Archbishop Trevor Huddleston
British anti-apartheid campaigner Huddleston dies
02:03 p.m Apr 20, 1998 Eastern
LONDON, April 20 (Reuters) - Archbishop Trevor Huddleston who helped put the campaign against South Africa's apartheid system on the world stage, died on Monday aged 84, the Church of England said.
A church spokesman said Huddleston, who spent a decade in the 1940s working in the poorest townships of Johannesburg, died early on Monday. He had been in poor health for some time.
Huddleston helped found Britain's Anti-Apartheid Movement with friends including Julius Nyerere, who later became president of Tanzania, to campaign for the ending of South Africa's white supremacist political system.
He was president of the movement from 1981 to 1994, when its mission finally came to fruition with South Africa's first all-race elections.
Huddleston received a knighthood for his campaigning work in this year's British honours list.
He was born in the wealthy London district of Hampstead, but after his experiences in South Africa he placed himself firmly on the side of the dispossessed.
Huddleston's first parish was Sophiatown, a vibrant black township near Johannesburg. The district was razed under apartheid policies, the houses destroyed and the blacks forced out to make way for whites.
``I had to declare myself in fully supporting the resistance movement of the African National Congress...I felt as a Christian priest that was what I had to do,'' he once told an interviewer.
In the 1950s, he wrote ``Naught for Your Comfort,'' based on his time in the townships. The book helped shape world opinion against apartheid during the following decades.
Huddleston was barred from South Africa in 1956 by apartheid leaders who recognised the political threat he posed. The ban was lifted in 1993, when the country's white leaders realised he was even more of a danger abroad than he would have been in Soweto.
The campaigning priest had taught many anti-apartheid leaders, including the late Oliver Tambo, a former president of the ANC, who became a close friend.
Huddleston, who never married, was elected Bishop of Masasi, Tanzania, in 1960 and spent eight years there. After a stint in London in the early 1970s, he returned to his beloved Africa as Archbishop of the Indian Ocean in 1978.
``If Africa takes hold of you that's it, you've had it. It was the physical demonstrativeness that took me, I think, the warmth - and the gentleness,'' he once told an interviewer.
Huddleston returned to South Africa in 1995, intending to pass his final years there, but left after a few months.
He said then he believed he could do more good in Britain, trying to persuade people to invest in South Africa.
He went to live in a retirement home, where his diabetes could be cared for. But he said he wanted his ashes to be scattered near his old church in Sophiatown.
South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the anti-apartheid movement would never have won the worldwide attention it did without Huddleston.
``If I had to chose one person who got the anti apartheid movement onto the world stage, that person would be Archbishop Huddleston without a doubt,'' Tutu told the BBC.
``The world was a better place for having had Trevor Huddleston,'' he added.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited
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Huddleston's ashes return home to S.African church 08:50 a.m. Jul 30, 1998 Eastern
By Darren Schuettler
JOHANNESBURG, July 30 (Reuters) - The ashes of Archbishop Trevor Huddleston returned home on Thursday to the tiny church in South Africa where the veteran activist launched a four-decade struggle against apartheid.
Huddleston, who spent a decade working in the poorest townships of Johannesburg, was lauded by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki as a ``national hero'' during a memorial service at Christ the King church in the former township of Sophiatown.
The Anglican priest, who earned the respect and gratitude of many South African blacks for his unbending opposition to apartheid in the 1950s and later as president of Britain's Anti-Apartheid Movement, died in April at age 84 in England.
``Although he was born elsewhere, his ashes, his soul should come to rest in this place which was his real home,'' Mbeki told about 100 friends and former parishioners gathered in the tiny, brown-brick church which was his first parish.
Huddleston's ashes, which he wanted scattered near the old church, received state honours at Johannesburg airport after arriving from London accompanied by South African Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo.
The tiny wood casket, with Huddleston's cross fixed to the lid, was draped in a South African flag during the church ceremony. His ashes will be interred in September.
Sophiatown was a vibrant black township in Johannesburg during the 1950s, but the district was razed under apartheid policies, the houses destroyed and the blacks forced out to make way for whites. The neighbourhood was subsequently renamed Triomf, the Afrikaans word for triumph.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Huddleston touched the hearts of millions of people worldwide, but Sophiatown would hold special memories of him.
``For those who knew him here, he will always be Father Trevor,'' Tutu said, adding that the new South Africa was a ``glorious vindication'' of Huddleston's efforts.
The former township is experiencing a sort of revival since apartheid ended with all-race elections in 1994, with blacks returning to their old neighbourhood.
``Sophiatown too has had its Easter. Sophiatown too has risen from the dead,'' Tutu said.
Outside the church, Tutu recalled the first time he met the Anglican priest as a young boy in a Johannesburg township where his mother worked as a domestic servant.
``He doffed his hat to my mother which just bowled me over. He was an incredible person,'' Tutu said, saying such an action was unthinkable in 1950s South Africa.
Huddleston, who was born in the wealthy London district of Hampstead, became a champion of the dispossessed after he arrived in South Africa in 1943.
He wrote ``Naught for Your Comfort'' in the early 1950s, a book based on his time in the townships which helped shape world opinion against apartheid during the following decades.
Huddleston was barred from South Africa in 1956 by apartheid leaders who considered him a political threat. The ban was lifted in 1993 and Huddleston returned to South Africa in 1995, intending to pass his final years there, but returned to England after a few months.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.