From mission to ecumenism in mid twentieth-century Southern Africa

In December of 1998, the World Council of Churches commemorated its fiftieth anniversary by holding its eighth assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe. President Nelson Mandela of South Africa addressed the delegates of over 300 churches. In his speech, he thanked the ecumenical movement, embodied by the World Council of Churches (WCC), for its anti-racism work and support for human rights over many decades. He stated that the WCC helped voice the international community's insistence that human rights are the rights of all people everywhere: “In doing so you helped vindicate the struggles of the oppressed for their freedom. To us in South and Southern Africa, and indeed the entire continent, the WCC has always been known as a champion of the oppressed and the exploited.”