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Embargo on Sudan urged
Bishops see echoes of apartheid
The Catholic Church in South Africa has strongly criticized cooperative agreements between South African oil companies and the Islamic extremist government of Sudan. “Given our experience under apartheid,” a South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) statement said, “we should be the last to support a government that is at war with its own population.”
Soekor, South Africa’s oil exploration conglomerate, is in the advanced stages of negotiating expansion activities in Sudan, the SACBC said. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, president of the SACBC and Archbishop of Durban, said: “We are gravely concerned that by negotiating new concessions in areas that have not yet been ‘cleansed’ of communities, regarded by the Khartoum government as disposable, South Africa will contribute to the escalation of the conflict in the Sudan.”
“We are convinced that oil is at once a major cause of the war and a means used by Khartoum to increase its military capacity,” Cardinal Napier said. “Soekor’s concession agreements with Khartoum will support one side in the Sudan conflict and thus increase the suffering of the people of southern Sudan.”
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