‘Troublesome priest’ Richard Wood dies at 88

RETIRED Anglican Bishop Richard Wood, whose support for the liberation of Namibia from colonial rule proved to be such a thorn in the side for the South African authorities that he was expelled from Namibia in 1975, has passed away in England.

Wood died at his home in Itchen Abbas, a small village outside Winchester in the south of England, on Thursday last week. He was 88.As Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Damaraland, which is today the Diocese of Namibia, Wood succeeded Bishops Colin Winter and Robert Mize as the head of the Anglican Church in Namibia.Like his predecessors, Wood’s opposition to apartheid eventually irked the South African authorities to such an extent that he was expelled from Namibia as an “undesirable” person.”I happily accept their judgement.I would be quite ashamed if I had not been a ‘troublesome priest’ to them,” Wood commented to The Windhoek Advertiser after he had been ordered to leave the country.He stated that considering the meaning the authorities attached to the term “undesirable” he would prefer not to be desirable.Wood’s expulsion took place at a time of increasing resistance to South African rule developing inside Namibia.Wood commented at the time that it appeared that the authorities still believed that white agitators had to be behind the calls of Namibia’s indigenous population for an end to colonial rule over their country.”The authorities will begin to understand, as slowly as their minds allow, that the so-called white agitators have never written the speeches or planned the black agenda.I have been privileged to stand with the blacks as far as I was able to, and offer them support,” Wood was quoted as saying after he was ordered to leave Namibia.An expulsion order was served on Wood on June 16 1975.He was given a week to leave Namibia.The next day, a similar order was served on his wife, Cathy Wood, whom he had met in Namibia.Wood left the country on June 23 1975.Cathy Wood however chose to defy the authorities’ order, remaining in Windhoek until Police officers collected her and the couple’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter at their home and drove them to an airport where they were put on an aircraft flying to Johannesburg.COMING TO NAMIBIA Wood had been working as a priest in South Africa from 1955 until his first wife, Elsa Wood, died in 1969.Planning to retreat into a religious order in the United Kingdom, he first wrote a letter to Anglican bishops in Southern Africa offering his service to the church for a year.When Bishop Winter took him up on his offer, Wood sold his belongings and hitch-hiked to Namibia in early 1971, a rucksack being his only luggage, Mrs Wood recounted to The Namibian yesterday.Lawyer David Soggot, who acted for Wood in legal challenges to the workings of South African rule in Namibia that Wood was to launch in the coming years, later wrote in ‘Namibia: The Violent Heritage’ that Wood’s purpose “was to minister to the poor in a nomadic existence à la John the Baptist and to offer his talents to ameliorate, however humbly, the ravages of an apartheid society”.After joining Winter, Wood toured Namibia preaching and selling Bibles from the back of a converted Volkswagen combi, according to Soggot.His reputation as an unconventional priest spread, fuelled also by his reluctance to wear traditional clerical dress, Mrs Wood recalled.”If you wear a clerical collar people don’t swear at you.When you dress as they do, though, they treat you as a human being,” he said.Winter was expelled from Namibia in early March 1972.The Anglican Church appointed him as Bishop-in-Exile for Namibia, with Wood then appointed as assistant Bishop.He was consecrated as a bishop in Pretoria on June 19 1973.EXPULSION ORDER In Namibia, he had thrown in his lot with the cause of Namibian liberation.”He appealed to white Namibians to work towards ‘a just and united Namibia in which all people have equal opportunity.What they have to decide is whether the question of colour is most important, or whether they love their country so much that they are prepared to work for a just solution’,” Mrs Wood recalled.Within a short time, though, Wood was accused of being an agent for Swapo and being involved in “international intrigue” aimed at overthrowing the government, with violence if necessary, Mrs Wood recounted.Wood’s decision to turn to the courts to challenge human rights violations under South African rule did not endear him to the authorities either.One case that Wood, Lutheran Church Bishop Leonard Auala and a Swapo member, Thomas Kamati, pursued against tribal authorities in northern Namibia from late 1973 to put an end to the public flogging of people who were suspected of being members or sympathisers of Swapo went on to make legal history in South Africa’s highest court.Wood, Auala and Kamati finally won that case on appeal in the Appellate Division near the end of February 1975.”This case became a celebrated one in the annals of South African and Namibian legal history where the court reached out to protect the victim against authoritarian abuse and in doing so upheld the highest traditions of the civilised legal culture,” retired Judge Bryan O’Linn has commented on that matter.Wood would always be honoured “for his courageous struggle against the ‘barbarous practice of flogging in Ovamboland’”, the South African Council of Churches stated when it condemned his expulsion from Namibia.The expulsion was “a response to Bishop Wood’s consistent identification with the cause of the oppressed people and his exposure of unjust and discriminatory practices” in Namibia, the SA Council of Churches commented.After leaving Namibia, Wood wanted to continue his work in Namibia from the Angolan side of the country’s northern border, but the Angolan civil war thwarted those plans, according to Mrs Wood.He then worked in London at the Africa Bureau from 1975 to 1977, and worked as a chaplain at Hull College between 1977 and 1979.Having joined the Labour Party in 1979, Wood said that he would leave the United Kingdom if Margaret Thatcher were to win the election that year, Mrs Wood recalled.”She did and he did,” she stated, recounting that Wood then went to work at St Mark’s Theological College in Dar es Salaam for three years from 1979.Between 1982 and 1985 he worked in the United States, retiring in 1985 and “working tirelessly as a very busy house husband with two young children,” according to Mrs Wood.Wood was born at Oldham in England on August 25 1920.He had four children.He was 88.As Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Damaraland, which is today the Diocese of Namibia, Wood succeeded Bishops Colin Winter and Robert Mize as the head of the Anglican Church in Namibia.Like his predecessors, Wood’s opposition to apartheid eventually irked the South African authorities to such an extent that he was expelled from Namibia as an “undesirable” person.”I happily accept their judgement.I would be quite ashamed if I had not been a ‘troublesome priest’ to them,” Wood commented to The Windhoek Advertiser after he had been ordered to leave the country.He stated that considering the meaning the authorities attached to the term “undesirable” he would prefer not to be desirable.Wood’s expulsion took place at a time of increasing resistance to South African rule developing inside Namibia.Wood commented at the time that it appeared that the authorities still believed that white agitators had to be behind the calls of Namibia’s indigenous population for an end to colonial rule over their country.”The authorities will begin to understand, as slowly as their minds allow, that the so-called white agitators have never written the speeches or planned the black agenda.I have been privileged to stand with the blacks as far as I was able to, and offer them support,” Wood was quoted as saying after he was ordered to leave Namibia.An expulsion order was served on Wood on June 16 1975.He was given a week to leave Namibia.The next day, a similar order was served on his wife, Cathy Wood, whom he had met in Namibia.Wood left the country on June 23 1975.Cathy Wood however chose to defy
the authorities’ order, remaining in Windhoek until Police officers collected her and the couple’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter at their home and drove them to an airport where they were put on an aircraft flying to Johannesburg. COMING TO NAMIBIA Wood had been working as a priest in South Africa from 1955 until his first wife, Elsa Wood, died in 1969.Planning to retreat into a religious order in the United Kingdom, he first wrote a letter to Anglican bishops in Southern Africa offering his service to the church for a year.When Bishop Winter took him up on his offer, Wood sold his belongings and hitch-hiked to Namibia in early 1971, a rucksack being his only luggage, Mrs Wood recounted to The Namibian yesterday.Lawyer David Soggot, who acted for Wood in legal challenges to the workings of South African rule in Namibia that Wood was to launch in the coming years, later wrote in ‘Namibia: The Violent Heritage’ that Wood’s purpose “was to minister to the poor in a nomadic existence à la John the Baptist and to offer his talents to ameliorate, however humbly, the ravages of an apartheid society”.After joining Winter, Wood toured Namibia preaching and selling Bibles from the back of a converted Volkswagen combi, according to Soggot.His reputation as an unconventional priest spread, fuelled also by his reluctance to wear traditional clerical dress, Mrs Wood recalled.”If you wear a clerical collar people don’t swear at you.When you dress as they do, though, they treat you as a human being,” he said.Winter was expelled from Namibia in early March 1972.The Anglican Church appointed him as Bishop-in-Exile for Namibia, with Wood then appointed as assistant Bishop.He was consecrated as a bishop in Pretoria on June 19 1973. EXPULSION ORDER In Namibia, he had thrown in his lot with the cause of Namibian liberation.”He appealed to white Namibians to work towards ‘a just and united Namibia in which all people have equal opportunity.What they have to decide is whether the question of colour is most important, or whether they love their country so much that they are prepared to work for a just solution’,” Mrs Wood recalled.Within a short time, though, Wood was accused of being an agent for Swapo and being involved in “international intrigue” aimed at overthrowing the government, with violence if necessary, Mrs Wood recounted.Wood’s decision to turn to the courts to challenge human rights violations under South African rule did not endear him to the authorities either.One case that Wood, Lutheran Church Bishop Leonard Auala and a Swapo member, Thomas Kamati, pursued against tribal authorities in northern Namibia from late 1973 to put an end to the public flogging of people who were suspected of being members or sympathisers of Swapo went on to make legal history in South Africa’s highest court.Wood, Auala and Kamati finally won that case on appeal in the Appellate Division near the end of February 1975.”This case became a celebrated one in the annals of South African and Namibian legal history where the court reached out to protect the victim against authoritarian abuse and in doing so upheld the highest traditions of the civilised legal culture,” retired Judge Bryan O’Linn has commented on that matter.Wood would always be honoured “for his courageous struggle against the ‘barbarous practice of flogging in Ovamboland’”, the South African Council of Churches stated when it condemned his expulsion from Namibia.The expulsion was “a response to Bishop Wood’s consistent identification with the cause of the oppressed people and his exposure of unjust and discriminatory practices” in Namibia, the SA Council of Churches commented.After leaving Namibia, Wood wanted to continue his work in Namibia from the Angolan side of the country’s northern border, but the Angolan civil war thwarted those plans, according to Mrs Wood.He then worked in London at the Africa Bureau from 1975 to 1977, and worked as a chaplain at Hull College between 1977 and 1979.Having joined the Labour Party in 1979, Wood said that he would leave the United Kingdom if Margaret Thatcher were to win the election that year, Mrs Wood recalled.”She did and he did,” she stated, recounting that Wood then went to work at St Mark’s Theological College in Dar es Salaam for three years from 1979.Between 1982 and 1985 he worked in the United States, retiring in 1985 and “working tirelessly as a very busy house husband with two young children,” according to Mrs Wood.Wood was born at Oldham in England on August 25 1920.He had four children.