our youth and adults, not to become the silent majority but to actively oppose injustice by speaking up and protesting.
Thank you Athravan for your article. Like you I am also a history buff. I used to ready history subjects in school and college as if I was reading a novel, and got highest marks in history.
Mobedyar Maneck Bhujwala M.S.E.E., MBA, MA (Interfaith Action)
Serving the Parsi and Iranian Zarathushtis with prayer services and religion based counseling.
Huntington Beach, California