I was like Jonah december 2011

I was like Jonah


Content
1. Early Gospel Seed. 7
2. The Gospel seed germinates
3. An African Missionary in Germany?

7. An Exile to all Intents and Purposes
8. A radical activist 45
10. Home or Hearth? 59
11. Back to Africa? 68
12. Flexing Missionary Muscles 75
13. Testing Times 85
16. The backlash 105
Two F’s - Frustration and Fight 110
20. Publication Fleeces ………………………………………………………………………. .103

Preface
I was just like the biblical Jonah, running away in some way or other, sometimes also from divine callings and challenges. Thankfully, God got hold of me again and again. Too often I obstructed His purposes with me. Sometimes I double-crossed His plans through my activism and self-centredness. At other times, I was simply downright disobedient, doing my own thing, without even trying to find out what God’s will was. It took me very long to learn the biblical truth that it pays to wait on Him before acting. Like the Master, I had to learn obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8).
I dedicate this booklet to the two people whom God used – possibly more than any other single person - to bring me back on His course when I was in danger of getting side-tracked. The inspiration to this effort at publication of autobiographical material arose from the fact that my best friend, the late Ds. Esau Jacobs, commonly known as Jakes, would have turned seventy on the 6th of December, 2006. My wife was the other one who pulled the brakes when I was too impulsive and spontaneous. She has in recent years also been to one to encourage and nudge me to try and get the one or other of many manuscripts published. Some of them have been on my computer for many years. Now she was the one to correct me once again when I wanted to rush ahead with this manuscript, challenging me whether my writing is not an idol. I was working full-steam – and going overboard to get this ready to finish it before 6 December 2006. I discovered that HIS(s)tory should come to the front of the queue of unfinished manuscripts, to be pasted on our website.
The most important lesson I have probably learnt over the years is perhaps that adversity often turns into a blessing when one can accept it with grace and thankfulness. The other big lesson I had to learn again and again was that it is always good to wait on the Lord. Over the years I have written and typed many a page that never got published. I have learnt to be patient. We pray that many a reader may be blessed to read how God has been teaching and carrying me in spite of my obstinacy and doing my own, when I was like Jonah.
Thus I present this work somewhat belated to Anne, the widow of my late friend Jakes and their son Alain. This is primarily intended as a tribute to one of the great unsung heroes of our beloved country.

Ashley D.I. Cloete
Cape Town, December 2011













1. Early Gospel Seed


I was on the go – perhaps like Jonah - often running away from problems - already from an early age. Before I entered primary school I could be found in places where I was not supposed to be, in spite of a sound Christian home background. When I turned six I detested the idea of going to school. My freedom would be curbed...
When ‘Aunty’ Bertha Roman – our next door neighbour of Combrinck Street - wanted to bring me home at one such occasion, I had the audacity to say to one of the many roaming dogs of the slum-like District Six ‘sa! Byt haar! (Charge, Bite her!). Long before I could read I was roaming through the area, knowing where almost every street was. It surely was God’s grace in my life that we moved from there, at an age where I was quite receptive to wrong influences. On the other hand, my heart was somehow touched at an early age when I listened to an open air service near to our home in District Six at which John 3:16 was sung - For God so loved the world that he gave he only begotten Son.
The Moravian tradition, from which both of my parents came, served as an effective foil to the slum-like sur­roundings of my early childhood. Thus it was logical to them that we as children would attend the Zinzendorf Primary School and the Sunday school at the same venue. The first occasion that I remember when I was challenged to commit my life to Jesus was at the age of about six - during an evangelistic service in the Chapel in Ashley Street on Moravian Hill, from where I got my name. Some German guest preacher was God’s instrument at that occasion.
(Photo: In front of our house in 30 Combrinck Street, District Six with some relatives, holding the hand of my favourite ‘Aunt’ Patsy Roman, our neighbour, who was actually still a teenager at the time.)

At the end of 1954, we moved to a big property of 8 plots in Tiervlei, as the Cape suburb Ravensmead was called in those days. Here we were regarded as ‘rich’ because we were one of very few families that possessed a brick house. That it was not even white-washed on the outside and having a kitchen that looked horrible because of black soot, was not relevant: almost all the other people, who resided there, lived in shacks of some sort.

Denominational Prejudice broken down
I am thankful that God used people from other countries and cultures to enrich my life, also in respect of faith. The breaking down of denominational prejudice and my appreciation of other church traditions started in District Six. It continued when we moved to the Northern outskirts of the Cape Peninsula at the end of December 1954. Tiervlei, later to be renamed Ravensmead, was still quite rural at that time. There were many sandy roads. Living in Northway Road, we initially attended the nearby Moria Sendingkerk, the local Dutch Reformed Church as a family on Sunday mornings. In the afternoon we joined the Moravian services in the garage of Mr Charles Grodes, the proud owner of a small taxi fleet. The denominational school up the road that my siblings and I attended was linked to the Volkskerk, the first indigenous Cape church where we learned the denominational anthem ‘Protea, protea. ..blom van ons vaderland’ (Flower of our fatherland).
When I was nine years old, the next invitation followed to accept Jesus as my personal Saviour. This time it happened at an evangelistic service by the well‑known evangelist Robert Thom in a tent next to the local AFM Church. I responded to the altar call, but I was neither counselled properly, nor was there any follow-up.

Not ready to die
After only two years in Tiervlei, a significant change came my way. When girls in the neighbourhood would tauntingly link me up to one of them, I was glad that an opportunity came my way to 'flee' from that situation. My grandfather, Oupa Joorst, asked my parents from the Elim Mission Station whether I could come and help them as a ‘stuurding’, an errand boy to fetch water, go to the shop for them and empty the toilet buckets.1 Although the idea did not really appeal to me to go to the country-side, I gladly went to Elim.
Quite an amount of Gospel seed was sown into my heart in various ways. The memorizing of Bible verses from memory while at primary school in Elim was to come in good stead in later years. A special Scripture portion was the first verses of Isaiah 53. We had to memorise how the prophet wrote about an unknown suffering person who was compared with a lamb taken to be slaughtered. I understood this to be prophesied about Jesus, the Lamb of God - He the Lamb not open its mouth when it was falsely accused.
Towards the end of February 1958 ‘Oupa Joorst’ became very ill. The doctor stated that he was not going to live very long. Soon his children and grandchildren came from as far away as Enon in the Eastern Cape to say farewell. The end came on 7 March 1958 just as I came from school for the noon break. I went straight to Oupa’s bedroom, where the neighbour, Ta’ Stienie Daniels, tried to push me out of the room, but it was too late! She could not stop me experiencing something very special! I was privileged to see the radiant joy on the face of the aged saint going ‘home’. He evidently saw something which nobody else of us at his bedside saw. He stretched out his arms expectantly, as if he was being fetched, with his face lighting up for a moment. And then it was all over...
This left an indelible mark on me to discern that Oupa obviously knew where he was to be ‘taken’. I was however terrified because I was nowhere certain where I would go to if I would die. How I detested the enforced midday nap which Auntie Maggie foisted on me and my borther Windsor, who later also joined me in Elim. (She had come to care for 'Oupa Joorst' after her divorce and the death of Ouma Joorst). But God used that circumstance to speak to me. The reading of a tract and the practice of the church brass band - while I was waiting for the church bell to toll for 2.30 p.m. so that I could go and play - combined to frighten me. I was not yet ready to meet God if I would die ...
Changes in Tiervlei
The situation back home in Tiervlei changed when our Dad had lost his job as a blocker at a milliner factory where they produced female hats. After Daddy had become unemployed in 1957, no factory in the clothing industrial union was inclined to employ a middle-aged worker on top wages. The financial situation at home thereafter deteriorated to such an extent that my parents saw no other way out than to take our sister Magdalene out of school as the eldest of the four siblings. She co-operated willingly to try to augment the family budget.
Even when Daddy eventually did get work as a night porter at Mupine, the hostel for workers of the insurance company Old Mutual, the total earnings were still not enough to keep four children between ten and fifteen years old at school. My younger brother Windsor and me had already been taken care of by our grandparents and Aunty Maggie in Elim.2 With the family income still not sufficient to cover the daily needs, Mummy took domestic work, serving first as nanny of the children of Professor Beinart from the UCT Law Faculty. But being away from home for two weeks in a row was unsatisfactory. Another attempt with a Jewish couple with a shop in Parow was also no solution. Our Mom ultimately joined Magdalene at the same sock factory in Parow, Footmaster, after these attempts with domestic work proved to be very unsatisfac­tory for the family life - with a meagre income to boot.

Secondary School Challenges For my secondary school training I had to return to the Cape Peninsula from the Elim Mission Station, attending Vasco High School, one of the only three in the northern suburbs designated for ‘Coloureds’. (In fact, the one in Bishop Lavis only offered up to Standard Eight (Grade Ten) at that time.)
I felt myself inferior to my English-speaking learner colleagues, but yet challenged. In spite of not really working hard, I managed to do well enough to be among the top four students at Vasco High School in Standard Seven (Grade Nine) after six months. That I was put in a class with Woodwork as a subject – and no Mathematics - proved to be something of a handicap. When I went to ask the principal whether I could do Latin, he chased me out of his office. It was not offered any more at the school for Grade Nines!
Nicholas (Klaas) Dirks was my best friend, the only one in my class who stayed fairly near to us. In the morning we would walk the few kilometres down Jopie Fourie Street to Tiervlei station, where we boarded the train to Elsies River. From there we walked another kilometre or two to the ‘Acres’, where our school was situated in Wiener Street.
At the end of the first year at Vasco High School I somehow nevertheless managed to get past Valerie Oliver and Gert Flink. I made up my mind, to take Mathematics the next year. I was ambitious enough to try and beat Ismael Khan as well. If only I could have Maths instead of Woodwork, a subject in which I was hopeless! With my small frame and almost two years younger than most of the other boys, I really struggled to handle the heavy wooden plane. By the beginning of the New Year, I had established myself well enough at the top echelons of the grade for Mr Braam to agree to my taking Maths instead of Woodwork. (I started in the summer school holidays to catch up on my own with the Standard VII (Grade Nine) Mathematics that I had missed). Unfortunately, Ismael Khan’s father had decided that the teenager had to come and help him in the shop. So I never had the chance to beat him. Also Valerie Oliver was taken out of school. That nobody beat me thereafter until the end of my high school days, was therefore a Pyrrhic victory.

Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine!
Our school principal, Mr Braam, was a fervent Methodist lay preacher who challenged us time and again with the song ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.’ He would stress the certainty he had personally experienced when he accepted Jesus as his Saviour. This made me quite jealous because I did not have that assurance.
Klaas Dirks was a member of the Boys’ Brigade. One day he invited me to an event staged by the Sendingkerk Boys’Brigade at the Goodwood Showgrounds to be held on 17 September 1961. The open air congregation was to be addressed by a certain Dr Oswald Smith from Canada. The name did not say anything to me. It turned out to be an evangelistic service where I surrendered to the claims of Christ. The Lord used the Canadian preacher to challenge me to consider that Jesus did not only die for the sins of the world at large, but also for my sins. The first part was not new to me at all. How often we had been repeating in the church on a Sunday in one of the liturgies Lam van God wat die sonde van die wêreld wegneem…3, I accepted Jesus there as my personal Saviour, without however receiving any spiritual discipling thereafter. Soon thereafter, Nicholas Dirks was diagnosed with Tubercolosis. Thankfully he could be treated in time and returned to school after many months.
For Standard Eight (Grade Ten) Richard Arendse had shifted into Nicholas Dirks’ place as the best friend in the class. (I was now in the class taking Mathematics). When the Arendse family had to leave the ‘Acres’ of Goodwood in the wake of the Group Areas implementation, their family bought the house that my uncle, Pappa Joorst, had rented in Eendrag Street, Bellville South (This was one of the few residential areas where Whites who lived on the wrong side of the railway line, actually moved out as ‘Coloureds’ moved in.)

Interest in Politics
The Sharpeville and Langa events of 1960 made itself felt all over the Western Cape. I had really started to hate apartheid but not Whites as such. The subtle education of discriminating society and the oppressive government paid its toll. Thus I had been thoroughly influenced to look down on Blacks. At the time of the Sharpeville shootings and the march of thousands of Blacks from Langa to the Caledon Square Police Station in March 1960, I was one of the first to leave the school premises of Vasco High School when a rumour went around that the ‘kaffers’ were coming. With fear and trepidation we left the school building.
I displayed more courage in writing a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Verwoerd, at this time. In my draft letter of protest I addressed the inequalities and injustice of the political system. However, I did not post the letter immediately. But I was not really sad when my father discovered the letter in my school blazer when it had to be sent for dry cleaningat the end of the school term. A serious reprimand followed: “Do you also want to go and languish on Robben Island?” I did not fancy that prospect. It was well-known that this was the fate of people getting involved in resistance politics. I had no intention to join the league of Robben Islanders.
A year later, I dared to heed the boycott call on the occasion of the Republican festival. (South Africa became a republic on 31 May 1961 outside of the British Commonwealth.) Nevertheless, my move was not completely courageous, because I used a sound excuse for my absence from school: I went to Karl Bremer Hospital for some flimsy reason. A few years later, doctors there did consider seriously removing my tonsils which became swollen a few times.

Medical Studies at UCT?
As I was finishing high school, one of our high school teachers, Mr Muhammad, thought that I should apply to the University of Cape Town to engage in medical studies . In fact, my father also mentioned the possibility of a bursary. My results inspired someone at Mupine - the residence of the Mutual Insurance company in Pinelands, the place where my father was now working as a night porter - to help spon­sor me for medical studies at the University of Cape Town, but I never even gave it a thought. But this was no Jonah stint. I simply felt myself much to inferior to attend a ‘White’ university. I also had no inclination for the medical profession at all. But I was definitely not going to attend the inferior apartheid tainted 'Bush' University College that had just started for 'Coloureds' in Bellville South!
If the Lord does not build the House Our final Matric exams were quite strenous. I wrote my last paper - Geography – three weeks after the first one. On the day before this paper, I was completely exhausted after many late nights and early mornings, trying to put in the last touches. Now we had a teacher for the subject who was nowhere qualified for it - a situation at the time that was so typical in all secondary schools for learners who were not White. We were ill prepared for the Geography paper. Often I studied together with Attie Louw and Attie Kotze, two class mates who lived nearby. I worked out a strategy for myself to make the best of the situation. But I had no energy left when I turned to the Bible that evening for a special word. I had a book mark from the Bible Society with scripture verses and pericopes for various occasions. Under a heading like 'extremities' or 'exhaustion' I found Psalm 127. 'If the Lord does not build the house.... in vain you work so hard from early morning until late at night.' That was just the word I needed. I was definitely not copping out by going to bed immediately. The examination paper seems to have been made tailor-made for the strategy I had worked out. I could just praise him that I passed quite well in the subject, unlike the bulk of my class mates.
A Financial Crisis at Home yet again
By this time our family had progressed materially. We now possessed two bicycles. Our sister Magdalene received a new one on a birthday with which she cycled to the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics factory in Parow where she was now working. (She had been sacked at Footmaster for talking too much.) I utilised the same second-hand bicycle which Daddy had been using, after he returned hom from Mupine in the morning.
During 1962 our mother had to stop working because of arthritis - aggravated by the factory work, where she had to be on her feet all day.4 In those days when only few people possessed a washing machine, Mummy would also do some washing for relatives who took pity on us as a family.
I matriculated at the end of 1962, with the under­stand­ing that I could finish my teacher training after a year of any other employment that I could find. The financial situation at home was not such that all three sons could be kept in educational institutions, two at school and Kenneth, the oldest of the brothers, at Hewat Teachers’ Training College.

God's higher Ways impacting me
After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting clerical work5 that was as a rule reserved for Whites in those days, I settled for a menial job at Nasionale Boekhandel in nearby Parow, cleaning the machines. Returning to our Tiervlei home from the printing works in Parow in the late afternoon of early January 1963, I learnt that I have been accepted as a trainee at Hewat Teachers’ Training College in Crawford. (Being the only institution of its kind for ‘Coloured’ males in the Western Cape, the bulk of the applicants was usually turned down.) A few of my Matric classmates settled for the second rate ‘Bush College’ in Bellville, the apartheid tertiary institution that had just started. Like all ‘Coloureds’ with a sense of dignity, I initially despised the new university college of learning designated for our racial group.
I was quite surprised when my parents disclosed that they feel that I should go to ‘Hewat’. (I was quite prepared to do any menial or other work for a year.) They had been challenged by the ‘Watchword’ from the Moravian textbook for the day, Isaiah 55:8: “My ways are not your ways ...” They decided to send me to college by faith.

Holy Spirit Conviction
In the first quarter of 1963 I was deeply challenged by a sentence from a sermon of the new local Dutch Reformed minister, Dominee Piet Bester. Apart from services in the local Moravian Church, I often visited the DRC Sendingkerk (Mission Church). The clergyman’s testimony of his deliverance from folk dancing pierced my heart: Was I actually idolizing sport myself? I wanted to speak to him afterwards, ready to justify my actions. Brother De Bruyn, the church deacon who counselled me afterwards, was however very clear: If the Holy Spirit convicts you of anything, then you must put it right.
As part of a new commitment to the Lord, I decided to stop playing cricket for Tigers, the local club. Even before this decision, I had been quite radical. As secretary of the youth club I deviated in my annual report from the prevalent custom of painting a rosy, but dishonest picture of our activities as it was the custom.
On the other hand, there was also a lot of movement ecumenically in the circles in which we moved. Thus we got preachers from all sorts of denomi­na­tions on the pulpit of our small church in Tiervlei. All members of our family played a role. Daddy contributed by bringing in Mr Braam, our school principal as well as Nic Bougas6, who resided in the Old Mutual Hostel Mupine. Nic was linked to Youth for Christ. In later years Tony Links, a teacher colleague and an Seventh Day Adventist, graced our pulpit. Our sister Magdalene invited Chris Wessels, a young minister at that time. His sermon on Jeremiah 4:3 was very exceptional, making a deep impression on me, even though the contents became rather vague. Only very seldom we heard a sermon from one of the prophets. 'Braak vir julle 'n braakland. Saai nie onder dorings nie', (Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns . …' was like seed sown on the fertile soil of my heart, to germinate and come up in my exposition of the Parable of the Sower: 'Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things …' I became very sensitive to the disparity of materialism and waging opposition to materialism. Chris Wessels utilised the occasion to challenge me to take up theological studies. But I was adamant that the Lord should clearly call me personally to serve Him as a pastor. Thereafter the conviction grew even stronger within me that I should really experience a divine calling from the Lord before indulging in such studies.

(My ID card, which one got at the age of 16)
As I went into my second year of teacher training - in those days that was the final year - I did not feel comfortable and capable at all to go and teach straight away the following year. I was really not acting cowardly like a Jonah. I still looked like a school kid myself. I genuinely feared that the learners would run over me because of my youthful appearance.


An ecclesiastical Misfit
In our church I did not fit in the mould. Along with two young Sunday School colleagues with the name Paul who had the typical Cape Moravian surnames Engel and Joemat,7 I would often launch out in an arrogant way to ‘get the Moravian Church back on track’ with regard to biblical conversion. The two Pauls and I sometimes used unconventional means. Bible choruses were regarded as sectarian in those days, but we had the respected Chris Wessels on our side. Chris had been in Holland and Germany before he returned to the church’s service and thereafter he became travelling secretary of the Christian Students Association. In that capacity he was to impact quite a few ‘Coloured’ young people around the country. Chris had been in Holland and Germany before he returned to the church’s service and then he became travelling secretary of the Christian Students Association. In that capacity he was to impact quite a few ‘Coloured’ young people around the country including Allan Boesak.
At our local youth services, I went a step further than my sister, inviting not only experienced (lay) preachers from other churches, but also teenagers like myself to come and preach. Attie Louw, who was with me in Matric, had contacts via the Christian Students Association (CSV). He came to preach at one of our youth services and he also recommended Allan Boesak from Somerset West, who was matriculating at Gordon High School. As a very committed believer, Attie was all set to become a Sendingkerk dominee. The Lord used him to bring life into the CSV of our school.
The Challenge to Mission Work
Ds. Piet Bester, who came to Tiervlei in 1962 (later called Ravensmead), was divinely used to get me not only interested in sharing the Gospel with others, but also intersted in missionary work. Since I was racially classified and raised as a ‘Coloured’ in apartheid South Africa, I never considered in my wildest dreams that I would ever get to another country for missionary purposes. Nevertheless, I joined the Wayside Mission after getting in trouble at my own church because of my evangelistic passion. I thereafter worked as a volunteer at a minute open air Wayside Sunday School in someone’s backyard.
The run-up to my involvement with the Wayside Mission was actually quite interesting. In the Sunday school of our church, I had led children to a personal faith in Jesus as their Saviour as I had been taught to do as a counsellor at various evangelistic outreaches with Ds. Bester. I also encouraged the children to tell others about their decision to follow Jesus. One of the children from the Sonnenberg family did just this at home. The staunch Moravian parents ‑ who had only been sending their children to Sunday School - promptly complained to the church leadership about the un-moravian way in which I was conducting the Sunday School classes. To get ‘converted’ to faith in Jesus was regarded to be sectarian by the rank and file Moravian Church member at the Cape, also on the mission stations. Sadly, our denomination had thus drifted far away from its blessed evangelistic and missionary beginnings.
Reverend Rudie Balie, our minister and our Mom’s cousin, came to Tiervlei once a month. At the next opportunity I was called to book on the Sunday after the morning service. I was however not prepared to budge, deciding to rather stop church Sunday school teaching. This typified my defiant, rebellious and arrogant spirit of that point in time. I joined the above‑mentioned Wayside Mission.
Preferring to be knocked down by a Car
While I was still a rebellious critical young teacher trainee, divine intervention was needed to get me to finish the confirmation class in the Moravian Church. It was apparently God’s way of keeping me in this denomination.
With the possibility of having to go and teach somewhere on the countryside the following year, my parents insisted that I should attend the confirmation classes of the church. I resisted this vehemently because I could not find any Biblical evidence for the tradition. Yet, I attended the first confirmation class obediently, although in my heart I was still rebelling. Because there was no one else from the Tiervlei congregation that year to be confirmed, it was agreed that I would attend the classes in preparation for Confirmation in Maitland, the main church. These classes were held twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday evenings after the respective service.
How happy I was when Uncle Rudie Balie stressed at this very first evening that the attendance should be voluntary. If anybody had been sent by his parent or family, it was not acceptable! At the next opportunity, on the Wednesday afternoon, I was scheduled to wait at the parsonage in Maitland - en route from Hewat in Crawford – until the evening. Immediately I went to Uncle Rudie, the minister, informing him that I was not attending the confirmation voluntarily at all. He responded very calmly that I should then just go home and pray to discern whether the Lord wants me there or not. He would do the same.
My parents were of course very sad when I was home quite early that day, breaking the news triumphantly because I did not attend the first confirmation class. Our friend Pietie Orange from the Rhenish Church came along the same evening with the request whether I could preach at their youth service the coming Sunday evening. This was just the sort of affirmation which I needed that the church tradition of confirmation was from Satan. I noticed how I was hurting my parents, but I could not care. I arrogantly knew everything so much better!
My certainty was however soon rocked. On the Saturday afternoon Pietie Orange came over once again with the news that the youth service had been cancelled (in those days only very few ‘Coloureds’ had telephones). Like a beaten dog, I went to the next confirmation class, knowing that God had intervened. But I was still very much unconvinced. I still would have preferred to be knocked down by a car rather than being confirmed on Palm Sunday in the Moravian Church in Maitland. If a ship was available to take me the other direction like Jonah, I probably would have taken it gladly. No car knocked me down and I was duly confirmed against my will.

Ready to be ex-communicated
Allan Boesak came to preach in our fellowship soon after he started with his theological studies. Allan had to come from Somerset West, 30 kilometres away. I used to cycle everywhere I went. But this was a little bit further than my radius. Allan slept with us on the Saturday evening. This afforded me with a good opportunity for theological discussion. I eagerly grabbed the occasion to sound Allan out about the christening of infants. (On the issue of believer’s baptism a Pentecostal friend had been influencing me. If he had pitched up on the arranged day to be immersed in a lake, that would probably have meant my expulsion from the Moravian Church. I was definitely no Jonah on that score. But the Lord evidently wanted to use me in that denomination a little longer.)
Allan Boesak couldn’t really convince me, but I was satisfied that he was honest enough about it, that he believed that infant christening is the sign of the new covenant, a substitute for circumcision. According to him the latter is the visible sign of the old covenant of God with Israel. Neither did the arguments used by Ds. Piet Bester of the local Moria Sendingkerk make a big impression. Otherwise Ds. Bester was such a big influence in my life at that time. If my Pentecostal friend had come on a Saturday afternoon to take me to a baptismal service in a lake as he had promised, I would have gone with him: I was ready to be immersed and thereafter to be ex-communicated from the Moravian Church because of believers’ baptism. That is what happened to people in those days who dared to get ‘re-baptised’. But my new friend didn't pitch, so I stayed in the Moravian Church.

A major turning Point in my Life
A major turning point in my life occurred when Allan Boesak and another teenage friend nudged me to attend the evangelistic outreach of the Students’ Christian Association (SCA) at the seaside resort of Harmony Park that was scheduled to start just after Christmas at the end of 1964, Allan Boesak and Paul Engel.
Allan Boesak’s dedication to the Lord made a deep impression on me. When he spoke about the ‘stranddienste’, the beach gospel services of the Students Christian Association at Harmony Park, he sowed seed in my heart. This seed germinated when my Moravian soul mate Paul Engel joined me at Hewat Training College in 1964. Paul also spoke about the Harmony Park beach outreach. I was soon ready to join the Harmony Park outreach after Christmas. At that time I was not only spiritually revived, but there I also received an urge to network with other members of the body of Christ, with people from different denominational backgrounds. Multi-racial work camps at Langgezocht in the mountains of the Moravian Mission station Genadendal from the mid-1960s - to help build a camp site there - gave me the rare opportunity to meet students from other racial groups in a natural setting.

2. The Gospel seed germinates

The Christmas of 1964 however saw me spiritually in tatters. I was on the verge of getting ready for the evangelistic beaches services, but I was feeling completely barren. In desperation I called to the Lord to meet me anew. I had nothing to give to anybody, unless He would fill me with His Spirit. And that He did. The Harmony Park beach evangelization was to change my life completely.

Impacted by the Unity of Christians
The Christmas of 1964 however saw me spiritually in tatters. I was on the verge of getting ready for the Harmony Park ‘stranddienste’ (the evangelistic beaches services), but I was feeling completely barren. In desperation I called to the Lord to meet me anew. I had nothing to give to anybody, unless He would fill me with His Spirit. And that He did. The Harmony Park beach evangelization was to change my life completely.
For the other participants it might not have been so significant, but the unity of the Christians coming from different church backgrounds there left an indelible mark. I did not know the divine statement yet that God commands his blessing where unity exists. But I saw the Holy Spirit at work there, as I had not experienced before. There my friendship was forged with Jakes, a young pastor who came to join us after a long drive through the night from far-away Umtata in the Transkei. Along with David Savage from the City Mission,8 I started learning the power of prayer there at Harmony Park.

Completely unbalanced
After my encounter with the Lord before my first Harmony Park beach outreach, I started to attend the early prayer meetings every Sunday morning at six o’clock at the Tiervlei Sendingkerk. One Sunday morning a mini-revival erupted there when suddenly everybody started praying simultaneously. That was quite revolutionary for the time, causing some disquiet among the traditional reformed believers. It was significant that women from different denominations started to meet each other regularly for prayer at this time. This confirmed for me the special blessing of united prayer. Years later we would put this to good effect in Zeist (Holland) in the 1980s and back in Cape Town since our return in 1992.
Yet, I was also very much a child of my surroundings and completely unbalanced. Not long before starting my teaching career, I frowned upon lengthy degree studies because I really expected the Lord to return very soon. However, when I heard that extra-mural courses would be started at the University College of the Western Cape, I jumped at the opportunity to start degree studies, conveniently forgetting my earlier reservations to study at the ‘Bush’ college. Soon I was cycling to the school in the morning, and from there to the afternoon and evening classes. Often I utilised the time on the bicycle - e.g. holding a book on the steering bar while I memorized the various forms of the German strong or irregular verbs. Not knowing that it would come in good stead at a later stage, I had included German Special as one of my degree courses. I was sad that they could not offer Mathematics as a subject extra-murally straight away. Only in my final year of the degree I included Mathematics in my curriculum, doing it through correspondence with UNISA.
Being thoroughly materialistic at this time, I only had eyes for the opportunity to get in line for promo­tion as a teacher in later years, so that I would be able to earn more. But there was also the academic field that beckoned. Posts at the new 'Coloured' University were waiting to be filled by people from our racial grouping. As one of the better students and also the youngest of the extra-mural ones, this was quite a tempting option.9

A Teenage Secondary School Teacher
Quite surprisingly there were not enough applicants for the third year “academic” teachers’ course at Hewat Training College for 1965. Thus I had to attempt to get one of the rare teaching posts in ‘Coloured’ primary schools. At the beginning of the school holidays, a post in Hopefield - on the West Coast countryside - loomed. The idea that I would have to do my own catering, was not very inviting, but beggars can’t be choosers. I had no other option.
A few days before the re-opening of schools in January 1965 I had not heard again from Mr Abrahams, the school principal from Hopefield. ‘By chance’ Mr Braam, my old high school principal, who had just started a new secondary school in Bellville South the previous year, discovered that I was still available to help him out. The increase in enrolment at his school required more teachers. In those days ‘Coloured’ university graduates were just not available for the high schools. I had just turned 19, but I still looked like a 14 or 15 year old. Thus I would now have to teach children almost my own age. The prospect of being only a few miles from home was however quite attractive.
The missionary zeal of the Harmony Park outreach was still very much part and parcel of me. I displayed a badge “Jesus Saves” and I challenged people left right and centre to accept Jesus as their Lord. It was only natural that a branch of the Student Christian Associ­ation (SCA) was to be started at the school.
At that time the movement was however going through a crisis. The association had just splintered along racial lines. Much to my surprise, the politics of the country started to play a role. Mr. Braam, our principal, called me in to complain about the name of the Christian organisation that had just split. Reverend Abel Hendricks of the Methodist Church, who had also been at Harmony Park, became the part-time travelling secretary of the ‘Coloured’ section of the student movement, visited the school. Mr. Braam himself displayed a badge of the SCA, but he didn’t want to have an organisation on his school that went along with apartheid. Our principal had strong objections to have a group of the ‘VCS’ - the ‘Coloured’ section of the segregated movement - at the school. I had no problem with this position. I simply changed the name of our lunchtime student group to the ‘Jesuites’. Nobody complained this time, so we just went ahead. I was too naive to consider that this could be confused with a Catholic movement. In the ‘Coloured’ community denominational walls were however quite thin.
But also in the classroom I came out quite radically for my faith, such as spreading tracts of the evangelist Chris Cronje and organising a trip for interested students to evangelistic campaigns, such as at the Goodwood Showgrounds. Here I bumped against the ever-present apartheid walls. I had booked seats telephonically, without mentioning that I would bring along a group of ‘Coloured’ students. I was not as radical yet to cause a stir, by insisting on the seats that I had booked! We just took the issue in our stride because there were still ample seats in the ‘other’ (the non-White) section of the stand.
Soon I was cycl­ing to the school in the morning, and from there to the after­noon and evening classes at the university. Often I utilised the time on the bicycle with a book on the steering bar while I memorised the various forms of the German strong and irregular verbs.







(Picture: Leaving home as a young teacher. The big empty space gives some indication of the residential plots, much of it was used for gardening by our father)

Activism as a Teacher
My interest in politics and the struggle for democracy received a tremendous boost at Hewat Training College. Many a lecturer supported the struggle against apartheid, although they were in general quite careful. Quite a few teachers were dismissed at this time or posted to rural places for sharing their political view too openly. Great was my disappointment though when two of the best lecturers, Mr Herbert (History) and Mr Hanmer (Geography) left for England and Canada respectively. Were they not running away from the responsibilities like Jonah?
In 1966 I was subtly nudging my High School learners to stay away from the celebrations for 'Coloureds' at the Goodwood Showgrounds commemorating that we had five years as as an independent Republic. This was however already an infringement. A teacher colleague was dis­missed in the wake of the ‘celebration’ for influencing the children politically. That I was almost posted to the countryside as punishment, hardly had any effect on me. I was not going to allow this intimidation to deter from taking a principled stand on such issues. (Decades later – in 2008 - I was to use this tactic again in addressing the corruption at Home Affairs, spreading the word that the refugees should try and get the money back which had been taken from them illegally.)
I also challenged my teacher colleagues - as a form of protest - that we as ‘Coloureds’ should request to get the lower salaries of the ‘Blacks’. That would be demonstrating our seriousness about racial equality. But nobody was interested in such a proposal. Everybody was only eager to get parity with the Whites.

Unity in Christ across the racial Divide?
I continued to naively try and ignore the unwritten prescripts of our society. I was looking at all sorts of ways to express the unity in Christ across the racial divide. I thus eagerly latched on to the opportunity to pray with the young people of Youth for Christ (YFC) on Friday mornings after I had read about it in their periodical. This would have been a natural supplement of my prayer times early on Sunday mornings at the Sendingkerk Moria.
However, when I pitched up at the YFC venue on my way to the Bellville South High School one Friday morning, I was told that the prayer meetings were not open to ‘Coloureds’. I took it in my stride, knowing that this was South African ‘way of life’. How pervasive racial prejudice and racist practice was I also experienced in the Wayside Mission. It was the common practice to let workers of the same gender operate as a pair. There was however no young White male available (or willing?) to work with me, the mission leaders teamed me up with a ‘Coloured’ female. Alas! The right race was evidently of prime importance to this evangelical group as it would have been for so many others.
My weekends were hectic, often even more than the weekdays. Yet, I revelled in those four years of hectic life, during which my family did not see much of me, not even during the school holidays. I was cycling to all sorts of venues seven days a week, sometimes from six o’clock in the morning, but not too late at night. If we had electricity, I might have worked until late at night as well. The paraffin (kerosene) lamp light made one quite tired so that I was usually already in bed by nine thirty in the evening.
A Significant Moravian Funeral
Another teenage hero of mine was Reverend Ivan Wessels. He contracted leukaemia at the beginning of 1968. He passed on after a few weeks in Groote Schuur Hospital, not very long after Professor Chris Barnard had just performed his first heart transplants at that hospital. Instead of the usual Sunday School Conference in Pella that had been scheduled for the weekend following his death, almost the whole Moravian Church establishment gathered in Lansdowne for the funeral of one of its most promising sons. Although very principled and outspoken against any form of racism, it was characteristic that the wise late Rev. Daniel Ivan Wessels was never jailed or banned - in contrast to so many other members of the Wessels clan. When Bishop Schaberg challenged the congregation: ‘Who is going to fill the gap caused by our deceased brother’, I discerned God’s voice in my heart. Back home in Tiervlei after the funeral, it was not difficult at all to go to my knees and say ‘Yes, Lord, I’m prepared to be used by you to fill the gap.’
The next day we went to the Pella Mission Station for our condensed Sunday School conference. I was completely surprised when Reverend August Habelgaarn, a member of the church board, approached me with the question whether I would be interested in a bursary for two years of theological studies at the Johanneum in Wupperthal (Germany).10 I could just reply that I saw this as clear confirmation of the call of the Lord the previous day. Another few months down the road preparations were well advanced towards my leaving for Germany at the beginning of 1969.


(Some of the people who came to see me off at the quayside: From left to right (front row): my friend Jakes, my Brother Kenneth, nephew Clarence on the arm of our dad, Brother-in-law Anthony Esau, Bishop Schaberg, Mommy, my sister Magdalene and sister-in-law Malie, Back Row: V.C.S. student camp friends John Tromp, Martin Dyers, Richard Stevens John was also a local Tiervlei Calvinist church youth friend, Martin a fellow student at Hewat, and Richard a class mate at Vasco High School)

(On my way to Germany)

3. An African Missionary in Germany?

Towards the end of 1968, preparation for Germany didn’t belong to my priorities. Instead of trying to get my knowl­edge of the German language on par, I rushed from one youth camp to the other. Romances had been starting to play a bigger role in my life, after I had previously decided that in terms of priorities, I was too busy with other things like studies and service for the Lord to have time for a girl friend.
I had just turned 23 when I left South Africa. All around me my peers were getting married. But I was determined from the outset not to marry a German girl because that would have prevented me from returning to South Africa due to of the laws of the country at the time. Rationally, I considered that I would be of more use inside South Africa than outside of the beloved country.

(On the day of my departure with my close friend Jakes standing between my mother and me. My dad is on the extreme left with John Tromp, a friend from the Calvin Protestant Church in Tiervlei)

An African missionary in Germany?
I regarded the stay in Europe from January 1969 in the first place as an opportunity to study, but it was also combined with some missionary zeal. Fairly at the beginning of my stint in Germany, I once opposed Marxist theological students, although I still could not yet express myself sufficiently in German, thus needing an interpreter. A German lady exclaimed quite shocked that their ‘Christian’ country now seemed to be in need of mission­aries from Africa.
I mentioned to Gerhard Fey - the youth worker who was directly responsible for me - the idea to live ‘in faith’ as a missionary in the university town Tübingen. This notion was possibly too radical for Gerhard. (Ameri­cans later started on this ven­ture in Tübingen, albeit well supported from their respective home churches.11)
Reverend Rolf Scheffbuch, our ‘boss’ at the Evangelische Jungmännerwerk, was quite open to the suggestion that I could possibly study Theology in Germany (with a bursary from the Landeskirche). I was of course elated, thrilled at the possibility of doing a full theological course at the renowned Tübingen University. The possibility of the deport­ation of our German lecturers at the church’s seminary was nowhere fictitious. This happened to a quite few foreigners who opposed apartheid. In the case of this eventuality, I argued that it would have been good if we had properly university-trained lecturers at our denominational seminary from our own ranks. I wanted to be available for this eventuality.
My church authorities back home were however not so enchanted with the idea. They feared that I could become estranged from the country after many years out of the land. In the end it was agreed that I could remain in Germany for one more year, studying the biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew.12
When the Germans offered to sponsor me for a shorter study of three years at the Moravian theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (USA) where Reverend Scheffbuch had also studied, this looked a good compro­mise. My church authorities in Cape Town regarded this as still too long! It was clear to me that they probably feared – later these reservations turned to be spot on – that I would then be lost for the church apart form the embarrassing situation for them as the responsible people. In the end it was agreed that I could remain in Germany for one more year, studying the biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew.13

From the outset I regarded myself as a ‘short term missionary’. In those days this terminology was still fairly unknown. The possibility of a missionary coming from Africa to ‘Christian’ Europe was unheard of. But I was just as determined to return to serve the Lord in my home country. The almost two years in Germany, during which I learned much about youth work in the first year, were very enriching. The last of the two years was devoted to studies in Greek, Hebrew and Latin.14
I had to guard myself against falling in love if that were possible at all. I had to learn the hard way (well, really?) that also my emotions had to be brought under God’s rule! His ways were indeed higher, also with regard to my future marriage partner. I still had to learn that it was not on to prescribe to the Lord the race to which my future wife should belong.
My Defences fell apart
I had not been in Europe for two weeks when ‘it’ hap­pened. I fell in love as never before. A Christian girl in Switzerland not only impressed me, but I also noticed a growing feeling towards her that drove me to my knees. I was really thrown into a spiritual crisis. I asked the Lord to take away my infatuation because she was 'White'. I felt myself committed to a task and a commission that was awaiting me in South Africa. The emotional crisis was saved when the friend wrote to me a few months later that ‘she’ appreciated me like a brother. She had a boy friend of her own. God taught me through this experience not to prescribe to Him to which race my future wife should belong. The end result of this experi­ence was however that all my defences fell apart. I sadly caused hurting young German females in the months hereafter.
A clear challenge came from a completely different direc­tion when I landed at Selbitz, a protestant institution that had all the hall-marks of a monastery. The life-style of these Christians challenged me to a celibate life, something with which I had not been confronted before. But I knew myself too well. I settled for a compromise: I decided to dedicate my ‘youth’ to the Lord, i.e. I wanted to stay unmarried until the age of thirty. This was however definitely no Jonah stint!
My vow-like intention to stay a bachelor until the age of thirty was made easy when I fell in love with a teenager. I knew I would have to wait on my newfound love for many years before we could marry. My resolve to return to South Africa at all costs had all but disappeared by now.
When my teenage girl friend wrote to me some months later ‘I don’t love you any more’, I was thrown into deep despair. But soon hereafter, a black-haired beauty walked into my life.

Stay clear of Politics!
Before I left South Africa, Bishop Schaberg warned me to stay clear of politics, because agents from the apartheid government were also well represented overseas. The Lord had blessed me with insights that turned out to be quite pro­phetic. In my usual talk on South Africa, I spoke about the unique problems of the country. I defined them as the apartheid government policy, the disunity of the churches and alcohol­ism. As a solution to the problems, I suggested much prayer because I believed in the power of prayer, the result of the mentoring of Ds. Bester. As a speaker from Africa, I was something of a celebrity in certain quarters, especially on the German countryside.
I heeded Bishop Schaberg’s warning initially, without however really making a conscious effort. A letter from my parents changed all this. It shocked me out of my wits to hear that our family had been served with a notice of the expropriation of our property in Tiervlei under the guise of slum clearance. Before I left South Africa we had heard a rumour that our property – the house plus 8 vacant plots on which more houses could be built – was offered to a businessman in Bellville South. Considering that our solid brick house nowhere resembled one of those that qualified for slum clearance, we had initially taken that to be an unfounded rumour.
What really enraged me there in Europe was that my mother mentioned in her letter something about ‘the will of the Lord.’ I could only perceive the move as a local version of the jealousy of Naboth in respect of the vineyard of a poor man (1 King 21:1-15). In my anger I stopped just short of considering joining the armed struggle against the apartheid government. The wanton act of the Parow Municipality was to me just an extension of the racist government policies. From abroad I wrote quite a strong letter of protest to the Parow Municipality, with copies to some people in Tiervlei. But it was all of no avail. A few months later, while I was still in Germany, my parents were forced to move.

I became almost reckless
Hereafter, I became almost reckless in my opposition to the South African government policies. I was very critical of the regime, now also in public utterances. Much of my initial missionary zeal went overboard. I did not feel any resemblance to the biblical Jonah however when resentment towards the apartheid regime took hold of me. I thought that I had every reason to feel that way. (Of course, this was nothing else than the sulking Jonah after God had spared Niniveh).
The only constraint with regard to the content of my speeches on South Africa was a moral and religious one. I wanted to act responsibly as if to God in everything I did. For the rest I couldn’t care less if they wanted to withdraw my passport or not. In my letter to the Parow Municipality, I had almost invited the folk there to pass the information on to Pretoria.
My protest letter to the Parow Municipality after the expropriation of our house in Tiervlei, didn’t have any effect one way or the other. My parents hereafter moved to Elim, with my father becoming a ‘migrant labourer’, going there one weekend per month. Health-wise it however became too much for him. It affected his heart. At the age of 58, he had to go on early retirement.
When my parents moved to the countryside - thus without visible reminders and news from me - the support from the Tiervlei prayer warriors diminished. Parallel to this move, also much of my initial missionary zeal vanished.
Although I was in the same region during the first months of 1969, I was yet to meet Rosemarie. In fact, for two months I actually resided at the Christian hostel from where I got in touch with the young people of the ‘E.C.’, the Jugendbund für Entschiedenes Christentum. Rosemarie was also a member of the ‘E.C., Christian Encounter, an evangelical group of committed Christians. I soon became a regular at the ‘Brenzhaus’ every Wednesday evening. Her student colleague and close friend Elke Maier, who rented a room in the city, had been attending regularly. Rosemarie however, commuted from Mühlacker every day to their training course, hoping to become an ‘educator’, a teaching qualification for Kindergarten and children’s homes.

(photo of Rosemarie’s friend Elke Maier)

Run-up to a special Relationship
When Rosemarie entered the Jugendbund für Entschiedenes Christentum with her student colleague and friend Elke Maier in May 1970, I experienced something as close to a ‘love at first sight’ as ever there was one, especially after I had spoken to Rosemarie afterwards. I could not keep it to myself, blurting it out and telling my two Stuttgart room mates immediately about ‘Rosemarie Göbel aus Mühlacker’, even though I still hardly knew her.
There was some disappointment when she stepped just as suddenly out of my surrounds as she had entered. We had no opportunity to exchange addresses or telephone numbers.
Almost simultaneously with my examination in Greek - two weeks before my scheduled return to South Africa - Rosemarie re-entered my life. This time I resorted to some very unconven­tional methods to make sure that we would not lose contact again. Those two weeks turned out to become quite crucial in our lives. The miraculous divine intervention so gripped me that I really wanted to shout it from the rooftops.
However, a crisis followed when one of my student colleagues also fell in love with Rosemarie. He touched a sensitive chord when he admonished me not to break another girl’s heart,15 as I was about to return to my heimat. I knew that his warning was not primarily inspired by concern for her but I was nevertheless gripped by a sense of guilt. I did not want to cause heartache to anybody before my return to South Africa - I was initially prepared to sacrifice my feelings for Rosemarie, basically ready to leave her over to him. But it was quite an inner wrestle until I could leave everything over to the Lord. And this was only a fraction of the action of two very intriguing weeks, where we definitely saw the Lord at work.16 Quite an unusual love story ensued.
The most important moment for me during this time was probably Rosemarie’s reaction when I invited her telephonically to join me for an evening with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Her response was: ‘already from childhood I wanted to become a missionary.’ To me this was the firm confirmation that I wanted nobody else as my future wife. But a few days later, a possible marriage seemed completely remote.
When she told her mother that she had fallen in love with an African student, Mrs Göbel immediately opposed the relationship, fearing an even harsher reaction from her husband, not allowing Rosemarie to meet me again. My darling agreed not to tell her father about me. How many times he had warned her never to marry a teacher or a pastor. (I had been practising as a teacher and was about to be trained to become a pastor.) This is not even mentioning the indoctrination of Mr Göbel’s upbringing. That had been an important reason for him to oppose her idea of studying in Tübingen, where she could possibly get involved in a relationship to a foreign student.
Rosemarie was not allowed to attend my farewell at the Christian Encounter youth group, but she later learned the chorus “My Lord can do anything ...” (We made a recording of the proceedings via one of the latest technological advances, the audiocassette. At my farewell evening I taught the German young people this chorus and ‘By u is daar niks onmoontlik Heer,’17 without thinking much about the content. These two choruses were to mean such a lot to us in the months thereafter.)
A foretaste of the miracle that was still to happen occurred just prior to my departure. When she went home the next weekend, Rosemarie’s mother allowed her to see me once more and then accompany me to the airport a few days later. I was so happy when she agreed to join me to a performance of Händel’s Messiah when I went to meet her at the train station. The Sunday evening everything seemed hopeless with regard to any future for our intense mutual love. We had no option but to stick to the content of the chorus: Our Lord could do anything.
We were thoroughly blessed when we attended the Messiah oratorio. As we listened to the words from the prophet Isaiah: ‘Every valley shall be exalted...’, we looked at each other eagerly and lovingly, adapting the promise to our personal circumstances! How we longed for the fulfilment of the application of the verse from Scripture!
When I returned to South Africa, I had no doubt that Rosemarie Göbel was the girl I wanted to marry. My intention ‑ not to get involved in a special relationship with the opposite gender in Germany that could lead to marriage ‑ was thus effectively dashed.


(with Rosemarie on the Stuttgart airport at my return to South Africa in October 1970)
4. Home sweet Home

My opposition to the government of my home country received a personal touch with my new resolve. A law was prohibiting me from getting married to Rosemarie Göbel. I could not accept that.
I was terribly in love and was soon telling our wonderful love story to all and sundry. At one of these occasions I blurted out my feelings towards Rosemarie to my cousin, Rev. John Ulster. He was the minister of the Elim Mission Station and a member of the Church Board. He pointed out to me the obvious, that I had to choose between South Africa and Rosemarie. But I wanted both. This must have looked really stupid and naive because a marriage to a (White) German was just not a runner at that time. But I was too much in love to accept that. I was determined to marry Rosemarie, determined to fight to get her into South Africa. To everybody around me that idea sounded quite crazy.

Quandries in Germany and at Home
I had caused problems in Germany for myself as well because I was quite outspoken there about my desire to return to South Africa to serve my people. In a newsletter to friends in Germany dated 22 December 1970, I wrote from Elim at the home of my parents:
I hear already your question: You always asserted that you see your duty in South Africa and now you have fallen in love with a German? ...
I defended myself in the same newsletter: It is not so much that I fell in love but that GOD granted us this exceptional love. I furthermore pointed out that if I had my own way, I would have returned to South Africa much earlier and then we would not have met each other again two weeks before my return in October 1970 after we had initially lost contact with each other.18
Many acquaintances on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea were rather sceptical about our friendship, waiting for the novelty of my new-found love to wear off. On my part there was no resolve to prove anything. I was so sure of our strong love. There was however still one snag: Rosemarie’s father still didn’t know about our friendship.
Rosemarie was now doing her qualifying year of teaching at the School for the Blind in Stuttgart, where she also resided. Thus we could correspond, without her parents getting upset by it. Rosemarie initially kept the promise to withhold the information from her father. She did share it with Waltraud, her only sister. But she knew beforehand that she could not expect any support from that quarter. Waltraud was engaged to Dieter Braun and everything was set for their wedding a few months later.

Fighting Apartheid
After my return to Cape Town, I was soon swept along by the politics of the day. Ever since reading books from Martin Luther King and Albert Luthuli during my stay in Germany - literature that was either unavailable or declared banned literature in South Africa - my interest was more than merely aroused. Now I was ablaze in opposition to apartheid. I saw this as my Christian duty. One of the first things after my return was to join the Christian Institute (CI), an organisation founded by Dr Beyers Naudé after he had been disillusioned with his denomination’s response to the proposals of Cottesloe in 1960, where he had been a delegate.
At the CI in Mowbray I linked up with Paul Joemat, my old rebel soul mate in the Moravian Church. There we wanted to be involved with other young people like Erica Murray and Tony Saddington, who also had the vision that Christians should be actively engaged in opposing the unchristian apartheid policies.
Paul and I were quite disappointed when we discovered that the ‘White’ members of the CI were not prepared to fall foul of the immoral apartheid laws. I had suggested that we should board a train together and then walk through the different racially designated train coaches. The idea was that all of us would then have to be arrested for the infringement. We were quite prepared to embarrass the government in that way. However, the White members hid behind the excuse that it was not CI policy to do illegal things. Paul and I stopped attending.

Part-time Theological Studies
Because I had started with the theological languages in Germany, our church board was prepared to make an exception, to allow me to join the other full-time students at the Moravian Seminary in District Six. I was however adamant. Typical of the rebel I still was, I refused special favours.
In January 1971 I met my former Afrikaans teacher at high school, Mr Adam Pick somewhere.19 My reputation as a fairly good Mathematics teacher had somehow done the rounds and he was now the principal of Elswood High School. He promptly asked me to come and teach at his school. Being a Moravian himself, he sowed seed into my heart, suggesting that I could study theology part-time. (He knew that the seminary had just moved to Cape Town after the Group Areas expropriation of the church’s property in Fairview, Port Elizabeth.)
I soon took up a full-time teaching post at Elswood High School in Elsies River, making clear though that I would only be teaching for a year. After that year I wanted to study Theology full-time.
Because my parents were now living in Elim and my sister and her family quite far from Elsies River, I needed accommodation in the vicinity. Mr Pick, the school principal, introduced me to the Esau family of Elsies River, which had a 2 by 2 metre room with one bed that I could share with my brother Windsor. How we enjoyed the lekker stews Mrs Esau could cook, like hardly anybody else! There I hung Rosemarie’s photo on the inside of the door, the important artefact for my Sunday 22h rendezvous with my darling. He worked for a pharmacist in Goodwood, but also doing some deliveries. Soon I helped him to buy an Austin, our second car.20 In turn, he was going to teach me so that I could also get a drivers’ licence. The latter was easier said than done. After a few efforts to pass the driver’s test, I was still without the licence two years further on. A few errors plus the racist attitude of a certain Afrikaner official made me so unsure that I had to start all over again with driving lessons in Germany in 1974.


(Photo: Together with some of my Elswood High School Mathematics learners, sporitng my UNISA blazer.)

I proceeded to take up the full-time teaching post at Elswood High School in Elsies River, studying part-time at the seminary in 1971, and linking up with my old stalwart rebel fighter of the Sunday School conference days, Paul Joemat. The third ‘musketeer’, Paul Engel, had started at the Moravian Seminary when the institution was still in Fairview. Paul Engel had however in the meantime aborted his theological studies.
From one of my first salaries I bought myself a help my trap 50cc Solex bicycle with a machine with which I would now not only commuted to school, but all over the Peninsula. This was a marked improvement to my cycling days while I was teaching at Bellville South High School from 1965 to 1968.

Various Dilemmas
A major problem had arisen in Germany after a few months. Rosemarie’s father still had no clue what was going on. At the school for the blind she received my letters. Only over week-ends she would return home. But she soon deemed it wise to do it less frequently.
Her mother was now torn between the love for her husband and allegiance to the daughter with the strange choice of a boy-friend. But God had already started to change her original attitude to our friendship. In a letter to Rosemarie she wrote very wisely:
... I feel that should Ashley come to Europe one day - and should you still think about it as at present - that it would be the opportunity to get to know him. Think about it how many people had to experience a time of parting. Sometimes God requires of us a time of testing. In the meantime, you can learn some extra things for His service. Should you serve Him together one day, He will surely make your way clear...
The inference is that her mother thus reckoned with the possibility that I would return to Europe in future. The next few weeks brought no change with regard to Mr Göbel’s position. In fact, at one of the rare weekends at home, Rosemarie couldn’t take it any more. She took her bag and ran out in tears. This also brought her in a spiritual crisis, thinking once again that the termination of our friendship would be the only way out.
The secrecy of our friendship took its toll on Mrs Göbel, so that she landed in hospital with gall trouble. Rosemarie had to face the fact that the tension because of our friendship was the cause of her mother’s ailment. But she also knew that she could no longer keep the secret away from her dear father. The tension inside had become unbearable with her mother in hospital. She splashed it out to her father, causing excessive pain to him. Subsequently she wrote to me about the quarrel she had with her father about our friendship.

A terrible Effort to ‘assist God’
I thereafter wrote an apology to Mr Göbel. In the letter I also formally asked to correspond with his daughter. He replied equally formally, giving me reasons why I should terminate my friendship to his daughter. He had nothing against me as an African, but he didn't want Rosemarie to marry anybody from any other nation than Germany. I should have left it at that. In stead, I stubbornly requested him to allow me to continue the correspondence with Rosemarie at festive occasions.
Ethically this was deplorable. I twisted Mr Göbel’s arm, because in the same letter I insolently suggested that if I would not get a reply from him, I would take it that he agreed to my proposal. I still had to learn that one could aggravate a problematic situation by forcing an issue. Mr Göbel was too angry to reply, instructing Rosemarie to write me one final letter!
Not aware of this, I went ahead with the writing of a thick epistle. Via my Easter letter I wanted to make sure that my darling would have enough material to read and to re-read until Pentecost!! Easter 1971 would have been the next occasion of our mutual exchange of letters. Her letter didn’t arrive at the expected time. After some delay, the letter arrived that should have alarmed.
* *
On this side of the ocean there was of course the ominous ‘Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act’, that tried to prevent any marital bond between a White and someone from another race. All sorts of efforts on my part to get Rosemarie reclassified as a ‘Coloured’ ‑ to enable her to come to South Africa ‑ only created more problems. Instead of waiting on God’s intervention to enable our marriage, I decided to ‘assist Him’. After reading in a local newspaper of someone who had been racially reclassified - something like that could of course only transpire in the apartheid era - this looked to be my big chance. I would not accept the ‘realistic’ options of either Rosemarie or South Africa.
I wrote to the Prime Minister, enquiring about the procedure to have someone reclassified. I was also insensitive to the objections from Wolfgang Schäfer, one of our Seminary lecturers - that I would give recognition to the immoral racial laws of a country which required such a reclassification. But this could not deter me.
Theoretically, there was another possibility to circumvent the legislation: if ‘non-white blood’ (what a laugh!) could be traced in Rosemarie’s ancestry. My darling has features that makes her not so typi­cally German at all. I really hoped that some non-European influence could be traced in her forbears. Alas, research that had already been done by her family for their family tree, showed just the opposite. Rosemarie is European through and through!
I desperately wanted Rosemarie to come to South Africa, instead of my going to Germany again to marry her. Knowing the objections of her family, Rosemarie on the other hand was however far from free from within to come to Africa. In one of her letters she actually requested me to pray for her inner liberation in this regard. I had no problem with this, trusting God to change that in due time. Didn’t she tell me when I invited her to the evening with the Wycliffe Bible Translators that she wanted to enter missionary work already from childhood? Thus I just pushed ahead with my own ideas in a rather headstrong way.

Traumatic Weeks
Naively over-looking what Rosemarie had intimated in her Easter letter, I continued writing my next epistle that was intended to arrive at Pente­cost. I had elevated this church feast to the next big occa­sion, just looking of course for an opportunity to write a letter to my ‘Schatz’. But Pentecost came and went, without any letter from my bonny over the ocean.
I was ‘sure’ that the South African government had intervened, that our post was being intercepted. Practices like this belonged to the day-to-day occurrences of apartheid South Africa. If the powers that be could stop our contact in this way, they would definitely not hesitate. Inter-racial contact of any sort was not appreciated in government quarters, let alone that between the sexes across the colour bar.
When I didn’t hear from my darling for many weeks, I got really worried that something could have happened to her. In the meantime, I had formally resigned from teaching to go into full-time pastoral work. I received a cheque from the authorities as a repayment of money that I had paid into the State pension fund just at this point in time. The amount of the cheque was more or less just what I would need for the cheapest air ticket with Trek Airways (later it changed its name to Luxavia) to Luxembourg. I expediently perceived - albeit after some serious prayer - the cheque from the government to be divine provision to fly to Europe in the June 1971 vacation. And my passport was still valid.21
In utter naivety, I still did not even consider the possibility that my darling could have become involved in another serious friendship. In the meantime, Rosemarie’s relationship to her parents became so strained that Rosemarie was severely tempted into another friendship to the loving handsome ‘Kriegdienstverweige­rer’, 22 Günther. The relationship to a prim and proper German seemed to bring back the family bliss. In her heart she was nevertheless still hoping for some miracle to happen so that she could marry her ‘first choice’ in Africa, but more and more this likened a pipe-dream.

My Bonny in a Dilemma
In the meantime, Rosemarie was teetering on the horns of an immense dilemma when the mother of Günther, the handsome German young friend, became critically ill. He stated innocently to her that he would not be able to take it if he would lose both Rosemarie and his mother. Günther obviously sensed that she still loved the African theological student in Cape Town. Rosemarie felt herself cornered when his mother died.
The temptation was too strong for her. Promptly she gave her word to him. Relief and joy became hereafter almost tangible every time she pitched up with courteous Günther at the Göbel home in Albert Schweitzer Strasse in Mühlacker. On top of that, Rosemarie showed Günther her 'final' letter to me that would have terminated our friendship. Through a combination of circumstances she could not post this letter, which would have settled the matter. I would then not even have contemplated to fly to Europe in the school holidays.
* * *
The shock was complete when a letter from Cape Town arrived at Rosemarie’s parental address in the first half of June 1971. Because I had not received my ‘Pentecostal letter’, I wrote in dire frustration to enquire about Rosemarie’s whereabouts. I also indicated that I wanted to come in the June school holidays, ‘even if it would mean to visit her grave’.
Any doubts about the correctness of such a drastic step as going to Germany for only two weeks were dispelled for a moment. I heard from Trek Airways that the first flight just after the start of the school holidays was absolutely full. This was a very convenient ‘Gideon’s fleece’, a test to see if it was right to use the money that I would possibly need soon to finance my theological studies. Two hundred and sixty odd Rand meant a lot of money in those days. So I argued: “If it is the will of the Lord that I should go, then he has to get a place for me on that flight’.
When I received a phone call only a few days before the departure date that one seat is free, I saw this as a clear indication that I should go. I had considered the venture prayerfully enough! I now sent a telegram to Germany which caused a lot of consternation there!

Feathers ruffled
My unexpected arrival in Germany ruffled feathers there, because Rosemarie regarded herself as all but formally engaged, to get married to Günther in due course. She knew full well that the problems at home would flare up again. But she also knew in her innermost now that she could not proceed with a marriage of compromise to Günther.
After an intense struggle in prayer, Rosemarie decided to break with both of us. Everybody had understanding for her decision, even her parents. I could fully comprehend the reason for her decision, but my own faith was really tested to the full. In that moment I could not understand why God allowed me to come all the way to Germany to experience this.
* *
The last time when Rosemarie and I were together before my return to South Africa, the Lord comforted us. Although we had the inner conviction as never before that we belonged to each other, we agreed to separate, committing our future in God’s hands. As we prayed for each other, we more or less left the ball in God’s court. He had to bring us together again if it was His will that we should marry one day. I knew for one that it had been wrong for me to try and assist Him through letters to the South African authorities or the like. But we also knew now that we still loved each other intensely and that was ample consolation for the moment.
I still experienced great difficulty to release Rosemarie completely from within. Through this I made it very difficult for her.

Full-time at the Moravian Seminary
Along with Paul Joemat I was now studying at the Moravian Seminary in District Six part-time when Black Theology was emerging as a force to be reckoned with. In my first year Matie October and Kallie August were full-time final year students. Matie returned from the University Christian Movement (UCM)23 conference, where he rubbed shoulders with Mashwabada Mayathula and other founding members of the Black Consciousness movement. In my second year, I was the seminary delegate when the radical Christian student movement was disbanded, pre-empting the expected government ban. Many of the delegates stayed on for the SASO students where Steve Biko was running the show.

The part-time and full-time seminary students with Rev. Martin Wessels lecturing.)
I don’t know why, but somehow I never rubbed shoulders with the Special Branch (Security Police). The closest I came to this sort of trouble was reaction to a sermon on the communalism of the first Christians from the book of Acts. Reverend John Swart, the pastor who had invited me, confided that a congregation member, who was in the police force, had passed on a warning. I should not be asked to preach there again because the brother would then have to arrest me. The police agent in question had confused Communalism with Communism. The latter word was like a terrible swear word to everyone in authority in those days, and abused in Christian circles. But hardly anybody knew what it stood for apart from the fact that Communism was atheistic.
Paul Joemat and other seminarians were less lucky. They got grilled by the Special Branch. Paul got more involved politically and his wife Rhoda was engulfed in trade union politics. Twice he was imprisoned, once incarcerated for a short time in the cells of Caledon Square in Cape Town and another time at Victor Verster Prison in Paarl.

Activism Galore
Our institution harvested a bad name with the government of the day because people of all races were entering and leaving there. In those days that was regarded as subversive. Definitely influenced by the emerging Black Consciousness ideology, I was fond of wearing my ‘Black is Beautiful’ T-shirt, especially after I heard that the sale of it had been banned. I went even one step further in my radicalism. With a Koki thick black marker I wrote ‘Civil Rights’ at the back of another T-shirt and ‘Reg en Geregtigheid’ (Justice and Right­eousness) at the front. (This meant of course that I could not wash this T-shirt for many months, but this didn’t trouble me much, as long as I could posture these sentiments defiantly. I knew of course very well that the wording on the T-shirts could bring me into trouble.) At the Moravian synod held in Bellville I sported my ‘Black is Beautiful’ T-shirt, giving some moral support to Chris Wessels as he fought a lonely battle in an attempt to nudge the denomination to break down the race barrier in its structures.


A magnanimous Gesture
I had some frank discussions with my parents in Elim during the last part of the June holidays, on political matters. Because we already received copies of Pro Veritate, the organ of the Christian Institute, at the seminary, I had my personal copy sent to Elim. With some satisfaction I noticed that my father - through reading this material - became enlightened on some issues. In earlier years so many of us were more or less taken on tow by the SABC (South African Broadcast­ing Association) version of events.
I also discussed the issue of my relationship to Rosemarie openly with my parents for the first time, including my hope of bringing her to South Africa one day. They shared that they would rather be prepared to sacrifice me if I wished to return to Europe than see me bringing Rosemarie into the humiliations and injustice that was part and parcel of apartheid on our side of the racial barrier. I was too much in love to appreciate how magnanimous their gesture was. They knew what they were talking about. My cousin Hester Ulster, who married Tubby Lymphany, an English marine sailor from the Simon’s Town naval base around 1950, had not been allowed to visit her parents as yet, i.e. after more than 20 years of marriage.

Divine Intervention
God intervened in Rosemarie’s life a few months later when it became clear to her that she loved me too much. We faithfully still kept to our mutual promise, our ‘rendezvous’: every Sunday evening at 21 hours mid-European time (10 p.m. South African time). For the rest, we heard about some of each other’s activities and whereabouts through the faithful Hermann Beck, my Stuttgart roommate whom I had dubbed Harry. Almost like clockwork he would return my post. He was studying in Tübingen, where Rosemarie now worked as an occupational therapist with terminally ill children.
It came as quite a shock when Rosemarie wrote directly to me:
Tübingen, 7th November 1971
“MAY THE LORD BE BETWEEN YOU AND ME”
... You must know that it was the love, but also the trust in our Lord that led me to write this letter to you to tell you of my decision. Precisely because I want to love Jesus above every­thing, I want to be absolutely obedient to Him. You know, out of a genuine love must also grow a complete trust. Out of this trust I want to take a step in faith that will lead both of us into a genuine inner freedom. Yes Ashley, I know now clearly that it is God’s will that we part. More I can’t and should not tell you now. You may expect more particulars through Harry. May you experience the compassionate love of God!

She felt that her love to me was obstructing her relationship to God. Later she described it as her Isaac experience, com­paring it of course with the Bible narrative of Abraham, who had to sacrifice his son. Rosemarie thought that she had to sacrifice me completely.
The Lord had prepared me somehow for this shock. Just prior to this letter, I received a notification on behalf of Dr Theo Gerdener, the Minister of the Interior, informing me that the government could only reclassify Rosemarie once she was in South Africa. This was of course logical. This letter helped me to release her completely, even though this was only temporarily.

Jakes comes to the Cape!
In the meantime, my close friend Jakes had accepted a call to the Cape. I was elated. He was responsible for ministry in the newly started township of Hanover Park, where many of the former residents of District Six were moved to. Our old Jonathan and David relationship flared up. Over the weekends, after the Sunday evening service, I often went to his home where we would have long discussions, often about a possible wife for him. He was a bachelor of long standing and I was determined to become one, at least until my 30th birthday. Of course, I was still hoping that one day my wife would be ‘Rosemarie Göbel aus Mühlacker’. In spite of my activism on more than one front, my heart was still aching that I could not write to my Rosemarie directly. This was foremost in my prayers. We “communicated” supernaturally. What glorious hours of ‘fellowship’ we enjoyed as we continued to pray for each other every Sunday evening at a fixed time.

Living in a liberated Area
A big dose of cross‑cultural pollination was administered to us as students during our time at the Moravian Seminary in Ashley Street in District Six. It was not so much the formal theological studies, but especially the extra-mural activities, such as via the Christian Institute with which our German lecturers Henning Schlimm and Wolfgang Schäfer brought us into contact. That enriched our lives as students tremendously. I was now living in a ‘liberated area’ - as one of our lecturers dubbed the seminary complex in Ashley Street. The Seminary was very much involved with the activities of the Christian Institute. Bishop’s Court, the University of Stellenbosch and the Black townships were places that I had not visited before, apart from visiting lecturers from around the world like Dr Desmond Tutu who came to the seminary in District Six. (At that time he was based in Britain, connected to the Theological Education Fund).
My personal friendship to Jakes brought us also to activities of the Sendingkerk (and later to those of the Broederkring). Reverend Martin Wessels of Steenberg, one of our lecturers, also played his part in our broad education when he would forfeit his own lecture once a month to take us fulltime students to places like Ravensmead for special lectures by Professor Willie Jonker from Stellenbosch or similar stuff at the Sendingkerk theological school in Bellville. These lectures were initiated and facilitated by Jakes. They developed into a sort of harbinger of the Broederkring,24 a circle of Dutch Reformed clergymen and academics from different racial backgrounds. The Broederkring was to give the White DRC and the government quite a few headaches in the late 1970s and early 1980s.25
We were allowed by our lecturers to participate in political marches, demonstrations and the likes, such as those for equal educational opportunities, without any fear of reprimand. In church politics the seminary students gave the church denominational leadership a hard time, inciting young people in different congregations directly and indirectly. A few congregations banned Fritz and me from their pulpits. Older ministers often emulated the government in their dealings with opposition to the traditionalism in the church. After Guston Joemat, Fritz Faro and I had walked out of the Moravian Hill Church in 1972, in protest against separate seating that was organised for the White Germans on the celebration of the Herrnhut revival of 13th August 1727, I was called to be the spokesman for the young people in the tussle with a delegation of the German Christians, led by our retired dear Bishop Schaberg.

A Reprimand from the Prime Minister
Early one October morning in 1972, while I was on my knees praying for the country, I felt constrained to write a letter to the Prime Minister. In this letter, I addressed him with ‘Liewe’ (dear). That was definitely something extraordinary. My natural feelings towards him were not that charitable. In this letter I challenged Mr Vorster to let himself be used by God like President Lincoln in the USA, to lead the nation on the ways of God. Basically, it was a letter of criticism that could have landed me in hot water. I was lucky that I only got a reprimand from Mr Vorster, the standard reply to people who objected on religious grounds to the racial policies of the country. In this letter, which was actually more or less a circular in which only the name of the recipient was inserted, the Prime Minister implied that I was involved in politics under the guise of religion. Through this ploy the government apparently endeavoured to teach churchmen to make a sharp distinction between faith and politics. Many Afrikaner eyes were kept blinded to the heresy of apartheid in this way.

In another initiative Robbie Kriger,26 a part-time seminary student, was prominent. Dr Beyers Naudé was invited to address a youth rally on Youth Power in the Old Drill Hall. This was typical of the position of the Seminary in opposition to the regime. As Dr Naudé was lodging with the Schlimm family, he heard about my pending departure for Germany to take up the position as assistant minister and about the link to my darling Rosemarie. (Henning and Anne Schlimm had been my confidants during the three years of my studies at the seminary.)
At that time our theological seminary was perhaps the only institution in the country where the students could influence what was actually taught. Black Theology made us quite sensitive to the context in which we operate and study. Thus we noticed for instance the irrelevance of the curriculum with regard to our surroundings. With Muslims all around us in District Six, it was indeed strange that Islam didn’t feature prominently in our curriculum, more or less an optional. Many Christians had left for the Cape Flats. Proportionately more Christians than Muslims left the residential area, creating a situation that made the Islamic presence quite strong. The Seminary lecturers had no qualms when I asked whether my friend Jakes could be invited over for a few lectures on Islam after the end of the year exams in 1972. In the atmosphere of openness at the Seminary, the lecturers had no problem to have some lectures added. My knowledgeable close friend Jakes was only too happy to oblige, coming to lecture on Islam.
South Africa a Micro-cosmos?
An article in Pro Veritate, the periodical of the Christian Institute, depicted how South Africa is a micro-cosmos – a sample of the world at large. This presented me with a great challenge. If it were true that all the problems of the world are present in a compact way in our country, why couldn’t we give an example to the world to the solution of these very problems? Without any ado, Reverend Henning Schlimm, our director, allowed me to examine poverty in the 'Old Testament' for a mini thesis in that subject. A few years later I challenged Prime Minister Vorster along these lines.27
Mentally I was almost completely caught up by the racial issues of the country. As a former teacher, the racial discrimination in educational funding and facilities was something for which I felt it worthwhile to go to the streets in a protest march, defying police orders to the contrary. I had an aerogramme in my pocket for Harry, my faithful Stuttgart room mate. I actually wanted to post this letter before joining the demonstra­tion. In this letter I stated that we expected to be arrested because of our defiance of a government ban on the demonstration for equal education for all races.
But we came away ‘unscathed’: tear gas won the day! In this way the demonstrating crowd of young people was scattered. Police was still sensitive to the Sharpeville precedent, not to use bullets too easily. Many activists took refuge in the nearby St. George’s Cathedral. This was perhaps the first time when the police brutality really got home to White people. Among other things, it was reported in the newspapers how a White girl was pulled from behind the pulpit at her hair.

5. Supernatural Intervention

Returning to the Seminary in Ashley Street from the political demonstration, there was a letter from Germany, not from Harry, but one directly from my ‘Schatz’! I could hardly believe what I could read there. Through the Old Testament Watchword on her birthday ‘love the alien in your gates’, Rosemarie’s mother was challenged to give us permission to resume our correspondence. At Rosemarie’s 21st birthday, the Lord had spoken to Mama Göbel through a word from Scripture: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ She knew that it meant for her that she had to accept me. She reacted positively, giving Rosemarie permission to write to me again! This was very courageous of Mrs Göbel because she knew that this was definitely not the wish of her hus­band.
We could thus proceed to bring my bonny to South Africa, so that she could be racially ‘reclassified’, a condition for a possible marriage.
Encouraged by this development, and liaising with my mentor and confident, Henning Schlimm, a teaching post was negotiated for Rosemarie at the ‘Kindergarten’ (Pre-school) of St. Martini, the German Lutheran Church in Cape Town. I was not aware of the great courage that Pastor Osterwald, the local pastor, had displayed to appoint Rosemarie, because he knew the whole background of the application. He had asked Rosemarie not to mention anything about her application in her letters to me.

S.A. Spies in Europe?
I had been far from careful when I stated openly in a newsletter to friends in Germany that Rosemarie was to come and work in Cape Town in February the following year. That was looking for trouble. Oh, sometimes I was so naïve and careless! Had not Bishop Schaberg warned me years ago that the S.A. government had their spies in Europe?
Rosemarie was of course pleasantly surprised when a ‘Coloured’ South African pitched up in her vicinity. He was introduced as Mr Ashbury from Gleemoor, a part of Athlone, a suburb of Cape Town. She had no idea whatsoever that he could be a link to the South African security network. (In those days the Special Branch also had the task to keep ‘pro­blems’ like our romance across the colour bar outside of the country. Rosemarie tried to send me an audiocassette with this gentleman. On this cassette she included Pastor Osterwald’s advice: ‘I want to tell you that your decision to start on this daring venture will lead you into many a conscientious conflict...’ The link of the ‘Coloured’ gentleman or his landlady to the South African authorities was quite clear when a certain commissar from Reutlingen assured Rosemarie soon thereafter that she would not get a visa to come to South Africa. It was evident that this ‘commissar’ knew the content of the recording. Further enquiry brought to light that the local police in Reutlingen did not know the commissar with the name given by him.
I was completely unaware of what was going on - a series of events that I might have set in motion through my careless newsletter. Or was Rosemarie’s visa application the cause? Or did both things play a role? All of this must still be unveiled.
I was still counting the days to the beginning of March 1973, when she was scheduled to arrive in Cape Town. Great was the disappointment when the first of March came and went without any news of the receipt of her visa. We first thought that this would be a mere formality. I was therefore completely stunned when Rosemarie called me on the recently installed direct telephone line from Germany. She had received a letter from the South African Consulate:
‘I regret to have to inform you that your application for permanent residence in the Republic of South Africa has been turned down...’

Spiritually Miles apart
Rosemarie was also refused a work permit without any reason given. It seemed inevitable that I would have to leave the country if I wanted to marry my darling.
We deemed it nevertheless important that Rosemarie should at least get to know South Africa and my family. Therefore she applied again, this time for a tourist visa.
Looking back, we saw that the Lord was very gracious to us. Our brittle love would have been put under extreme pressure by the compulsory sphere of secrecy caused by apartheid laws. But also theologically and spiritually we were miles apart at that moment. I had become rather liberal under the influence of Black Theology and the teaching at the seminary. The lectures were definitely not evangelical.
The spiritual environment in which Rosemarie was operating in Tübingen at the time was very conservative, not always in the best traditions of the word. The congregation had close contacts with Bob Jones University in another part of the world where the full individual freedom in Christ was not always practised. It is doubtful whether our sensitive relationship would have survived the double tension if Rosemarie had been able to come to South Africa in March 1973.
For the second time a visa was refused to Rosemarie. In stead of coming to South Africa, she now went to Israel with Elke and other Christian friends. During this time in Israel, her love for the Jewish people deepened. (Neither of us was aware that she had been blacklisted in respect of entry into the country.)
After Rosemarie’s second visa refusal, once again without any reason given, I had to face the only option left for a possible marriage: I would have to leave South Africa. Our church board co-operated almost whole-heartedly. They came up with the suggestion that I could go and work with the Moravian Church in Germany at the end of the year. Perhaps the one or other among them was also happy to get rid of an uncomfortable trouble-shooter. The Lord still had to humble me more.
It looked inevitable that I would have to leave the country if I wanted to marry my darling. God still had to humble me to accept his choice of a wife. I still somehow did not want to leave South Africa. There seemed to be only one way out: I had to choose between the love for Rosemarie and my love for the country. Hesitantly I opted to leave the country with little hope of ever return. I did resolve though to fight the matter, to work towards returning to my home country by 1980. To this end I intended to fight the discriminatory laws from abroad to enable our return.

Interaction with the Jesus People
The Lord was evidently also working in my life, chiselling away more rough edges. My student colleague Fritz Faro was in close interaction with the Jesus People, a group of young men and women who came out of the hippy movement. We appreciated that they were radical, even though we had prob­lems with their a-political stance, for example that people from the different races were sitting separately in their church services. Spiritually, their radicalism did rub off. It reminded me of the days with the SCA people of which I had become estranged, possibly because of the liberal phase through which I was going.
Of course, we could not leave the a-political stance of the Jesus People unchallenged. In a discussion with someone from their ranks, we invited and challenged them to come and make a public demonstration of our unity in Christ. A young believer, who hailed from Zimbabwe, was playing some musical instrument. He immediately agreed to come along with the three of us to play choruses on the beach of Muizenberg. Gustine and Fritz were playing the guitar and I blew my own trumpet, an instrument that I brought along as a gift from Christians in Bietigheim, Southern Germany. This could have caused the police to arrest us, but we were quite prepared to take this risk. As this beach was racially designated ‘for Whites only’, we three seminarians were liable to be arrested. But alas, the brother from Zimbabwe phoned, opting out with a flimsy excuse. Other believers advised him that he shouldn’t come along with us. We deduced that he most probably had been influenced by ‘a-political’ South African Christians, who supported the status quo. On the other hand, the Lord still had to deal with my activist spirit and my faith in such demonstrations of the unity in Christ.
After Rosemarie’s latest visa negative, I had to face the only option left for a possible marriage to her: I had to leave South Africa. Our church board co-operated optimally, almost whole-heartedly at my request to go and work with the Moravian Church in Germany at the end of that year. Perhaps they were also happy to get rid of an uncomfortable trouble-shooter. The Lord still had to humble me!

Deep Soul Searching
Yes, God also had to humble me to accept his choice of a wife. I still somehow did not want to leave South Africa. There seemed to be only one way out: I had to choose between the love for Rosemarie and my love for the country. My inner tussle came to a head one August Sunday of 1973 when we invited a visiting Black preacher for our youth service, one of the friends of the seminary.
Ever since my return to South Africa from Germany in October 1970, I had set as one of my goals to oppose racial prejudice wherever it would surface. Operating predominantly within the confines of the ‘Coloured’ community, I knew that we had to address the superiority complex in terms of Blacks. In August 1973 we had the Congregational Church pastor Bongonjalo Claude Goba28 as the speaker at our youth service on compassion Sunday. This was possibly one of the first times that there was a Black South African on the pulpit of Moravian Hill Chapel. It was thus actually not so surprising that a lady walked out of the church the moment Claude Goba walked to the pulpit. (Have we seminarians given a bad example, to walk demonstratively out of a church service? The three of us did this when the local pastor persisted with segregated seating for visiting Whites, after earlier protests from our side had achieved no result.)
Claude Goba’s sermon brought me to some deep soul searching. Was I not like Jonah, running away from the problems of our revolution-ripe country? This was the very last thing that I wanted to do! My inner voice told me that I should apply in time for the extension of my passport that would have elapsed on January the 16th the following year. Through applying in time for such an extension I would have been able to get peace at heart with regard to my leaving the country. But I just couldn’t stand the real possibility of a negative response to my application. The result was a real struggle between the love for my country and my love for a foreign girl who would take me out of my trouble-torn heimat. So much I wanted to make a contribution towards racial reconciliation. I thought, perhaps a bit arrogantly: “I am of more use in my native country than anywhere else.” I was still to be brought down from that presumptuous pedestal.
I was so wary of creating the impression that I was running away from the problems of our country. It would have solved the problem for me if I had fallen in love with a ‘Coloured’ girl. In fact, I actually started praying along those lines. This would have been proof to me that I was not destined to venture into the life of a voluntary exile. Was I still gripped too much by apartheid thinking?
Hesitantly, I opted to leave the country, with little hope of ever being able to return. I did resolve though to fight the matter, to work towards returning to my home country by 1980. To this end I intended to attack the discriminatory laws from abroad, to enable our return as a couple.
A good example of my rebellious arrogance at this time was a part of the final ‘oral’ exams in November 1973, when I had to write a sermon on a prescribed text. In true revolutionary fashion, I noted in my preface to the sermon that I find this a futile exercise. Instead of writing a theoretical sermon, I wrote a sermon that I also would actually go and preach in the township of Hanover Park. However, I refrained from using intellectual Afri­kaans as language medium, but the dialect of the people, and also wrote my examination sermon down like that. (As someone who was born and bred in District Six, this was of course no problem to me!)

Farewell South Africa!
But there were also other things that kept us busy at the seminary, such as the preparations for a youth rally with the theme Youth Power and Dr Beyers Naudé as the speaker. Our seminary played a major role in the organising of this event. There were all sorts of other things to see to like greeting many people prior to my departure. Fol­lowing in the footsteps of my cousin Hester Ulster, who married Tubby Lymphany and my friend Roy Weber from Elim (who became a marine biologist of international repute in Den Helder, (Holland), after marrying a Danish national), we expected this to become my final fare­well to South Africa, most probably never to return. (Roy never saw his Dad alive again and the same thing may have happened with regard to his mother.)
From yet another side, I was squeezed. In the months prior to the scheduled departure, various leaders of the Christian Institute (CI) had their passports confiscated just prior to their respective departures from Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg. Although I was only a very inconspicuous member of this organ­ization, one could never know. The presence of Dr Beyers Naudé at our youth rally did not augur well for me. I wrote to Rosemarie that I would phone her from Johannesburg if the government would prevent me from leaving the country.
* * *
After so many youth camps and the like that I had been attending I was almost conditioned to farewells. But this time it was almost unbearable. The finality of leaving my people behind was the hardest of all. Five years before this, I was determined to return to South Africa. This time I had to expect to all intents and purposes – never to return - if I would succeed in getting out of the country. But my parents and a few others like ‘Aunty’ Bertha, our neighbour from District Six, were praying that things would change in our country, to enable me to return one day. And yet, I loved my country so much. This was a real Isaac experience of sacrifice, where I did not expect to return permanently one day any more if the government would let me out of the country. But I was going to put up a fight, at least to enable my return!
Yet, there was also the nagging uncertainty whether my decision was God’s will. Or was it my own way? Wasn’t I just running away like Jonah? I couldn’t muster the courage (or faith?) to apply for the extension of my passport in time! My passport was to expire soon. I bought a round-trip ticket, although I didn’t intend to return to my fatherland. I booked a ticket to leave fairly soon after the completion of my theological examinations in November 1973.

6. Back in Germany

All the anxiety with regard to my getting out of the country proved to be unnecessary. Rosemarie and I were soon enjoying every minute of being together after the years of involuntary separation. It was however not easy for my darling when I made no secret of the fact that I regarded my return to Germany as a sacrifice.

The first Visit to Rosemarie’s parental Home
My first visit to Rosemarie’s parental home in Mühlacker was very near to a catastrophe. Mama Göbel remembered the command from Scripture, but her husband still had difficulties accepting a foreigner as a future son-in-law. My visit caused so much tension in its aftermath that her parents felt compelled to request her to leave the home. Conditioned by the notorious South African way of life with all its racial prejudices, I hardly had a prob­lem with these developments, much less than Rosemarie. My bonny knew of course that she was not sent forth because her parents did not love her any more. But it was not easy nevertheless. The family of Elke Maier29 in Gündelbach lovingly took Rosemarie into their home.
We got engaged in March, 1974, with no family from either side present. We still deemed it important enough - if possible at all - that Rosemarie would get to know my home country and my relatives. Because I was now in Germany, a major obstacle to a visa should have been eliminated. At least, that was how we reasoned.
Together and yet miles apart!
At a German Moravian pastors’ conference in May 1974 I shared the room with Eckard Buchholz, a missionary from the Transkei. He was not sceptical at all - like so many other people - about the fact that the South African government intended to give real independence to the homeland. In fact, he challenged me to come and work there after the commencement of the independence of the ‘homeland’ due to follow in 1976. He was confident that Transkei would not take over the racist mixed marriages prohibition. I gladly accepted the challenge, encouraging him to send me audiocassettes so that I could start learning Xhosa.
Taking for granted that Rosemarie wanted to become a mission­ary one day, I expected that she would want to join me to the Transkei. On her visit to Berlin soon thereafter, I was therefore quick to communicate my latest intention to her. I was completely taken by surprise that she was not ready at all to go to ‘Africa’ with me. The end of our engagement was on the cards, because I was quite determined to return to my continent as soon as possible. I didn’t feel like ‘hanging around’ in Europe for any length of time. It is so strange that we never discussed this matter thoroughly before we got engaged!
Neither of us was prepared for this turn of events. What could we do now? On the issue of our future abode, we seemed to be miles apart! In our utter despair, we cried to God for help! We loved each other so dearly. We didn’t want to part, but on such an important issue we had to agree. It had to be sorted out immediately. This was however no Jonah issue. We loved each other far too much. In complete desperation we prayed together, asking God to guide us through His Word.

Divine intervention seemed to be the only possibility to save our union. Both of us knew that it would not be a proper way to handle Scripture, but we decided to seek God’s mind by opening the Bible at random - albeit prayerfully. When the Word of God fell open at the verse where Ruth said to Naomi, ‘I shall go where you go’, we were filled with awe and thank­fulness. We were extremely elated as we sensed that this was God’s special word for us. We could go into the unknown future together, and that’s what both of us really wanted!
It could have been a problem if we had discussed the issue further, because both of us interpreted the text from the own perspective. I trusted that Rosemarie would join me, going to Africa. She thought I would now stay in Europe. Thankfully, we didn’t pursue the matter further. For the moment, parting was not an issue any more. We were overjoyed at this confirmation that we would be serving the Lord together, wherever He would lead us!
* * *
Rosemarie and I became betrothed in March 1974, albeit with no family from either side present. We still deemed it important enough - if possible at all - that Rosemarie would get to know my home country and my relatives. Because I was now in Germany, a major obstacle to a visa should have been eliminated. At least, that was how we reasoned. We asked the Moravian Church Board in South Africa whether Rosemarie could come over to do voluntary work for a period of two months at the Elim Home, the institution for retarded children on the Elim mission station. (My parents had relocated to Elim after they were more or less forced to leave our home in Tiervlei by municipal decree, to go and live in the small Moravian settlement where they had come from originally.) Theoretically my darling would have been able to get to know them well in this way. With increased hope Rosemarie applied for a visa for the third time. Along with the application she sent an explanatory letter mentioning the fact that she wanted to get to know my parents better.
We were quite encouraged when we heard from my parents that the Special Branch (of the police) had left a note in Elim: Rosemarie and I could come to South Africa together, on condition that we would not contact the press. We however had no intention of going to South Africa as a couple! Therefore it really took us by surprise - to put it euphemistically - when instead of the requested two months, Rosemarie received a visa for two weeks.
But the Special Branch had given us an idea, the possibility of spending our honeymoon in South Africa! This notion was something that was destined to give us severe hassles. With regard to a visit to my home country, we now went over into the attack. The activism that had taken hold of me ever since my return from Europe in 1970 - and which had increased during my seminary days - got full scope. I had no idea into what a war of nerves I would throw Rosemarie by prompting her to write the following letter:
Gündelbach, 10th December, 1974.
Dear Mr Consul,

I thank you very much for obtaining a visa for me. Thus far I could not use it, because I have learnt that the cheaper flights are only applicable from 19 days.
My fiancé and I have now decided to undertake the trip after our marriage. We would like to spend four weeks in South Africa. Could you please extend the visa to four weeks? If this is not possible, we would like to hear it soon, so that we can apply timely for visas to other countries within the 19-45 days tariff. I want to make it clear however, that we would rather spend the full four weeks in South Africa.
Yours in high esteem,
Rosemarie Göbel.

Although the consulate in Munich was notified promptly by Pretoria to instruct Rosemarie of a conditional visa, they didn’t inform her of it. During a very unfortunate phone call to Munich Rosemarie was spoken to very impolitely. An adventurous but nerve-wrecking correspondence with the South African authorities followed. However, unwittingly we made some serious mis­takes. But the result of the correspondence and a visit to the consulate in Munich was that we found out that Rosemarie had actually received permission for a visa to be issued, albeit under the condition that she would not “travel to South Africa accompanied by your future husband.” The lady at the consulate warned us not to try to circumvent the condition.
Initially I didn’t see any problem with the condition. I was so elated that she received a visa at last to visit my home country! But in the car on our way back from Munich, Rosemarie had a poser for me. She didn’t want to go to my “heimat” alone any more. All the arrangements for our wedding had more or less been finalised already by this time. Rosemarie’s apt rhetorical vexing question was “What sort of honeymoon is this?” I had no reply ready. With a fearful heart I agreed that we would travel separately, in spite of the warning. The prospect that I would now still see my family and friends was so enticing. When I left the country in 1973, I I had to reckon with the possibility that I would never be able to return legally!
To ensure that our plans would not be wrecked on Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg, I was now quite untruthful. I gave the impression in my correspondence to my parents and friends that Rosemarie would come alone. It would have been quite easy for the auth­orities to send one (or both) of us back with the next flight or to lock me up. I still possessed a South African passport.

The travelling plans could now be finalized. Because of the uncertainty with regard to Rosemarie’s visa in the light of previous experiences, we had cancelled the booking with Luxavia. The new 19-75 day tariff, which had just come into oper­ation, had two distinct advantages that were of interest to us, though it was slightly more expensive. One could cancel on short notice without any costs and one could change one’s booking from the one interna­tional airline to another without any cost.
* * *
Henning Schlimm, our friend and confident from the seminary days, had just returned from South Africa with his family. He was about to take up a post as minister in Königsfeld (Black Forest). There I resumed my stay in Germany in December 1973, operating as an assistant pastor. It seemed almost obvious that we should marry there because marrying from Rosemarie’s home was out of the question.
On Thursday, the 20th March 1975, we became husband and wife legally in the Rathaus (= Town Hall) of Rosemarie’s home town Mühlacker. We deemed it a special blessing that her mother agreed to serve as witness, along with Elke Maier, who had such a big part in the run-up to this moment. Elke brought along a protea, the South African national flower, for the occasion. This was quite costly in Europe. With her special gift she gave me an idea.
A cloud hung over the festivities because my par­ents and family would not be represented and Papa Göbel had no liberty as yet to participate. Rosemarie still wrote a letter to him shortly before the wedding, apologising for the hurts caused by our friendship. She also urged him to come to our wedding. We were grateful that he gave his wife full freedom to act according to her convictions, to attend. But he was not to be swayed.
The wintry conditions in Königsfeld could not mar our joy. Virtually until the last minute we were busy with things like removing ice from the windows of our wedding ‘limousine’, Rosemarie’s little Renault R4 and boiling eggs for the reception.
My bride was so beautiful, although I did not quite like the small Biedemeier bouquet. An idea took shape!
The Königsfeld church choir rose to the occasion with a great rendering of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of man’s desiring.’ The highlight of the marital ceremony in the church was undoubtedly the sermon. Reverend Henning Schlimm understood magnificently to intertwine parts of the thorny road up to our marriage with the biblical verse that we had requested him to speak on.
“You have seen what I did... and that I bore you on the wings of an eagle and brought you to me.”
(This is Exodus 19:4, the Daily Watchword from the Moravian textbook for 22 March, 1975).
Many a tear was shed as we were overawed by God’s good­ness and grace. Haven’t we experienced clearly enough how the Father bore us on His strong wings? Our hearts were filled with gratitude and joy towards the mighty God we now wanted to serve together, joined in matrimony.
At our wedding reception there was a lovely protea, blom van ons vaderland, on the table in front of us. This was of course the thoughtful gift of Elke Maier, our bridesmaid, at the occasion of our state marriage.
7. An Exile to all Intents and Purposes

Three days after our church wedding Rosemarie and I parted for the start of our honeymoon. I left with a Lufthansa flight a few days after our wedding ceremony and Rosemarie was ready to fly the following day with South African Airways. She was however still very tense because I was not supposed to go my home country at this time. We were clearly circumventing the condition of the visa that she had received. At such occasions one tends to aggravate things. Fears of my arrest in Cape Town, or even in Johannesburg were only natural.
Initially we intended to stick to the spirit of the strange condition of the visa, by entering the country separately. We had also taken precautions with regard to lodging. In Elim she was scheduled to lodge in the Mission house. This was indeed a strange preparation for a honeymoon journey, but we were quite prepared to live with these conditions temporarily. We had also agreed that I would not come to Cape Town Airport to meet Rosemarie, because you could never know whether she would be watched by the Special Branch of the police.
Thus she came to the Mother City of South Africa with quite a bit of apprehension, expecting to possibly see my brother Windsor as the only known person, because he had visited me in Bad Boll during his period of study in Switzerland.

A Honeymoon with a Difference
I left with a Lufthansa flight a few days after our wedding ceremony and Rosemarie was scheduled to fly the following day with South African Airways. She was still very tense because I was not supposed to fly to my home country. We were clearly circumventing the condition visa that she had received. At such occasions one tends to aggravate things. Fears of my arrest in Cape Town, or even in Johannesburg were only natural.
Thus she left Germany with quite a bit of apprehension, expecting to see my brother Windsor as the only known person from the family on the airport. He had visited me in Bad Boll during a period of study in Switzerland.
I was much more optimistic. I was surely very naive, but I just couldn’t resist the temptation to go along to D.F.Malan Airport to welcome my bride on home territory. Elke’s unintended hint came in good stead. I indicated already at the wedding that I was not totally happy with her small “Bie­demeier” bouquet. How could I welcome her more fittingly than with a beautiful box of protea’s from the Cape?

Untruthfulness coming Home to roost
My untruthful correspondence with family and friends was however coming home to roost soon. On Good Friday, the 200-kilometre trip to Elim was on the programme. When we arrived there, I decided on the spur of the moment that Rosemarie should get a “real” welcome by my par­ents and not in my shadow. After all, I was not supposed to be in the country. I instructed Rosemarie to go inside while I hid myself in the car. This idea was not good at all. It was no cowardly Jonah stint, but it was not thoroughly thought through. A few minutes later I regretted it very much.
From the car I could hear the warm welcome given to my wife, coupled with general relief with regard to Rosemarie’s ability to speak English. In jest, Jakes – who had also met her in Germany - had left them with the impression that Rosemarie could hardly speak any English. Now it turned out - as Magdalene and the rest of the Esau family had of course already discovered - not to be such a big problem after all. The first few questions about the journey and so forth didn’t pose any problem, but then the crunch came:
“How’s Ashley?”.... I had put Rosemarie in a real predicament. I salvaged the situation for a moment by appearing “from nowhere”, but this was too much for my mother. She burst out in tears hysterically....
This was to be expected. Not only had I misled them through my letters, but they had also not expected to see me again. Now I was standing there in front of all of them, so unex­pectedly.
In this unforgettable - close to sacred moment - I could only embrace my parents and my newly wedded wife, also as a consolation. This treasured moment still belonged to our wedding cere­mony.
* * *
The local policeman of Elim encouraged us saying that we should just behave ourselves like a normal married couple. He would warn us in time if there were complaints from his headquarters in Stellenbosch. Jakes, our bachelor friend, would have none of it that Rosemarie should go and sleep with Lies Hoogendoorn and Hester van der Walt, our two White friends, with whom we had fought many an apartheid skirmish. He insisted that we stayed in his home, the parsonage of his Hanover Park congregation. In our obligatory discussions about a wife for him the name of Ann Swart featured prominently. When Jakes and I met her in 1971 at a youth camp she had just matriculated at Harold Cressy High School, impressing both of us. Of course, I genuinely ‘approved’ of her as a front runner as a partner for him. She was not so young anymore, which had been an objection in 1971.
A special part of the honeymoon journey was the car trip through the Transkei. Here I renewed the contact with Eckardt Buchholz, with whom I had shared a room at a conference in Germany. The short meeting with Willy Mbalana in Mvenyane was also meaningful, leading to a partnership later in the year between his church and our congregation in Berlin. Willy and I had originally met at a students’ retreat in the Eastern Cape in 1972.30

(The participants of the retreat at Clarkson near Humansdorp in the Eastern Cape)

My first meaningful contact with the black members of our denomination had started with the friendship to Karl Schmidt, who had been a minister in the Southern German village Bönnigheim, where I also preached once. He had been a minister in Shiloh, a Moravian settlement in the Ciskei that we also visited on our honeymoon trip. Schmidt was a political activist, who made me sensitive for the struggle of the ANC. After visiting him, I pasted ‘Freiheit für Mandela’ stickers (Freedom for Mandela) on my letters to South Africa.

One Surprise after the other
Having fulfilled the conditions of the visa, not to enter the country together as a couple, and after our honeymoon with a difference, we returned with thankful hearts that nothing seriously happened that could have marred the tremen­dous trip. We changed our tickets to travel in the same Lufthansa machine, straight to Frankfurt. The honeymoon however also stamped the finality of my new status. I was no Jonah any more, but rather like the apostle John on Patmos, an exile to all intents and purposes.
Back in Germany, one of the first things of course, was to phone our parents (-in-law). That we wanted to visit them on the very first Sunday after our return was only natural. We knew however, that this did not mean that Papa Göbel would be at home to meet us.
On this particular afternoon we experienced one surprise after the other. Our faith was too small, because God had wonderful things in store for us. Papa stayed at home to start with. But then he also went along to their “Stückle”, a small site where the family spent many a Sunday afternoon. We were still wary of the meeting because of the tragic similar occa­sion one and a half years prior to this, after which Rosemarie had to leave her parental home.
But this time it was to be totally different. It was a bright sunny afternoon, but I did not bring along a pair of shorts. Papa Göbel offered me a pair of his, addressing me with the personal “Du” (You). With that - and it was particularly discernable in the tone - he was saying so much as “I accept you fully as my son-in-law.”
Rosemarie, who knew him so well, recognised how much it must have cost him to come that far. Once the ice was broken, it didn’t take long before it seemed as if we had known each other for ages, as if there had never been any problem at all. God had performed nothing less than a miracle!

A Lack of Virtue
My conscience didn’t leave me in peace because we had circumvented the condition of Rosemarie’s visa. However, I also felt that we should encourage the South African government towards real democracy. A letter to the Prime Minister served this double purpose well enough, but I went too far when I tried to justify our actions. In this letter, I displayed a lack of Christian virtue by hitting back quite hard at the officials because of the bureaucratic blunders made by the Consulate in Munich.
I was courting trouble by sending a copy of this letter to the Consulate. I “earned” the jitters a few days later: an element of revenge on my part had clearly played a role. I should not have been surprised when my activ­ist attitude elicited a quick response.
The consul twice tried to contact me telephonically but on both occasions unsuccessfully. He had discovered the name of Breytenbach in my correspondence. (I had called on the precedent of an illustrious Afrikaner, who had been allowed to visit South Africa with his Vietnamese wife. I tried to use that as a vehicle to get Rosemarie into the country.) This now turned out to be an unfortu­nate move. Breytenbach had been arrested in the meantime in terms of the law concerning the suppression of Communism. By mentioning Breytenbach’s name, I made myself suspect.
When the consul phoned the second time, he threatened with disciplinary measures, under which we understood the confiscation of my passport. Therefore I just had to be avail­able at the set time when he would phone again.
Rather fearfully I went to the phone at the set time. I suspected that it would be about our visit in South Africa and my letter to the authorities. It was very reassuring though that I knew that Rosemarie and other friends were praying while I was on the phone with the consul.
The Lord worked mightily: in the course of a few minutes the tone of the consul changed 180 degrees from tough to cor­dial. In the end he actually offered his aid in a very friend­ly tone if I should ever encounter any problems in Europe.
This experience encouraged me to carry on working towards democracy in my home country even more. But there were other priorities. After our return from South Africa, Rosemarie was pregnant. This was not ‘planned’ because I was still finishing the last part of my theological studies in Bad Boll, the HQ of the Moravian Church in the Western part of the European continent.

Visitors in our minute Flat
We received many a visitor in our tiny flat in Bad Boll. That pattern was to follow us wherever we went. Our first marriage quarrel followed when I rocked up with visitors from South Africa that I had met in the village, without informing Rosemarie beforehand. From our culture that was never a big deal. We would simply share what we had or fetch something from the shop. In Germany everybody wants to be properly prepared for guests. Unexpected visitors were completely unknown.
Bärbel Sander was a visitor with a difference. Her dormant epileptic fits erupted after her fiancé had been killed in a car accident. She improved to quite an extent, but when she visited us, she had another fit. We had to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. The friendship thereafter only strengthened. In later years she became the godmother of our daughter Magdalena.31
Rosemarie’s first pregnancy was not normal at all. The gynaecologist in Boll should have monitored the pregnancy better. We were not only completely inexperienced, but also very unwise. Soon after the ordination in September 1975, we travelled in an inconvenient truck to Berlin with our meagre possessions. There I was returning to the same congregation where I had been assistant to the pastor the year before.
A really emotional experience followed soon after our move to Berlin. At the very first time Rosemarie went to the gynaecologist, he discovered problems. He diagnosed placental insufficiency. She was sent to hospi­tal, but the baby couldn’t be saved. Even though we had not ‘planned’ to get a baby in the first year of our marriage, we had really looked forward to the birth of our first child. Our little David came stillborn into the world.
Even more traumatic for Rosemarie was that she was alone in her grief. I had to preach on the Sunday when the hospital gynaecologist decided to remove the lifeless foetus. The staff of the institution, the ‘Neuköllner Krankenhaus’, was hardly interested in her as a person once it was known that the baby had died. Only the Turkish lady cleaner showed compassion to a young mother who had lost her first baby!

A ‘Peaceful’ Front to change the racist Structures?
Every week I received the airmail edition of the International Star. Thus I kept abreast of developments in South Africa. I saw how trouble was brooding in Soweto, with High School students demonstrating after they were forced to learn Afrikaans. However, the uprising of the 16th of June took all of us by surprise. With Pastor Uwe Holm, a leader from the Lutheran State Church, I spontaneously got involved in organizing a protest meeting in the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis’ Church in central Berlin. The 16th of June 1976 made even more of an activist out of me as I feared an escalation of violence that could lead to a bloodbath in my beloved South Africa.
I saw it as my moral responsibility to continue working towards a non-racial set-up in South Africa, using non-violent means. I attempted to start a ‘Peaceful Front' to change the racist structures of our country. I wrote letters in all directions. But support was not forthcom­ing. The brutal government repression of the peaceful protest of the students was to all and sundry the proof that the days for boycotts and the likes were over. My compatriots overseas felt that the government in our home country could only be toppled through the barrel of the gun. All bar one of those whom I approached had given up on the option of peaceful transition to change in South Africa. Our friend Rachel Balie, who was studying in Berlin, was the only one of our circle of countrymen and -women who were still supporting the idea of non-violent change. The brutal putting down of the Soweto school protests in 1976 brought so many to change their minds on the effect of non-violent protest.
In an activist way, especially through letters to various Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers, I resolutely continued towards my goal of returning to South Africa by 1980, i.e. trying to get the apartheid laws gradually repealed. (Much later I changed my views in my correspondence with the South African authorities significantly, after I had discerned from Scripture that one could not reform a wicked system; that it had to be eradicated completely. But I possibly went overboard in the process.)

The Stewardship Issue
Before I left the South African shores in 1973, I had been influenced indelibly at the fairly unknown theological institution in Ashley Street in the heart of District Six in yet another way. The Moravian seminary not only increased my awareness of political justice, but during the three years from 1971- 3 I also became very sensitive to structures that perpetuate economic inequality. As a teacher I had already battled with the racial disparity. Being on the receiving end of injustice was in fact some consolation because I knew that we as ‘Coloureds’ were earning almost double that of our Black counterparts. And we had much smaller classes to cope with at that. But I felt nevertheless uncomfortable that I was earning much more as a young man than others who had to make do with much less and whole families to feed.
From 1 December 1973 I had been an unmarried assistant minister of the Moravian minister in Germany earning a salary that was a multiple of what my colleagues with families and many years experience earned in my home country. This was not the first time when structural inequality was hitting my conscience like a bomb.
Come 1974, my guilt syndrome was really driving me almost berserk when our salaries were increased by almost 10%. This constantly happened the next few years adding agony to injury. After our marriage in 1975, I felt very much alone when even my wife could initially still not comprehend how I felt. Our very first Christmas in Berlin highlighted my dilemma. We received a fat bonus – the Europeans call it a 13th monthly salary - in a climate where the birth of Jesus Christ disappeared in the wake of the commercial atmosphere all around us. Of course, in Cape Town it had not been much different. Even there I had my problems with the abusive commercialism at Christmas time, but now I was really sad. At first, Rosemarie couldn’t understand my emotions, but gradually she became more sensitive to my feelings in this regard.
The extreme ‘Weihnachtsrummel’ (Christmas commercial hype) of Berlin was in such sharp contrast to the needs of our brothers and sisters in the Transkei. (I had kept up contact with Reverend Willy Mbalana, who was the Moravian minister in Sada. Sada was an apartheid creation, a ‘resettlement area’ where redundant people were dumped – such as those who returned with diseases from the goldmines.)

I started seeing White South Africans in a different light
It was crystal clear to me that the annual salary increases in Germany were only possible because of the disparity between rich and poor countries. This bugged me. I felt myself so helpless although I did stage my protest in a quiet way by refusing the salary increases. In further negotiations with the church authorities it was agreed that the salary increases would be used for the church’s mission work. I discerned how Europe was firmly in the grip of materialism.
Suddenly I started seeing White South Africans in a different light. I discovered that they were similarly enslaved and imprisoned by a system of injustice.
My fight against apartheid got a new direction. I hereafter challenged various leaders of the apartheid state in letters to set the example to the rest of the world by a voluntary sharing of the resources with the poor of the country. My role models at this time were Jan Amos Comenius and Count Zinzendorf, who took their cues from the Bible. That Comenius had stated that we can erect signs pointing to the reign of the coming King, was very inspiring. Thus it was not so important any more if one does not see any immediate fruit of one’s actions. Similarly the example of Zinzendorf - including his day-to-day relationship to Jesus and his high view of the Jews, really challenged me in a deep way.
In April 1977 we received a phone call from our church head office in Bad Boll (Germany) with the question whether we would consider pastoring the congregation of Utrecht in Holland. The church authorities needed someone in the city of Utrecht who could learn Dutch quickly. Because Afrikaans is my native language, they approached us. We had earlier indicated that we were open to work among the Surinamese people in Holland. Before this development, we were already planning to go to South Africa in February 1978 to show our Danny to my parents. Now this would of course not be possible and such plans shifted to a future date.
After my ‘Soweto’ speech in West Berlin I was catapulted into the role of mediator in a dispute between foreign African students and the local authorities. This effort of mediation caught the eye of Heinz Krieg, who was connected to Moral Re-armament. He and his wife befriended Rosemarie and me. They gave me a challenging book as a parting gift when we left for Holland in September 1977: South Africa, what kind of change? I read in the book about personal friends from the Cape like Franklin Sonn and Howard Eybers.32 I was challenged once again to become an activist for racial reconciliation in my home country.
8. A radical activist

Rachel Balie, who had returned to South Africa after the completion of her studies, wrote that Chris Wessels, a minister colleague and long-time friend in whose home Rosemarie and I had still been on our honeymoon journey, had been imprisoned. Nobody from his family knew where he was incarcerated. He was never formally accused or brought before a court of law. Later we understood that his main offence was that he helped to care for the families of political prisoners. Shortly before this, Steve Biko died while in police custody. We feared that the same thing could happen to Chris.
My activist spirit was aroused. Everything was set in motion, to nudge the Moravian Church leaders into action on behalf of our brother in detention. Initially it involved something of a battle to get our church authorities in Bad Boll (Germany) on board, but they finally also nudged other countries to write to the S.A. Embassies in their respective countries. We heard later that this move possibly saved Chris’s life.

The unsound Premise of my Calling to Utrecht
The premise of my calling to the Moravian congregation of Utrecht was not sound. Robin Louz, a Surinamese brother representing the Utrecht congregation, had heard me attacking the South African Moravian Church for its double standards. The occasion was a visitor from the Broederkerk church board of South Africa to the Synod in 1975, Rev. Hansie Kroneberg, at the opening evening meeting. I embarrassed him, exposing the lack of support of the church board for the banned brother Wessels in Genadendal (On our honeymoon we had visited the old pensioner). The Surinamese brother thus thought that they would get a young ‘political’ radical pastor. He didn’t bargain for one who was also an evangeli­cal, one who was on top of it deeply influ­enced by a moral radicalism. Later this was to cause a lot of strain.
After merely three months I was involved in a head-on collision with my Utrecht church council, because I didn’t mince words in my sermons. I challenged them on moral issues as well as towards complete sub­mission to the claims of Christ. My referring to terminology of the Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the Renewed Moravian Church - about winning souls for the Lamb - was maliciously mis­construed as something tantamount to sheep stealing. After I had used testimonies of Moral Re-armament people from South Africa in a church service on Christmas Day, this was equated with the practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses.33 But I was not going to budge. In fact, I almost revelled in fighting for biblical truth. I was possibly very unwise to be so radical almost at the outset of my tenure in the congregation.
Initially Rosemarie also attended the meetings of the ‘Broederraad’, the church council. But soon it became too much for her. Soon she decided to rather stay at home. She couldn’t take the unfair attacks on me any more.
* * *
My interest and involvement in Moral Re-armament taught me to jot down insights and things that I wanted to do during my ‘quiet time’. As a radical activist I started collating all the documents and correspon­dence pertaining to our struggle with the authorities in South Africa, giving the manuscript the title Honger na Geregtigheid.34Also the Moravian Church authorities came under fire as I tried to nudge them to be more active towards racial reconciliation and equality between the privileged ‘Coloureds’ and the ‘Blacks’ in the church. Thus I challenged the leadership to merge the ‘Coloured’ congregation of Manenberg and the Xhosa one of Nyanga just over the railway line, to be served by the same pastor.
Driven by activism, I got up at two o’clock in the morning after perhaps three hours of sleep. I would then return to bed at five for another quick dose of sleep, but before 8 o’clock I was again behind my desk where our son Danny got onto my lap until breakfast.

A terrible Fright
We had started making preparations for a second visit to South Africa when we got the fright of our lives. Rosemarie went to Dr Wittkampf, our home doctor in Zeist, because she noticed a lump in her throat. He immediately phoned the hospital - he suspected a tumour! We were already over-sensitive after a series of terminal cancer cases occurred in our circle of friends. Peter Dingemans, a Moravian pastor colleague in Zeist, was out of action months after we came to Holland and Reinhild Schäfer, the wife of Wolfgang, our lecturer in District Six, had also passed away because of cancer. The two children of Henning Schlimm also had the same disease. (Henning’s first wife, whom I never got to know, had also died from brain cancer) The daughter Monica had already passed away while we were still in Berlin and it looked to be a matter of time before Andreas, their son, would traverse the same road. In this atmosphere it was all gloom. Tears were flowing freely.
I hurt Rosemarie immensely when I was so insensitive to clearly verbalise her possible passing on as an opportunity to return to my home country. What a strain this brought to our marriage, the first really serious disagreement in our blissful marriage because I dared to express this. She was not yet ready to return with me to my home country. After the traumatic experiences in the run-up and aftermath of our honeymoon, she had come to resist this fiercely. She did not want to raise children in such a racist environment. Her prayers thus went along the line of “Lord, I’m prepared to serve you anywhere in the world, but not in South Africa!”
A positive element of the detection of a tumour in Rosemarie’s throat was that we got some reprieve from the malice and accusations in the Utrecht church council,35 which was inappropriately called Broederrraad. Suddenly it seemed as if everybody rallied around us. In those days having cancer was like awaiting death. The Lord somehow spoke to Rosemarie through this experience. She now became prepared to serve the Lord in South Africa if He would spare her life. But she did not share this with me.
* * *
In our utter despair we turned to the Lord in prayer. At this stage we read a Bible verse, John 16:20, that comforted us extremely: “Your grief will turn to joy!”
A few weeks later the tumour was removed in an operation. The laboratory examination showed that the tumour was benign! Indeed, our grief turned to exceeding joy!
A tragic misunderstanding occurred shortly hereafter when I mentioned casually to Robin Louz, one of my Broederraad members, that I would like to teach Mathematics again - even if it would be only for a few hours per week. He thought that I hoped to augment my salary in that way. The aspect of an extra earning had never even entered my head. I was just longing to teach my favourite subject again.
Apartheid has the Beating of me
In September 1978 we left for South Africa for a six-week tour. Experiences with the Moravian church leaders at the Cape and with the folk of Moral Rearmament during the second visit in 1978 with Rosemarie and our son Danny were quite traumatic. The stark differences between the township and shack surroundings of Sherwood Park, Manenberg and Crossroads on the one hand - and the posh residential areas like Glenhaven and Fish Hoek on the other hand - were hitting us as never before.
And then there was the general indifference to the injustices that seemed all-pervading, not even mentioning the rationalisation of it by people from whom I least expected it. Petty apartheid bureaucracy was adding insult to injury. Disappointments in the church and their reaction to the imprisonment and restriction of Chris Wessels, our friend who had been detained without trial - along with racist experiences on the train from Cape Town to Johannesburg, had the beating of me. It brought me to the point of utter frustration and despair, deciding to leave South Africa - never to return! That a Cabinet decision was necessary to give clarity whether we could travel in the same compartment as a family, together with bureaucratic bungling, really embittered me. Now I was really like Jonah, completely disgruntled.
It looked as if apartheid had knocked me out. This was not a sacrificial Isaac experience as in 1973. Nor was it Jonah again running away from responsibility. I had simply resolved to give up the fight.
Howard Grace, a British Moral Rearmament (MRA)36 full-time worker, fetched us from Park Station in Johannesburg. He had to bear the brunt of my anger. When I was still fuming, Howard suggested on a car trip to Umdeni (the villa of the movement, where we were scheduled to stay in the rondavel for the next few days) to introduce me to the influential Professor Johan Heyns. The moment of his kind gesture was the worst one the MRA man could have chosen. At that point in time I was definitely not prepared and interested to meet the chairman of the Broederbond!
On that November Saturday the MRA people of Johannesburg surely did not encounter a happy Christian. I am ashamed to say that I relished whipping an old lady verbally because she clearly expressed her sympathies with the government. With as much venom as I could muster, I shared how the various agents of the apartheid government had been maltreating us. Therefore it was no wonder that Howard Grace and others suspected in the evening that I was craving after sensation by phoning Dr Beyers Naudé to find out where he was worshipping. There was thus ample reason for the one or other MRA member to surmise that I was not sincere in my wish to want to worship with Dr Naudé. One of them actually suggested that I more or less had a martyr complex, hoping to be thrown out of the church.37 I received special grace, so that I could still keep my cool!

A farewell Gesture of Solidarity
I intended the visit to Dr Naudé’s church to be my farewell gesture of solidarity with the politically oppressed of the country. After being terribly angered by the Moravian Church Board and the government, I was now determined never to put my foot on South African soil again. Someone - or perhaps even more than one person - must have been praying for me. Rosemarie and I along with a few believers linked to Moral Rearmament, were really privileged to visit the church that Dr Naudé attended regularly. He entered there as the last person just before the bell would toll so that the minister and his church council could step out of the vestry in procession. Dr Naudé would then leave as the first congregant at the end of the service because he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time. His wife came to us, organising that we could follow him in his car to their home well she was to teach at the Sunday School.
The Father hereafter used the well-known Oom Bey Naudé - who was loved by many who were not White and hated by those who supported apartheid - in a special way. A miracle happened that Sunday. I was changed supernaturally from within through the visit to the Naudé home.
God used the banned Dr Beyers Naudé and the congregation where he worshipped to bring me to my senses. A divine touch cured me of my intense bitterness and anger towards the country that - paradoxically - I so dearly loved.
In fact, after the red-letter Sunday I really wanted to make amends for my racist bias. Hereafter, I set out to work quietly for the lifting of the ban of the beloved Dutch Reformed Minister, who had meant so much to me.38

Determinination to fight the demonic Apartheid Ideology
In His sovereign way God used the events of that Sunday to make me more determined than ever to fight the demonic apartheid ideology from abroad. The Moral Rearmament practice of writing down thoughts fuelled my activist spirit. Hereafter I wrote various letters of protest to Cabinet ministers. From the time of our return to Holland after our six-week visit to South Africa, I saw a ministry of reconciliation now as my special duty to the country of my birth. As part of this effort, I continued to collate personal documents and letters with more verve, hoping to get it published under the title ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ (Hunger after Righteousness). In this manuscript I included and commented on my correspondence with the rulers of the day. Yet, I wanted to win the government over, rather than expose their practices abroad. As a means to this end, I targeted the Dutch Reformed theologians whom I believed could play a pivotal role.
In my resolve to work towards racial reconciliation, I went out of my way to meet Professor Johan Heyns and a delegation of Dutch Reformed minis­ters, who attended a synod in Lunteren when they visited Holland in 1979. A few months prior to this I was not interested at all to meet the chairman of the Broederbond! The delegation furthermore included Dr O'Brien Geldenhuys and Professor Willie Jonker. I arranged to meet them again at the Amsterdam airport Schiphol on the return to South Africa. These three were to be quite influential to bring about significant changes in the Dutch Reformed Church in the years hereafter. I urged the clergymen to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted, challenging them also with regard to membership of a secret society. Prof Willie Jonker, whom I still knew from my District Six seminary days, took me aside to explain to me that he was not a member of the Broederbond.
I was of course elated to read later that some of them had responded positively, however without initial success to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted. Because of the well-publicized tampering with post by the special branch of the police - which I had experienced myself - I contrived to send the draft manuscript of Honger na Geregtigheid to Dr Naudé with the delegation.
My request for one of them to deliver the manuscript to Dr Beyers Naudé, was however not honoured (I had left the envelope open on purpose, suggesting that the bearer could read the manuscript himself first. I learned later however that the envelope and its content were handed to the government. However, that move did harvest respect for me in government circles thereafter.) An inter­esting sequel to my meeting up with the Dutch Reformed minis­ters was that Mr van Tonder a top official of the South African Embassy in The Hague, who was also at the airport, visited us in Zeist shortly hereafter. (Only a few weeks before, Mr Reg Septem­ber, who was at that time an influential ANC offi­cial in Lusaka, pitched up in our home on the Broederplein of Zeist.)

Tears and Anxiety
A direct result of the 1978 visit to my home country was that I had a new determination to work towards racial reconciliation back home. This was not completely without danger. I for example refused to take sides when a group of South African Blacks who visited us, threatened me. It was not easy at all, but I managed to stand my ground saying: “I am neither solely ‘for White’ nor ‘for Black’, I merely want justice. Cathy Buchholz, a Zulu, who was visiting us at the time with her German husband Eckhardt and their daughter Irene Nomsa, cou­rageously supported me. (I had married the couple in Berlin).
A further nice ‘aftermath’ of our visit to South Africa was that Rosemarie was pregnant once again. We really wanted a second child. It was so fitting that the addition to the family was conceived just before our return to Holland, after I had been reconciled to my home country. The pregnancy proceeded however not without tears and anxiety.
A few months after our return to Holland, Rosemarie was diagnosed with Hepatitis. Both she and Danny had contracted it in South Africa and in January 1979 both of them had (yellow) jaundice. We were not overjoyed at all when the doctor felt compelled to suggest an abortion, intimating that this was advisable because of the great risk to the foetus. The possibility was great that we would have to cope with a deformed or handicapped baby. But we would not have anything of that. As a matter of principle we decided that we would accept the baby in whatever state it would come into the world as God’s gift to us. For the next six months we had to live with the real possibility of a handicapped child to be born in August 1979.
* * *
Through my theological studies my zeal for evangelism suffered a lot, although I was still fasting and praying on Fridays for the Communist world. Whenever I had to preach, I used to refrain from breakfast on those Sundays. Rosemarie found this very unsociable, so I later stopped it.

The Love for my Home Country cemented
The two visits to the ‘heimat’ in 1975 and 1978 cemented my love for my home country. In correspondence with the church back home and with the government, I still tried to fight my way back into the country, initially with the intention of coming to work in the Transkei. My intentions in this regard - which were not fully shared by Rosemarie - were interrupted when we were called to Holland in 1977. It never became relevant again because two years later the continuation of our service in the Moravian Church was already in the balance.
I was quite insensitive to the needs of my Surinamese congregants as aliens in Holland. My love for my home country made some of them quite envious. Or was it mingled with guilt? (It was well known that many Surinamese people fled their country as economic refugees, whereas I endeavoured to return to a revolutionary situation in my home country.) Opposition to me grew when I appeared headstrong to them in my opposition to occult traits and sinful habits which they regarded as part of their culture.
In the church council I suggested to receive 3/4 of my salary so that I could also use a quarter of my time to help achieve democracy and reconciliation in my home country. This was bound to cause problems. The brother, with whom I had shared my longing to teach Maths again, was completely taken aback that I was willing to earn less so that I could also get time free to fight the injustice in my home country. The Broederraad members felt themselves misled and left in the lurch. When I explained in my defence that I was not using ‘church’ time to work at my treatise “Honger na Geregtigheid”, that I got up at two o’clock in the morning, only increased their anger. They had hoped that I would rather make similar sacrifices for the Surinam cause in the Netherlands.

Almost unbearable Tension
The tension in the church council became almost unbearable. When we heard of a vacancy at the headquarters of the Dutch Scripture Union, I promptly applied, seeing this as a possibility to get away from the untenable situation. At the beginning of 1979 I was sick and tired of the bickering in my church council, the fighting over what I regarded as peripheral issues.
On a Saturday at the end of January 1979, I was almost on my way to Noordwijkerhout for the interview for the Bijbelbond post, when a freak slippery condition on the roads set in - ice starting pouring down - a very rare phenomenon. We never experienced something like this before or after that day. I was already in our car when the road became increasingly slippery. I decided to leave the car at the station and travel by train. When I phoned the Scripture Union people, they suggested that we should postpone the interview because there were similar conditions in Noordwijkerhout.
The interview never took place. I knew that it was a Jonah experi­ence par excellence. I was trying to run away from the difficult church situation!
* * *
Discouraging News from S.A.
Other discouraging news coming from South Africa carried politi­cal implications. From the MRA people in Johannes­burg I heard that the South African author­ities had intercepted the Dutch MRA periodical Nieuw Wereld Nieuws in which I had written an article about our previous visit. In the same periodical there was also a radical article under a pseudonym by Kgati Sathekge, one of the youths from Atteridgeville, whom we had met on our previous visit to South Africa. As a 16-year old Kgati had been among the leaders of the riots and the school boycott of Black townships like Soweto and Atteridgeville in 1976. He was arrested thrice, beaten and put into solitary confinement for a long time.
As an eighteen-year old he made up the balance. He and a few other young leaders concluded that the price was far too high in his own generation; crime and teenage pregnancies were spiralling. Drug abuse increased drastically. Kgati and his friends decided to start a back-to-school campaign. That however led to threats to his life. Howard Grace and other MRA people supported them.
In January 1979, Kgati stayed with us in Zeist for some time, although we had warned him that Rosemarie had hepatitis. In his article in the 9 December 1978 edition of the Dutch MRA periodical, Kgati sharply attacked apartheid as an un-Christian pol­icy, stating bluntly that ‘we have hunger yes, but we especially hunger after ‘de volle schotel van gerechtigheid’ (the full measure of justice). In a balanced way he also attacked Black Nationalism that likewise does not produce free people.39
I referred in my article to the unjust incarceration, banning and wanton arrest of innocent people like Beyers Naudé and Chris Wessels. I also stated that ‘I look forward to the day when great people like Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Beyers Naudé and other great South Africans may be seen and heard on South African TV and radio.’
It was a sad tes­timony of the slow pace of change that articles like these were viewed with distrust. The same atti­tude pre­vailed when I sounded out some people about pub­lishing my treatise “Hunger after justice” in South Africa. It became clear that the government was prone to censure the publica­tion, apart from the fact that much still had to be been done to make it readable and palatable.
On another track, I took the initiative to cor­respond with ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church about its race theology, as laid down in Church policy papers on “Church and Race”, also with regard to synod resolu­tions and reports. Some stories in the press gave the impres­sion that the government wanted to abol­ish the “Prohibi­tion of Mixed Marriages Act”, but that the Dutch Reformed Church would not agree. However, my cor­respon­dence with people of the influential denomination brought me nowhere. Instead of achieving anything, my activism made me only more suspect in the eyes of the South African authori­ties!

Difficulties In Holland
In Holland itself my radical activism also harvested difficulties. Soon after our arrival in 1977, a local Moravian brother, who was responsible for organising lay theological training, heard me mentioning stewardship. Promptly he thought it fit to invite the new young minister of Utrecht to give teaching on the subject to his students. Hardly anybody was possibly fully happy that I was also including obsolete church traditions as things, which should be eradicated. Yet, in the beginning of 1978 I was not even remotely contemplating christening of infants as one of these traditions. With only a few lay people attending these Saturday classes, nobody seemed to take offence at the radical40 statements which I derived from my biblical studies. Hereafter the water heated up even more. I challenged the church practice on every level, i.e. suggesting that we should test all the traditions of the church from the Bible.

That was however only the start. In typical activist fashion, I proceeded from here to campaign for ‘signs of the coming Kingdom of the Messiah’ globally. I had discovered this tenet in my study of the teaching of the old Moravian Bishop Comenius. I furthermore believed firmly that the small Moravian Church - as a micro-cosmos of the global economic disparity - could start to do something to rectify the global economic imbalances. I went too fast, suggesting for example a voluntary lowering of salaries in line with the teaching of Jan Amos Comenius. In addition, I proposed that a fund should be established to enable missionaries from the third world Moravian Churches to come to Europe. I aimed much too high. The church was not ready yet for such revol­ution­ary stuff.
In due course I also got involved in the drafting of synod resolu­tions and reports. Thus I also actively participated in a small pressure group to formulate a Moravian synod decision for a boycott of Shell, a Dutch-based multi-national petrol company, because of its perceived role in supporting apartheid structures and practice. It was no surprise that I was now regarded by many in the church as an infante terrible, although hardly anybody openly showed their dislike. Strange things happened like the disappearance of proposals that we had prepared for the 1979 synod in Driebergen. Gradually I was being side-lined, but surprisingly enough, not ostracised.
9. Problems with Infant ‘Baptism’

The crowning of my renewed commitment to work towards reconciliation in my home country was to me the birth of our second son, 9 months after our visit to S.A.!
On August the 4th 1979, our second son was born healthy - against the prognosis of the doctor. Fittingly, we gave him the name Rafael. This has the meaning God, the healer. With my brother Windsor about to visit us with his wife Ray and their baby Kevin shortly hereafter, an infant christening service was scheduled for a September Sunday. Rosemarie’s sister Waltraud with her family was also visiting us.

Scrutiny of Church Traditions
Two other infants were to be christened. A serious problem arose when the one couple took exception to my asking questions about their relationship to Christ. The dis­cussion at the home of the couple was not so cordial. They argued that they paid their church dues and they expected me to simply perform my ‘duty’ as a pastor, to christen their baby without asking any questions. I was nowhere willing to oblige. The idea of a quarrelling couple pitching up at the church service, at which our son Rafael was to be christened, literally haunted me. Although I had my church council supporting me on the issue, it gave me a sleepless night. The possibility of a scene at the church in the presence of our family from South Africa and Germany was not pleasant, to say the least!
I experienced a genuine sigh of relief when the ‘difficult’ couple with their baby stayed away that Sunday. But the issue of infant christening was to flare up soon hereafter. I suppose that the occurrence at our church made me very sensi­tive to the issue of infant ‘baptism’. Shortly hereafter I was seriously challenged from Scripture about this church practice. This was happening at the very time when I had been suggesting that stewardship should include the scriptural scrutiny of all church traditions.
Hein Postma was the principal of the local Moravian school, whom I got to know when he addressed the congregation at a love least. We met soon hereafter and got befriended. Rosemarie and his wife Wieneke struck a close friendship, having babies of the same age. I sensed that Hein Postma had a kindred spirit, the real servant attitude of the Herrnhut Moravians. It did not matter one bit that he worshipped at another fellowship. When he invited us to a weekly Bible study with other local Christians that he was leading with Wim Zoutewelle, a biology teacher at the local Christian high school, I accepted without any ado. Through this influence I regained my evangelistic zeal that I had lost during my activist anti-apartheid period.

A Substitute for Circumcision?
During a Bible Study with Hein Postma, Colossians 2:11,12 was read: “In him you were also circumcised... with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith...” Although baptism was not discussed at all that evening, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart.
I was moved to discover that ‘circumcision of the heart’ - conversion to faith in Jesus Christ - was the actual basis of baptism according to the above-mentioned Bible verse. My own argument for practising the tradition of christening of infants was pulled from under me. Subconsciously I was still somehow influenced by the Calvinist argument in defence of christening of infants. According to this view, the christening of infants as the sign of the new covenant was a substitute for circumcision, which is the visible sign of the old covenant of God with Israel. I was now reading there in Colossians about the circumcision of the heart. I was bowled over. I had not yet looked critically at the replacement theory, whereby it is believed that the church came in the place of Israel. From the context it was clear that conversion through faith in Jesus was meant.
In the preceding years and following in the footsteps of the Count Zinzendorf, I got to love Israel and the Jews. When I now had to think of it more deeply, the untenability of the christening of infants struck home. How could the church put something else instead of circumcision, a practise so sacred to the Jews? As I now also studied the liturgy used at the christening of babies, I knew that I couldn’t carry on with a practice that had indeed become a tradition that nullifies the power of God (Mark 7:13). The seed was sown in my heart for opposition to replacement theology, whereby the church is alleged to have substituted the nation of Israel.
In the course of my participation in a liturgical commission of the church I was deeply troubled by the formulation in the Moravian (infant) baptism liturgy whereby eternal life is apportioned to babies at their ‘baptism’.
This was now really the last straw to me. How could I continue with the practice with a good conscience? I promptly put the problem to my church council. They were very sympathetic, especially after our common experience only weeks prior to this. They suggested that I should discuss it with my minister colleagues.
Also here I initially found surprising much understanding because the colleagues likewise encountered irresponsible fatherhood among the Surinamese church members. It was decided that we would organise a weekend to discuss the issue in depth with the various church councils in the Netherlands because also in other congregations there were similar problems. The lack of responsibility by men who fathered children outside of wed­lock was a common difficulty.
Before any such a weekend could take place, my problem with infant ‘baptism’ was maliciously conveyed to the church board in Germany. I was taken to task and finally referred to the bishop for counselling. This nevertheless transpired in a very cordial spirit. I was impressed that Bishop Reichel – walking in the footsteps of Zinzendorf on the issue - was convinced of the matter for himself as he looked at the grace of God operating ahead of us. But it didn’t solve my problem. In the end we found a compro­mise: I would continue as a minister without having to christen infants. This could of course not go on for any length of time. I was offered another post, but as the matter of radical stewardship had become so important to us, we could not accept a post where we were required to compromise on this issue. We agreed that I would terminate my services in the church at the end of 1980.
Too critical, not loving enough
Hein Postma pointed out to me that the manuscript ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ was too critical, not loving enough. He missed compassion in it. I revamped the manuscript, concentrating on the issues around the prohibition of racially mixed marriages and our own experiences, calling it ‘Wat God saamgevoeg het’ (‘What God joined together’). I hoped of course in my heart of hearts that this could facilitate my return to South Africa. In my spare time - i.e. during the early morning hours between 2 and 4 a.m., because I was also sensitive to the criticism of my church council - I worked at the rewriting of ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ in three parts. I had to agree with Hein Postma that the manuscript was possibly an overdose of medicine to a sick society. I toned it down, planning three smaller booklets, of which the first one concentrated on issues around the Mixed Marriages Act, ‘Wat God saamgevoeg het.’41
There were also other persons who were not happy with the manuscript like my close friend Jakes to whom I had sent a copy. He felt that one should not correspond or associate with members of the apartheid government. They should be isolated and treated like outcasts! We agreed to differ, but it was not easy to discern that apartheid was causing a strain on our friendship. His ‘second best friend’ was Allan Boesak. Jakes’ views were apt to rub off on our common friend, who had become quite influential by this time.42

Mixed Marriages Act to be scrapped?
I was following the developments in the country closely. One of the most dramatic developments occurred when Mr P.W. Botha, the Prime Minister, stated publicly that he was ready to scrap the (prohibition of racially) Mixed Marriages Act. All the more I was very disappointed to read hereafter that the Dutch Reformed Church effectively pulled the break lever on this government intention at their synod of 1978. Botha later made a somersault backwards though, mentioning that he rather looked at reviewing the law in question. Yet, he challenged the churches to come with a united viewpoint, which he knew was very far away.
Initially another visit to South Africa seemed a non-runner towards the end of 1980. Because of my conscientious and scriptural objections against the practice of the chris­tening of infants, I could not remain a minister in the Moravian Church of Utrecht in the Netherlands, being the only pastor of the congregation.
Rommel and Celeste Roberts, a couple from South Africa, suddenly popped up in Zeist. We had met Rommel in Caux (Switzer­land) at a conference of the Moral Rear­mament (MRA) in December, 1977. After his training as a Cath­olic priest, Rommel got involved in the Modderdam squatter camp near Bellville. Here he met Celeste, a White Catholic nun. They broke all the codes of South African “way of life” by marrying in South Africa, thus not crossing the border to exchange marriage vows in some neighbouring country. Rommel himself had been released from prison just before their departure. He was never brought before a court of law because of his role in the bus and student boycotts of that year, but the couple feared a new arrest. Therefore they were very happy for the opportunity to get away from the police hunt. Probably more than anybody else in South Africa they had courageously challenged the “Prohib­ition of Mixed Marriages Act”.
When they came to visit us in Zeist, Celeste was pregnant. A complica­tion not only extended their stay in Zeist, but she came close to losing her life because of it. In what amounted to a miracle, her life was saved. Because of her illness and hospitalisation, Celeste stayed with us much longer than they had intended.
Just at this time we got the news in August 1980 from South Africa that my only sister Magdalene had contracted leukaemia. She had played such an important part towards the education of us, her three younger brothers.
God used Celeste Roberts to sow seed in our hearts so that we started enquiring after the cheapest possibility to go to South Africa. We decided initially more or less that I should go to South Africa alone. The date of my mother’s pending 70th birthday (28th December) was however far from convenient. There were so many other complicating factors militating against it. I still had two weeks of holiday due to me. But one could hardly expect any church council to allow their minister to leave before Christ­mas.

Schiphol Airport “rendezvous”
Since our last trip down south, some other interesting things had happened. After reading in the newspaper about their presence at some church synod in Holland, I had taken the initiative to meet a delegation of the (White) Dutch Reformed Church at Schiphol Airport. From this “rendezvous” stemmed a superficial correspondence with Professor Johan Heyns in which I challenged him to include theologians of colour like Dr Allan Boesak in the plans of the denomination for overhauling a booklet on race relations in the church. Indirectly I also tried to reconcile the two of them, who were leading the influential “Broederbond” and “Broederkring” respectively. (I knew from our student days how Allan had been raving about Dr Johan Heyns, his lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University College of the Western Cape).
It was still my conviction that ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ should be published in South Africa in Afrikaans first to win over the Afrikaners. The curt reply of a Cabinet minister when I hinted this in one of my letters was to me the sign that the climate was not yet ripe for the venture. Rosemarie had little faith in my letter writing activity, but I just continued, albeit rather subdued.
Because different Cabinet ministers openly expressed their intention to move away from discrimination, I secretly hoped that they would co-operate with the publication. After our trip in 1978, I had informed the government of my inten­tion to publish the documents that I had collated. I naively hoped that I could help (White) South Africans to repent in that way. After a response by Dr Schlebusch that was not positive enough to me, I decided to abort the effort towards publication. Towards the end of 1980 it seemed as if the government was seriously trying to revive the momen­tum of change. (This was however effectively halted when Dr Andries Treurnicht started to breathe threatening down the neck of the government from the right wing.)
I noticed know how influential people got damaged spiritually when they came into the limelight. I wanted to be certain that my autobiographical material would be published in God’s perfect timing. The letter to the Cabinet Minister was one of many ‘fleeces’ (Compare the story of Gideon in Judges 6:36-40) to ascertain whether I should have my autobiographical manuscripts published at all.
In my spare time - i.e. during the early morning hours between 2 and 4 a.m., because I was more sensitive to the criticism of my church council - I worked at the rewriting of ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ in three parts. I had to agree with Hein Postma that the manuscript was possibly an overdose of medicine to a sick society. He noted that he missed love and compassion in it. I hereafter toned it down, planning three smaller booklets, of which the first one concentrated on issues around the Mixed Marriages Act. I revamped the manuscript, concentrating in the first volume on the issues around the prohibition of racially mixed marriages and our own experiences, calling it ‘Wat God saamgevoeg het’’43 (‘What God joined together’). The intention was also to diminish the possible shock effect for Afrikaners in that way. I hoped of course in my heart of hearts that this could facilitate my return to South Africa.

Remain in Jerusalem
Through our connection to Moral Rearmament, we got befriended to the work of the ‘Offensive Junger Christen’ in Bensheim, Germany. Their working method sounded very much along the lines of our own thinking. Soon we were seriously considering moving house to Germany. To our disappointment nothing came from our application to join the ‘Offensive’. No clear reason for the refusal was given, although we suspected that our critical attitude towards the christening of infants might have been the problem.
By October 1980 we still had no new position and nowhere to go after the termination of our work in the church. It was understood that we were required to vacate the parsonage at the end of the year.
At this stage we called to the Lord for a word, for guidance. We were surprised when Luke 24:47 almost jumped out. The verse mentioned ‘beginning in Jerusalem’. It was not clear to us how to interpret it. We thought it to mean that we should remain in our Jerusalem, Zeist. But this seemed impossible!
From two other groups we had firm promises that we could join them - with accommodation included - if we would have no place to go to. But nothing was forthcoming from either of them when it came to the push.
Our friends who prayed with us stood firmly in support. To us this was very much an encouragement. They knew that it was really a step of faith for us.

Another visa application
Rosemarie was much more realistic with her suggestion that we should write another accompanying letter with her visa application. She thought that my sister’s disease in such a letter would surely have been reason enough to expect a positive reply. Encouraged by a speech of Prime Minister Botha in Upington and other reports in the press, I was however very much under the impression that the govern­ment actually wanted to change or scrap the law pertaining to the prohibition of racially mixed marriages. The impression was given that the (White) Dutch Reformed Church was the big culprit. Later I had to recognize that this was too simplis­tic a view. I naively thought that they would not dare to refuse Rosemarie a visa again, knowing that I could publish the documents abroad to their detriment – i.e. an element of subtle blackmail was involved. I even thought - although I had no concrete proof to this end - that my initiative perhaps played some role in the government’s inten­tion to change or scrap 62 discrimina­tory laws.
My idea not to write an accompanying letter however helped us to get clarity whether we should go to South Africa as a family or not. Financially it amounted to a major risk. We also considered that the granting or withholding of the visas could be a test whether it was right to start on this risky venture at all.
Before I could book any flight however, there was still the hurdle of my congregation. It was unreal to expect them to release me just before Christmas, although I still had two weeks of leave due to me. In a remarkable sequence of events, we experienced that we were guided by a much stronger hand than ours. My church council agreed that I could deliver my last sermon there on 14 December, 1980. Rather unusually, we thus never had a valedictory service, but at least this was honest.
The heavenly Father was obviously continuing to break me down to fit into His plan with us. Thus I could return to the travelling agency to book seats on a flight just before Christmas. There the lady greeted me with the words “Mr Cloete, I have a nice surprise for you!” She had just received news that Luxavia offers a special air fare on the occa­sion of the airline, starting to use the big Jumbo jets. We saw in this “co-incidence” another confirmation to proceed with our plans. I had no hesitation any more to book for 18th December.
Letters from South Africa with regard to the illness of Magdalene, our sister, encouraged us to quite an extent. We knew that we should not get excited too soon, even though we believed always that “My Lord can do anything”. And didn’t God prove it so often in our lives? The fact that we could plan to go to South Africa was already a miracle to us.
Our joy was however soon replaced by anxiety because of the visas for Rosemarie and the children. Various telephone calls to the South African Embassy in The Hague brought no result. Slowly but surely the last day for payment drew nearer without any prospect of the visas. Even a telex from the South African Embassy personnel to Pretoria on our behalf turned out to be fruitless.

Agonizing days
Celeste was back with us after visiting some other people. Together we experienced the agonizing days of waiting in vain. We shared our uncertainty with Celeste in respect of our going, because we would be using just about our last savings for the trip and I still had no employment after our return from South Africa. On the day, on which we were required to pay the deposit to reserve our seats,44 I phoned the Embassy once more. The official suggested that I phone someone in South Africa to contact Pretoria. It was fortunate that the travelling agency gave us an extension of an extra day extension to get the visas.
I couldn’t phone my relatives of course, because we didn’t want to cause any more anxiety because of our problem with the visas. But we were happy that it was a Thursday. Now we could share our burden in the evening with our Bible Study and prayer group in Zeist.
Our friend Jakes whom I phoned, used a method with which I would not have been happy if I had known it. On the other hand, I had only myself to blame because I was the cause that the accom­panying letter with the visa application was not written. His phone call to Pretoria went along the following lines:
“I am a friend of Reverend Ashley Cloete in Holland. I want to contact the press straight away, but I just want to check out whether it is true that you don’t want to allow him and his family to come and visit his sister who has cancer...”
Of course, the government could not allow such an embar­rassment without any ado, especially since we were still abroad. Therefore it was not surprising when the answer came promptly:
“No sir, I shall investigate the matter straight away. I’m sure it will come in order.”
* * * *
Not aware of this telephonic conversation, we were still anxiously waiting on the call from The Hague on Friday, the 28th of November. Before 4 p.m. we had to phone the travelling agency. We agreed that if we didn’t get positive notification from the Embassy by then, we would have to cancel our bookings. Finally, four o’clock arrived without any call from The Hague. I had given up hope but Rosemarie prodded me to phone the Embassy once more before cancelling our seats. I dialled the now so familiar telephone number, while Rosemarie prayed that God’s will might become evident:
A friendly voice greeted me from the other side of the line: “I have good news for you. The visas have been granted. However, I must still read the full text of the telex. Please phone me on Monday.”

Visas granted Although we knew by now that strange conditions could be attached to the visas, we were overjoyed. And it was such fun that Celeste was there with whom we could share our joy. The preliminary knowledge about the granting of the visas was already such a special gift to us. At the same time it was also a confirmation to venture out in faith into the unknown. We were encouraged to trust God for our future and for our everyday needs.
We needed this fillip because not everybody was happy with our six-week trip to South Africa. We could understand their reasoning so well: in such a case one would normally first make sure that one has a job on one’s return. In so many words, we had to hear that this was very careless. It did hurt deeply when we had to read from a representative of the church:
“It has nothing to do with faith...” But I had given the church board member who wrote these lines such a hard time through my activism whilst he tried to mediate. I knew it was well meant out of concern. In the same letter, our brother affirmed that I would remain a minister of the denomination and that he would love me to come back and to take up a post in the field of representation.
The only conditions attached to the visas turned out to be that we had to pay the telex costs and that we had to obtain and send a letter from the travel­ling agency to certify that we had bought return tickets. The stage was set for our next trip.
In the following three weeks the big priority was to get a job. I hoped to take up teaching again. Some posts for Relig­ious Instruction seemed fitted to my previous experiences, but the expanding unemployment was also taking its toll in Hol­land. When we left for South Africa, my hopes were pinned on one single application where I had survived the first round of nineteen applicants. But there were still nine other applicants in the running for the vacant post.

10. Home or Hearth?

We had a nerve-wrecking few weeks until we finally received the visa for Rosemarie and our two boys literally on the last minute. Now we could finalize our travelling plans at last. Unfor­tu­nately, all seats on the connecting flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town were already booked by this time.
We had no option than to sleep over in Johannesburg. The conditions under which the visit to the Cape would took place, were nevertheless awesome. We were basically going to visit my dying sister. We had no idea what was to happen on our return to Holland because we had more or less used our last savings for the air fares.
It suited me perfectly that my seminary colleague Martin October, with whom we lodged in the Moravian parsonage, was so willing to take me to Bishop Tutu and Dr Beyers Naudé when we would return to Holland. From the Bosmont manse I made a few phone calls. Among others I contacted Dr Beyers Naudé. When I heard from Dr Naudé that he had never received the manuscript that I had sent with the delegation of DRC theologians the previous year, I was now all the more keen to discuss my manuscripts with him and Bishop Tutu. We left our winter coats with Martin and Fanny October, intending to collect them on our return to Europe.

A sad Welcome and Good Bye
On arrival at D.F. Malan Airport, the name of the international airport of Cape Town at that time, we heard that my sister had died the evening before. (When I spoke to Anthony, our brother-in-law telephonically, I somehow did not understand his question properly when he asked where we were staying.) We were still in time to attend the funeral. Hoe kan ek u prys, the anthem of our clan, was of course a must at this occasion. Rosemarie and our almost four-year old son Danny had learned the hymn as well.
It was felt that the event of the Joorst clan at the Jolly Carp Recreation Centre in Grassy Park, that our late sister Magdalene had initiated, should go ahead just after Christmas. She had hoped of course that she could still attend it for the last time and meet the 200 odd clan members.
In a series of events prior to our scheduled return to Holland, we discerned God’s hand clearly. This happened especially during the evening devotion of 19 January 1981 in Elim. My late father was reading the scriptural Macedonian injunction: ‘Kom oor en help ons.’ Our mother was furthermore quite ill at that time. Her passing away was actually anticipated. With Daddy’s heart condition, which caused him to go on early retirement, it was a big question whether I would see one or both of them alive again.

The Anti-apartheid Spirit made me hard
By this time I had however become quite a hardened anti-apartheid activist. The only constraint I had was that I waged my opposition from a religious platform. I recognised that the unity of believers was all-important. We were very much encouraged by a multi-racial group from different churches in Stellenbosch that had been started by Professor Nico Smith and a few pastors. This was a sequel to the SACLA event in Pretoria in 1979.
I was very keen to discuss a few issues with Dr Beyers Naudé and Bishop Tutu in Johannesburg, all the more after I had heard telephonically from Dr Naudé that he never received the manuscript that I had sent with the DRC delegation the previous year.
Rosemarie was also deeply moved when she saw how our brother‑in‑law Anthony was struggling after the death of his beloved wife, our late sister. She could not understand why I insisted to go to Johannesburg in the remaining week before our departure for Holland.
The anti-apartheid activist spirit had made me hard and uncompassionate. Many people asked me why we didn’t stay longer when they heard that I had no employment in Holland on our return there. According to certain trusted people to whom we turned for advice like our friend, the Anglican Pastor Clive McBride, I should easily get a post with my good reputation as a Mathematics teacher and the dearth of qualified colleagues in ‘Coloured’ schools for that subject. When I checked it out, this was confirmed. But I was not to be moved to stay longer in Cape Town. I wanted to proceed to Johannesburg. Not even the possibility of my mother passing on soon - and that I would not see any of my parents again - could touch me significantly. This was the classic Jonah situation all over again where I wanted to run away from a certain responsibility.
On the afternoon that had been scheduled as our final time together, my special friend Jakes was at hand, taking us to the Strandfontein beach. A strong wind was blowing there. In the evening we were to take the train to Johannesburg. This time we had received government permission to travel in the same compartment as a family without any ado, albeit that it bugged me that one still had to ask for permission. My manuscript had evidently done its intimidating work in government circles.
When we arrived in Sherwood Park at the home of the Esau family, the train tickets were however nowhere to be found. I must have lost them in Strandfontein. With the strong wind there, it would have been futile to go back and try and find them. God had caught up with me once again. Just like Jonah once, I was trying to run away from the responsibility to my parents and the bereaved family.
The Holy Spirit had thankfully softened me up by now. Reticently I agreed to stay in Cape Town for another week. My parents were pleasantly surprised when we pitched up in Elim once again. This time we had interesting news for them. We had decided to extend our stay in South Africa unless I got the Religious Instruction teaching post in Holland for which I had applied.
After the extra week in Cape Town, everything was cut and dried. It was confirmed that we should try and stay for another six months. The church in Holland graciously agreed that we could leave our furniture in the parsonage in Zeist. A new pastor for Utrecht had not been appointed yet.

Teaching in Hanover Park
I took up a teaching post at Mount View High School in Hanover Park. I knew that this was one of the two schools where the boycotts had started the year before. I felt a little bit uneasy when the relevant authority in Wynberg expressed his satisfaction at me being a clergyman to take over at the school where a colleague had been dismissed for ‘unprofessional conduct.’
The suspicion at the school that I was a government informer was almost tangible. The reason was clear. My predecessor also had the surname Cloete. In addition, I must have dished up a strange story to them, having come from Holland and a sister who had passed away. All this must have sounded very suspect. On top of it, the widely read tabloid-styled newspaper of the ‘Coloured’ Community, The Cape Herald, reported shortly after I started teaching in Hanover Park that Matthew Cloete, my predecessor, had been sacked for disseminating ANC pamphlets. It must possibly have been logical for the school fraternity to regard this as confirmation that I was an informer, a collaborator with the hated regime. Fortunately for me, the practise of ‘neck lacing’45 was not yet in vogue.
We tried to support the bereaved Esau family by being on hand. Richard Arendse, my classmate of high school days and a later teacher colleague, immediately obliged by allowing us to use their caravan. Thus we could now sleep in the caravan in the backyard of the Esau home. My brother Windsor and his wife Ray from Grabouw generously put the use of one of their two cars at our disposal so that we could visit my sickly and ageing parents in Elim, 200 Km away, frequently.
It was very special to see our ailing mother recovering slowly and the diminishing strain was evidently doing our Daddy a lot of good.

During the short spell of teaching at Mount View High School (Hanover Park) in 1981, I had a good percentage of Muslim pupils in my classes. During the intervals I had some interesting discussions with a teacher colleague, Mr Hoosain Solomons, a devout Muslim. I was especially happy that I was so near to my friend Jakes, who had married Anne Swartz, a social worker, whom we had met years ago at a youth camp of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Villiersdorp area. On Friday afternoons we often had a little rendezvous together there in the Penlyn Estate parsonage on Friday afternoons with Henry Engel and Chris Wessels, two Moravian pastors. There I also joined a few Belydende Kring meetings. After one of those meetings I was evidently followed by some Special Branch agent. Thankfully, there were no negative repercussions when I experienced divine protective intervention the next day.
Just after Easter, Mr Cassie, the principal, asked me to address the school assembly in the weekly devotional exercise. In my mini sermon I stressed that Mar,ky Magdalene had previously been an outcast and demon‑possessed before she became a follower of Jesus. Coming from their despised township, the pupils could obviously fully identify with the message that I shared. I was deeply moved to see how open some Muslim learners were to the radical claims of Jesus. I furthermore highlighted in my message that the outcast Mary Magdalene became the first evangelist of the resurrection of Jesus according to John’s gospel. This was solid Contextual Theology. Others would perhaps have called it Black Theology. In my talk I challenged the township pupils and teacher colleagues, stressing that this could only happen to Mary Magdalene because she had first committed her life to Jesus as her Lord. Of course, that was down to earth evangelical language. Be it as it may, this sermonette harvested for me acceptance from the pupils in the highly politicised school.

Camping semi-permanently
As the nights became colder in March, it became imperative to move out of the caravan. Our one and a half year old Rafael constantly had a cold. However, the politics of the day prevented us from getting accommodation in a ‘White’ residential area for three months. Not even the church was prepared to risk letting us stay in an empty parsonage in Newlands, a White residential area, where I was quite willing to be the rent paying ‘caretakers’. Of course, the danger of repercussions and government reprisals were very real. It is understandable that the church board did not see their way clear to take a risk. Knowing my rebellious attitude of the past, for example when I challenged them in 1978 on behalf of Chris Wessels, was possibly not forgotten. The one or other of them probably noted the possibility of me wanting to stay in South Africa with my family. Then the church would have been in trouble! I could actually understand their stance, but I was nevertheless very disappointed that no one took the trouble to explain the refusal.
Repeatedly Rommel and Celeste Roberts invited us to come and stay with them. The couple had been with us in Holland for a few months after they were more or less forced to flee from the country the previous year. They were not only known as political activists but just like us they were a racially mixed couple. To accept their offer would have meant inviting trouble with the government. After all other efforts to get temporary accommodation46 had failed, we had no other excuse available to turn down their generous offer. Very hesitantly, we moved into the three-bedroom cottage with our two small boys to join Rommel, Celeste, Alan and Wally. The latter two are brothers of Rommel.

My interest in Muslims and Islam revived
My interest in Muslims and Islam remained dormant for quite a few years. After the Ayatollah Khomeini had worked his way back to Iran in 1979, a book appeared in Germany that shook me somewhat. The author - Marius Baar - suggested the use of petrodollars after the oil crisis in 1973 as demonic, an imitation of God’s work through the Holy Spirit. I knew that oil was seen in the Bible as a picture of the Spirit, for example the ten virgins in Matthew 25 that had to have oil in their lamps.
Baar’s view proved to be quite accurate and prophetic. Over the years it became known how petrol revenue was used not only to build mosques and print Qur’ans, but also to burn Bibles and fight Christians, for example in Southern Sudan. Also the Western oil companies fitted into the ruthless exploitation of the poor in the quest for oil e.g. in Nigeria.
The next stimulus to get engaged in reaching out to Muslims occurred in 1981 when I was teaching in Hanover Park. The openness of Muslims to the Gospel - if it is presented in a relevant and sensitive way - struck me.

Involvement in ‘political’ matters
Because of my own involvement in ‘political’ matters at school or our supporting Rommel, Celeste and Alan Roberts in the volatile Crossroads community with harassed ‘illegal’ Black women,47 there was the real fear that anyone us could have been arrested by the police. Of course, we were basically working towards racial reconciliation. It was illegal for a ‘Coloured’ or a White to go into the Black areas without a permit. Expecting that it would have been refused any way, we never even considered asking for one. That would have meant looking for trouble, apart from the principle involved. (It is highly debatable whether one should apply for a permit under such conditions.)
Our personal experiences and involvement in political turmoil during the first half of 1981 caused resentment in Rosemarie towards South Africa. On more than one occasion we experienced from close range how the political climate in the country was heating up to near boiling point. As a volunteer Rosemarie had been helping a Black teacher in a Catholic school in Nyanga with the teaching of retarded children. Every day a red car was following her closely, apparently attempting to intimidate her.
During our half-year stay in South Africa in 1981 I tried out Tafelberg Publishers with ‘What God joined together’’, yet without success. Even though I had no proof that my actions contributed in any way, I did sense satisfaction when the law that prohibited people from different races to marry, was finally repealed in 1985.

Tense weeks
We furthermore had to request the extension of the visas of Rosemarie and the children that could still be turned down. With my track record of opposition to the government, the granting of visas for them could not be taken for granted. Rosemarie and the children valiantly joined me in some dangerous ventures, such as going with me to Crossroads as part of a church delegation after a busload of ‘illegal’ Black women had been forced to return to the Transkei. A crisis followed when the group returned to the Cape with a hired bus through secret compassionate assistance of the South African Council of Churches under the leadership of Bishop Tutu. This sort of defiant opposition was of course very much against the wishes of the government.
In the middle of the crisis I was preaching in the (White) Congregational Church of Rondebosch where our friend Douglas Bax was the pastor. Through his involvement other representatives of the Western Province Council of Churches got on board.
Military ‘Caspirs’ with soldiers driving along Lansdowne Road reminded us at our open-air meeting with these women and others in Crossroads that a shooting spree, in which we could lose our lives, was very much on the cards. The presence of a TV crew from overseas probably saved the day for us. On that occasion I was very much impressed by the performance of a young pastor, Elijah Klaassen.
Rosemarie and our two sons also joined me to Hanover Park when I decided to stand with students of Mount View High School. We were defying the government with a programme of alternative teaching on the ‘compulsory holiday’ on June 1.48 On this day the police actually stepped in when a few pupils entered the school premises illegally.
During these tense weeks we had to reckon with the possibility of any one of us residing in Haywood Road, Crawford being killed or arrested all the time. The months preceding this event were also not easy at all as we had to struggle through all sorts of apartheid red tape. Then there had been the attitude of locals and that of the churches; they feared to break through the racist customs as we tried to find accommodation.
In the meantime I had become quite bitter once again. Spiritually I still had to learn that God was more interested in my relationship with Him than in my activism. Of course, I regarded my political activism as a part of my service for Him, part and parcel of an effort to get the races reconciled to each other. Towards the end of our stay Rosemarie had more than enough of all this turmoil and uncertainty.

Spadework in preparing the Battle of Nyanga
The separation of Black families developed into a strange tradition in South African society because of government policy. We were privileged to have been involved with the spadework that prepared ‘the battle of Nyanga’. Alan Roberts, the brother of Rommel, interviewed the ladies who had been taken out of the homes in the church where they stayed for some time. I was deeply moved as I typed the stories of the luckless Black people whom the government was trying to remove forcibly. It was strategic that I had copies of these stories after they had mysteriously disappeared at the court hearings.
Our involvement with the Blacks did create in me a resistance of another sort. As I saw how Black families were forced to live separated, I was not interested any more to go to the government - cap in hand - for the ‘privilege’ to live in my home country with my wife and children.
Rosemarie hereafter had only one prayer left: ‘Lord, I am prepared to serve you anywhere in the world as long as it is not South Africa’. She had completely forgotten her vow of 1978.
The life stories of the women were not the only material that disappeared. A manuscript that I wrote at this time about false political alternatives that I had left at the school in Hanover Park during the boycott crisis around June 16/17 was also nowhere to be found.

An old Wound opened
We also now had to witness how confused our four year-old son Danny had become because of the different languages to which he was exposed. In one short sentence he managed at some stage to use the four related languages – Afrikaans, English, Dutch and German - not even mentioning two different dialects apiece of the first two. We were using these languages as we interacted with different groups of people.49 We were convinced now that we had to return to a European country where Danny could concentrate on one language. A German-speaking environment was the obvious choice. After leaving the political cauldron in South Africa, we first went to Rosemarie’s family in Southern Germany. But all efforts to get employment in Germany or Switzerland were unsuccessful. As we shared our experiences, we completely forgot the divine injunction to ‘remain in our Jerusalem’, Zeist in Holland.
It was quite difficult to accept soon hereafter that Rosemarie was pregnant again. We very much wanted another child - preferably a daughter - but the timing of the pregnancy was very uncomfortable indeed. I was still unemployed with little prospect of anything coming up. On our return to Holland Rosemarie and I were quite divided on the issue of where we should be located - an old wound had been opened: I yearned to return to my home country, although I knew that it was well-neigh impossible. Rosemarie was relieved that we could get out of the threatening hearth more or less unscathed. But we knew that God had brought us together and that we had to be called together to whatever country He would choose.

The Aftermath of the Saga of Nyanga and Crossroads50
We returned to Germany and Holland, unaware of the crisis which we had helped to unleash through our involvement in the initial stages of saga of Nyanga and Crossroads by getting church leaders on board. The plight of the victims received not only international attention but it also boiled down to one of the major defeats of the apartheid regime, when the Dutch Reformed Church was split down the middle and thrown in a crisis because of the brutal treatment of the Blacks in those townships. Professor Nico Smith, who had already moved to the periphery of the apartheid structures after SACLA in Pretoria in 1979, not only took a group of theological students to Crossroads, but the events of the winter of 1981 there became instrumental in opening his eyes the other side of apartheid.
Professor Smith’s brave stance unleashed a storm in his church, leading to intimidation and victimisation. Times had changed. Unlike the post-Cottesloe period when Dr Beyers Naudé was ostrasised and isolated, other clergymen rallied in support. In fact, he had little difficulty to find contributors for his book Stormkompas, which he co-edited with Dr Piet Meiring and Dr Obrien Geldenhuys. The latter had been one of the DRC delegates that I had challenged on Schiphol airport two years earlier.
The practical aid of the SACC in the saga made it only natural that Bishop Tutu, the General Secretary at the time, would visit Crossroads in August at the end of a period of prayer and fasting.
The saga continued until deep into 1982 when 60 Xhosa men, women and children occupied the huge St George’s Anglican Cathedral in the heart of Cape Town and a stone’s throw from Parliament.

Growing List of unpublished Manuscripts
It was still my conviction that Honger na Geregtigheid or Wat God saamgevoeg het should be published in South Africa in Afrikaans first, to win over the Afrikaners. The curt reply of a Cabinet minister when I hinted this in one of my letters had been the sign to me that the climate was not yet ripe for the venture. I also noticed how influential people got damaged spiritually when they came into the limelight. I therefore wanted to be certain that my autobiographical material would be published in God’s perfect timing. The letter to the Cabinet Minister was one of many ‘fleeces’51 to ascertain whether I should have my manuscripts published at that time. Some people wanted to introduce me to Mr P.W. Botha but I was not interested after having seen how other families were being ripped apart because of the pass laws. 52 During our six-month stay in the country I updated an amended manuscript. When we left South Africa in June 1981, the second draft of ‘Wat God saamgevoeg het’ in English translation - ‘What God joined together’’ - had already been cyclostyled. I left a copy of the English manuscript with Tafelberg Uitgewers just before we returned to Europe in June, 1981 with the understanding to have the book printed in Afrikaans first if they accepted it for publication. It was however turned down, becoming just another addition to of a growing list of unpublished and incomplete manuscripts.

Activism in the Church
In Holland I got isolated even more in the church after I clubbed together with two young minister colleagues, trying to nudge the Moravian Church to oppose Shell because of its support of apartheid. However, our draft resolution at the synod ‘disappeared’ mysteriously. The conclusion was not to be overlooked: the South African government and its lackeys had its contacts within the innermost confines of the church. Fortunately I still had a copy of the proposed resolutions. We caused even more of a problem when we now started distributing the resolutions outside the confines of the synod. Our radical suggestions - originally intended to be presented at the synod – for example that the Moravian Church in Western Europe should take a lead in real sharing with the poorer countries, contributed to my isolation. I was vilified among my colleagues as a fundamentalist and a trouble-shooter simultaneously.

Foes wherever I went?
My radicalism on many issues made my position quite difficult. In my view the South African Moral Re-armament and the Moravian Church were much too compromising in their opposition to apartheid. In Holland I collided with my minis­ter colleagues when one of them aired that Europeans had no right to oppose occult Surinamese traditions. His argument was that the Europeans themselves are in the web of another ‘-ism’, viz. material­ism. I was not prepared to allow a compromise for any sinful ideology or practice.
I seemed to irritate people wherever I went. Many had problems with me because I did not fit into one of the boxes of the time. One was expected to be either against apartheid or Communism. I attacked both. On top of it, I also opposed occultism and materialism. Could one blame them that I seemed to be against everything? All the while I had hoped to be positive: to fight for God’s righteousness and justice. But it was probably not very wise to fight so many different issues simultaneously.
In the meantime I targeted the Dutch Reformed theologians of South Africa whom I believed could play a pivotal role in effecting change for the better in my home country. A fairly extensive correspondence followed with different role players on the South African scene. My ministry of reconciliation also aimed at trying to heal rifts where I discerned them. Thus I attempted to reconcile (the later Arch) Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak. The latter, along with his Broederkring cronies, were angry at the likes of Tutu - people who were still prepared to talk to President Botha. It also affected me personally when my correspondence with the government estranged me to some extent from my close friend Jakes. My effort to bring Boesak and Heyns together was unsuccessful, but I was happy to hear later that Bishop Tutu and my former evangelism buddy Allan Boesak were again operating in concert. However, my interference could have earned me the wrath of Allan, who was by now a well-known church leader.
Professor Heyns went on in the mid-1980s to become one of the divine instruments of change in his church to take the denomination away from apartheid thinking and attitudes. (It is generally believed in South Africa that a right wing extremist, who could not accept Heyns’ role in the dramatic turn-around of the denomination, was responsible for his assassination in November 1994).
* * *
Back in our “Jerusalem”
Back in Holland, a very difficult period in our lives started. Time was running out because my work permit was due to expire soon. Yet, the word from Scripture to stay in our “Jerusalem” did not enter our minds again. However, we had no motivation to start packing. On the other hand, we did not feel like Jonah at all. The church had offered us temporary accommodation in Bad Boll, where we once started our marriage. But we had no peace about this move.
And then it happened. Virtually on the last minute, I got a temporary teaching post in nearby Utrecht. Simultaneously, I applied for a position with a new mission agency EZIN, to function as a pioneering church planter in Almere, a new polder area where land had been regained from the sea and where there we hardly any churches. For some reason or other, I never heard from the EZIN people again after sending them my CV. The new evangelical group probably found my political activism too much.
We had no intention of joining another denomination when we left Zeist for South Africa at the end of 1980. When we returned in July 1981, we found that a few believers had decided in our absence to start a new fellowship. Our friends Hein Postma and Wim Zoutewelle had been having talks with Albert Ramaker and Jan Kits (sr) in an attempt to start a new evangelical fellowship in Zeist along the lines of the Christian Brethren.53 I was not opposed to the idea of another Bijbelgetrouwe (Bible based) fellowship, but I was not very happy that they decided to have the meetings also on Sunday mornings. I did not like the idea at all of competing with other Christian groups.
Yet, it was still a long way off before I learned that church disunity and a competitive spirit among the various fellowships were actually demonic strongholds. My preference was to have a fellowship on a Saturday so that everybody could still attend a church of their choice on Sundays. I also had not discerned yet how Constantine had high-jacked the Church, estranging us from our Jewish roots by making Sunday a compulsory day of rest. If we had known it at that time, our decision to join the new group might have been different.
What I specially liked about the new fellowship was that there would be no formal membership. The concept of dual membership that we brought along from the German Moravian Church - where the members also held membership of the state Church – also appealed to me. At any rate, we remained members of the Moravian Church. On both sides people were unhappy, but we were not to be deterred. On virtually every Saturday evening one would find me joining the traditional Moravian ‘Zangdienst’ (Evensong) and on Sunday evening I enjoyed the spiritually enriching liturgies that were constantly updated by our neighbour Hans Rapparlié. We maintained a cordial relationship to the old couple, the Rapparliés - who lived beneath us - until they had to leave for an old age home. On Sunday afternoons (later on Saturday evenings) we often would play together on different musical instruments and/or sing and pray with each other.
The tragedy of denominational division really hit home to us on Sunday mornings when we set out for the new fellowship where I had been asked to join the leadership team. With some hesitation I agreed to serve on the Broederraad and lead the young people along with Tom, the son of Wim Zoutewelle. The minute fellowship moved to a new location at Panweg from where it significantly influenced the region in the 1980s.


11. Back to Africa?

Very surprisingly, Rosemarie did not protest at the prospect of a return to South Africa after we had heard from Hein Postma that the Dorothea Mission was looking for missionaries to work among the youth of Soweto. I had little hesitation to apply. However, I clearly mentioned that racial reconciliation was dear to us. The Dorothea Mission probably regarded my stance as too political because we never received any reply from them. Via friends we heard a few years later that our application was fiercely debated. With us being a racially mixed couple, this was of course quite a hot potato in a mission agency that was very close to Afrikaner thinking, if not completely immersed in it.
The next few years I applied for numerous teaching vacancies in Holland. My South African nationality however made me suspect because I purposely refrained from mentioning my race in all applications. I did not want to be employed because of sympathy. On the other hand, not being Dutch, i.e. having a foreign accent on the phone and in the classroom, was not to my advantage either. Amid the uncertainty of permanent employment our daughter Magdalena Erika - named respectively after my late sister and Rosemarie’s mother - was born on 17 March 1982.
I was elated when Jakes and Anne joined us in Holland with their little boy Alain, although we had become somewhat estranged from each other in between.
The teaching stint at Hanover Park in 1981 healed the temporary rift because of our different views of handling people in government. Jakes still thought that isolating the regime as the best way. I still had my doubts. We agreed to disagree in this matter.
A return to Southern Africa was however still high on my list of priorities. When we heard of a teaching position in Lesotho, I was of course quite interested. But also other ‘doors’ never seemed to open, with my South African passport constituting an important obstacle to get into any African country. Different missionaries who worked in South Africa would visit us when they were on furlough thus we got to know Dick and Rie van Stelten, a missionary couple from the little town of Josini as well as Cees en Els Lugthardt, who were working with the Dorothea Mission at the headquarters of the Dorothea Mission in Rosslyn, north of Pretoria. Shadrach Moloka, originally likewise from the Dorothea Mission, I knew already from my first period in Germany when he ministered in Stuttgart and Liebenzell.

The Start of the Goed Nieuws Karavaan
Peter Kalmijn, was one of the youth group members of the Panweg fellowship that met in our home. The Lord used Peter at different times in our lives to challenge us. Peter had returned from Austria with his mother Geertje and his brother Hans in 1981. His parents had been missionaries there before estrangement and divorce caused them to return to the Netherlands. On one of our youth evenings in 1982 Peter mentioned that the organizers of the ‘Kinderkaravaan’ - a local outreach to children - were looking for a leader. This occurred when I was unemployed after a year of Religious Instruction at the College Blauwkapel in Utrecht.
While he was still at high school Rens Schalkwijk, who returned with his parents from Jamaica in 1978, joined the weekly prayer group at the Moravian Widow’s house. This was the one link to the denomination that I kept intact throughout our period of ministry in Zeist. Later Rens’ mother led the prayer group at the Zinzendorf House next to their home when the venue was changed.
With Rens I felt spiritually very much on the same wave length. In 1982 the young man suggested that the two of us should come together for early morning prayer, just as our spiritual ancestors, the Moravians, had been doing. This we put into practice, soon joined by Peter van Veldhuyzen, a young member of the Panweg fellowship, praying in the nearby forest before Peter left for his work.
The suggestion of Peter Kalmijn and the 1982 prayer effort with Rens and Peter van Veldhuyzen culminated in the setting up an evangelical group, the ‘Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan’ that included various facets of evangelical outreach.
Spiritual warfare
When we came to Holland we were fairly ignorant with regard to unseen things happening in the spiritual realm. However, we should have known better because we had been reading about occult realities in the literature of Kurt Koch, a German theologian. In the course of our experiences with our congregation I was leading in Utrecht, we started to catch up.
We soon knew that we were back in the battlefront. In the run-up to the birth of our son Samuel in July 1984 we were clearly confronted with occult forces. Rosemarie had excruciating pains in her back during the pregnancy with our Samuel. She feared that evil forces were trying to kill the foetus. We had learnt about generational curses and influences in the meantime. Rosemarie heard from her father why he never wanted a son. Through generations some curse had rested on their family coming via the sons. One night when she had this heaviness and fears again, she woke me. When she told me this, we immediately prayed, breaking the curse in Jesus name! That was the last time that Rosemarie had these problems, albeit that the actual birth of Samuel was not plain sailing at all.
Samuel’s birth brought Brigitte Röser, a Dutch friend who has been visiting us from Germany from time to time, closer into the family frame. We asked her to become his godmother. In later years she was to become our contact person for the distribution of our newsletters in Germany.
Knowing that we were now in the front-line of missionary outreach, we were not surprised any more at the attacks that we recognized as demonic. Yet, we still had not discerned mutual links between Communism, Islam and other anti-Christian forces.

A period of great uncertainty
After stopping to function as a minister of the Moravian Church, a period of great uncertainty followed for us as a couple. This coincided with the practical need to feed my family. It was not easy at all to get employment as a teacher of Religious Instruction and my South African (Bachelor of Arts) degree was not recognised in Holland. I decided to resume studies in Mathematics, not only as a way of getting a post more easily, but also as a vehicle with which I could return to Africa in ‘tent-making’ missionary work. We really wanted to get involved with missions but no door seemed to open. One of the major handicaps was my South African passport.
In the mid 1980s a speaker from OM (Operation Mobilisation) pitched up at one of our Panweg church meetings. I sensed a challenge to venture into one of the Middle East countries as a missionary. A simple comparison of the number of missionaries in Islamic countries brought home to me the dire need to share the gospel there. It was clear that I could not go into one of the closed countries as a Christian minister of religion. I was thus highly motivated to get an updated Mathematics teaching qualification for this purpose. Rosemarie was however not at all enthralled at my idea of going to a country like Egypt. But she initially patiently allowed me to continue with my studies in Mathematics, in order to use that as an entrance into one of the countries that were closed for Christian missionaries.
* *
Although I had no proof that my activism had contributed in any way, I did sense some satisfaction when the law in my home country that prohibited people from different races to marry, was finally repealed in 1985. This caused me to test the waters back home with regard to take up a teaching post in South Africa. The Group Areas Act, which prescribed where the respective races were to reside, was however still standing erect as a major hurdle.

A great interest in missionary work
Our diminutive evangelical fellowship at the Panweg in Zeist maintained a great interest in missions in general. From the word go the fellowship supported various missionaries. Liesbeth Walvaart and Bart Berkheij had been linked to the group before they went to England where they studied at All Nations Bible College, soon to be followed by Bep de Bruyn and Peter Zoutewelle as missionaries to West Africa. With Willie Jonker, a church member and a worker with the Evangelische Omroep as a board member of the Red Sea Mission, the outreach to Muslims was natural. In the loving low-key missionary outreach of the Goed Nieuws Karavaan team that Rosemarie and I were leading, we now started to work with many Moroccan and Turkish children and the youth of Zeist.
We had a fairly close friendship to Bart Berkheij, praying with him through all many obstacles before he was finally accepted as a missionary. And how happy was he to introduce to us his British fiancée Ruth! A special bond developed between Ruth and Rosemarie after their marriage. The two were pregnant almost at the same time when we expected our three youngest children. How did we empathise with the Berkheij family as they struggled for many years to go through all sorts of preparations until they could finally go to Mali with the Red Sea Mission! They knew how I yearned to return to Africa and how no door seemed to open for us..
By 1986 Rosemarie could still not appreciate at all my idea of wanting to go to a Muslim country like Egypt. This was not easy at all. I had just turned 40 and our fifth child Tabitha was born on 25 April 1986, the very day I had an examination to write and thus not able to be present for the birth. (Apart from our first born, who came lifeless into the world, and Danny, who was delivered via a Caesarean, I was privileged to be present at the birth of the other three.). The information in one of the OM leaflets however effectively nailed the door to me to proceed with any procedure to be accepted by that mission agency: ‘Don’t wait until you are 40 or when you have five children.’
A phone call to the WEC Headquarters in Emmeloord likewise discouraged me. I erroneously got the impression that they would expect me to go to a Bible School again. That put paid to our joining WEC at that point in time. Later we understood that we would probably not have been accepted then, because of Mission Policy. New couples with five children would not have been accepted at that time.
A visit to the Panweg fellowship by Shadrach Maloka, an evangelist from South Africa, spawned the sending of clothing to needy evangelists who were linked to his work. Rosemarie was sensitive to the nudge by the Holy Spirit. Financially we were just making ends meet at this time, but we had a surplus of clothing because we received used clothing from different people. This was encouragement to start distributing clothing to missionaries, evangelists and other needy people. In our spacious home, the former parsonage, we always sub-rented at least one room or helped someone with accommodation - and yet we still had space to spare. A part of a big upstairs room that was only used as a guest facility, was changed into a small bring and share clothing ‘boutique’ from where also Dutch believers could come and help themselves, giving a donation in return. From the fund thus received we could send parcels to missionaries and needy believers in different countries. This gave the jitters to people like the Romanian dictator Nicolau Ceauçescu, who tried to prevent his nationals from having contact with the outside world.

Going to a Muslim country?
My Mathematics studies caused a lot of frustration because I had so little time for Rosemarie and the children. From 1985 I attended lectures on two evenings per week and often thereafter still studied or worked after coming home because I was also teaching simultaneously. One evening per week every fort-night there was also the church council meeting, apart from me being the leader of the city-wide evangelistic work of the Goed Nieuws Karavaan that we had started at the end of 1982. Almost every evening of the week I was not at home. The children only really saw me on the weekends. We tried to compensate for this by doing something together on the Sunday afternoons that they would enjoy. It surely was a good idea to take time with one child apiece over the weekends. This could be just going for a drive by bicycle, eat ice cream or whatever they would wish and which would not be expensive. This was also excellent for the education of our children, but it petered out however after only a few months. (Yet, we continued with the practice of me washing the dishes with one of the children in turn for many years, until I succumbed to Rosemarie’s request to buy a dish-washing machine because of the many guests we always had.)
Rosemarie could not appreciate at all my idea of going to a Muslim country like Egypt, but she reticently allowed me to continue with my studies in Mathematics. This was not easy at all. I had just turned 40 and our fifth child Tabitha was born on 25 April 1986. The information in one of the OM leaflets however effectively nailed the door: ‘Don’t wait until you are 40 or when you have five children…’ It was clear that I would not proceed further in an attempt to be accepted by that mission agency.

Regional Prayer
Rens Schalkwijk, had been coming in and out of our home - so much so that he was a natural choice to become the godfather of our youngest daughter Tabitha in 1986. One day he came along with the suggestion that we should resume our times of prayer, but perhaps in a different way. In January 1988 we started a Sunday evening prayer meeting at our home. Rens brought along another couple, Ria and her fiancé Lukas Hartong, who had been students at the local Pentecostal Bible School. Out of these prayer times Rens was ‘delegated’ to attend a meeting with David Bryant, an international speaker who had come to challenge the Dutch Christians with regard to Concerts of Prayer.
In August 1988 - through the active urge of Rens Schalkwijk and his contacts with Pieter Bos, the prayer movement in Holland got underway. Rens and I were soon leading the first unit of the ‘Regiogebed’ of the Netherlands - that of Driebergen-Zeist.
However, the summer of 1988 also brought a terrible shock when we heard that Bart Berkheij and his children had lost Ruth his wife and their young mother in a car accident. They had been in Mali only for a very short time! We had been feeling ourselves so close to them.

Suffering from spiritual Suffocation Before long I got involved in yet another skirmish. I ran into problems with a few members of our Panweg fellowship because a few Roman Catholic nuns had participated in the ‘Regiogebed’. Some believers had obviously been so brainwashed by anti-Catholic indoctrination that they could not believe that born-again people - especially nuns - could be in the ‘Church of the Pope’. The unity of the body of our Lord was an issue on which Rosemarie and I felt that we could not compromise. Other simultaneous tensions in the fellowship brought matters to a head. We soon suffered from spiritual suffocation. It was very special when we now received a letter from the Dick van Stelten54 in Josini (South Africa), which confirmed to us that we should consider moving on. To all intents and purposes a split occurred in the fellowship.
The internal differences of the fellowship coincided with a financial and transport crisis within our family. Our old VW minibus needed expensive repairs at a time when we had a negative banking account for the first time. We had been scraping the barrel for many years, but we somehow never landed in the red. Now this had also happened.
We decided to walk on Sunday mornings to the nearby ‘Figi’ congregation - the Full Gospel Fellowship - until such time when we would be ‘mobile’ again. The problem of transport was really not a crucial issue because everybody in Holland uses the bicycle all too often. As a family we were regularly on the road on a Sunday afternoon in that way, with our two youngest children respectively transported by Rosemarie and myself.
We were slated, slandered and unfairly criticised, but we nevertheless hoped that matters could be resolved and that reconciliation could be achieved. It never entered our head to defend ourselves. We nevertheless yearned to return to the fellowship with which we had so many happy memories over the previous seven years.
But it was not to be. The reconciliation did not come about until much later, when the children were already settled in the new church environment of ‘Figi’. It took some time for me personally to get warm in the much bigger new fellowship, but once we joined a home cell in 1989, things improved considerably. That this congregation would not fully support the ‘regiogebed’ was nevertheless a matter of distress to me. The building of an own kingdom was very much rife, also in the ‘free churches’.
We had proved a point in the meantime with the work of the ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’. This local evangelistic ministry was going well with about 30 workers from different denominations, involved in a wide range of evangelistic ministries. We had demonstrated to Dutch Christians that it was possible for people from different church backgrounds to work together if doctrinal tussles were not allowed to cause quarrels, if they would only concentrate on the uniting person of Jesus.

My dream to return to Africa buried
Rosemarie and I had been attending the annual mission day of the Evangelical Alliance regularly in Amsterdam. Year after year we went there, hoping that the door to foreign missions would open up. When we went to Amsterdam in 1988 we had actually more or less given up the possibility to enter missionary work. My dream to return to Africa was all but buried. Our eldest son Danny was about to enter secondary school and there were four more siblings to follow. When Tabitha would be finished with her education I would be almost at pension age. On top of it, it seemed as if hardly any mission agency would be prepared to accept a family with five children.
For years we had been attending the annual mission conferences, but everything still seemed far away. We went to Amsterdam nevertheless, where I took along a leaflet from Africa Inland Mission (AIM). It struck me that they were looking for teachers at their boarding school for the children of missionaries in Kenya. When we spoke to the representatives of AIM, they encouraged us, even seeing other possibilities for us with my training and background. The only problem was my South African passport. But seeing that I had been in Holland so long, they suggested that I should apply for a Dutch passport.
The visit of the Dutch AIM leaders was the catalyst to start using the book Operation World to pray with our children through all the African countries. In this way we hoped to discern in which country the Lord wished to use us. The effect of these prayers at meal times was initially not positive at all, if not counter-productive. The sprouts did not seem excited at all at the prospect of having to leave Europe for what they perceived as primitive Africa. But our children now noticed that we meant business in respect of missionary involvement.

Cutting off my own Roots?
The suggestion to apply for Dutch citizenship was easier said than done. The problem that I would then have to apply for a visa to visit my parents and my home country did not even enter my mind at that stage. My main problem was the feeling of despair at cutting off my own roots. It had been traumatic already that not only our home, school and church in District Six had been razed to the ground, that my high school in Vasco suffered the same fate because of the Group Areas Act and that our home in Tiervlei/Ravensmead had to be vacated under the guise of slum clearance. Would I now also have to lose citizenship of the country I loved so intensely?
I nevertheless buried my pride and inner turmoil, sensing that a step of obedience was now required. We had been praying all the years for the opportunity to return to Africa for missionary work. How could I opt out now? Surely I could not be a Jonah again, running away from the responsibility in disobedience?
* *
A few months later God had the opportunity to confirm the move in a sovereign way. It all started when our black and White TV set that we had bought in Berlin in 1975, packed up just prior to the Olympic Games of 1988. When the entertainment appliance started giving trouble, we decided not to replace it. The pending Olympic Games were however something we thought that could also have some educational value for our children. Our quest after a second-hand model from the newspaper resulted in us agreeing to take a TV set on loan via a befriended family. Their aged mother was not using her set much in the old age home. However, we insisted that we would keep the TV only for the duration of the Olympic Games.
For many years we had not been in the position financially to consider even going to South Africa again. Somehow we could put some cents together so that I could go with one child. My parents had not yet seen our daughter Magdalena. One of the obligatory visits was of course Wellington, where my friend jakes was now the pastor. He decided to return to the pastorate, turning down a bursary for finishing his doctorate or an appointment with Professor David Bosch, who was already one of South Africa’s most prominent theologians.55

A Dispute turning into a Blessing
As we drove from Lienzingen back to Holland, after having spent a few days with our family in the European summer of 1988, Rosemarie and I were involved once again in a subdued dispute that had been a cause of anxiety and tension in the family - my Mathematics studies. I also had some responsibility in our church congregation apart from leading the Goed Nieuws Karavaan, so that there was little time for the family. I now possessed a Mathematics qualification for Dutch schools, but I was considering to add another year to upgrade my teaching diploma that would give me more options for getting permanent employment.
We agreed that I would only do that extra year if God would give us a worker who would take responsibility for the driving of the vehicle to the various Goed Nieuws Karavaan children’s clubs of Zeist. For the very same evening the Friday evening ‘coffee bar’ outreach was scheduled. Harmen Pos came of his own accord to tell me that God had laid on his heart to take over the driving of the vehicle that gave its name to the organisation. He became not only the chauffeur of the vehicle, but also the maintenance man. Harmen cared for the missionary truck like his baby until we sold the blessed evangelistic tool in 1991, just before our going full-time into missions.


12. Flexing Missionary Muscles


1988 ended so full of hope. After so many temporary teaching posts in Holland, I really yearned to settle down. I had an updated secondary Maths teaching certificate in my pocket and I was on the verge of getting an even higher qualification in that subject. I had no intention of continuing academic studies as such, but the idea of venturing into missions was somehow blocked out of my mind by November 1988. I finally got a teaching position in Huizen, a position that could become permanent. After all the dark years of employment uncertainty and scores of applications - plus the local Moravian congregation breathing down our necks to move out of the former parsonage56 - light at last seemed to break through. The prospect of having a home of our own in the picturesque little town of Huizen with a permanent teaching post in the offing was just too attractive after the years of uncertainty. It all but nullified my vision for missionary involvement. I definitely required another ‘Jonah experience’ to get me back on track in terms of a calling to missions.

Struggle - and Victory
The year 1989 started with turmoil. Every Saturday evening Martje van Dam had been coming to us with Gré Boerstra, another believer from the Panweg fellowship, for a time of prayer. We had been doing this regularly with our neighbours, the old brother and sister Rapparlié until they went to an old age home. But Martje, who had survived the death sentence of breath cancer for almost 11 years, was now terminally ill. Her cancer recurred.
* * *
We have a family tradition to wake the birthday boy or girl early in the morning by singing the prayer of Martin Luther “Führe ihn (sie) O Herr und leite...” [Guide o Lord and lead him (her)]. When we followed the meaningful ritual for our eldest son Danny on the 4th of February, we had no clue of the multiple double blow that was to hit our family that day. First of all the news came through that Martje van Dam passed away. But we knew that this could happen any day.
We were not prepared for it when a phone call from Mühlacker informed us that Papa Göbel died in his car after he had a heart attack. As if all of that was not enough, we heard that a close friend from our Panweg fellowship, Els van Wingerden, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. To the Van Wingerden family we had quite close ties not only because they had five children of similar age than our sprouts. They had left the Reformed church with similar battles as we experienced in the Moravian Church. Hans, the husband, was ill with a serious rheumatic problem. He was in constant pain. They were also battling financially all the time. Children’s clothing was shared to and fro between the two families. Together we had been battling with the crisis at the fellowship, which we had left. The Van Wingerden family still stayed on for some time under much duress.
But that was not the end of the calamities. As I travelled from school in Huizen with a teacher colleague one afternoon, I heard from him that my teacher predecessor wanted to return to the secondary school. It was just the time when the decision on my probationary three months was to expire. I knew that I could not compete, because I did not belong to the right church. Actually I was also still struggling to cope in the Dutch teaching environment. Of course, being in a foreign country in a situation of unemployment makes one very vulnerable. The odds were stacked against me. Yet, I now at least I had an up-to-date Dutch Mathematics teaching diploma, hoping to have an upgraded one in a few months. The Lord used this circumstance to throw us back into exploring a possible involvement in missions, where we wanted to be in the first place. I had almost forgotten that I had applied for Dutch citizenship in order to get to the African mission field. I had to come to grips that all the disappointments were actually another Jonah experience. I was running away from my calling. Information we received during the funeral of our father (-in-law) in Germany comforted us. For years we had prayed that he would come back to the Lord. At a family camp the whole family committed their lives to Jesus, but thereafter he gradually got backslidden because he had no spiritual nourishment. It was very special when our dear Mama Göbel told us that he carried in his wallet (that was found in his pocket at his death) the letter that Rosemarie wrote to him just before our wedding, asking Papa Göbel to attend and apologising for the trauma she had caused them through her friendship to me. Although he did not attend our wedding, he evidently treasured that letter.
* * *
Ever since an old German couple, the Scheunemanns, were sleeping in our home as guests of the Rapparliés, our downstairs neighbours in Zeist, we had been receiving Weltweit, the German two-monthly newsletter of WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) International. After we had read there about a family camp to be held in the little town of Braunfels, we decided to book in faith. We had no money for such luxuries as holidays at that stage, but we definitely needed a break. The Lord provided miraculously.
We had hardly arrived there, when the news reached us that Rosemarie’s mother had a stroke, that she was committed to hospital. This was only a few months after her father had passed on. Rosemarie left by train for Mühlacker, starting a period in our life that would require more visits to her mom. The holiday brought WEC into focus as a possible mission agency with which we could work, although we still had AIM as a back burner when I expected to get my passport the next year, i.e. 1990. At our application for Dutch citizenship the accompanying letter stated that we had to reckon with a two-year waiting period.

God mysteriously at Work
I completed my upgraded teaching diploma, but that also signalled the end of my teaching career in Holland. When I applied for a post in Gouda, the principal confided telephonically that he wanted to employ me but that the two Maths teachers on his staff resisted the move because they were not qualified for the subject. With future retrenchments expected because of a merger, their own jobs would then have been on the line if I were appointed. No other application for a teaching post was successful. Yet, God was at work.
We knew that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform! Unwittingly I assisted in preparing my return to Africa, to my dear heimat at that! On 4 October 1989 I wrote a letter of confession to President De Klerk, the new president, after I sensed an inner conviction to confess to him my activism and arrogance, offering an apology. Over the years I had written quite a few letters to the presidential incumbent’s predecessors and to some of the Cabinet ministers. Rosemarie felt that I was wasting my time. She was sure that my letters would never reach the likes of Mr P.W. Botha. I persevered nevertheless, but after 1982 the letters became very sparse compared to the years 1978-80.
At our regiogebed meeting of 4 October 1989, I mentioned in passing to someone that I had posted a letter to President De Klerk that day. Spontaneously Mr van Loon, a teacher from the nearby town of Doorn, a one-off visitor of our prayer meeting, suggested that we devote more time that evening to pray for South Africa. Nobody objected. That must have been supernatural guidance. It was the only occasion that we did it in that way, i.e. praying for only one country and not for other people and issues.
Nobody of us present at the regiogebed was aware that President De Klerk was to meet Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak, my friend of our common teenage years, the following week. That strategic meeting became in a sense a watershed in the politics of the country, the prelude to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid. Also in other countries - especially in South Africa itself - people had been praying for a change of the suicidal direction of the political system.57
This regiogebed prayer meeting was special to me in another sense. This was one of the very first opportunities in evangelical circles where I experienced clear support for my opposition to my government at home.58 There had always been individuals from evangelical ranks who had given support, but the lead from the Evangelische Omroep was very ambiguous. Some people even perceived the Dutch evangelical radio station as being supportive of apartheid. There was somehow the idea still going around that a good Christian had to be supportive of either apartheid or Communism. I was opposing both, but not so isolated anymore as in earlier days.

Financially in the red
When a letter arrived from The Hague regarding my application for Dutch citizenship, they also mentioned an administration fee of 400 guilders. This was occurring at a time when we had no savings available. Ever since I left the pastorate we had been scraping the barrel financially almost all the time.
Rosemarie and I went to the Lord with the letter in prayer. I still had the turmoil in my heart, really struggling with the prospect of having to give up my South African citizenship.
God intervened in a clear way when a befriended family that was struggling themselves financially, wanted to give us 800 guilders. I was overawed that God sent in double the amount we needed! It turned out that the husband, who brought the money, was actually using it as a litmus test on the evangelical Christians. Our friend came to fetch the TV of his mother, but he and his wife had decided to give us money so that we could buy a new set. He was sure that we would be too proud to accept their generous offer. He did not know that we had been praying for confirmation with regard to the money for my Dutch citizenship. He was just as surprised when I showed him the letter. He agreed that we could use the money for that purpose and other more urgent needs.59 I was reassured at the same time that God was in the move of my having to hand over my South African passport.

Africa, here I come
The annual mission day of the Evangelical Alliance was held from 1989 in the little town of Barneveld. October 1989 was to become one of the very special months in our lives. We were challenged in that month when Marry Schotte of WEC shared in Barneveld about a mission school in Vavoua (Ivory Coast) where they needed teachers. We soon arranged for her to come and visit us.
The attitude of our children in respect of Africa changed when Marry Schotte came along with a video of the mission school in Côte d’Ivoire where she was teaching. Videos were still something special in those days. Suddenly the children caught the vision to go with us to Africa. At our extended weekly family devotions even the little ones now started to pray fervently for a teacher to accompany us to England where we were required to do our WEC candidates’ course. The need of the WEC school in Vavoua seemed geared to what I could offer. In the school for the children of missionaries, they had departments for Dutch and German children. The common language of the school was English. I could teach Maths - for which they indeed had a vacancy - in all three languages. The original idea of joining AIM disappeared gradually but in later years we were to have renewed contact with AIM missionaries.
I hardly had opportunity to digest this challenge when along came our friend Wil Heemsbergen with a repeated invitation to me to join a bus trip to Romania with all costs paid, to assist on the pastoral side of the touring bus to the Communist stronghold. I had stated the first time that I was not really at ease to accept the invitation because of my situation of unemployment, waiting on replies to applications.
It was now already well into October. I had just heard that some of my most recent applications for teaching posts were unsuccessful. Thus I would theoretically be free to join the group. But there was still another hurdle - my possession of a South African passport. I was uneasy about it, after my experiences every time I had to cross a border into East Berlin. I explained to her my predicament that I feared that I would cause problems for the rest of the group. Wil promptly relayed my reservation to Jan van de Bor, the Dutch leader of the mission agency The Underground Church,60 and the organiser of the trip. Although the organisers wanted to give it a go with me on their bus - in spite of my South African passport, I was still somewhat uneasy.
Very soon thereafter our friend Bart Berkheij, who lost his wife in a car accident in 1988, phoned with the request whether I could join him on a trip to Mali at the end of January 1990. All expenses would be paid for him and a friend, to go and wind up things where he had stayed with his family. I declined Bart’s initial invitation to join him because I was still unemployed. I was definitely not a Jonah trying to evade a difficult task. In fact, it all sounded very attractive to get a feeling of West Africa in the light of our own preparations to go to Côte d’Ivoire. However, I found it ethically incorrect to plan this while I was still hoping to get a teaching post. Everything looked cut and dried when I heard that someone else was due to join him on his trip to Mali.

Underground Work
When the Dutch leader of the organizing support in Holland for the “Underground Church” approached me a second time, my most recent application for a teaching post had been very discouraging. My hope of getting an appointment as a Maths teacher in Holland was all but dashed. But this cleared the way for me joining the 'tour' group to Hungary and Romania, all expenses paid for pastoral and counselling duties I would have to be ready to perform.
And then it happened! Out of the blue I heard that my application for Dutch citizenship was successful, without any test of language proficiency that I had expected as the next step – and much earlier than what everybody had anticipated. I unexpectedly received a letter from the office of Dutch Queen, informing me that I qualified for a Dutch passport. Within a few days I had my passport, ready to be off to Hungary and Romania! Many believers in Zeist covered us in prayer for the trip to Romania, one of the prime Communist strongholds of the time.
The trip to Hungary and Romania was quite exciting and blessed. Although none of us could read Hungarian, I was specially blessed to see that Christian literature was freely available in Budapest. We delivered the bulk of our special load – Russian Children's Bibles and other literature that was forbidden in almost all the Soviet-block countries in a Reformed Church. We slept one night with families from the congregation ahead of the main part of our mission - the Communist stronghold where the dictator Nicolae Andruţă Ceauşescu was ruling with an iron hand.
As we were driving there the next day, one of the passengers - who had been a Hungarian before her marriage to a Dutchman, picked up on the news via the radio that a warning was spread against a bus with tourists from the West. As we had dumped our 'dangerous' material already in Budapest, the scrutiny of Romania's Securitate at the border was nerve-wrecking but it transpired without a hitch.
I was a rookie on a trip of this kind, a tourist – albeit that I did not pay a cent towards the trip! All those like me would stay at night in the hotel while the Dutch leader of the “Underground Church” and a few other regulars would be involved with clandestine operations of which we were not aware. The next day we took clothing in suitcases to certain addresses. If we were stopped by the police we would just be tourists, asking for the address of our hotel. Romanians were not allowed to have contact with anybody from the West. As it happened, I and my other two in my group were not stopped. However, nobody at the address where we delivered the gift suit case with content could speak a Western language. And yet, we had such wonderful supernatural fellowship in the Lord.
One of our group who protested at the border on our return to Hungary when a guard insisted on taking his video camera for inspection. This was a mistake onto which Securitate latched – an excuse to put the whole group through stringent questioning. They had done their home-work properly, interrogating those tour group participants who did the clandestine work. We travelled back to Holland in a very sombre mood. What would Nicolae Ceauşescu and his cronies do to the families we had visited and assisted? What a blessing it was to hear soon thereafter of a mass movement starting in Timişoara, a city that we had visited.

Demise of Nicolae Andruţă Ceauşescu
Demonstrations in the city of Timişoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evict Laszlo Tõkés, an ethnic Hungarian pastor, accused by the government of inciting ethnic hatred. Members of his congregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support.
Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police and Securitate fired on demonstrators on December 17, 1989. On December 18 Ceauşescu departed for a visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timişoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return on the evening of December 20, the situation became even more tense. He gave a televised speech from inside the Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timişoara in terms of an 'interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs' and an 'external aggression on Romania's sovereignty'.
The country, which had no information of the Timişoara events from the national media, learned about the Timişoara revolt from western radio stations and by word of mouth. On the next day, December 21, a mass meetingwas staged. Official media presented it as a 'spontaneous movement of support for Ceauşescu',
When the Ceauşescus attempted to flee, they were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army. On December 25, 1989 the two were sentenced to death by a military court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgovişte.

A Trip to West Africa.
I had hardly returned from the trip to Romania, when Bart Berkheij approached me again to accompany him to West Africa. The friend, who would have gone with him to Mali, had pulled out. I still had no teaching appointment. This time I was ready to accept the invitation to join him to go to Mali on condition that he would join me to Côte d’Ivoire. In the latter country I hoped to explore the situation at the WEC mission school where I hoped to go and teach. Thus the itinerary could soon be finalised. I would join him on the trip to Mali for two weeks and the third week he would accompany me on an orientation trip to the Ivory Coast.

We were scheduled to fly from Abidjan, the capital city of Côte d’Ivoire on 16 February, 1990. The last day in the West African metropolis was exceptional. I had already enjoyed the bus trip from Vavoua, during which I had a meaningful ‘conversation’ with a student who had studied German. I practiced my recently acquired little bit of French, translating a tract about the lost sheep of Luke 15 into German, for him to check. The openness for the Gospel in the West African metropolis impressed me deeply.
Bart and I spent the morning doing some sightseeing and shopping – buying small artefacts to take along for the families at home! Nostalgia overtook me as I looked over the Islamic city! When I saw a few mosques, it so much resembled the old District Six, the slum-like area of my childhood. I had thought that South Africa was way out of my mind in terms of a return there! But in a fleeting moment I was overwhelmed by nostalgia. It was strange that my trip was supposed to be an orientation for us as missionaries to West Africa, but I was now also ambivalently longing to return to my home country. On this day Nelson Mandela was released. I was quite sad that I could not even witness the event via a TV set! Is the way opening up for me to return after all? But now I was more set on returning to Côte d’Ivoire to come and work in the WEC mission school in Vavoua.
With the 'iron curtain' of Communism and the edifice of apartheid all but shattered by February 1990, supernatural intervention occurred in Abidjan to nudge me to tackle the daunting wall of Islam. With my Dutch missionary friend Bart Berkheij, I landed in a 'mosque’ by accident. When all the shops closed down at lunch time that Friday, we had no opportunity to continue our memento shopping spree. We simply took a seat next to the road, when prayer mats were rolled out all around us. Bart was sitting obliquely behind me. Somehow I had the impression that he was also doing the obligatory raka’ts, the Islamic cycles of bodily movements accompanying the prayers. Thus I simply joined in, imitating the people in front of me. Suddenly I heard an angry stifled shout-whisper: ‘Ashley, wat doe je daar!’ (Ashley, what are you doing!) What a bashing he gave me hereafter for going through the Islamic motions. Strangely enough, I felt embarrassed, but I did not feel very deeply sorry from within...
As I looked at the people in front of me, I experienced a thrill. It was as if the Lord was reassuring me that these bodily movements were no more than meaningless tradition; that some day the Islamic wall would also crash like the communist ‘iron curtain’ had done. The experience of that day helped me to persevere over the next decade and a half with low-key missionary work among Muslims although it seemed as if we were wasting our time. Islam was expanding all the time, buying property in Cape Town and building mosques all over the Cape Peninsula.
* * *

Back home in Holland we deemed it fit to speak to the leaders of the local Full Gospel Church about our mission plans, even though we had been church members for less than a year. The dynamic ‘Mama’ Heijnk was quite contented when she heard that we intended to use teaching, the vocation in which I had been trained. She stated clearly that as a church they were financially committed to ‘Kruistochten’ (Open Doors), although she really felt that more missionaries should go to the Muslim world.
At the discussion with the new church leadership team a few months later - the old Heijnks had taken a back seat - they were quite surprised that we didn’t mention financial support. Not very long hereafter, the elders progressed even further along a new road: they committed themselves to substantial regular monthly support for us. (That promise became the basis of what we would trust the Lord for rental payments in Cape Town in 1992.).
As we travelled in West Africa I had lots of time during which I wrote a diary of the trip. A friend in Zeist who had access to a computer volunteered to type it for me, but somehow I never saw the handwritten manuscript again, forming yet another casualty of my literary escapades.

The Yoke of ritual Bondage
As the years went on, we discerned that many Muslims were wrestling under the yoke of ritual bondage. The question became even more pressing: How will all those millions of people who are still veiled, ever get rid of it? As my wife and I read 2 Corinthians 3 once again, we were reminded that Martin Luther only got into the freedom of Christ when he discovered that he needed a Saviour. This only occurred when he developed a deep sense of urgency about his own sin. We also realised anew that this is something that only God can accomplish in a sovereign way. God doesn’t need us, but we can be instruments in His hands to change the world, especially through prayer.
The three weeks were sufficient to excite me about possibilities to share the gospel in West Africa. The discussions at the school in Vavoua, Ivory Coast, were promising, although I foresaw that as a chapter, merely as a prelude to get into other missionary work after a few years. But I still had to get fluent in French (Rosemarie had not even started learning this language).
* *
The Lord used the trip in yet another way. While I was in West Africa, our long-standing friend Geertje Rehorst visited Rosemarie one evening. After she had to return from Austria with her two teenage sons, we helped to make them feel at home in the new environment as part of the youth group held in our home.
When Geertje heard from Rosemarie that we were praying for a teacher, she asked all sorts of questions. Because she had been ruled unfit for teaching a few years before this, we never even seriously considered Geertje as a possible candidate to help us out.
When her son Peter visited us with his wife Annelies soon after my return, we told them of our predicament, our need of a teacher to accompany us to England. He promptly responded with ‘Have you thought of my mother?’ At the school for the blind Geertje had been teaching children of different age groups. When we invited her over one evening to put the question to her, Geertje confirmed that she knew all along that the Lord wanted her to go with us to England. She was only waiting on us to approach her.

Come over and help us!
On my return from West Africa there were quite a few letters awaiting me, two of which were challenges to new areas of ministry. Most of all I was surprised that Rosemarie appeared quite tense about my response to a letter from South Africa. Out of the blue there was a hand-written letter from Pietie Orange, a friend from our Tiervlei/Ravensmead days, the one who invited me to preach at their youth service in 1964.
There was not much in Pietie’s letter in terms of contents, but very clearly there was the clarion call: COME OVER AND HELP US. Under normal circumstances I would have jumped at this opportunity to return to my home country, but with many different missionary opportunities that have suddenly opened up, I was quite confused. The experiences in West Africa especially were still fresh in my mind. For years the doors to mission services seemed to remain closed and now there appeared to be many doors wide open. Which was the right one?
I was surprised to sense Rosemarie’s excitement about the possibility to go to South Africa. She knew of my fervent desire to return to my home country. In the early years of our marriage it caused a lot of strain when she sensed that I perceived it as a sacrifice to be in Europe. Through my ‘Joseph experience’ during personal devotions the Lord had by now thoroughly dealt with my craving after a return to South Africa. Like Joseph who was exiled to Egypt, I was in the meantime prepared to serve the Lord anywhere in the world, quite willing never to return to South Africa if that was the confirmed divine guidance. However, the African continent was still my silent preference.
With Campus Crusade I had started to do some voluntary work in Holland with their devout worker Bram Krol. Also from that side we were challenged to go and work full-time. I had learned to use the four spiritual laws and we started seriously to buy a house in Zeist from where we would operate. (Rosemarie’s parents wanted to help us with capital towards this end when her father was still alive).
I also got to know Cees Rentier and David Appelo through this outreach. Cees worked with us in our Goed Nieuws Karavaan outreach and later led a major ministry of loving outreach to Turkish people in the Netherlands. David Appelo was to play a big role in helping me to get a manuscript prepared for the Golden Wedding anniversary of my parents in January 1991..
We decided to move further along the road towards the teaching post at the WEC school for missionary kids in Ivory Coast, unless the Lord would close the ‘door’. Lovingly Jean Barnicoat, the directress of the WEC mission school, pointed out in a letter that the age and number of our children militated against such a venture. I was shattered to some extent when this reply came. I had been looking forward to serve in Vavoua, starting to learn French to that end.
Journey into the unknown
In his faithfulness the Lord intervened once again. Out of the blue we received a phone call from Dick and Ann van Stelten, a missionary couple in the little town of Josini in South Africa, near to the Mozambican border. They invited us, challenging us to come and take over their work.
Through a process of elimination we were guided to WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ). Jacob and Emmy Spronk, the Dutch WEC leaders, were very supportive that we should go and explore the work in Northern Natal, to see if the Lord confirmed it. Perhaps it could become a new venture of the mission agency. My mother was to have turned 80 at the end of that year and the Golden Wedding anniversary of my parents was due shortly thereafter.
After all the trips to other countries of the preceding months, we hardly had liberty to share our vision with other Christians, to visit South Africa on orientation. How could one sell that to others especially financially? In official terms I was still unemployed. But gradually every hurdle was taken as we decided to take the eldest and youngest of our children along on the journey into the unknown.
We were severely tested as we prayed about going to work in Northern Natal. In a TV programme on Dutch TV the reporter mentioned that Natal was worse than Lebanon and Northern Ireland put together. Was this the sort of situation into which we wanted to take our children?
In obedience to the Lord we nevertheless planned to start a visit to South Africa in Pretoria, visiting the Lugthardts, a Dutch missionary couple linked to the Dorothea Mission. From there we trusted that we would get to the Van Steltens in Josini somehow.

Pretoria was still very much an apartheid bastion in the year 1990. In the morning we attended the church of our friend Shadrach Maloka in Garankuwa just outside of Pretoria, to whom we had been sending parcels with clothing. It was no surprise to me when we heard that I would not be able to attend the evening service of the Afrikaanse Baptiste Kerk, but that Rosemarie could. We got the message. I was not allowed to attend because I was not White.

The Lord turned the tables
The Lord himself turned the tables when Cees Lugthardt came to me the Sunday afternoon with an ‘unanimous request of the church council’. Their pastor had contracted a slip disk at the morning service. Now they wanted me to preach in the evening. Never before had someone of colour attending the church, and now I was to be on their pulpit!
Rosemarie however gave me thumbs down after my first sermon draft. The old carnal activist in me had resurfaced. The Lord gave me grace to revamp my draft, to serve without any resentment. And the heavens did not come down! In fact, from the reactions of the congregants afterwards it seemed to have been an eye-opener for many of them.

A sense of home-coming
In a wonderful way transport was supplied for us to get to Josini. We were given a ‘bakkie’, a transport vehicle with only one seat for two or three passengers. Our two children that we had taken with us – Danny, our eldest son and Tabitha, our youngest - could sit under a canopy at the back.
In Josini it was clearly confirmed that the Lord did not call us to serve in Ubombo, a school for Zulu children. On the other hand, when we joined the national conference of WEC in Durban, we experienced a sense of home-coming. Although we did not know anybody present, we felt that we belonged there, in spite of a hick-up or two.61 Durban was the ideal preparation for our candidates’ orientation at Bulstrode in England soon after our return from South Africa. Also in Cape Town, the next step, things fell in place. It was agreed that we could return there at the beginning of 1992 with a role in representative work and possibly for evangelistic work among students.

The Lord at work in different ways
After the WEC leaders in Holland had suggested that we should have ‘contact persons’ before we would set out to our mission field, Rosemarie mentioned Harmen and Fenny Pos, our faithful ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’ co-workers. We could not have asked for more devout persons. The way they rallied around us became the example for other missionary support groups in our own church and even for many other groups in the Netherlands.
The Lord used the time in Bulstrode, the international WEC Headquarters near London, to bring Geertje Rehorst back into missions. Soon hereafter she started to learn Spanish, becoming the member care person for a few missionaries in Spain. (This was still quite a few years before it became the in thing in mission agencies to make someone responsible for member care.)
When we worked in Zeist among Moroccan and Turkish children, we were not aware that the Lord had started to prepare us for a future ministry among the Muslims of Cape Town. 62Working as a missionary in a Muslim country was nevertheless one of the options I kept in mind as a definite possibility. And then there was of course the visit to Mali and the Ivory Coast that had struck a chord in my heart to reach out more to those who were suffering under Islamic bondage.
The procedure to become WEC missionaries had already started when we suddenly became very uncertain. The Jonah spirit returned. We asked ourselves what would happen if WEC turned us down or if we decide not to join that agency after all. Then we would be without any accommodation. We knew how difficult it was to get a house even for a couple or a small family. With our five kids, would such a step be responsible? We decided to put out a ‘fleece’, to test the waters. If the Lord would give us people who would be willing to come and stay in our home and pay the rent for the six months of our missionary orientation, we would know for sure that God was confirming our call.
We indeed got a couple who had no children and both of whom were employed. That sounded perfect to us, looking like God’s perfect provision.
13. Testing Times

Come January 1991, we were already in Bulstrode, the headquarters of WEC International for the Candidates’ Orientation Course. The Lord used this time to start moulding us for our future ministry in Cape Town. Here we were clearly introduced to the concept of spiritual warfare for the first time in a clear way. Never before had we heard about terms like prayer walks, about strategic and targeted prayer although I had practised it before, for example in Zeist, together with other believers.

The Gulf War Paradigm
The Gulf War at the beginning of the year made things very practical. In one of the devotionals the assistant of Patrick Johnstone at the International Office demonstrated why it was necessary for the allied aeroplanes to prepare the area for the onslaught of the artillery.
I should have known more about spiritual warfare because Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Church, had introduced a term like ‘Streiterehe’ - the warrior marriage - centuries ago. (According to this concept the married partners sacrificed to be separated from the spouse for extended periods.) But all of this I had perceived as not valid for our time. At Bulstrode this changed because the Gulf War made the issue so practical. Furthermore, fundamentalist Islam became ever more clearly visible as a threat to world peace.

Field Study
As part of our missionary training at Bulstrode we had to write an assignment called a ‘field study’ about the country where we intended to go to. I had been giving talks about different aspects of South African life, but discerned that I did not know enough about the culture and history of the Indian population of my country. What also played a role in my thinking was the strategy to be used back home to help recruit South African Indians for missionary work in the subcontinent from where their ancestors originally hailed. We shared our ideas with Heather Jones, a missionary who had to leave Liberia because of the civil war there. She got challenged to go to Durban, to work among the Indians.
My suggestion now was that Rosemarie could study the politics, economy and related issues, while I would make a study of the South African Indians. This led me into looking at Hinduism and Islam, their two major religions. My experience in West Africa also influenced me in yet another way. I now also thought of the Black South Africans as potential missionaries to the Muslim countries of the continent. I also noted how I was impacted while in exile, hoping that we could one day also inspire foreigners in South Africa in a similar way to go and minister in their home countries. In the months hereafter I started writing my thoughts about these matters which ultimately led to a manuscript I called ‘A Goldmine of Missionary Recruitment.’
During my field study I discovered that Bo-Kaap, the residential area below Signal Hill, had become even more of an Islamic stronghold because of apartheid. A seed was sown into my heart.
The schooling of our children at Bulstrode belonged to the highlights of their educational career. Tante Geertje would often take them into the spacious grounds of the castle-like area and a special relationship developed to Joyce Scott and her husband Chris. Howard and Jill Sayers as the Candidate secretaries did their bit to make the experience very memorable to all of us as missionary candidates.

Missionary Orientation in Emmeloord
When we returned to Holland from England, we first had to go for two months to Emmeloord, to the Dutch HQ of WEC. In the occasional sermon, such as one in Steenwijk, I challenged Christians to send their ‘batteries’ to the Muslim stronghold of Bo-Kaap in the city where I was born and bred, to bombard the area before we as missionaries could go in as the infantry. The Holy Spirit had obviously started to prepare me for ministry in the prime Muslim area of the Mother City of South Africa. I was not aware at that stage that an SIM Life Challenge team was already active there with door-to-door outreach. We also had no concrete plans for involvement there.
In our correspondence to WEC South Africa we did mention that we wanted our hands free to spread the Gospel among the Cape Muslims. However, the South African WEC leadership desperately wanted to use us for representation in the Western Cape. The stated strategy of WEC in SA was to focus on recruitment, and not to start new ministries. We on the other hand were not inclined to get bogged down by administration and representation, not seeing that as our gifting.
Differences with the new WEC leadership in South Africa with regard to our future role clouded our start at Emmeloord. Also in Holland we got in a verbal skirmish with one of the leaders. We decided to defer our acceptance as WEC missionaries. We were definitely no Jonahs, ready to back off in the face of the challenges. However, we wanted clarity before we would leave for South Africa whether we would have freedom to evangelise there. We continued however with the negotiations to get the necessary papers for relocating to South Africa. Thankfully, all the differences could be resolved and a few months later we were accepted as WEC missionaries. It was agreed that we would help our colleague Shirley Charlton with representation in Cape Town in the first year and thereafter we would see how the Lord would lead.
We celebrated Rosemarie’s 40th birthday in Emmeloord. My gift to her was a manuscript ‘Op adelaars vleugelen ’ (On Eagle Wings), alluding to the text Henning Schlimm used at the occasion of our wedding in Königsfeld.

Hurdles and afflictions
The next hurdle was the airfare for us as a couple plus five children, of which two would have to pay adult fares. We furthermore decided that a container would be the most economical way to get our belongings to Cape Town, even though the bulk of our furniture was quite old and tattered already and some appliances bought second-hand in Holland. The Lord sovereignly helped us in these major steps of faith.
The circumstance we considered as a ‘fleece’ became quite an affliction when the couple that stayed in our home in Zeist for six months did not pay the rent promptly. They finally paid the rent in a lump sum. We thus experienced once again how the strong divine wings of the eagle were seeing us through. Not even once did we have to delay the payment of rent and we always had sufficient to contribute towards our stay in Bulstrode.
With the lump sum belated payment of the rent we now suddenly also had sufficient finances not only for the airfares to South Africa for the seven of us, but also for the transport and rental of a container with our possessions!
In Emmeloord, at the Dutch HQ of WEC, we heard of the advisability of having a missionary prayer meeting in our home church. Shortly after our return to Zeist, we invited Don and Kryniera Koekkoek, a couple from our church for a cup of tea. They had occasionally been supporting our ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’ evangelistic work. Kryniera shared during their visit how God had challenged her to stimulate prayer for missionaries.
Another couple in our church was about to go to Bhutan as missionaries. When we spoke to Hans Riemersma, one of the elders, he was very sympathetic to our request, but he was rather sceptical. Apparently, other people had already tried something similar, but tradition in the church smothered every effort in that direction.
Surprisingly, we soon hereafter had regularly monthly prayer meetings for the missionaries of the church started in the home of the Koekkoek couple. That became an important feature in the calendar of the church.
During the last few months in Holland before our departure to South Africa, I helped out on one day in the week as a teacher of Religious Instruction at Barthimeus, the local school for the Blind, where Geertje Rehorst had taught before she was boarded. On another day I assisted in the office of the Eastern Europe Mission. This led also to my taking clothing and Bibles for persecuted and needy Christians on behalf of the Eastern Europe Mission to Switzerland over certain weekends. From there other people took the goods to Communist countries. On these trips in a small truck with comfortable seating for at least five people, I was given permission to take the family members along. Because we would sleep with our family in Southern Germany, this saved the mission quite a few Dutch guilders. On our last trip in December 1991 - also intended as our farewell to the family in Germany - we had to face the reality of spiritual warfare as never before. Satan evidently wanted to prevent us from going to South Africa.
Attacks from different sides
When Rosemarie and I left for Switzerland from the home of the Brauns in Lienzingen, with the intention of returning there the same evening, we had no clue how close we would come to losing our lives. Apart from the literature we had brought from Holland, we also picked up quite a number of Russian Children’s Bibles at Licht im Osten in Korntal, near Stuttgart. The load was thus quite heavy herafter. Snow in the mountainous region of Southern Germany about 50 Km before the Swiss border with the van loaded with books, made driving hazardous in the extreme. As we slid across the road on the heights we were praying almost all the time.
And then it happened! We skidded off the road. We discerned God’s protecting hand when the truck with the heavy load was thankfully just at a place where there was a parking place. If it had been at almost any other location in that area, we would have gone done into the depths to a certain death.
Soon we had to face an onslaught of another sort. Accusations came at us that really made us feel very guilty to go to South Africa. It was suggested that I had been only abusing the interlude of the Ivory Coast as a smokescreen, to prepare the way to take my family to South Africa. That was fully comprehensible. Everybody knew how dearly I wanted to return to my home country.

A last hurdle
Rosemarie had her share as well of the attacks, because she was accused of callously leaving the care of her ailing mother to Waltraud, her sister. From Holland we could at least come during the school holidays to take over some of the burden.
We returned to the Netherlands with heavy hearts. We cried to the Lord to intervene. Our tickets were booked by now and the container ordered. The Lord would have to send in someone to help Waltraud with the care of our mother. Otherwise we would have no liberty to go!
It was special that our friend Tom Zoutewelle now brought us in touch with a retired nurse who spoke German and who was prepared to go and help Waltraud with our Mama. This cleared the way for us. It was however never necessary to call on that help. But we were now free to go to Cape Town in January 1992!

Called to minister to Cape Muslims?
The Master clearly used our first days in Cape Town to make it unambiguously clear to all and sundry that we were called to minister to the Cape Muslims. When we came from Holland we didn’t have any accommodation. We were already considering approaching my faithful friend and teacher colleague Ritchie Arendse for the use of his caravan again when just before our departure to South Africa we heard that we could be accommodated in a Bible School in Athlone during the month of January.
The first morning after our arrival we were awakened by a shock, a deafening roar at half past four. The cause was the seven mosques within a radius of two kilometres of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute.63 This was the first indication that the Lord was perhaps calling us to get involved with the Cape Muslims. But we were not starkly aware of it as yet.

Two Priorities
The number one priority was now to get permanent accommodation and priority number two was to get the schooling of the children sorted out. Already during our orientation in December 1990 we thought that our two eldest children should attend the German school. There they ultimately enrolled all the children, also Tabitha for the first grade, although she was only five years old.
We followed up all sorts of advertisements, hoping to find a four bed-roomed house so that we could also have guests. But finding a suitable one that is more or less affordable was almost like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Four bed-roomed houses were few and far between and usually very expensive.
In the heavenlies something was obviously happening, because somewhere in the suburb of Kenilworth a Greek lady could not sleep. Ireni Stephanis never had problems with sleeplessness, but this night she constantly had to think about the family from Holland about which she had heard from Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague. She was curious whether the family of seven had found accommodation in the meantime. After hearing of our predicament, Ireni offered to share her big house. Her daughter had just married and left the home. Ireni’s two adult sons were elsewhere. They would not be around for some time.
When we learnt this story the Saturday afternoon from Shirley Charlton we stood there in awe! We could only marvel at the intervention of the Lord. It looked to be the most practical thing to sleep at the Bible School for the last time. Even in this little detail we could see the hand of the Lord. At this time we also met John Cyster, who offered to assist us with the clearance of our container, when it would be in the Cape Town docks.
After moving over to Kenilworth, we resumed our search for a house. Ireni Stephanis said that we could stay at her house as long as we would need the accommodation. But we really wanted to get into our own home and of course, we did not want to abuse her hospitality.
Our lack of transportation brought us in touch with Manfred Jung and the late Alroy Davids, both of whom were involved with outreach to Muslims. The 13-year old horrible-looking minibus, which previously belonged to the Gschwandtner family before they sold it to Manfred Jung. It badly needed some colour. Alroy Davids spray-painted the vehicle in his spare time. Every weekend I would bring the vehicle to him. This went on for a few weeks.
One Sunday afternoon we decided to just go and have a look at a house in Brunswick Road, in the suburb Tamboerskloof, because it would be relatively near to the German School. We liked the town house but because of the rental tag, we never gave it serious consideration. It would have been suitable, albeit that it was a bit small for a big family. But it was within walking distance from the German school. The monthly rental would be however well above what we had budgeted for, the monthly gift from our home church in Holland. On the other hand, we would be saving on the costs of commuting them to school.
We heard that the lady owner, whose children had also been attending the German school, had remarried. Thus the house in Tamboerskloof had become redundant. Nevertheless, more out of courtesy and because we had no other option, we left the home phone number of Ireni Stephanis with the couple.
We were taken by surprise when the Germans phoned us the next day. Our two eldest boys had made a good impression on the lady owner. (We left the three young ones up the road in our very old and ugly Microbus - not to scare the home owner too much!) We were over-awed when the owner ultimately gave us the option of renting the house at the price we could ‘afford’, although they could have receive more from another interested prospective lessee. We could not do otherwise than seeing this as a special gift from the Lord!
Just at this point in time we heard that the container with the furniture had arrived. Our new landlords agreed that we could move in, almost a week before the end of the month - without any extra cost! Thus it was not necessary to leave the container in the docks for any length of time. That would have amounted to added costs for the storage. We could just praise the Lord once again for his wonderful provision!
14. Commencement of Cape Ministry

The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which our WEC colleague Shirley Charlton took me soon after my return to the Cape, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. Here I met among other strategic people, Martin Heuvel, Bruce van Eeden and Jan Hanekom. At one of the events to which Shirley took me, I heard Joyce Scott reporting. She was a missionary of AIM with a gift of using music her in ministry, lecturing at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute. This was the catalyst for me to start a choir from different cultures, a vision I had brought along from Holland. (In Zeist I had attended a performance of a culturally mixed group from New Zealand. This sowed a seed in my heart.)
In 1992 there was still great need for racial reconciliation. I contacted Joyce to start a choir as a possible vehicle for reconciliation in our devided country.)
At different occasions to which I was invited as speaker, I took along the cross-cultural choir that we had recruited. Apart from Grace Chan, our colleague from Mauritius, we also had people from different races in the choir - including a Zulu and a few Xhosas. I collated the choir members predominantly from Capetonian Bible Colleges. Soon after Joyce left the Cape to take up a post in Natal - some of the Bible School students left as well - the choir was disbanded. The contacts to the various bible colleges proved quite valuable for our later ministry.

Involvement with Drug Rehabilitation?
Almost from the word go we got in touch with a big problem of the Cape communities - drug addiction. On the first Sunday after moving to Kenilworth, we attended the Living Hope Baptist Church with Ireni Stephanis. A couple there told us about their daughter who was addicted to drugs and who subsequently became a Muslim. We were immediately reminded of the successful Betel outreach of our mission agency to drug addicts in Spain, seeing this as a loving avenue of service to the Muslim community. This was yet another nudge that we should get involved in compassionate outreach to that part of the Cape population.
The problem of drug addiction in the Cape Muslim society was highlighted again and again. We were thus confronted with the need of a centre for rehabilitation where people could be set free through a personal faith in Jesus. Our mission agency WEC had significant success in Spain. Many former addicts started out as missionaries to other countries. This now became our model for the drug addicts of Cape Town. We were yearning to share the vision with Capetonian Christians. The initial response was general indifference.
Only after a few months in the Vineyard Church we found out that there was a Muslim background believer in the congregation. Achmed Kariem had fled South Africa in the wake of his anti‑apartheid activities with a hatred for Christianity. In his fairly accurate youthful assessment apartheid had been the cause for his family to be moved out of Mowbray to the desolate Bonteheuwel. This ultimately resulted in him fleeing from the country. In England he became addicted to drugs. There he was miraculously set free from drug abuse through faith in Jesus. The need of a centre for the rehabilitation of drug addicts in Cape Town was invigorated in my heart when I heard his testimony. He would become God's instrument in our ministry in many a way.

Focus on Outreach to Cape Muslims?
To get more information about the German school, we were referred to the Pietzsch family. Horst Pietsch was also involved with the SIM Life Challenge missionary outreach.
Without making any special effort, we got in touch with converts from Islam. We met Adiel Adams and Zane Abrahams through our representation work with WEC. My late Aunt Emmie Snyers spontaneously gave us the phone number of Majiet Poblonker, a convert from Islam. It seemed as if different people were divinely instructed to challenge us to focus on Cape Muslims.
A clear confirmation along these lines came when we were able to rent the house in Tamboerskloof, almost a stone’s throw from Bo-Kaap, the prime stronghold of Islam in the Western Cape. This happened a few weeks after our arrival in the Mother City. God had evidently started fitting things together in his perfect mosaic.
At the beginning of our stay in Tamboerskloof I joined the SIM (Society of International Ministries) Life Challenge team of Manfred Jung in Bo‑Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock.64 However, I soon felt very uncomfortable with the method of knocking at strange people’s doors to speak to them about my faith. This coincided with the cessation of the SIM outreach effort in Bo‑Kaap. Rosemarie and I decided that we should now do prayer walking in the Muslim stronghold, asking the Lord to lead us to those people where the Holy Spirit had done preparatory work.
Soon we were walking through the Bo-Kaap as a couple once a week, praying for the area. But after a few weeks we sensed that we should not be alone in this venture. We had to get the backing, moral and prayer support of other Christians. As a family we were now attending the City Branch of the Vineyard Church (as the Jubilee Church was called at that time). Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims, but the church in general had no affinity as yet in this direction.
At the same time Rosemarie and I prayed, asking the Lord where we should start with ministry. By June 1992 our ministry was not focused at all. As I was speaking during a phone call to Val Kadalie, the matron of the G.H Starke old age home in Hanover Park, I sensed confirmation that this township, where I had been teaching in 1981, was the place to get involved with ministry. Soon I linked up with Norman Barnes, a former gangster and drug addict and a convert from Islam. He was leading the prayer group on Saturday afternoons.

Representation Work
Via Shirley we were approached to assist with the training of Xhosa young people in children’s work at Camp Joy, a campsite in Strandfontein during the June holidays. The week turned out to be quite strategic. There we met the gifted Melvin Maxegwana, who was translating the teaching of Ammie Coetzee of the Children's Evangelical Fellowship into Xhosa. For the rest, our ministry still had no clear direction. We took along two young people from the Hanover Park City Mission congregation, who later showed interest in missions and evangelism. In due course Shane Varney, a former learner of mine from Mount View High School in Hanover Park, went for missionary training to Pretoria with Operation Mobilisation (OM) with a vision for Bangladesh. Carlo Johnson, still a teenager, later attended the Cape Evangelical Bible School. Shane Varney completed a degree at university. Subsequently he became a township pioneer to teach English in the Far East.
Trying to unite the churches of the Mother City in ministry was a daunting challenge. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be when I started with tentative steps. During our first year we would often go to churches where Shirley Charlton had arranged the meetings. Occasionally also our children were involved, such as dramatising the story of Jonah at a church in the ‘Coloured’ suburb of Kensington.
Fruitful Networking
In the course of my representation work of our first year, I attended the meeting of the Western Cape Missions Commission. Here I met Martin Heuvel, a pastor from Ravensmead. He impressed me so much that it was only natural that I would visit him when I assisted to prepare the October 1992 visit of Patrick Johnstone, the author of Operation World.65 A touch of nostalgia was hardly to be prevented when I visited the premises of the Fountain Family Church complex in Ravensmead. (The building and the adjacent shopping centre have been built for the great part on the property, from where our family had to move in 1970.)
There I was to give a few lectures at the Cape School of Missions where James Selfridge, an Irish missionary, had become the principal. One of the students was Jeff Swartz, through whom I got to know a young student from Venda, Tim Makamu.
When Shirley Charlton organised for me to preach at the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur, one of the most meaningful contacts ensued. Pastor Walter Ackermann had a heart for missions second to very few in the Western Cape. I was soon preaching there regularly until Pastor Ackermann left the church at retirement age.

Bo-Kaap Prayer Meetings Resume
During one of our Bo-Kaap prayer walks we visited the Bo-Kaap Museum. There we heard about Cecilia Abrahams, the neighbour at 73 Wale Street, a committed believer. She is the widow of a convert from Islam in the Islamic residential area. When we finally met up with her we were blessed to find out that we could actually a resume the prayer meetings, which had been conducted by Walter Gschwandtner, SIM Life Challenge missionary before he left for Kenya. We started with fortnightly prayer meetings in the Abrahams home in July 1992.
SIM had decided to stop their activities in Bo-Kaap, but Manfred Jung brought me in touch with Hendrina van der Merwe, a fervent prayer warrior from the fellowship commonly called the Orange Street Baptist Church. She was immediately ready and eager to join the new prayer group. Dave and Herma Adams, our local Vineyard church leaders, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims. They gave their blessing that we could invite people at the local Vineyard church. Soon Elizabeth Robertson and Achmed Kariem joined us for this purpose. Achmed hailed from Mowbray before he and his family were dumped in the desolate Bonteheuwel due to the Group Areas Act. In rebellion and disappointment at the Islamic leaders he became a Communist, finally leaving the country in frustration. In England he became addicted to drugs before he was miraculously freed through faith in Jesus. We learned a lot from him and the other converts from Islam. Achmed soon suggested that we should start a prayer meeting on a Friday when the Muslims go to their mosques.
We were less happy when Manfred Jung of the SIM team came to our home to discuss the respective ‘operating areas’ of ministry. We were not interested in rivalry and competition, preferring to network with other missionaries. We nevertheless agreed to concentrate on Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park where no other mission agency was operating at this time.

Start of Friday Prayer Meetings
This could be implemented very promptly through the mediation of Marge Ballin, a YWAM missionary, who was involved with evangelistic work in the nightclubs. Without much ado we were allowed to make use of the ‘Shepherd’s Watch’, a former funeral parlour in Shortmarket Street where the Ark Mission was now conducting services and caring for a few mental patients. It was an added blessing when we heard that missionaries in other parts of the world were also starting to do this.
Of the early regulars at the new Friday prayer meeting we had Alain Ravelo from Madagascar and Johan van der Wal, who originally hailed from Holland. We had met Johan van der Wal and his wife Maaike in our home church in Holland a few months before we came to South Africa. Both Alain and Johan had been in the country for some length of time. Alain had been part of a group that met regularly, praying for the country when apartheid was still rife. He also had a vision for networking. Soon hereafter Arina Serdyn, an Afrikaner, joined us after she had retired from teaching. She was one of the best examples of networking, soon linked to our children’s work in Hanover Park while still having close links to the Ravelo’s who are linked to TEAM and simultaneously being a co-worker of SIM Life Challenge.
Next to Achmed Kariem, Berenice Petersen was another Muslim background believer who worked at Truworths.
Gathering Believers from Muslim Background
One of the most strategic moves of our ministry ensued when we started gathering the believers from Muslim background once a month. Already in 1992 Martin Heuvel and Patrick Johnstone had been encouraging me to do this which I promptly put into practise, liasing with Alain and Ravelo-Hoërson (TEAM) who originate respectively from the Indian ocean islands of Madagascar and Reunion. Along with Alain and Berenice Petersen, who attended our Friday lunch hour prayer meetings from the beginning When Martin Heuvel suggested that we should try and gather Muslim background believers on a regular basis, he found an immediate resonance in my heart. Without my knowing it, Alain Ravelo-Höerson and his wife Nicole, who hails from Reunion, had started making plans for such a group at their home in Southfield. Instead of doing my own thing, I decided to join them, functioning as a chauffeur to bring along Muslim background believers who worked in the city and from the Mowbray area.66
I started another group with males in Hanover Park, along with Adiel Adams from Mitchells Plain. Our vision was to start little cells like that all over the Peninsula in conjunction with the other missionary colleagues.

Operation Hanover Park
Going into the last quarter of 1992, we had become involved with children’s ministry at the Newfields clinic through Bruce van Eeden and with the establishment of Operation Hanover Park. The stimulus for the latter operation was given by Everett Crowe, a police officer, who approached the churches in a last-ditch effort after the law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality of the area any more. Operation Hanover Park was formed with Pastor Jonathan Matthews of the Blomvlei Baptist Church,67 the main driving force of the initiative.
The initiative had prayer by believers of diverse church backgrounds as its main component. Dean Ramjoomia, a Muslim background believer, was eager to operate among the gangsters as the local missionary of the churches. The home congregation of Pastor Jonathan Matthews, offered Dean and his family accommodation on the church premises and a few other churches pledged financial contributions. Things looked quite promising. It seemed as if the churches were finally going to get out of their indifference. Our idea of solving the gangsterism problem on the long term, by starting Christian children’s clubs in different parts of the township, got many believers excited. Furthermore, it looked as if our vision - getting local churches working together in mission and evangelism, was coming to fruition. At the same time, this would give an example to the rest of the country of how to combat criminality and violence! A miracle happened: Hanover Park experienced its ‘most quiet Christmas ever’, according to an older resident. A combined prayer effort by Christians from different churches was the mainstay of the operation.
We still thought that the establishment of a drug rehabilitation centre ‑ as a service of love and concern to the Muslim community ‑ would be a very effective way to make inroads into the ruling demonic forces. The related problem of gangsterism had spawned the establishment of Operation Hanover Park. A tract by our co-worker Dean Ramjoomiah, written in the slang of the gangsters, touched Ivan Walldeck,68 a gang leader. Dean also succeeded to organize gangs to play soccer games against each other instead of shooting at each other. Soon peace was returning to the township. To God be the glory for the answer to the prayers! But hereafter Dean not only got estranged from the Blomvlei Baptist Church, but he also drifted away from the fellowship of believers.
Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993 when a leadership tussle stifled the promising movement.
The Alpha Centre of Hanover Park became another connection to the township. Vivian West was the Directress. She was one of my friends who attended the sstudent evangelical outreach at Harmony Park in the 1960s. Later she attended the Bible School in the Strand run by the Moravian and the Lutheran Church. At the Alpha Centre we got involved with children’s and youth work once a week. We got the jitters there though when we discovered that some Muslim mother would peep secretly, to listen what we were doing. It turned out that the Holy Spirit had started touching her. A few months later she became the very first Cape Muslim we were privileged to lead to the Lord.
Our vision to train children’s workers in Hanover Park never came off the ground. We also never found a solution to counter the lack of discipline and perseverance of gifted potential workers. That seemed to be part and parcel of the township sub‑culture.

A serious Feud
At the end of our first year (1992) a serious feud with our WEC colleagues ensued. Just before the end of the year we had our WEC conference in Durban. At that time the national conference was held twice a year. The midyear conference had been held in Cape Town for the first time ever in July. At the conference in our Tamboerskloof home – WEC South Africa was indeed still very small - it had been decided ‘to strengthen the stakes’ to consolidate the present work. That meant that our colleague Shirley Charlton would remain at the Cape, instead of going to Johannesburg (She had hoped that Rosemarie and I would take over from her as WEC representatives in the Western Cape). At the same time, the Lord had clearly confirmed that we should be more involved in Muslim Outreach. That is how we perceived it and it seemed to us so evident!
At conference our missionary colleagues were initially not prepared to release us to continue with Muslim Outreach, because that would have meant starting a new ministry in the country. WEC South Africa had decided officially to concentrate on recruitment. We had to fight all the way for the right to continue with the new ministry. Having fought many a verbal skirmish over the years, this was not new to me at all. For Rosemarie it was the Broederraad of Utrecht all over again, including the tears. It was touch and go or we would have left WEC to do Muslim Outreach outside the confines of the mission agency. The Lord had called us into this ministry and we were not prepared to budge, even though I did not put it to the conference as clearly as that. The presence of Neil and Jackie Rowe, former British WEC leaders, saved the day for us. We finally received the right of way to get involved with the new ministry as an exception to the rule.69

Breaking new Ground through Prayer
My first major move attempt at unite churches of the city area was trying to get them to pray for Muslims. We organised for converts from Islam and various missionaries to speak in different churches on the Sundays during Ramadan. When I noticed that this merely resulted in entertainment - with no commitment in some way following it - I aborted the effort. Hereafter I would challenge churches to loving outreach to Muslims when they invited me to come and preach. This did not deliver the goods, only resulting that I hereafter received far less invitations to come and preach.
So much more committed and interested was the WEC prayer group that we started in our home with a few elderly ladies. Margaret Curry, a member of this monthly WEC prayer group in our home, introduced us to the matron of St. Monica’s Maternity Home in Bo-Kaap. (Margaret Curry had been a missionary with the Hospital Christian Fellowship). I vaguely remembered that my mother had mentioned that I was born at that institution. St. Monica’s hereafter played a special role in our getting to know people from diverse cultural backgrounds. After initial hesitancy because of her complexion and foreign accent, Rosemarie would usually immediately harvest more trust from the patients when she mentioned that her husband had been born at St. Monica’s.

Photo: Sedick and Ruweyda Adams, our first friends in the Bo-Kaap with their son Yusuf who was born at St. Monica’s whom we got to know via a missionary colleague


Preparations for the start of a missionary prayer meeting progressed well in the Hanover Park City Mission congregation. They were prepared to have their Saturday weekly prayer meeting per month changed to a missionary prayer event.
With Norman Barnes, a Muslim background believer and former gangster drug addict as the leader of the City Mission prayer group, it was easy to share the burden of praying for these groups. This Saturday afternoon prayer meeting fused into the monthly prayer meeting of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. The vision to pray for missionaries called from their area was likewise gladly taken on board. The idea was completely new to them, but the Lord soon started answering the prayers miraculously. Within a few years many missionaries from the Lansdowne/Hanover Park/Manenberg area went abroad with different mission agencies.
In Hanover Park we were also to have the first cell group consisting of male converts from a Muslim background. There we studied biblical personalities that also figure in the Qur’an. This cell group petered out after September 1993 after our Microbus was stolen.
The Great Commission conference at the Athlone Civic Centre in July 1992 brought about some direction when we met Bruce van Eeden of the Evangelical Bible Church. He wanted to start a children’s club in a clinic in Newfields, which is adjacent to Hanover Park. Being a neutral venue, we thought that this was just what the doctor ordered. We really wanted to include Muslims in our outreach. Hanover Park and Bo-Kaap became our target areas.

Diverse strategic Moves
Elizabeth Robertson, who was now attending our evening Bo-Kaap prayer meeting, really loves Israel and the Jews. A few years prior to this she had been on the verge of marrying a Jew in Israel. Soon we decided to pray for the Middle East at every alternate Monday prayer meeting, including Muslims and Jews in our intercession. Renette Marx, who was also interceding for the Jews, soon joined our group for this prayer meeting. Hereafter we visited the Beth Ariel fellowship of Messianic Jews in Sea Point from time to time. In later years Lillian James, who grew up in Woodstock, started to pray with us. She had a heart for both Muslims and Jews. Still later, two Messianic Jewish believers joined this prayer group, viz. Lally Neveling and Marilyn Kemp.70
An event organised in 1993 with some link to the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop with John Robb of World Vision. I later used the list of participants at this occasion to organize Jesus Marches the following year.
Contact with Jan Hanekom of the Hofmeyr Centre in Stellenbosch was quite strategic. He was a spiritual giant, who was praying about entering Bhutan as a tent-making missionary.

Changing Church Fellowship yet again?
In the meantime we were increasingly unhappy with the fellowship at which we were worshipping. The initial interest for the outreach to the Muslims appeared to be limited to Herma and Dave Adams, the leaders of the local Vineyard Church.
Achmed Kariem, the lone Muslim background believer in the fellowship, like-wise found no resonance when he spoke to someone from the church leadership in this direction. Liz Robertson, who almost got married to a Jew, thought that the church had only real interest in church planting in the Black townships. That was of course much easier than attempting to reach out to the resistant Jews or Muslims, apart from the need to focus somewhere and not spread themselves too thinly.
Rosemarie and I attended the foundation class of the church, considering to become full members of the covenant set-up. Alhough we fancied the idea of commitment, we had no liberty to join a church that had so little vision for the body of Christ in general. That is at any rate what we perceived at that time. Hanover Park is not far from Toronga Road in Crawford where the Vineyard Church was situated. It would have made a big impact if they had also joined Operation Hanover Park. But no interest was forthcoming.71
We knew that these reasons were definitely not adequate to stop attending the church, but we now really started to pray seriously about the matter. Prior to this we had been changing churches a few times because of relocation. We really wanted our children to get settled into a fellowship where there was warmth and love. One of the last things we wanted was to change congregation yet again.
Just then the Jubilee church leadership came up with a suggestion, which made the decision very easy for us. Instead of the separate entities at different venues for the Sunday morning service, the church members decided to congregate centrally again at the former Waverley blanket factory in Observatory. We were not happy to attend church some five kilometres away. We saw this as God’s answer to our prayers. But to find a church fellowship where we would be happy as a family, was yet another matter.

Joining the Cape Town Baptist Church
The Lord himself to confirm our link to the Cape Town Baptist Church using the eight-year-old daughter of Brett Viviers, one of the elders of the church. This family belonged to the Tamboerskloof cell of the church. The daughter had been terribly troubled by the calls from the minarets in the nearby mosques of Bo-Kaap. Her father suggested that she should start praying for the Muslims. The result of the child’s prayers was that a whole group from the church pitched up one Monday evening at our Bo-Kaap prayer meeting in Wale Street. From that group nobody continued to attend our prayer meeting regularly, but it was decisive in forging our links to the church.
That Heidi Pasques and her husband Louis were interested to become missionaries to a Muslim country became the factor that ultimately nudged me to join the church formally. Louis was a student at the Baptist College and leading one of the three daughter fellowships of the Cape Town Baptist Church, just as the Vineyard Church had been doing. We attended a few meetings in a school in Tamboerskloof where either Louis Pasques or Brent Bartlett, another theological student, was preaching. While the preaching was theologically sound, we still missed the spark that could ignite us towards joining up as members of the church.Furthermore, two members of our Bo-Kaap prayer meeting, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids, already belonged to the congregation. Yet, Rosemarie was not quite convinced that this was where we should be church-wise. Its proximity to Bo-Kaap, where we wanted a spiritual breakthrough, clinched the matter for me. There is where we wanted to plant a church. Rather hesitantly she agreed that we join the church. I really did not expect that it would take so long to achieve this breakthrough. For many years this was to cause some strain in the family. We had apparently not yet learned the lesson well enough that we should not proceed with major decisions like this without complete unity.

The country in turmoil
Over the Easter Weekend of 1993 almost the whole country was thrown into turmoil when the news came through that Chris Hani, a leader of the Communist Party, was assassinated. He appeared to be on course for high office in a new ANC-led government. For a few days the country hovered on the brink of civil war. The brave action of a White woman, who saw the car of the assassin driving away, prevented a major escalation of bloodshed. Civil war may have sent us packing our bags to leave the country. The murder of Hani demonstrated the urgency of the situation, resulting in the date of the elections set soon hereafter for April 27, 1994.
Just after Rosemarie’s return to the Cape in July 1993, South Africans were shocked out of their wits. Yet again, on the last Sunday of that month deluded hate-filled Blacks killed a few congregants and maimed many believers wantonly in the evangelical St James Church in a Cape Town suburb, Kenilworth. It was a miracle in itself that not many more were killed.
The great deceiver evidently planned this to become the start-shot of massive bloodshed. It had been preceded and followed by many attacks on innocent civilians, including Amy Biehl, an American exchange student. Although the date had been set for the first democratic elections, hardly anybody expected the run-up to the elections to be peaceful. Black townships like Khayelitsha were no-go areas for anyone who was not Black. Our friend Melvin Maxegwana of the Khayelitsha City Mission fellowship, where I had preached once in the meantime, had to flee from the area. The local civic organization had concocted allegations against him. As a pastor with contact to other races, he was accused of mixing with the Whites. This was for many local Blacks tantamount to colluding with the devil in person.
But Satan had overplayed his hand. The St James Church massacre turned out to be the instrument par excellence to impact the movement towards racial reconciliation in the country. Those family members who lost dear ones received divine grace to forgive the brutal killers. The killing of innocent people during a church service sparked off an unprecedented urgency for prayer all around the country. The adage of Albert Luthuli after he had been dismissed as chief by the South African government in November 1952, received a new actuality: It is inevitable that in working for freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer: the Road to Freedom is via the Cross.
* *
Encouragements
The archenemy tried to give us one hammering after the other, but the Lord encouraged us. In the second quarter of the year we felt that Rosemarie should visit her ailing mother again to relieve her sister Waltraud. When we lived in Holland, we would go to Germany in the school holidays to give Waltraud a break. But how could we finance such a trip to South Africa? Just as Rosemarie and I started praying together about the matter one morning, the telephone rang. It was Waltraud from Germany. She and her husband had been thinking about funding a trip for Rosemarie to come and visit them. That would be much cheaper than trying to get the bed-ridden mother into a home for two weeks so that they could get a break.
My cousin Milly Joorst and her prayer warrior friend Magda Morkel came from Genadendal to cook for us in Tamboerskloof while Rosemarie was in Germany. That was the beginning of a close prayer relationship with the two of them.
While Rosemarie was in Germany, money became available that her late father had earmarked as an inheritance for his grandchildren. For months we had experienced the need of a guest room. The need was amplified with the visit of Milly and Magda. The close relationship with Lothar and Barbara Buchhorn at the nearby German Stadtmission, that contributed such a lot to make our children feel at home at the Cape, was an added boon. But we did not feel comfortable to approach the Buchhorns again and again when we had visitors.
Rosemarie’s visit to Germany also contained a temptation. While being there, she heard how nothing was done to reach the many Turkish people of the area with the Gospel. In order to share the good news with the children of the guest workers and other foreigners in the region, it would not even be imperative to learn their language. In due course the enemy was to abuse this snippet of information to tempt us to return to Germany.
A home of our own?
About this time we received a letter from the German owner of our home. She wanted to sell the house, but she gave us the first option to buy it. Our landlady was definitely not the only person who wanted to sell property at this time. In fact, so many people who were in the position to emigrate, were considering this option.
I was rather sceptical when Rosemarie shared that the Lord had given her a vision of a house with a beautiful view in the city Bowl. I was absolutely sure that there would be no suitable house in the price range that we could afford. On Rosemarie’s insistence we went to an estate agent to indicate our interest in buying something in the area. With money that would be coming from Germany soon, we were now in the fortunate position to consider buying a suitable house. Up to that point in time we did consider this, but a bond on a house with four bedrooms was well beyond our means. It was still the question whether the bank would grant us a bond because we had no fixed income.
With Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park as the main areas of our activity, we were looking at possibilities to purchase a house geographically somewhere between these localities, such as the suburb Pinelands.
The first few houses that we viewed vindicated my scepticism. But then one day the estate agency phoned to inform us that a run-down house in Vredehoek, a suburb on the slopes of Table Mountain, was for sale. The repossessed building was offered to the estate agent by the bank on condition that the potential buyer had to make an offer within two weeks. The mansion we entered at 25 Bradwell Road in the City Bowl suburb Vredehoek had broken windows plus a stinking carpet in the living room that dogs had infested with fleas. But then Rosemarie saw the beautiful view the Lord had given her. I was not yet convinced.
We decided to ask Rainer Gülsow, a German friend who had been in the building trade, to give us his view. “A bargain, take it. You will never get this again.” This was as clear a cue as we needed. But the decision to make an offer within two weeks created some strain. Furthermore, the buying price was still substantially higher than the price range that we had originally envisaged.
While these thoughts milled through our minds, a traumatic event shook us to the roots of our existence. Whereas the violence and turmoil on the East Rand, in Natal or even Khayelitsha was still on the periphery of our lives, the weekend starting with the second Friday of September 1993 had us reeling.

A traumatic weekend
After the children had left for school at about 7.40h, Rosemarie and I had a short prayer session because we were to have our WEC prayer meeting in our home later that morning. For many years hereafter I tried to complete a report of those two days. I wrote down the following notes (slightly edited) shortly after the traumatic days:

9 a.m. Just after nine I leave the home with the little broom to sweep the car before I pick up the old ladies.
But the car is not there! I can’t believe my eyes. We wanted to get rid of the ancient 1976 combi, but not in this way! We had hoped to get something for it as a trade-in even though it was getting less powerful.
Completely shattered I could just run back to inform Rosemarie in Dutch, our home language: “De auto is weg!” I phone the police and Margaret Curry, one of the (WEC) prayer ladies, instructing her to phone the other participants. I would phone again when the police would have left. Then we would have to see whether we could still have our prayer meeting. Quite soon the police was there.

The occurrences of the next 30 hours were traumatic in the extreme. Our emotions swung like a very long pendulum from the heights of elation to the deepest despair. For many years hereafter I tried to complete a report of the events. But I was traumatized so much that I was never able to finish writing down the story within a reasonable time limit, where the memory of the events was fresh enough. On the same Friday on which we discovered that our vehicle was stolen, a new ‘convert’ came to our one o’clock prayer meeting. Purportedly he was a drug addict who had just been ‘saved’. Thirty hours later we found out that he was a conman. In between, this fake convert had fooled us terribly. His demonic demeanour squashed our vision to work or challenge others towards the establishment of a drug rehabilitation in Cape Town almost completely.
The events of the weekend highlighted the temptation to return to Europe. The Jonah in me surfaced very strongly. The Lord however did not give us peace to leave the Mother City as yet. In fact, thirteen years later we are still living in the Vredehoek home that we actually bought.
A sequence of special circumstances made the purchase possible. Melvin Maxegwana and Brett Viviers – whose 8-year old daughter the Lord had used to link us to the Cape Town Baptist church and who was also unemployed at the time – operated in harmony with Cameron Barnard, a believer from the Jubilee Church and the son of Frans and Vena, an elderly couple that wanted to go to Turkey as WEC missionaries. The threesome renovated the dilapidated house in two months. The working together of Melvin and Brett especially was invaluable for that time. The example of a White man working happily under a Black was not so common at all in South Africa!
15. Back to ‘School’

Apart from the many lessons that I still had to learn in the preceding years, I discerned that the Master was taking me through many more.
Taking back what Satan has ‘stolen’
The indifference of the Cape churches for evangelistic outreach was a scourge all around the Peninsula. The situation in Woodstock and Salt River belonged to the worst in this regard. The two suburbs had become predominantly Islamic within a few years. We got involved through a missions week with theological students at the Cape Town Baptist Church that Pastor Graham Gernetsky organized with the Baptist Seminary in March 1994. Reverend Gernetsky was open to the suggestion that we should do some prayer warfare with the students not only in Bo-Kaap, but also in Woodstock, in an attempt to take back what Satan has robbed through drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism.

Slaughtering of sheep in Bo‑Kaap
In our loving outreach to Cape Muslims it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. We had been reading how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea until he found the peace child as a key to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines, to get a key to the hearts of Cape Muslims.
That Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at their major Eid celebration, made me aware how near to each other the three world religions Christianity, Judaism and Islam actually are. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is central to all three faiths. Witnessing the Islamic slaughtering of sheep in Bo‑Kaap was a special blessing to my wife and me. The ceremony really brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learnt by heart as a child. To see how the sheep went to be slaughtered ‑ without any resistance ‑ reminded us of Jesus, whom John the Baptist called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. We immediately knew that the Lord answered our prayer. He had given us the key to the hearts of Cape Muslims.
It was wonderful to discover somewhere along the line that according to the Midrash - so much part and parcel of the rabbinic oral teaching traditions - Isaac was purported to have carried the fire‑wood for the altar on his shoulder, just like someone would carry a cross.

More lessons of March 1994
The mission week became one big lesson in spiritual warfare to us. One morning early – we had times of prayer with the students starting at 5 a.m. - Rosemarie shared what she had ‘discovered’ in Galatians 1:8,9; viz. that even an angel can bring a false message, if that would differ from the original Gospel revealed in Scripture. This amplified to us the origins of the Qur’an -that Muslims believe was brought to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. It is well-known that the crucifixion of Jesus is denied in the Muslim sacred book. We were filled with more compassion towards the Muslims when we discovered that they have been deceived without their being aware of it. This became to me the pristine beginnings of a major study of the Angel Gabriel in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud and the Ahadith. (The latter are Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s words and deeds that are regarded as equal in authority to the Qur’an.) The more I studied, the more I discovered how deceptive the arch enemy was, that he has indeed been masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14); that the consistent omission of everything alluding to the cross in the Qur’an cannot be coincidence. The latter discovery came about when I prepared teaching for a group of male Muslim background believers.
Another lesson of the mission week was quite painful to me. When I taught the Bible College students something about the history of Islam in the Western Cape, I broke down in tears. I had to discover that deep in my heart there was still resentment towards the Dutch Reformed Church. I suppose that it developed when I read how the denomination opposed the government when Mr P.W. Botha and his Cabinet were ready to scrap the Mixed Marriages Act from the statute books.
Two of the student participants at the mission week were Kalolo Mulenga and Orlando Suarez, respectively from Zambia and Mozambique. The seed had already been sown in my heart to see South(ern) African Blacks as future missionaries. Now the increasing number of expatriates in Cape Town came into my vision as future missionaries to their own people just like the Samaritan woman of John 4. The lessons in cross-cultural outreach that the Master Teacher passed to us through this chapter were to guide me during the next few years. I not only used the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a woman from another culture as a prime example for the outreach to Cape Muslims, but we were now concentrating on the local converts from Islam. We noticed how much more effectively they were reaching out to their own people.72
It was special to see how our prayers for Woodstock were being answered. Soon after the mission week we heard that the local Assemblies of God fellowship under the leadership of their young pastor William Tait had started with early morning prayer meetings. Every weekday at five o’clock a few church members came together, to seek the face of the Lord for their crime-ridden residential area.

Fruit with Muslim background believers
There was also some fruit to observe in our ventures with Muslim background believers. We invited Zane Abrahams, Adiel Adams, Salama Temmers73 and Majiet Poblonker to come to our home to discuss the possibility of starting a monthly meeting in Bo-Kaap as the forerunner to planting a church in the Muslim stronghold. The character of the planned meeting was completely changed when apart from Louis Pasques, one of the local Baptist church leaders, two other ministers from that denomination turned up. Rev. Nelson Abraham belonged to the mission committee of the denomination and Rev. Angelo Scheepers was the Western Cape coordinator. Somehow they had the idea that we should plant a denominational Baptist church in Bo-Kaap. Graham Gernetsky, the senior pastor of the church, had already become excited when I highlighted during my teaching during the mission week at the church how their former daughter churches in Jarvis Street in Bo-Kaap and Sheppard Street in District Six were lost because of the Group Areas Act.
Perhaps it might have been easier to try and start up a denominationally linked Baptist congregation in the church building in Jarvis Street that now belonged to the Cape Town Photographic Society. However, I resisted the idea fiercely, thinking of all the Muslim background believers in the Cape who came from different denominations. Adiel Adams supported me in my views. He subsequently suggested that we should have an over-arching ministry across the Peninsula. The support of Adiel was important because the dynamic Angelo Scheepers is his brother-in-law. I insisted that a convert from Islam should lead such an initiative. Before long Friendship Ministries was born under the leadership of Adiel Adams. The decision was however not strategic, because the emphasis was shifted from Bo-Kaap through this move.

A costly Mistake
Also in Cape Town we witnessed the miracle that has been documented widely - peaceful elections countrywide. Nobody could deny that this was God’s supernatural intervention: the result of the prayer effort that had been especially ignited by the St James Church massacre.
My second sermon – of a series of three on John 4 – in a local church was held in May, was held just after the unique elections of 27 April 1994. I had invited Zane Abrahams, a Muslim background believer to come and give his testimony at that occasion. Due to a miscommunication, he didn’t arrive. (I still had to learn that it is always advisable to confirm such things just before the event).
I erroneously thought that I now had to make up for it. In my sermon I shared far too much from our personal experiences. That was unfortunate. I evidently offended some church members when I made a joke out of the fact that Rosemarie was expected to come into the country without her husband on our honeymoon journey.
I was not asked anymore to complete my series of three sermons. An important reason for the indifference to Muslims hereafter was that the leadership of this church became embroiled in internal bickering. Interest in any outreach, least of all to the Muslims, waned in the months that followed.
A week of early morning prayer with a speaker from Zimbabwe hyped up some excitement while it patched up the lack of cohesion in the leadership. But the writing was already on the wall. There was no real unity that is the basic ingredient for any effective outreach. A few months later a serious rift in the leadership scattered the dynamic fellowship.

Jesus marches and their aftermath
Jesus Marches were planned for a Saturday in the month of June all over the world. In a letter from our friend and WEC missionary colleague Chris Scott from Sheffield (England), he wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. Inquiries on this side of the ocean brought the co-ordination of the whole effort in Cape Town into my lap. I had high expectations when I got involved in the co-ordination of about 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula and liaising closely with Danie Heyns and Chris Achenbach with regard to the northern suburbs of the city and the immediate ‘platteland’ (country side). I hoped that this venture would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest that our second attempt with our updated audio visual had stimulated in various areas petered out. I had to learn that it was not yet God’s timing and that we should do a lot more to stimulate the unity of the body of believers. In the run-up to the Jesus Marches I shared for the first time publicly what I had researched about the influence of the Kramats, the Islamic shrines on the heights of the Cape Peninsula.
A strategic contact of this latter initiative was Trefor Morris, who was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor occasionally visited our Friday prayer meeting. He became a link to the radio station when we were invited to give advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends’ of the station, who had to speak to those Muslims who phoned in at Radio Fish Hoek. His radio series on old churches was valuable to me as an inspiration for further research. Another important contact of the Friday prayer was Freddie van Dyk, who linked us to the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell. Freddie van Dyk’s attendance at our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting helped to give birth to our very strategic hospital outreach.

Muslim Prayer Focus
In 1992 mission leaders had decided to call the Christians worldwide to pray for the Muslim world during Ramadan. This was a natural follow-up of the call of Open Doors for 10 years of prayer for the Muslim world in 1990. Everybody was still vividly remembering the spectacular result of the 7 years of prayer for the Soviet Union. A little booklet called the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed with information on different issues relating to Islam. South Africa was soon in the thick of things when Bennie Mostert of OM initiated the printing of the booklet in South Africa. Hereafter it became an annual event.
In October 1994 I had the privilege to meet Bennie Mostert personally when I joined a prayer effort at the shrine of Sheikh Yusuf, the founder of Islam in this country. I drove in the car together with Bennie and Jan Hanekom,74 another giant of the South African mission scene. I shared with them some of my research on the history of Islam in South Africa. The prayer at Sheikh Yusuf’s shrine that day probably signified a breakthrough in the spiritual realm. Although the Cape churches in general remained indifferent, individual Christians started showing an increasing interest in praying for the Muslims. Invitations for me to come and preach still hardly rose above the level of entertainment, where I was usually asked to bring along a convert from Islam.

An extra-ordinary weekend camp
The preparation for a weekend camp with juveniles from Hanover Park developed into a major strain on our nerves. Two days before the camp was scheduled to start, I was the only one of the leaders left with reasonable health. Cheryl Moskos, our Hanover Park co-worker, was down with a heavy flu that more or less ruled her out and Rosemarie was out of contention due to a slipped disk. We approached Nasra Stemmet, a convert from Woodstock, to assist. She had started attending our Friday prayer meeting after she got in touch with us through an American pastor in the Dutch capital Amsterdam. But she hardly had any practical driving experience after she had passed her test. (We now had two vehicles, because we were blessed to come into the position to buy another Microbus at the beginning of 1994, to replace the stolen one.) God had confirmed to us so clearly that we should proceed with this camp, that we had no hesitation to suspect that this was another onslaught from the enemy camp.
The Wednesday evening Rosemarie stayed at home because of the slipped disc. It was just as well, because now she was at home to take a crucial phone call from our SIM missionary colleague Horst Pietzsch. He had been approached by Anthony Duncan, a young missionary from Frontline Fellowship who wanted to get involved with local mission work before his next stint to more dangerous operational areas. That phone call swung things around. We decided to go ahead with the camp. Up to that point in time cancellation seemed to be the only logical conclusion. God used a gyro practitioner to whom we went the next day. He did a grand job to get Rosemarie back in action even before the weekend. What a blessing the camp became to those children, the majority of whom had hardly been out of the township where they were born and bred.
All the more the shock was great when the news came through to us a few weeks later that Anthony Duncan was killed in a motorbike accident on his way from Angola. We were surprised how little reaction the youths showed when we broke the news to them. We realised how normal death had become to the young people from a township where gun killings and other forms of unnatural causes of death belong to everyday life. Not so long hereafter a big disappointment followed when one of the teenagers who decided to become a follower of the Lord Jesus at the camp, suffered abuse at home. He later landed in gangsterism and ultimately in prison.
My presence at a meeting of the Alpha Centre, the venue of our weekly children’s clubs, led to our being approached by the mother of a few of our children. Their youngest child had just been declared terminally ill because of an unknown virus. This got the ball rolling for many sessions of counselling and prayer when Rosemarie and I visited her.

Search for Truth
The development of the publication of a booklet with testimonies of Muslim background believers in Afrikaans proceeded quite well during the first half of 1994. Eleven of the stories were finally selected. I was very much interested to see the publication as a combined effort of the various mission agencies that worked among Cape Muslims. However, because of its sensitive nature, not one of my Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) missionary colleagues was prepared to stick his neck out. Converted Muslims were prone to persecution if the testimonies would be published and the publishers could reckon with the same. It was the apartheid intimidation all over again in another way. So few people were prepared to take risks!
In the end we had no other option but to use our mission agency WEC as the publishers, but the compiler and the names of the converts remained anonymous. This was a weak link of the booklet, but we had to protect the Muslim background believers - some of whom had experienced terrible persecution and thus had reason enough to be quite afraid. I did not mind at all to stay in the background in this way. I did not want to endanger my family or myself unnecessarily.
The plan was furthermore that the original booklet, Op Soek na Waarheid, the Afrikaans version, would be ready for a Muslim seminar in Rylands early in 1995. This was too ambitious, because we also wanted to launch our revised audio-visual at the same occasion. Johan van der Wal,75 whom we had met in 1991 in our home church in Holland a few months before we came to South Africa, made beautiful colour slides of different aspects of our work. This was the second version of the audio-visual. The very first time we used it at the Cape Town Baptist Church during the mission week with the theological students earlier in the year.
16. The backlash

A positive result of the effort of the Jesus Marches of the second quarter in 1994 was an intensification of contact with a few churches in the city area. As a result of this a local congregation started to show interest in outreach to the Muslims. As one of my last initiatives of 1994 I was able to conduct a short course on Muslim Evangelism in that church. As we headed for Christmas, I looked forward to get them involved in the outreach to the stronghold of Bo-Kaap.

Toronto Blessing?
But it was not to be. When I returned to the church early in 1995 to introduce the Ramadan prayer booklets, the congregants were not interested any more. The ‘Toronto Blessing’ had completely distracted them. Also the Cape Town Baptist Church and a few other congregations of the Peninsula were negatively affected by this “blessing”. In a few cases this led to serious rifts and internal problems in the churches.
As a couple, Rosemarie and I were thrown into a dilemma when a Christian friend seriously meant to impress on us the absolute need of personally experiencing the Toronto Blessing. We would be missing out significantly if we did not have this blessing. We had our doubts.
We nevertheless went to the Lord in prayer with the question. His lesson to us was unequivocal when our 8-year old daughter Tabitha had to cry unabatedly just as I was about to go to the church referred to above. The Lord had laid such a burden on her for the lost. Tabitha wanted to know whether she could volunteer her life and go to hell so that others could be saved from a lost eternity. Romans 9, where Paul agonized in a similar way, came alive before our eyes. Rosemarie explained to her that Jesus did just that when he died for our sins on the Cross of Calvary.
Unknown to me, the excesses of the ‘Toronto blessing’ had become rife at the church I went to that evening. I witnessed profuse ‘laughing in the Spirit’ which I could not really appreciate. I went there with the hope of getting quite a few of the 30-day Ramadan Prayer focus booklets among the people because before Christmas there had been such interest in Muslim Outreach. Now there was hardly any interest in anything else than laughing that appeared to me so senseless.
For Rosemarie and me the penny dropped: it is not our laughing in the Spirit’ but our weeping for the lost that honours God more!

An evangelistic seminar in a Muslim stronghold
The New Year 1995 started quite well. We received a substantial sum of money from Rosemarie’s godmother, a retired dentist. We saw this as God’s provision to enable us to book air tickets for our four-month home assignment in Holland and Germany. (Our home church is in the former country; Rosemarie’s family and other supporting friends are in the latter one). But we still needed funds for the printing of Op Soek na Waarheid.
Just after the school holidays we had a Muslim seminar in Rylands, a predominantly Indian residential area. That we could stage the evangelistic seminar in a Muslim stronghold was already significant. For the rest, the seminar was not a resounding success. Our time schedule for the publication of the testimony booklet was much too tight. But this was only the start of many disappointments and attacks. It was clear that the testimonies were strategic in our spiritual fight against the enemy’s hold on people.
Rainer Gulsow and his wife Runa, friends from the nearby German Stadtmission, introduced us to Gerda Leithgöb, who was still fairly unknown to Cape believers. Their recommendation was influential in me inviting Gerda to come and teach at our seminar in Rylands Estate in January 1995. ‘Spiritual mapping’ is a term that has been used in recent decades for research into spiritual influences, especially those of a demonic or anti-Christian nature. In respect of Islam, Gerda Leithgöb introduced the issue at the Cape at the prayer seminar. Ds. Pypers had originally been the scheduled keynote speaker in the Reformed fellowship where he had done pioneering work and she would have been just an ancillary speaker. For the majority of the audience the subject matter was completely unknown. With Ds. Pypers absent – once again the result of my failure to confirm the speaking appointment - she suddenly had much more time for teaching. Nevertheless, her talk changed the outlook of many a co-worker when they discovered the value of strategic prayer.
Just prior to the prayer seminar I gave to Gerda Leithgöb some of my research results on the establishment and spread of Islam. Among other things we interceded on behalf of a prayer network throughout the Cape Peninsula might be established, which could really cause a breakthrough in the hearts of Cape Muslims. I had pointed to the apparent effect of the shrines on the heights.
* * *
When I mentioned the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 as part of a devotional in our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting, the Lord used that to start calling Gill Knaggs into the mission to the Muslim World. She had been attending our prayer meeting on a one-off basis. This brought her into motion to pray about getting involved in full-time missionary work. Soon Gill was used by God to get YWAM in South Africa more interested in the Muslims. Concretely, an interest developed in Egypt where they started to network with the Coptic Church in that country via links through Mike Burnard of Open Doors. When we started with a radio programme in 1998, she was on hand for the writing of the scripts, something she continued to do for many years, also after her marriage.

Thrust into the front line
We still had little clue of the spiritual forces that are unleashed during the Islamic month of Ramadan. We had to learn that because we had been thrust into the front line of the battle at the Cape, we needed a lot more prayer covering.
The battle heated up during Ramadan. In two cases we escaped serious car accidents on the highway by a whisk. In one of the instances it was very near to a miracle that Rosemarie was not killed. Some strange things also happened to our 1981 model Mazda that we bought after our minibus had been stolen. Twice I had to be towed to Warren Abels, a pastor who works from home as a mechanic in Fairways. On both occasions they found nothing amiss with the vehicle and also thereafter we had no problems with the car. It was evident that there were dark powers at work.
Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation did not arrive. It left the bank in Holland all right, but inexplicably it never arrived at the bank of our headquarters in Durban. In the meantime we were forced to start using the money that was scheduled for the air tickets of our ‘home’ assignment time in Holland and Germany. Some tense weeks followed when the airline with whom we had booked (but not paid), cancelled our seats. Cape Town was fast becoming a favourite destination for tourists.
Right from the start it had been part of our vision to see Muslims from the Cape converted and then sent to other parts of Africa and the Middle East. These were not the first disappointments. One of the first Muslim background believers with whom we had been in close contact and who had been really a blessing to us during the first year of our ministry, completed the first year at Bible School in 1993. He changed over to study political science. He retained the vision for some time to get to the Middle East as a covert missionary in some capacity, but we had our doubts whether that would ever come to fruition. Finally he moved to some unknown address. We eventually lost contact with him for many a year.

Turmoil and Stress
The run-up to our home assignment in Germany and Holland, scheduled to start at the end of March, 1995, was one big turmoil and stress. Apart from the money issue - which was resolved just in time - there was a major problem to get seats. One international airline had a special offer for which we provisionally booked. Because we did not secure our seats with payment, we lost the seats. But by this time also the other airlines had no cheap seats available for a family of seven. The best what we could manage was to get waitlisted on different flights. Because of the uncertainty of getting seats, everybody in the family - also the children - had forgotten that it was our 20th wedding anniversary on the 22nd March. I furthermore got involved in a minor car accident on the 21st. My nerves were all but wrecked!
Somewhere in between I also started to attend a prayer meeting of young Baptist ministers in Woodstock. The visionary Edgar Davids, who had just been called to the area, was the initiator. I was excited, asking myself whether pastors would at last start to pray together for revival in the islamised residential area? Was God already answering our prayers for the area with some of Edgar’s student colleagues the previous year?

A red-letter day
The wedding anniversary - twenty years after the special ceremony in the Moravian Church of the Black Forest village Königsfeld - nevertheless turned into a red-letter day. On that memorable Wednesday morning we baptized five converts who came from Islam, including a female convert from Hanover Park and Nasra Stemmet from Woodstock. At that occasion we also heard about Johaar Viljoen, who had won over many Christians to Islam in his Islamic hey-day. The former imam came to faith in Jesus in the prison of Caledon. His conversion in 1992 - a demonstration of the power of prayer - shook many Islamic inmates who regarded him as their imam.
It had been a very special blessing for Rosemarie and me to witness how a mother of five children, four of which were attending our children’s club - came through to a living faith in Jesus. As we discipled her, we didn’t even dare to mention baptism. In fact, we shared the gospel with her but we spelt out the consequences very clearly. The big responsibility - taking her with five children into our home if her husband would kick her out after her conversion - was a possibility we had to face squarely. We were not ready for that. It was nevertheless a joy for us to lead her to the Lord - after she had phoned us - but we did not encourage her to share her new faith with her husband. We suggested that he should see the difference in her life first. But the seed was sown into our hearts for the need of a discipling house where we could walk a road with new believers.

A special wedding anniversary
On the evening of 22 March the home ministry group of our fellowship sprang a big surprise on us. We had no clue what they were up to when they came to our home for a special farewell. Everybody in the family had forgotten that it was our wedding anniversary, but Carol Günther did not. She arranged with the participants to bring along enough to eat to make it a very special celebration. The day became perfect when the gentleman of Club Travel, who had been working overtime, phoned at 21h that he could secure seats for us, thus only a few days before our intended departure! The three older children could fly on a youth fare of Lufthansa, with the rest of us flying Air France.
Within our own family the first few days back at the Cape after our stint in Europe were quite traumatic. We returned from an extraordinary hot summer in Holland to an icy Cape Town. Our son Samuel promptly developed double pneumonia. Early on the first Sunday morning we had to rush him to Somerset hospital. It was touch and go or we could have lost him.
Through Magdalene Overberg, a long-time youth friend, we heard about Fatima Hendricks, who was working with Edith in a factory in Woodstock. There we ministered to her from time to time. When we visited them again one day during a lunch-hour, it turned out that Fatima had already secretly asked the Lord into her life. Hereafter we visited the factory regularly at lunchtime to encourage her. This was the pristine beginning of lunchtime ministry in factories.

Other blessings
There were also other blessings. It seemed as if our vision of a prayer network across the Peninsula was slowly coming off the ground. Gill Knaggs, who had been touched at one of our Friday prayer meetings, now helped with the English translation and editing of my booklet ‘Op Soek na Waarheid’. She also began a weekly prayer group for the Muslims in her home. Was this the start of the exciting fulfilment of our vision to get a network of prayer across the Peninsula? This was unfortunately not to be, albeit that the group of Muizenberg was to pray there for quite a few years.
The diminutive Baptist Church congregation of Woodstock called a minister. What a blessing it was when we heard that Edgar Davids accepted the call to be their pastor. Just before our departure for Europe, I had been praying with a few students of the Baptist College in Mountain Road, Woodstock. This augured well for a close link to the denominational sister City congregation only a few kilometres away wehre Luois Pasques was now the interim pastor. Edgar Davids proved to be a real visionary and a man of God, along with his devout wife Sandra. Soon I was preaching a series here on the Samaritan woman of John 4 that I had expanded in the meantime.
The minute fellowship took the step in faith to start renovating the ruin of the local former White Dutch Reformed Church. Elisabeth, a committed believer who belonged to this fellowship, brought me in touch with Munti Kreysler, one of her Muslim neighbours of District Six. In turn, we hereafter met Maulana Sulaiman Petersen, the brother of this Muslim lady who was living in the former Afrikaner city stronghold Tamboerskloof. Maulana Petersen was an influential Cape Islamic clergyman who had studied in Pakistan for many years, a scholar of note. I got to know him fairly well.
I was very happy to hear at this time about pastors from different denominations coming together for prayer in other residential areas. I decided to link up with Dr Ernst van der Walt of the Rondebosch Dutch Reformed Church and a few colleagues including Fenner Kadalie from the City Mission. This led to closer contact with the Rondebosch congregation and especially with a prayer group of older members at their old age home, where Erika Böhler, the church worker, initially led this group on Sunday mornings at 7 a.m. For many years I visited this prayer group from time to time until it ceased in 2006. At the Cape Town Baptist Church a small pastors’ group started with Louis Pasques and Edgar Davids in 1995. After the serious rift at the City church after which Pastor Gernetsky left, Louis had a torrid time. The two of us would often pray together through this crisis.

The alien in our gates
Our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting became the start of yet another venture after Daniel, a believer from Eerste River, who had been a regular in the beginning of our prayer meetings, popped in again one day. He challenged us, mentioning the many French-speaking Muslim street traders from West Africa, who have been moving into the city: ‘Have you ever considered doing something about bringing the Gospel to them?’
At this time Louis Pasques, who was raised in an Afrikaner set-up, had become the senior pastor of the Cape Town Baptist Church. Alan Kay resigned his well-paid job at Telkom to become the administrator of the congregation. He became the leader of a church home ministry group. As Alan was living just a street away from us, we joined his group on Wednesday evenings after our return from Europe.
We started to pray about the issue of foreigners at our Friday lunch-hour meeting. God surely used these occasions to prepare Louis Pasques’ heart. He had not only been a regular at the prayer meeting in the Koffiekamer, but he also speaks French. Due to this fact and possibly also because of a brave sermon in which Louis confessed on behalf of the Afrikaners for the hurts to people of colour, West and Central Africans started attending the church. When the destitute teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka pitched up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of the youngster. When Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a weekend visit, they asked Alan Kay to accommodate the Congolese teenager. Gildas crept into Alan’s heart, setting off an extended and unusual adoption process.
The attitude in the church hereafter gradually started to change positively towards refugees. Before long quite a few of them attended our services, especially after special French-speaking services were arranged first monthly and later twice a month as an effort to equip the French-speaking believers for loving outreach to the Muslim French-speakers from our continent.
The need for refugees to get employment was the spawn for the English language classes at the church to be revitalised. The simultaneous need for a discipling house and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. I hoped that the city churches could take ownership of these ventures. That turned out to be easier said than done.

Contacts with individual Muslim leaders
For years I had the illusion that one should just be able to sit down with Muslim academics to show them how they have been deceived. Having seen how a few academics like Professors Willie Jonker and Johan Heyns had been used by God to bring Afrikaners to repentance, I hoped that Muslim leaders would then lead their people into freedom once they understand the truth of the Gospel.
The contact with Dr Achmat Davids was quite cordial, but our conversations never went really deep. I learnt a lot from him about the history of Islam, even though I soon challenged him on some issues. He was a true academic, taking my opposition in his stride. On theological topics he was somewhat at a loss. This was just not his field of study.
Through the contact with Maulana Sulaiman Petersen I realised not only how naive my assumption was, but also our work with Muslim converts actually could become quite perilous.
At one of our first private conversations, I chatted to him casually in City Park Hospital.76 Visiting him there, I was very much aware that he was terminally ill. I cited John 14:6 more or less by the way, where Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me”. The absolute statement clearly shocked him. Knowing that he was a heart patient, I feared for a moment that he might pass out. I did not want to be the cause of his death. He nevertheless allowed me to pray with him in the name of Jesus. Soon hereafter I visited him at his home in Newfields. There he gave honour to Allah, who brought him through once again.
When I tried to arrange with Majiet Poblonker, a Muslim background believer, to pay Maulana Petersen a visit, his true colours came out. Completely angry, he shouted at me on the phone because I had the temerity to bring an apostate into his house! I was very surprised that a learned Muslim could be so sensitive and intolerant not prepared to even receive an ex-Muslim in his home.
The next year at Lebaran(g), the Eid celebration at the end of Ramadan, Rosemarie and I went to wish him for the occasion as we travelled back from a Bible School in Strandfontein. After listening to his argument that there are many ways to get to God, I conceded this as a possibility, but concluded our dialogue more or less in the following way: ‘There may be different roads to God because everybody is unique. There are different avenues, but there is only one entrance because Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me.” This was the same Bible verse that had shocked him a few months before in City Park Hospital. I saw now how the penny dropped with him, but I also discerned his determination. He was evidently convicted, but to concede that one had been wrong all of one’s life, is of course never easy. Even though he was on death’s door, he was not going to risk ostracism by going through the door of faith in Jesus. Hereafter we never had a good talk again. He was obviously avoiding me until he finally passed on into eternity.

Centre for missions at BI
When Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa once again, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started on Sunday evenings. At that occasion Dr Roger Palmer of the YMCA and a board member of the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay aired his vision to have a centre for missions at BI. I had already been in discussion with Manfred Jung of SIM to get a similar venture off the ground, teaching Muslim Evangelism at different Bible Schools. In fact, I had already approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about Islam at these institutions, remembering the lack we had in our own curriculum at the Moravian seminary. After Colin Tomlinson, a missionary from MECO (Middle East Christian Outreach), returned from the field on home assignment, the BI venue was secured.77 An interesting partnership developed at the course of January 1999 when local churches started sponsoring believers from other African countries to attend our course.
Two F’s - Frustration and Fight
The WEC conference of 1996 was memorable in more than one sense. At an international leadership conference in 1994 the various sending bases were challenged to look at the remaining unreached people groups in terms of the gospel in their geographical areas. As I had already given much thought along those lines, e.g. through my document around South Africa as a goldmine for missionary recruitment, I took on the challenge to research the topic before the next conference for Southern Africa. I expected to be given the opportunity to share the result of my research with the rest of the conference in May 1996. Here however I experienced one frustration after the other until I had to leave by bus again on the Friday, without being given the opportunity to report back.
The same conference in early May 1996 had an interesting aside when we heard that Ahmed Deedat, the well known Muslim apologist, was admitted to hospital. With a missionary colleague from Brazil I went to the hospital where we prayed for Deedat, who was however in a coma.
Deedat had gone one step too far though. Local Christian clergymen including the missionary Dave Foster of AEF, requested Deedat to retract the offensive remarks he had made in a large advertisement in a Durban newspaper. They warned the well-known Muslim leader that he would have to reckon with God's wrath in the case of his refusal.
True to his reputation, Deedat refused to do anything of the sort. Promptly he was knocked down by a stroke. An instance of divine wrath would have been a logical conclusion. But even after his partial recovery he gave no indication of repentance. For many years Deedat remained in a condition that resembled a coma, completely out of action.

Our Work a Threat in the spiritual Realms?
That our work was presenting a threat in the spiritual realms, got home to us after we taught at Youth with a Mission in the first quarter of 1996. After having heard me sharing at our first BI course for prospective missionaries, a member of the His People Church, who was linked to Youth with a Mission, asked me to come and teach at their base in Muizenberg. At this time Mark Gabriel, a former shaykh from Egypt, had just come to them to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) there. He had to flee his home country after he decided to follow Jesus. Also in Johannesburg there had been attempts to assassinate him. They requested us to host Mark for the practical part of his DTS.
The presence of Mark in our home turned out to be a fruitful two-way experience; I learnt such a lot from him, for example when he referred to the Ebionites. My own discovery that Muhammad, the founder of the religion, had been intensely influenced by the Jews, led to studies in Judaism and subsequently to my personal discovery of the Ebionite Jewish-Christian roots of Islam.
I went on to examine other Christian roots of that religion.78 I detected very soon that Christianity had a much greater debt to pay in respect of Islam than I was aware. I learned that Muhammad had been misled by a sectarian view of Biblical belief. I discerned that this is only one of many causes of what I dubbed ‘the unpaid debt of the church’. I wrote a treatise with that title. How sad I was when I discovered how Islam adopted one doctrine after the other from heretical Christianity; yes, that even reputable theologians and church fathers like Augustine played a role in this development. And then there was the role of the emperor Constantine, driving a rift between the Jews and Christians when he gave special favours to the latter group. I was also reminded how paganism was made fashionable via the worship of the sun god, making Sunday a compulsory day of rest in 321 CE. This was destined to keep me uneasy for many years. When I shared this with Christians, there was surprise, but also opposition and denial. Like the harsh realities around the practices of apartheid in the not too distant past, it seems to be difficult for followers of Christ to swallow these hard truths.

Mark Gabriel on the run again
However, Mark’s presence was not without hick-ups. He joined me on a preaching engagement at the Moravian Church in Elsies River on the last Sunday of July 1996 where our friend Chris Wessels was the pastor.79 We offered copies of Against the Tide in the Middle East, Mark’s testimony and Search for Truth for sale. That evening Mark also shared his testimony at a youth service at the same venue, where Christians from other churches of the area attended. I made a crucial error in the morning, omitting to warn the congregation to pray before they would pass any testimony booklet to Muslims. Three days later, on Wednesday 31 July, it was clear that Mark’s life was in danger yet again. Heinrich Grafen, a missionary colleague, phoned me to warn me that Maulana Petersen was looking for Mark. A few minutes later Maulana Petersen phoned me as well, enquiring after the whereabouts of the apostate from Egypt who wrote a booklet with very offensive material. It was indeed not so wise of Mark to include a comparison of Muhammad and Jesus in the testimony booklet. He had intimated in the booklet that Muhammad was inspired by the devil. We had another Salman Rushdie80 case on our hands; in fact, we had him in our home!
The ‘co-incidence’ of a combined meeting of the home ministry groups at our church the same evening gave us the opportunity to share the need for a hide-out for him. That turned out to become a decisive stepping-stone for Debbie Zaayman. She offered her flat because she would be going away for a few weeks. Although already almost at retirement age, the 57-year old nurse decided to venture into missions, entering the Africa School of Missions the following year. The year thereafter she was already on her way to the mission field, to the Indian subcontinent as a ‘tent-making’81 missionary, using her nursing skills in a loving way to the down and outs.82
The killing of Rashaad Staggie by PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) a few days later on 4 August 1996 was the next major stimulus for prayer. It brought personal relief to us, because in the resulting turmoil the fundamentalist Muslims apparently forgot to hunt further for Mark Gabriel!

A Lebanon scenario
The PAGAD issue highlighted the fear of and resentment (sometimes even hatred by some Christians) towards Muslims. The veiled threat of a Muslim State was now mentioned more often than was healthy for good relations between the adherents of the two major religions at the Cape. On Saturday 17 August 1996, surmised Satanists broke into the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne, attempting to arsonise the building. The arson attempt on the church was thankfully downplayed in the press. Satanists were accused of the arson attempt. Thankfully the damage was not too extensive. When Pastor Walter Ackermann phoned me after reading the article in the newspaper, we were seriously challenged because a course one evening per week was to have started at that venue soon thereafter on the 27th of August, 1996. We had unwisely called the course ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim neighbour’ in the pamphlets that we printed to advertise the course. But how could we know that Lansdowne was actually a PAGAD stronghold? With the arson attempt occurring only two weeks after the Salt River execution, the frightful possibility of a Lebanon scenario challenged the Christians to get their act together. A wave of prayer followed, after which we decided to put out another ‘fleece’. It was decided to test the famous but ill-fated St James Church that had been attacked in July 1993 as a possible venue for our course, instead of cancelling it outright.83 The name of the 10-week course (one night per week) that eventually did take place at the St James Church in Kenilworth, was changed to ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’.
The PAGAD crisis - a wonderful opportunity?
The crisis that followed the PAGAD eruption of August 1996 presented the churches with a challenge, a wonderful opportunity to impact the problem areas of the Cape townships. With the danger of a Lebanon scenario very real - everybody was just waiting for the gangsters to hit back with a vengeance - a meeting for church leaders and missionaries was organised at the Scripture Union building in Rondebosch. Here the suggestion was put forward to organise a mass prayer meeting on the Athlone stadium. At this occasion I suggested drug rehabilitation as a possible solution where Jesus is central. But this should be a service to the Muslim community. The Bet-el centres which had proved so successful in Spain was still our model. Many people, who have recognised the harmful effect of drugs, were finding it so difficult to get rid of the addiction. Yet, many drug addicts around the world have in the meantime experienced the liberating power of a personal faith in Jesus. A certain pastor attacked me indirectly, suggesting that we would be abusing the vulnerability of drug addicts in this way.84
When the crisis in the Mother City subsided, pastors simply continued with the building of their own ‘kingdoms’, shelving the drug problem into some invisible drawer.

A Base for new Initiatives?
In September 1996 we suddenly received access to St Paul’s Primary School, Bo-Kaap, through a teacher, Berenice Lawrence, to whose home I had taken Mark Gabriel. Berenice’s husband Elroy had been at our home in Holland in 1978, while he was attending Spes Bona High School.85 Now Berenice came with the request to bring people like Mark Gabriel and others from different countries to their school. I jumped at this idea to broaden the minds of the Bo-Kaap children, to open them up to the Gospel in a loving and non-threatening way.

A difficult Month
I had to discover anew: If there were to occur a spiritual breakthrough, a revival in the Mother City of South Africa, it would be God’s sovereign work. Our own experiences highlighted the need for more prayer.
On Sunday October 6, 1996, I preached at the Cape Town Baptist Church. Towards the end of the sermon my emotions got the better of me and I could not finish. I broke down in tears when I was overwhelmed by the idea that the Lord might want to use this church to minister to Africans from other parts of the continent. When I invited the congregation to join in the venture, there was hardly any visible response. Yet, seed was sown.86 (Within a few years there were more people of colour – the bulk of them foreigners - attending the church than Whites.)
October 1996 was a month when we were very much involved in spiritual warfare, often at the receiving end. I started writing a diary that went as follows at some stage: “The attack starts not only very early in the month, but also early in the day. Neither Rosemarie nor I was able to sleep properly. For Rosemarie it was the second sleepless night in a row. She shares her concern that we were getting nowhere with our ministry: ‘For almost five years we have toiled here in Cape Town. And what have we achieved? Almost nothing! We might as well go back to Holland.’ I concede that I also feel completely depressed.”
Prayer walking by me and Rosemarie in October 1996 for a church to be planted in Bo-Kaap, the (former) Muslim stronghold, brought us anew to the discovery that demonic forces were at work that are trying to destroy the churches of the city centre. The necessity of church unity was more than evident. It had to become one of our priorities. Somehow we forgot that we had learned that we should not be doing this sort of thing alone as a couple.
The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when our son Rafael came to us in the middle of the night with all the signs that he had been attacked demonically. He appeared to have become mentally crazy. This seemed to Rosemarie the signal for us to stop with our ministry. To her the price was too high to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. Reminding her of the false alternatives I had to face years ago when someone suggested that I should choose between my love for her and that for my country, I pointed out that we should fight in prayer for our son. This definitely paid off. He came through the crisis with flying colours. He later became pivotal for the ministry of Cross Culture, a ministry among young people of a few city churches while he studied at Cornerstone Christian College87 where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree.88

Intercessors from different Areas
June Lehmensich, a regular at the Friday prayer meetings and an office worker for the City Council, had taken the pastoral clinical training course with Dr Dwyer in Lansdowne. She also attended the ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’ course at St James Church (Kenilworth) in 1996. Subsequently she became a pivotal figure as she spread the vision for prayer, taking it right into the Provincial Chambers and the National Parliament. June was simultaneously the personification of faithfulness and perseverance, as well as a link to a prayer group with a long tradition at the Cape Town City Council.
I organised the launch of the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus booklets in the historic St Stephen’s Church of Bo-Kaap for November 1996 . Bennie Mostert arranged the annual countrywide distribution, ensuring that the vision of countrywide prayer for Muslims once a year was guaranteed. However, the bulk of agencies linked to Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM), which were in some way involved with Muslim outreach, never fully adopted the vision. Intercessors were coming together from different places once a month at the Sowers of the Word Church in Lansdowne, where the veteran Pastor Andy Lamb was the leader.
Sally Kirkwood, a Cape intercessor of note, had already been prepared by the Lord. She had started a prayer meeting at their home in Plumstead at her home for Cape Muslims in the mid-1990s with Arina Serdyn, an Afrikaner retired teacher. Along with other intercessors she became God’s instrument for increasing prayer awareness in the Mother City. Cynthia Richards from Africa Enterprise, and later a pastor of Camp Bay United Church, was another important cog in this regard. She visited the various Ministers Fraternals of the Peninsula, organising prayer meetings in preparation for an evangelistic campaign with Franklin Graham, the son of the renowned evangelist Billy Graham (I had given Cynthia the phone numbers which I used for the Jesus Marches of 1994). The Franklin Graham campaign was scheduled for April 1997.
17. Under Attack

The evident demonic attack via our son Rafael in October 1996 was not an isolated experience. Others were not so stark, but nevertheless very real. However, every time we experienced how the Lord would bring us through supernaturally. We are so thankful for intercessors in different parts of the world who were praying for us. We would otherwise hardly have been able to survive all the onslaughts mentally and spiritually.

Ramadan attacks
In previous years we had experienced major spiritual attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In 1994 I twice had the experience that our car had to be towed away but no fault to be found. The year thereafter Rosemarie was almost killed in a car accident and during the same period we skidded on the high way and miraculously came out of the incident unscathed. In 1997 we experienced it almost as a satanic taunt when Rosemarie had symptoms of being pregnant just after Ramadan. That would effectively have ruled her out for much of our ministry.
Just prior to this we were so happy when a friend of Bo-Kaap brought her in touch with a home-craft club in the area. A pregnancy would have meant an abrupt end to her involvement with the new friendships. A scan did not show any foetus. A month or two later, when she was admitted to hospital for a suspected miscarriage, there was no trace of any pregnancy when the gynaecologist scraped the womb. What was this all about?

Crises in the Ministry
I had to learn the hard way through this experience once more that we should not give satan too much honour. Soon we discovered that the deceiver was actually attacking our marriage relationship once again. A tension developed as Rosemarie could not accept the validity of my office ministry, including research and writing. Indeed, I was far too much on the phone, organising teaching courses and working behind the computer. This was happening at the expense of person-to-person contact. Communication between us was completely insufficient.
The Lord used the crisis to help me regain sight of the priority of actual outreach to the lost and the needy. The 1997 version of the Ramadan backlash appeared not as obvious. The trauma was nevertheless very real when the sale of the CEBI Bible School to a Muslim buyer came up during a prayer conference with our friend Gerda Leithgöb of Herald Ministries. This was the very same building at which we had been called into Muslim Outreach in January 1992.
During the year 1997 I had to see many of my hopes and dreams being dashed. All our efforts to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity, failed. It had been my dream to see this building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries. I had to take the latest disappointment in my stride.

A significant evangelistic Campaign
Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur was one of few pastors I knew at this time who had a very broad vision for both missions and prayer. I could call on him on short notice for assistance, for example when a friend from Holland wanted to be baptised in the middle of winter (It was Pastor Walter Ackerman who phoned me, after he had been reading in the Week End Argus of the arson attempt of a church in Lansdowne in August 1996).
It was really significant for the Cape Town metropolis in April 1997 when churches across the Cape Peninsula and from almost every denomination joined hands for a big campaign on the Newlands Cricket Stadium with Franklin Graham. Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur and Pastor Elijah Klaassen from a Pentecostal fellowship in Gugulethu/ Crossroads, worked tirelessly to enlist people from the Cape Flats and Black churches respectively for this event. Transport from the townships was provided free of charge. This thus became the model for the Transformation stadium events of the new millennium.
I had met Elijah Klaassen the first time in 1981 when I was part of a church delegation in Crossroads when the government wanted to send women and children back to the Transkei. I met up with him by chance again in 1992 when he was addressing a group on the Grand Parade, an effort to challenge banks to give loans to Black entrepeneurs. My attempt to use him to rope Black pastors into a prayer network for the Peninsula was however not successful.
Eben Swart became the Western Cape coordinator for Herald Ministries, working closely with NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa), which had appointed Pastor Willy Oyegun as their coordinator in the Western Cape. Important work was done in research and spiritual mapping, along with Amanda Buys, who founded Kanaan Ministries. Some of her clients had been involved with Satanism. Ernst van der Walt (jr) had ministered in China with OM on short term and Amanda Buys had been involved with the counseling of Christians with psychological problems.

Confession once again
It came really as a special boon when Christians overseas starting organising a Reconciliation Walk following the path of the Crusades. Bennie Mostert (Jericho Walls) faxed the lengthy confession of the organisers through to our Cape CCM Forum on the very day that we had one of our meetings. It looked to me as if God had his hand in it. But it turned out to be no cakewalk. In our meeting the lengthy confession was turned down out of hand because it was regarded as not relevant for us in South Africa. I managed to salvage the idea, suggesting that we should then write our own confession. At our Easter Conference 1997 at Wellington I reminded the missionary colleagues of the idea at a meeting of the leadership. They promptly gave me the homework to write a draft and send it to the relevant people in preparation for our leaders meeting in October, 1997. It looked pretty obvious to me that the bulk of them were just procrastinating, but I did not want to let them off the hook so easily. The matter was much too important to me for completely leaving it at that.
More knocks
The general disappointment at the basic disunity among our missionary colleagues was only one of a series of knocks. Just prior to the Easter conference we had to bury my father on the Elim mission station and shortly thereafter Rosemarie had to fly to Germany for the funeral of her mother.
While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia telephonically. Nadia manipulated matters cleverly, so that I arranged with Rosemarie telephonically that we would take her into our home after Rosemarie’s return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to accommodate Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. This we did at great personal cost. At the same time this highlighted the need for a discipling house.

I was encouraged when I visited my dear friend Jakes - breaking away for a few minutes from the CCM conference in Wellington. He shared his resolve to go on pension soon. Thereafter he wanted to get involved with Muslim outreach again. That mad me quite happy, but it was not to be. A little more than a month later he had a stroke. When I prayed with his wife Ann in hospital, he was in a coma, with little hope given that he would survive. The next day our dear Jakes was with the Lord.
When Rosemarie and I arrived at the church for his funeral, there was not a single seat available.
I did not mind at all to sit on the wooden step just next to the coffin, which contained my late friend.

On the same evening of Jake’s funeral, Rosemarie had symptoms of having had a stroke as well after Nadia had manipulated in such a way that Rosemarie felt compelled to drive her to friends after our return from Wellington, although she was extremely exhausted.

Divine Provision
Ekkehard Zöllner, a befriended doctor, referred us to a Christian specialist who quickly diagnosed that it was a nervous breakdown caused by stress. I was very near to burnout myself, completely exhausted - battered and bruised by the circumstances of the weeks prior to my best friend’s funeral. The specialist, to whom we were referred, ordered us at least two weeks’ rest. It was so good that Joyce Scott, our missionary colleague from England, a nurse, was on the spot. She spoilt our children to the hilt as we left for Betty’s Bay, to the holiday home of the Edwards family from our church.
Soon thereafter, Maria van Maarseveen, a member of our home church in Holland, came to do her Bible school practicum from the Africa School of Missions with us. With Nadia in the very late state of her pregnancy, it was handy to have Maria, a qualified midwife, with us. During this period Maria sensed a call to come and join us after completing her Bible School training.

Many hopes and dreams dashed
During the course of the year 1997 I had to see many of our hopes and dreams dashed. All our efforts failed to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity. We especially thought of it as the building for our new national WEC headquarters, but it had also been my dream and vision to see the building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries to all parts of the world.
How wonderful the prayer seminar with Gerda Leithgöb at the former Cape Evangelical Bible Institute was, still in April 1997. The news of the proposed sale of the former CEBI Bible Institute to Muslims coincided with the prayer seminar. What a sense of unity we experienced in spite of the sword of Damocles hanging over all of us. (The late Pastor Danny Pearson led the believers of the fellowship that was making use of the premises from there on many a prayer walk in the area.) At some stage Gerda Leithgöb approached me to become the co-ordinator for the Western Cape of Herald Ministries, but I had no peace to accept. This was definitely not the Jonah at work again. I saw the need for strategic prayer, but nowhere did I sense a call for leading intercession events. Eben Swart turned out to be a much more capable person for that function.
The visit by Cindy Jacobs from the USA brought a significant number of ‘Coloured’ and White intercessors together at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchells Plain. She confirmed the need for confession with regard to the blight of District Six. When Sally approached me in October 1997 about the matter, I had already started to prepare a visit of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng) that had been referred to me by Bennie Mostert.

Like-minded Partners
In his divine wisdom the Lord had already started to raise like-minded partners. I attended the monthly pastors and wives prayer meeting on the second Thursday of January 1998 after a lengthy absence. Pastor Eddie Edson asked me to address the group off the cuff about the latest issues in the Muslim outreach. As a result, an ‘unknown’ brother gave me his address card and a scribbled note in my hand as we lined up for the tea at the end of the meeting. The content of the note had me looking up: ‘You don’t recognise me, but you were my Sunday School teacher!’ The circle was complete. Ernest, the writer of the note, hailed from the Sonnenburg family in Ravensmead. The Lord had used his parents to thrust me into missions while I was still an arrogant rebellious teenage Christian.
When Rosemarie and I visited Ernest and Eleanor, his wife, we sensed an immediate bond. Exactly those ideas that had been on my mind for years - and that I had struggled to put over to pastors - were aired by them. It turned out that Ernest also had training as a journalist. Ernest had been writing a regular newsletter to about 100 pastors.
Soon Rosemarie was ministering together with Eleanor in a factory every Thursday at lunchtime. Unfortunately, this ministry soon petered out, as did the other one with Edith la Grange after Fatima H. had left. The factory work was to be resurrected in a different but more satisfactory form in 2003.

June Lehmensich has been one of the regulars at our prayer meetings. She introduced various workers and believers at the Cape Metropolitan Council that went through a complete re-organization in 1997. Reggie Clarke became one of the new regulars. Through him our contact to the Lighthouse Christian Centre of Parow got some more substance. This was one of the churches with which I had contact when I co-ordinated the Jesus Marches in 1994. Unfortunately the early promise of this contact soon faded, but it was revived through the involvement of Eben Swart, who belonged to the congregation and Billy Marais, a pastor. The latter had been a Baptist minister in Three Anchor Bay before the fellowship there merged with the Sea Point Assemblies of God. He was a pastor of the Lighthouse Christian Centre only for a few months, but just long enough to be a catalyst for the fellowship to open up for City-wide prayer events. I was happy to help facilitate the link to Eddy Edson, who had been the driving force of the meetings of ‘Coloured’ ministers.

The Hospital Ministry
The hospital ministry, led by Rosemarie and June Lehmensich, had interesting ramifications. At the Groote Schuur Hospital89 she and June especially started visiting the cancer ward. A very special case occurred when we heard about a patient, Ayesha Hunter, who had undergone surgery. Rosemarie understood that she had more or less been sent home to die. This sort of situation was of course happening quite regularly from time to time in the cancer ward.
What a surprise it was when Reggie Clarke, a church member of the Lighthouse Christian Centre, mentioned at one of our Friday prayer meetings that Ayesha Hunter was to share her testimony at one of their church home cell meetings. It turned out that the Lord had touched her body, healing her. She was now ministering to patients on behalf of the Cancer Association. Soon a contact was established.
At that time we went to Grabouw more or less every second week, after our mother had been admitted to Huis Silwerjare, a home for the aged. In the hospital Rosemarie met an old Muslim lady from Belhar who seemed to be quite open to the gospel. As Belhar would not be too much of a detour en route to Grabouw, we popped in after the old terminally ill patient had been sent home basically to die. When we visited her, she spoke very lovingly about her grandchild who evidently had made her quite jealous to experience the wonderful love of Jesus. The old Muslim lady understood that die liefde van Jesus is wonderbaar (the love of Jesus is wonderful). Her heart was wonderfully prepared, so that Rosemarie could lead the old sick (grand)mother to the Lord. When we went to visit her again a few weeks later en route to Grabouw, we found a devastated couple that was not only in bereavement about their mother – they had been expecting that - but also because of the death of their 17-year old daughter. A man who was ‘playing with a pistol’ killed the young girl so-called accidentally. The parental couple went on to rave how other children loved their daughter at Kensington High School but they stopped short of accusing anybody. When they mentioned that the perpetrator had links to PAGAD, suspicion did come through that it was no accident after all.

Radio Opportunities
Rosemarie and I would have loved to attend the Global Consultation of World Evangelisation (GCOWE) in Pretoria in July 1997, if only it were to utilise the opportunity to visit our son Danny. He was doing a year of orientation with Trans World Radio before the start of his tertiary studies in Electrical Engineering. But the ‘door’ never opened to enable us to go to Pretoria. After the experiences of March to May of that year, we understood why.
However, the Lord did His thing in a sovereign way. Shortly after the GCOWE conference, we got a phone call from the Cape Community FM (CCFM) radio station. Avril Thomas, the directress, had been challenged at the conference to look at ways and means to spread the Gospel via the radio responsibly, also to other religious groups. At that stage CCFM had been passing telephonic contacts from Islamic background to us.
With a fairly full agenda already I did not see my way clear to commit myself to a regular radio slot. Rosemarie challenged me. How could we let such an opportunity slip to enter many Muslim homes? After serious consideration, I could envisage adapting my series of the lessons of Jesus on cross-cultural communication. I had used this series on the revolutionary conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman in John 4 as devotionals at various courses.
However, after more thought and prayer, Rosemarie and I thought that the series was not suitable for radio devotionals. Instead, I would write a series on common personalities of the Abrahamic religions, which I had been using at the cell meetings with male Muslim background believers in Hanover Park. The result was ten talks about personalities such as Moses and Abraham, after more private study of the Qur’an and the Talmud. The proximity of not only two Western Cape theological faculties but also a Jewish and a Muslim library, apart from the Cape Town Campus of the South African Library90 made matters so much easier for me in terms of research opportunities.
The consistent denial of the Cross in the sacred book of the Muslims was more than compelling. It was just too subtle to be man-made. Knowing the history of the compilation of the Qur’an, the question was how I could share this theoretically devastating information in a loving way to a possible Muslim audience. The fact that I would also be addressing Christians and Muslims via the radio simultaneously would of course not make things easy. During one of our prayer walks in Bo-Kaap it became clear to me that I should not go on the air myself. Someone else should read the script. CCFM agreed to the suggestion.

A regular Radio Programme
The contact to CCFM turned out to be quite strategic. After the initial radio series we felt that we should switch to a regular programme. We were praying about the format when we heard that Salama Temmers had resigned her full-time post at Standard Bank. Along with Ayesha, we would have two possible presenters from Muslim background for our envisaged programme. When we spoke to Avril Thomas about our plans, we heard that Gill Knaggs had volunteered to assist just prior to our meeting with her. (Gill had been our contact in Muizenberg for a few years, but we did not know about her experience in secular radio work).
PAGAD was still breathing down our necks, soon also in the radio work. From the outset I felt compelled to mention to Avril the possibility of the bombing or arsonising of the radio station. But she was brave enough to take the risk. The greater risk would fall on Salama and Ayesha, two converts from Islam. But they were brave, ready to lose their lives for the cause of the Gospel if that was what was divinely needed. On Wednesday, 7 January 1998 we took the decision to forge ahead. We would trust the Lord, come what may. The same evening we were encouraged to find a newspaper report that the Muslim radio station has employed a convert from Christianity who had married a Pakistani cricketer. The precedent created space for us to follow suit with less fear of PAGAD reprisals if the Muslim radio station could use converts coming from Christianity.
Soon the format of the slot on the radio evolved - it would be a 15 minute women’s programme on a Thursday morning during one of the Life Issues slots, with Gill writing the scripts and the presentation done by Salama and Ayesha alternately. Phone calls to the station gave testimony that many homes, factories and even shops were impacted by the programmes that have been running until CCFM restructured their programmes in 2004. In that year the radio station was given permission to transmit for 24 hours per day.

Time for confession?
I thought for a long time that it was high time that we as Christians should begin paying off the debt with regard to Islam and Judaism. Remorseful confession would be the right way to start, followed by concrete steps of restitution. (Through my studies and research I discerned that the establishment and spread of Islam in South Africa could really be described as the unpaid debt of the church.) But how could we convey the need for confession to the church at large? I knew that we had (and still have) to be patient. Remorse is not something, which we can bring about through our efforts. Only God can do that.
Yet, I hoped it quite important to disseminate the results of my studies so that clergy and missionaries could discover the need for confession. But ‘doors’ would just not open. Or was I not persevering enough? Or was the timing not correct?
Normally I would not have regarded the attendance of the CCM leadership conference in Johannesburg as a high priority. To go to big expense to attend a conference of which the purpose and sense was not so clear to me, seemed to me a luxury. The optimal use of my time was also part and parcel of stewardship to me. A major draw-card for the visit to Gauteng was the possibility of seeing our son Danny, who was with Trans World Radio (TWR) in Pretoria for a missionary year.
The ‘final straw’ to go to Gauteng was the contact to the Dutch Reformed Suikerbosrand congregation in Heidelberg (Gauteng). They wanted to come and undertake a prayer journey to the Mother City, to come and pray for the Cape Muslims. I thus decided to attend the conference on the Reef and visit Heidelberg thereafter.
A Case of )verkill?
At the CCM conference itself it was possibly a case of overkill when I suggested in my draft confession - which I had sent quite late to the conference participants - that it should also be read in mosques. Because Ramadan and the start of 1998 coincided, it appeared to me a good opportunity to present the confession. The timing of my suggestion was unwise, because we got sidetracked.
Thus it was actually not so surprising that the discussion of the confession itself was postponed to the next CCM conference at Easter 1998. The overall reaction to my suggestions did not augur well for the future. I had the silent fear that not many colleagues were behind the idea. One of them was honest enough to state publicly that he was against my suggestion. Another one assured me privately afterwards that he wanted to work with me on the re-drafting of the confession.
My personal further participation in CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) got a serious blow when I could not discern a clear commitment to prayer with my colleagues. I was however ashamed that the participants almost cold-shouldered Bennie Mostert, after he had come especially from Pretoria with the new copies of the 30 day Muslim Prayer Focus. The interest in taking booklets was minimal. I really could not understand how the colleagues expected a breakthrough in the ministry to Muslims without an increased prayer effort!

An ‘open letter’ to Clergymen
After hearing certain things said at the CCM leadership conference I thought that I should try to disseminate the results of my studies as a matter of urgency. I started writing an ‘open letter’ to clergymen with the title My spiritual Odyssey as a summary of my studies. The title of the initial research was The unpaid debt of the Church. However, the dissemination/publication of neither manuscript was confirmed, disappearing to the pile of unpublished document.
Yet, the conference also had positives. The main speaker, Dr Wasserman, came from the Carmel Mission in Southern Germany. He confirmed my suspicion of demonic involvement in the compilation of the Qur’an and I received important catalysts for further research. With regard to confirmations of my own independent study - the result of meticulous computer analysis with regard to the names of God, was just astonishing. I was for example not aware that the Arabic equivalent of Yahweh did not feature in the Qur’an at all.
Instead of gaining support for the idea of confession to be done by churches throughout the country at the beginning of 1998, I was shattered. I sensed that even if I had succeeded in gaining support, it would not have been from the heart. Very few colleagues had remorse with regard to the guilt of Christians and Christianity. Basically only God could do that. I would have to find a way to disseminate my research in a way that the Holy Spirit could use to that effect. What an awesome task! For some of the participants, the Muslims had a bigger guilt and that was for them the end of the story.

In AWB territory
I would have left Gauteng a very frustrated and despondent person if I had to come back to the Cape straight from that conference. Instead, I returned from there overjoyed. The big difference was the visit to Heidelberg in Gauteng, where I met the group of believers that was to leave for the Cape the very next day. At the occasion of the sending out of prayer teams to different spiritual strongholds in 1997, a team from the Dutch Reformed Church Suikerbosrand congregation from Heidelberg (Gauteng) followed the nudge of Bennie Mostert to come and pray in Bo-Kaap. In the spiritual realm this was significant because Heidelberg was the cradle of the racist Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) when the town belonged to the Transvaal province of the old South Africa.
While I was still in Heidelberg, I heard telephonically that Fatima H, our factory contact, was about to lose the house that she had inherited as the only daughter. Just prior to this, she resigned her work at the factory where we had been ministering to her during lunch times, to care for her mother. Her family was pressurizing her to return to Islam if she wanted to keep the house. A Muslim lawyer would see to it that she gets the house under this condition. We were over-awed how she was determined not to recant, even if that would mean losing her house. The believers in Heidelberg joined in prayer for this emergency.

Dropping our low Profile?
Up to this point in time, our involvement with Muslims and the converts coming from Islam was very low-key. We thought now that the moment had arrived to go public with the unjust way in which Fatima was treated. But this could have entailed losing the low profile that has been so beneficial for our ministry.
The Lord intervened. It turned out that her mother did not sign the last will and testament, which stated that Fatima H was disinherited because she had left their religion. The document was declared null and void. Being the only heir, the house was now awarded to her.
Traumatic experiences around Nadia and another Muslim background believer that we had taken into our home amplified the urgent need of a discipling house, where people like these can be assisted more effectively. Also with Fatima it was touch and go or she could have landed up destitute.

Both Maulana Petersen and Achmat Davids died in 1998; the latter only a day after I still had an interview with him at the studio of Radio Voice of the Cape. After all our experiences, I knew that only prayer could make the difference. I still hoped to get into dialogue with young Muslim academics, who might be more open to listen to the credentials of the Gospel. I started learning Arabic in 1999 - through private lessons by a student from Tunisia - to get the necessary grounding to start as a student at the University of the Western Cape the following year. Unfortunately my full schedule did not allow me to persevere with the lessons. I saw the lessons however also as a way of building trust with the Tunisian student with whose wife Rosemarie had close contact.

A scintillating week of spiritual warfare
A few weeks before I left for the Reef, I had to prepare the visit of the group from Heidelberg. Sally Kirkwood phoned me at this time because she was burdened with the barrier of guilt over the City with regard to District Six. Intercessors had discerned that the Cape Town that was like a sleeping giant that was tied by its shoulders. I took her to Bo-Kaap where we prayed. There the Lord reminded her of a prophetic word that was originally given for Jerusalem, but which she sensed that she had to apply to the Mother City of South Africa. The afflicted city would be spiritually rebuilt with beautiful gem stones.
The dramatic weekend on the Reef was followed up by a scintillating week of spiritual warfare, including an unforgettable day of repentance and reconciliation in District Six. As part of this visit from Gauteng, a prayer meeting of confession was organized for November 1, 1997 on a gravel patch near to the former Moravian Church in District Six. Sally Kirkwood, who had a prayer group for the Cape Muslims at her home in Plumstead in the mid-1990s, played a pivotal role in this prayer event. Our contact with Gill Knaggs increased at this time. She brought along Dave and Trish Whitecross (Dave Whitecross had been helping Mark Gabriel with the editing of manuscripts). Through this event the citywide prayer movement got a major push because I had asked Eben Swart to lead the occasion in District Six. That turned out to be very strategic. Hereafter she came to the fore with a more prominent role among the Cape intercessors. Richard Mitchell, Eben Swart and Mike Winfield linked up more closely at this occasion in a relationship that was to have a significant mutual impact on the prayer ministry at the Cape in the next few years and transformation in the country at large. Eben Swart’s position as Western Cape Prayer coordinator was cemented when he thereafter got linked to the pastors and wives prayer meeting led by Eddie Edson. Mike Winfield belonged to the congregation in Bergvliet, that got Trevor Pearce as their new pastor. (The Anglican Church in Bergvliet later took a leading role in the attempts of Transformation of the Mother City.) Richard Mitchell left for England at the end of 1999.
The ceremony on November 1, 1997 saw tears of remorse flowing freely. English-speaking South Africans, Afrikaners and foreigners repented of their respective roles in exploiting the apartheid situation.

Drugs and Gangsterism once again
When the PAGAD crisis of 1996 in the Mother City subsided, pastors continued with the building of their own ‘kingdoms’. A year later, in November 1997, the gang war erupted once again. This time TEASA (The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa) called a meeting at the Baker House in Athlone. At this occasion I addressed the group, challenging them from Scripture how Jesus used outcasts like prostitutes; that David was at some stage little more than a gang leader.
The PAGAD issue had highlighted the need for a drug rehabilitation centre. Anew we started to pray such a centre into being. What a blessing it thus was when we got in touch with the work of Ian Murray and his team on a farm in Philadelphia. A few members of that ministry team had been drug addicts themselves. The prospect of Eddie Hofmeyer91 becoming the new pastor of the City Mission fellowship in Salt River brought a note of excitement for the prospects for the following year.
Our dreams were however dealt a serious blow soon thereafter. We had to witness how Nadia turned away from Christ. We had discipled her for many months and we also heard that her drug-addicted nephew was not allowed to go to the farm in Philadelphia where Ian Murray was ministering with his team. The reason given by the Muslim family was shattering to me - they would not allow him to go there because it was a Christian institution. This dampened my eagerness somewhat to get a rehab centre off the ground. We were not prepared to hide the fact that our intended rehab centre should be Jesus-centred, but I also hoped that we could serve the Muslim community in this way.
Our Friday prayer meeting became the start of yet another initiative when Onne Mellema, a regular participant, casually threw in a matter. He shared with us that Vision S.A. - the ongoing consultation in the wake of the Franklin Graham campaign - was planning a weekend in Lansdowne in March. The Lord had laid on my heart since the beginning of that year to pray for Dean Ramjoomia, who had been inactive for a few years in terms of outreach. We really longed to see him being used among the gangsters again. Of course, he first had to get out of his backslidden state. He was living in Lansdowne in a spiritually backslidden state with his family
God used the ensuing visit by me and Onne to rekindle in Dean’s heart the desire to return to the Lord. Towards the end of 1998 he was already making restitution for some of the things he had been committing during his period of back-sliding. In the beginning of 1999 he started attending the EBC Bible School in Strandfontein.
At this time the PAGAD scourge was threatening to cause major disruption in the city. The need for a response in the form of a Rehabilitation centre had become pressing. It was only natural that we challenged Dean and his wife to pray about a leadership role in the envisaged Bet-el related Christian rehab centre.

Rays of light
A ray of light broke through in 1998 as more city pastors joined our weekly prayer that we were now having in the German Lutheran Church. Louis Pasques had caught the vision for united prayer to get a breakthrough in the City Bowl after attending a conference with the Argentinian Ed Silvoso in 1996. Over a period of 40 days after Easter 1998 Christians from different backgrounds throughout the country were joining in a fast. A week of prayer meetings with speakers from different churches was organised. But also here the initial promise was not realised. Yet, a core of pastors kept coming every Thursday for many years.
Through my reading I initially perceived the role of the missionary Dr Philip in the emancipation of slaves as extremely significant. I meant to discover that an important stimulus for the formal abolition of slavery worldwide had been given at the Cape. Dr Philip, who had been a missionary at the Cape, through his book Researches in South Africa and his personal friendship to William Wilberforce, influenced matters worldwide. It is of course common knowledge that the British evangelical parliamentarian became the main driving force towards the outlawing of slavery. The appointment of Thomas Pringle, as secretary to Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society in 1826 after a stint at the Cape, where he had been a staunch fighter for press freedom, has hardly been recognised in the emancipation of slaves. Later I discovered in my research that Dr Philip was not much more than an important catalyst. Nevertheless, my crooked understanding of his role inspired me to see history repeat itself. I sensed a challenge to avail myself to spread the information to my fellow Capetonians. Could we be the avant garde yet again, this time to emancipate the world of demonic religious enslavement, to usher in the return of the King of Kings?

Demonic Conspiracies
For years I had been aware that the various forms of apartheid were demonic. In my studies I became aware of Satan’s success at keeping the spiritual descendants of Abraham apart. It is a tragedy of history that the really great men were loners who had insufficient vision for the spiritual dynamics of separation as a tool of the enemy. Paul, the unique apostle, and Martin Luther, the special reformer, both belong to that category. It is sad that all these men were obviously headstrong, but basically misunderstood. I asked myself how Paul, who really was prepared to give his life for his people (see Romans 9-11) could be perceived by the Jews as someone who had cut himself off from them? To me, there was only one explanation: it was a demonic conspiracy! How different things could have been if Muhammad, the great statesman had been explained the Gospel clearly and committed himself in faith to Jesus - not to regard the Master merely as a prophet.
It was so sad to discover that Muhammad and Islam actually had precedents for their doctrines in heretical Christianity. Yet, there was no evidence that the time was ripe for Cape pastors to heed my challenge towards confession in the ‘open letter’.

18. Publication Hurdles

When I was still a student in Germany I wrote a record of my first five months there, which I called Vir jou Suid-Afrika. Naively still hoping that some profit could be gained, I suggested this to be equally divided between the Langgezocht Youth Centre that we had been attempting to build in Genadendal, theological students at the Moravian Seminary and the Christian Institute. I hoped to have it published by the Broederkerk Church Board, because the printing works in Genadendal were still running full steam, but the responsible brethren were not so happy with my attempt, without giving good reasons. I should not have been surprised, because I also wrote some critical remarks about the church board and other notions that might have been too radical for the time. Twelve years later, Tafelberg Publishers returned the manuscript of ‘What God joined together’ in 1981 with little comment. Also there I had been too naïve to expect the government-supporting publishers to deviate so much from the official policies.

Government Negotiations with the ANC?
The closest I came to get something published in the 1980s was a series of articles about South Africa in the periodical Factum in Switzerland. A German school principal and a friend, Gunter Kurz, perceived my viewpoint on my home country quite balanced in view of the polarised positions in Germany. He suggested that I write a series for the Swiss middle of the road periodical.
On 6 April 1982 Mr Nitsche replied on behalf of the editors that he would like to publish my series, adding the request whether I had Black and White pictures of South Africa. In this series I argued that the churches should urge the South African government to enter into negotiations with the ANC. That proved to be my downfall. After my reply of 5 May of the same year, I did not hear from Factum again for more than a year. After my inquiry what happened to my articles, I had to learn that my articles were given to some professor for scrutiny. In evangelical circles the ANC was regarded as Communist inspired. This was reason enough for my material to be turned down even in neutral Switzerland.

Publishing autobiographical Material in Holland?
Another few years on, in 1990, I started considering publishing autobiographical material in Holland. I used the manuscript as a ‘fleece’ - albeit still with some inner uneasiness - to discern whether we should visit my home country again. The idea was to generate funds for our proposed trip with Danny and Tabitha, two of our children. My parents were set to celebrate their golden wedding anniversaryand my mother her 80th birthday at the turn of the year 1990/1. However, after all the overseas trips I did in the preceding months and the pending four-month visit to England as candidates of WEC International, I deemed it almost immoral to expect believers to support us again.
The husband of a cousin of mine, Hein Fransman, had started Kampen Publishers, as a subsidiary of the renowned Dutch company. (He published Allan Boesak’s Vinger van God). Our friend Chris Wessels was also eager that I should expose the evils of apartheid in this way, but I was still holding on to my hope of winning the Afrikaners over in love. The need of funds to go to South Africa with my wife and some children for the Golden Wedding anniversary of my parents and the 80th birthday of my mother nudged me to approach the well-known publishers in the Dutch town of Kampen. They returned my manuscript, stating that there would be no market in Holland for such a book. Miraculously, God sent in sufficient funds for us to go to South Africa, without us approaching anybody to assist us. We gradually got used to expect God to supply our financial needs once we had inner peace that we should venture out in faith.
I trusted that the Lord evidently knew that my heart was not really in it to lower my lofty ideal to refrain from publishing the sensitive material abroad. This would surely have been quite embarrassing if not damaging to the government of the day.

Rosemarie was critical of my Writing Activities
Rosemarie was still quite critical of my writing activities. She thought that I was wasting my time. This effectively put a break and a damper on my spirit. Indeed, I had very little to show for all my efforts. Looking back, I am nevertheless thankful for Rosemarie’s criticism. It kept me humble. I don’t know whether our family life would have been able to handle the pressure of the prejudicial South African society in the 1980s if we had gone at that time. One of the issues of which she was very critical was my emphasis on confession. Through our contacts with Moral Rearmament (MRA)- where I was clearly influenced in this way - we had also seen that confession could also be abused as a tool. We had learned that remorse was a pre-condition and that it as a rule had to be followed with genuine restitution.
In the meantime we had distanced ourselves from the movement. We felt that MRA was too compromising, not radically committed to justice. In our view MRA appeared to emphasize only those parts of Jesus’ message that suited the rich and influential. And then, of course, we perceived the unique position of Jesus as the only door to the Father, was being compromised as well in MRA.

Collating written Material
I started collating the written material about the three visits to South Africa. As my parents were due to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, some sort of treatise was the intended present. David Appelo, a friend that I got to know during my stint in Holland with Campus Crusade, helped me a lot to get a manuscript in a presentable form with the aid of his computer.
After our return to Zeist after our period in England and Emmeloord, David Appelo felt that we should try and publish the material in a form that would not be only a family record. I allowed him to revamp the manuscript for wider publication. During my quiet time I had been challenged through a Bible story: God touched the heart of King Ahasveros to have the records fetched when he could not sleep. There the king could read how someone had saved his life. Mordechai, his benefactor, was honoured in the perfect divine timing. I understood clearly that I should not manipulate, trying to get honoured by men. I should leave that over to God. During our visit to Josini near to the Mozambique border of South Africa, there was also a word from the Lord through the Van Steltens, a missionary couple: I was not to sell my testimony, I should not expect to be vindicated through a book. The Lord would see to it himself in His good time.

Family history
Family history was definitely the tone of a manuscript, which I presented to my darling on her 40th birthday on 7 July 1991. Alluding of course to our wedding sermon, I gave it the title Op adelaars’ vleugelen (On Eagle’s Wings.) Yet another treatise followed soon thereafter as the result of further studies. It was a missiological work describing the new South Africa as a ‘goldmine’ for the recruitment of missionaries, intended to coincide with the quadcentenary of the birth of Bishop Jan Amos Comenius. I was also encouraged to read how indigenous missionaries of India were being used in a national mission agency.
After I presented some of my research to international leaders of WEC International, the response was not encouraging enough to proceed with an attempt at publication. I decided to leave it at that. I loved writing and researching, hoping to put the results in the service of the Lord. But I definitely did not want to waste money to have books printed that would not be read. On the other hand, I was still very much appalled at the absolute waste of missionary potential in Africa and the waste of money in the training and preparation of ineffective Western missionaries to the third world.
Yet, I wanted the Lord to confirm any possible publication. Kallie August, my former student colleague of the Moravian Seminary, mentioned also the financial limits of publication of the denomination92 because he himself was in the process of attempting to get his thesis printed. I also recognised that it is not so bad at all to remain an unknown entity. Our family life remained fairly stable that way. I was only too aware of the possibility of homes disrupted through too much media interference.

I refuse to co-operate in the publication of a book
I had little hesitation to refuse my co-operation to the publication of a book on my behalf a few months into 1992. David Appelo had not complied to our original agreement that he would sent me the manuscript on a ‘floppy disk’ first. (I had become the proud owner of an old 286 computer which Peter Kalmijn organised for me, after he had sold parts of different computers which I had brought from the East European Mission. For word processing the old computer was good enough.)
I was especially not satisfied that my intention - that the publication should be a testimony to God’s goodness and grace - was coming through sufficiently after David Appelo’s editing. I was nevertheless sad to disappoint David, who had gone to such length to prepare the manuscript for publication, that he had given the title Involuntary Exile. (My title had been Home or Hearth).

Formal studies once again?
At the beginning of our stay in Tamboerskloof I joined the SIM (Society of International Ministries) Life Challenge team of Manfred Jung in Bo‑Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. I soon felt very uncomfortable with the method of knocking at strange people’s doors to speak to them about my faith.
A positive result of the door-to-door ministry was that I discovered that my knowledge of Islam was completely inadequate. I got permission from our leaders to do a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay with a special focus on Islam.
Things were nevertheless auguring well for the future. Our friend Jattie Bredenkamp, who had visited us in Zeist a few times and whom I had assisted to get some archive sources in Utrecht, had become professor of History at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He assisted me in my research on the establishment and spread of Islam at the Cape for a study assignment. When I shared with him some of my discoveries, especially with regard to the misrepresentation of missions in the available literature - notably in the writings of Professor Robert Shell and Dr Achmat Davids - he encouraged me to publish my findings. Professor Bredekamp arranged with the South African Library to have a shortened version of my assignment printed in their quarterly journal. The idea was to let my article coincide with the tercentenary of the arrival of Sheikh Yusuf, but I could not meet the deadline. The research became the basis of a treatise which I called The Cinderella of Missions, highlighting the neglect of missionary work to Muslims and Jews.

The Struggle against the giant Islam
A few more treatises were thereafter predominantly connected to the struggle against the ideological giant Islam. As I studied different biblical figures in the Bible that are also found in the Qur’an for use with our meetings with our Muslim background believers, a pattern became clear, namely that the cross is consistently left out in the Qur’an. To cross-check my discovery, I also studied the same personalities in the Jewish Talmud. Here I was struck – which of course should have been quite natural - how close early Christianity actually was to Judaism. I was very much aware that my critical writing about the Sabbath doctrine, i.e. the changing of the day of rest by the Emperor Constantine in 321 CE, could bring me into disrepute not only with all the mainline churches, but also with the evangelicals. I nevertheless used the results of my studies – I called them Pointers to Jesus - carefully in a radio series of the local CCFM in 1997, where we used another person as reader. I also used the material in our teaching courses in Muslim Evangelism. I read a more daring version of the series myself on radio in 1999 as midday devotionals. Fortunately there were no repercussions. This series was running concurrently with the Friday evening programme God Changes Lives where I was interviewing people from different religious backgrounds who came to faith in Jesus. I
The studies also sent me in search of the roots of Islam, when I discovered that virtually every single Islamic doctrine had a Judaic-Christian background. More work on manuscripts followed to which I gave the titles ‘The unpaid debt of the church” and “Is Islam a Christian sect?”93

Frustration at the lack of networking
Before the 1999 CCM conference in Wellington I was on the verge of withdrawing our mission from CCM because of frustration at the lack of a vision for networking and the indifference of missionary colleagues with regard to corporate prayer. When it was suggested that every leader from the various mission groups should contribute something at the conference, I volunteered to speak on the role of prayer in Muslim Evangelism.
At the conference I delivered a paper on Christian-Muslim Spiritual Dynamics at the Cape94 that was well received. We returned from Wellington quite excited, after having had a lot of scepticism with the way the networking was operating. Various participants asked if they could have my paper. This resulted in the expansion of the studies into a manuscript that I called Some Things wrought by Prayer and Christian-Muslim Spiritual Dynamics at the Cape.
The new excitement with the networking unfortunately faded away as I tried in vain to get the colleagues on board with a major effort to distribute the Ramadan prayer booklets, to be prepared by a letter to all pastors as well as a common endeavour to disseminate four testimony tracts that I had written. With both issues the colleagues dragged their heels to such an extent that I was quite frustrated.
I was challenged to see Cape Town used again in the worldwide liberation of Muslims from Islamic bondage. This challenge I also included in the insert to the South African version of the Muslim Prayer Focus. But somehow I just could not excite my missionary colleagues. I was not unhappy at all to hand over the chairmanship of the Forum, even though nobody was willing to take up the baton. I was however disappointed when by September 2000 no meeting of the Forum had been called. Our hand was however forced somewhat because we in the Cape had to stage the next national CCM annual leadership consultation, scheduled for October 2000. Neither this consultation at Wortelgat near Stanford, nor the one at Betty’s Bay in 2001 delivered the goods I was hoping for (In fact, at the latter one it was touch and go or WEC would have left CCM.) I was now only waiting on God to confirm our departure from CCM, without getting activist in my efforts to see networking with the other mission agencies operating again.
The Angel Gabriel in Islam
When a rather polemical German booklet came into my hands in 1998, I felt an urge to search deeper after the background of the figure of the angel Gabriel in Islam. The threads seemed to come together as I discovered that there was clear evidence of a sinister supernatural conspiracy of some sort at work. Around 2003 I tried to test the waters for publication via Mark Gabriel’s connections in the USA. As I discerned that my ‘discoveries’ were not new at all, that much of it was actually also written about by Muslim scholars themselves - I saw ever more that the lie and deception at the origins of Islam and the resultant bondage caused by it, will only be exposed and overcome by much more prayer. Just as it had been the case with the apartheid deception, I continued to pray that the church will get ready to confess its guilt in respect of Islam as a possible run-up to the exposure of the lie at the basis of Islam.

More Post-Graduate Studies
I still hoped to follow up my post-graduate studies, by doing a masters programme at UWC in an effort to get in touch with Muslim students in a natural way. In consultation with the Dean of the theological faculty, Professor Daan Cloete (whom we knew from our common days in Holland) and Professor Robinson, his Missiology expert, I thought of doing a Masters degree, with the proviso that I would first do a course in Arabic. The groundswell idea was to get into dialogue with the next generation of Cape Muslim leaders.
This venture was not confirmed while I just continued with my private research. Neither was the nudge of Rosemarie in 2004 that I should attempt to get some academic recognition for my studies. A feeler at UNISA where our former missionary SIM colleague Dr Christof Sauer was now responsible for post-graduate studies merely pointed out that they only work with theses more or less fro scratch. But he brought me in touch with Muhammed Haron, a former lecturer at UWC who had studied in Holland and who was now operating in Botswana. Drs Haron gave me valuable hints which I pursued in the completion of my research on the History of Cape Islam. He volunteered to be one of my supervisors for a Masters degree if I wanted to use my material for a thesis. This ultimately led to another ‘fleece’ towards the end of 2006 whether I should enrol at UWC in 2007, with the loving outreach to foreign students as another possible focus of such studies. I presented some of my manuscripts on a CD to the Department of Religious Studies but never got any response, even after a repeated enquiry. This was no problem to me, merely confirmation that this was not the timing for it. In this regard I was however definitely no Jonah running away from a challenge.
19. The Strong Wings at Work

The new workers who settled in nicely into our team brought valuable additions to our ministry. Our Indonesian colleagues Nim and Nur Rajagukguk met influential people from Bo-Kaap at their Consulate. They brought us in touch with a Chinese medical doctor, a convert from Islam, with whom Nur had come into contact in Hong Kong when she was working there as a missionary.
Quite a close relationship developed to Richard Mitchell and his family after we had joined them in prayer at Rhodes Memorial and later resumed early morning prayer meetings on Signal Hill. When the opening came for a regular testimony programme on Friday evening on Radio CCFM, Richard Mitchell was a natural choice. The programme ‘God Changes Lives’ with him as presenter was naturally also used to advertise the citywide prayer events.

Citywide prayer events
Such an event on the Grand Parade in 1998 almost floundered after a bomb threat. Churches across the Peninsula had initially been requested to cancel their evening services on Sunday, 19 April 1998. In sheer zeal, a Christian had thousands of pamphlets printed and distributed without proper consultation with the organizing committee in respect of the content of the pamphlet. The flyer and poster that invited believers to a mass prayer meeting against drug abuse, homosexuality and other vice, unfortunately also referred to Islam in a context that was not respectful enough for some radicals. A PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) member apparently regarded this as an invitation to disrupt the event. The meeting was subsequently announced by radio as cancelled, but a few courageous believers including the late Pastor Danny Pearson, who had been deeply involved with the organization of the event, felt that they should not give in to the intimidation. If need be, Christians should be willing to die for the cause of the Gospel. The meeting went ahead, albeit on a much smaller scale than originally planned. The prayer event included confession for the sins of omission to the Cape Muslims and to the Jews, a slot which I led at that occasion.
The unofficial renaming of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ - led by Pastor Johan Klopper of the Vredehoek Apostolic Faith Mission Church - and regular prayers at Rhodes Memorial, fitted into the pattern of spiritual warfare. These venues had been strongholds of Satanists. A mass march to Parliament on 2 September 1998 in response to the perceived attack on community radio stations was followed by a big prayer event on Table Mountain a few weeks later. The prayer day, this time as an effort to rename the reviled peak ‘God’s Mountain’, was called for 26 September 1998. A few thousand Christians prayed over the city from Table Mountain. The event inspired a new initiative whereby a few believers from diverse backgrounds would come together again for prayer on Signal Hill on Saturdays every fortnight at 6 a.m. Soon thereafter early Saturday morning prayer meetings also commenced at Tygerberg, Paarl Rock and on the Constantia Heights. Christians from different churches thus demonstrated the unity of the body.

Prayer efforts in the Cape Town City Bowl
A forty-day period from Easter Sunday to Ascension Day 1998 included days of prayer and fasting by a few churches in the City Bowl. Rev. Louis Pasques of the Cape Town Baptist Church, who also displayed a vision to reach out to the Cape Muslims with love, spearheaded this endeavour. After trying hard since September 1995 to get a ministers’ prayer group going in the City Bowl, this weekly meeting with a prayer emphasis gained ground slowly after the 40 day prayer effort from April to May 1998.
A corresponding move in 1999 - this time with a prayer period of 120 days - was concluded in the Western Cape in the traditional service of the Groote Kerk on Ascension Day, 1999. At this event Dr Robbie Cairncross was divinely brought into the equation. He had been prepared by the Holy Spirit, coming to the Mother City with a vision to see a network of prayer developing in the Peninsula. After hearing me speak at the Groote Kerk, an appointment was set up. I was able to introduce him to the leaders of the Cape Peace Initiative, which had been formed in the wake of the PAGAD disruptions in 1999 (see below). His prayer for an office for his Christian Coalition/Family Alliance near to Parliament was answered in a special way, and he could move into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce at 4 Church Square, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. Dr Robbie Cairncross’ plan became quite strategic when Achmed Kariem, a convert from Islam with a vision for distributing prayer information, came onto his staff. Unfortunately the plan faltered somewhat when Robbie Cairncross had to leave the Chamber of Commerce because of financial constraints.

Anarchic conditions
In the beginning of 1999 PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still terrorising the Cape Peninsula, part of a sinister plan to Islamise South Africa and attempting the violent overthrow of the government in the Western Cape where the bulk of the Muslims in the country are living.95 Gangsters and other criminals gladly jumped on board with high-jackings, rape and all sorts of crime to make the Western Cape ungovernable. Some of them enjoyed the anarchic conditions created, started taking protection money not only from shop keepers, but even dared to request this in individual cases from churches.
It was touch and go or we as a family were also bereaved at this time. I was having a week-end retreat in the little village of Mc Gregor with our friends Elma and Freddy van Dyk when Rosemarie reported a traumatic experience telephonically. In the era before we had the use of cell-phones at our disposal, she was taking our daughter Magdalena to one of her friends in Sea Point. After using a telephone booth to find the exact location of Magdalena’s friend, she returned to our VW Minibus, which still is very much of a favourite vehicle for use as township taxis.96 She was about to drive off, when her head was supernaturally turned to the right, just in time to notice a man with one hand going for the vehicle handle next to her. In the other hand he had a pistol. Reacting instantly, she pressed down the locking knob, driving off without looking into the mirror. This caused some consternation, which had the potential high-jacker fleeing. Not only Rosemarie and Magdalena were thus spared an even more traumatic experience.

Former Gang leaders shot
Achmat Cassiem, the leader of the Hisbollah-Hamas related Qibla, was a frequent spokesman for PAGAD. Rashied Staggie, the Cape drug lord and leader of the Hard Livings Gang, had become quite well known with frequent media appearances. Two weeks before Easter, Staggie was shot and hospitalised, with PAGAD almost sure to be behind the assassination attempt. He made the news headlines soon thereafter from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. He recovered miraculously.
Shortly after Rashied Staggie also Glen Khan, another Hard Living gang leader and drug lord, committed his life to the Lord at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchells Plain. He became a Muslim after his marriage to Lameez, who was already a secret believer by now. She had been counselled by Ayesha Hunter, with whom we were linked. Glen Khan secretly heard the gospel in this way. He was also clandestinely funding a feeding distribution scheme to poor kids related to the Hard Living gang for which Ayesha took some responsibility. Sharing the gospel with them, she used the first letters (HL) of the notorious gang, calling the children the Heaven’s Little Kids.

We returned from the Easter CCM conference 1999 in Wellington in high spirits. For the first time WEC was represented there with a substantial contingent. My efforts, which started already in 1996, to nudge the umbrella organisation to give guidance to the church at large confessing our sad role in the establishment and spread of Islam, looked promising at last.
We were however thrown into the spiritual battlefield on another level much sooner than we could anticipate. Our spirits were already dampened the same afternoon when the bag of Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague, was stolen from our minibus in front of our house while we were drinking coffee and before we would take her to her home nearby. In broad daylight the vehicle was broken into.
Only a few hours later, we were shattered when Ayesha phoned, telling us that Glen Khan had been shot and killed. The next morning we left for Mitchells Plain to assist with the funeral arrangements because a crisis had arisen. The Muslim family was claiming to have the corpse for an Islamic funeral that was to happen within 24 hours! Lameez, the young widow and still a secret follower of Jesus, was very brave to refuse to release the body of her late husband for such a funeral. She knew of course how he had just recently made a public commitment, indicating that he also wanted to follow Jesus. She insisted that he should have a funeral from the Shekinah Tabernacle where he made that commitment under the ministry of Pastor Eddie Edson.
Lameez requested me to speak on behalf of the family in the church at the funeral, even though I never got to know Glen personally. I did not mind at all when instead ‘Brother Rashied’ was called up to give a tribute just as I was about to speak. This caused quite a stir because the media had evidently been tipped off that he would be there as well. Almost overnight he had become a celebrity of a different sort. The new babe in Christ gave a powerful message to the packed church. Many were listening outside to the funeral service that was relayed by microphone. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of gangsters. Staggie, who had been avidly reading the Bible in the preceding weeks, challenged his many followers present, quoting from scripture: ‘My kom die wraak toe’. “We are not going to retaliate!” Coming from one who had virtually returned from the brink of death because of an assassination attempt, the message could hardly miss the mark. (I did not mind at all when I did not speak. This kept me out of the limelight and PAGAD attention. Ayesha and the family were however disappointed though that I left quietly, not even attending the graveyard ritual. They wanted me to speak there on behalf of the family as a plan B).

Aftermath of the Glen Khan funeral
In the wake of the Glen Khan funeral on 7 April 1999 and the powerful testimony of Staggie at that occasion, a trickle of Muslims started turning to Christ. Suddenly PAGAD was marginalised even more. It was not surprising that they frantically sought to get credibility. This was God at work supernaturally, but Pastor Eddie Edson and his colleagues were not immediately aware of it.
When Edson phoned me the afternoon of 13 April for prayer support because ‘Muslim leaders’ wanted to speak to him in the evening, we feared a confrontation because rumours were spread that Muslims have been coming to faith in Jesus, for example as a result of preaching in the trains. We called the intercessors to bathe the proposed meeting with ‘Muslim leaders’ in prayer. A crisis was feared once again.
Pastor Edson was surprised when the ‘Muslim leaders’ turned out to be no less than representatives of PAGAD. This was a major turn around on their part. It was however quite surprising that the PAGAD leaders now had become willing, almost eager to speak to churches. Only a few weeks prior to this occasion they refused to meet any Christians or other mediators. Whatever the deceiver had planned in terms of havoc, was thus curtailed. A direct result of all this was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI). Pastor Richard Mitchell, who was closely involved with the CPI attempt at negotiating peace between the gangsters and PAGAD, kept us informed. We had become quite close to Pastor Richard Mitchell, last not least through our fortnightly prayer at Signal Hill Saturday mornings at dawn. Thus we could pray intelligently for the proceedings on 22 April. The meeting with PAGAD that took place at the Pinelands Civic Centre was followed by discussions with gang leaders the same day.
Eben Swart, whom I had linked to the predominantly ‘Coloured’ praying pastors at a strategic prayer occasion on 1 November 1997, started to work closely with Eddie Edson, who remained the steadfast motor for citywide prayer events. With Swart’s base as the Lighthouse Christian Centre, White churches more readily linked up in the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI). Debby Lamb, a pastor with roots at the well-known His People fellowship, hereafter started working closely with Vivian Rix, a pastor at the Shekina Tabernacle of Mitchell’s Plain, where Edson was the senior pastor.
‘Coloured’ pastors verbalized their disquiet to Eddie Edson that the Cape Peace Initiative gave the impression of making PAGAD fashionable. Some clergymen were unhappy that the CPI leaders had been speaking to PAGAD.
Pastor Eddie Edson organised occasional all-night citywide prayer events, one each on 25 June and 15 October 1999. Natural prayer fuel was provided by the possibility of an escalation of tension between Muslims and Jews in the Mother City, because of the situation in the Middle East.

Beginning of Community Transformation
Around this time Father Trevor Pearce from the Anglican Church linked up with Ernst van der Walt in a vision to spread the Transformations video, which was just being distributed worldwide. The Transformation of Communities, led by Reverend Trevor Pearce, saved the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI) after it had come in disrepute. At a half night prayer meeting on the Grand Parade, much of the unity was restored. The same weekend the two Dutchmen, Pieter Bos and Cees Vork,97 representing the prayer movement of Holland, joined local Christians in confession for the sins of the forefathers and in praying against satanic strongholds in the Peninsula.
Trevor Pearce had been impacted by the vision during a visit to Washington D.C., starting a procedure to invite George Otis and Allistair Petrie to the Mother City for a conference of his denomination from 29 October to November 2, 2000. Soon it was agreed to add a conference at the Lighthouse Christian Centre, Parow from 3-5 November of the same year. Trevor Pearce likewise had a vision for citywide prayer. The Transformation concept brought the evangelicals from the mainline churches and the Charismatic-Pentecostal traditions together. Even more significant was the fact that the prayer event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in November 2000 saw the end of the bombing spree that kept the city in suspense for months.

A traumatic Incident during our Absence
The pattern of traumatic incidents happening at home during my absence continued when Rosemarie and I attended our WEC conference in Natal in October 1999. When we phoned our home we heard that our 21-year old son Danny had to counsel Nazeema, the Muslim background believer we had taken into our home. She threatened to commit suicide.98
Shortly after our return from our conference in Natal, I received an invitation to attend an international conference on Muslim Evangelism in Nairobi as the South African delegate, with all expenses to be paid by TEAR FUND, a British development and charity agency. I was less excited about the invitation when I discovered that my departure would coincide with the return of our second eldest son from Germany. Rafael had been evangelising with Youth for Christ in a mobile bus for the greater part of the year. Knowing that travelling in Africa by air is very expensive, I enquired how much a ticket to Europe would cost. I had just heard that I would lose my Dutch passport unless I interrupt my residence in South Africa before January 2002. We thought that a guest lecturing period at the Cornerstone Christian College, a WEC institution in Holland, could be the solution. We thought that it would be good to go and discuss that en route to Nairobi.99 Rosemarie pointed out to me that a visit to Madrid would be more important to get some movement towards the Jesus-centred Cape drug rehabilitation issue for which we had been praying so long. The international Headquarters of the WEC-related Bet-el ministries is in Madrid. Without much more ado the itinerary was finalised. I was to fly with the Royal Dutch Airlines KLM to Nairobi via Holland and Spain.

A strategic detour
The first and third venues of this overseas trip turned out to be quite strategic on the short term. My two days in Holland were special, pivotal in getting funds for our discipling house. An evening was organised on short notice to speak to some of our friends. There I showed a picture of the house we intended to buy for use as a discipling house. The mother of Martie Dieperink, one of the believers who attended that event, died soon after my visit. Martie thought it fit to put funds at our disposal, which we would need to secure the house. Shortly after having heard of the need of a discipling house in Cape Town where new believers coming from another faith could be nurtured, she immediately offered to help us with a substantial amount as an interest-free loan, to be paid back over a period of five years. This set in motion the acquisition of a building that became an important asset of our ministry. The furniture from the house of her mother was part of the content of a container that was sent in 2001.
The detour to Nairobi via Spain and Holland did not deliver the goods on the short term, but seed was sown. In 2003 Elliot Tepper, the leader of the Betel Ministries, informed us that Cape Town is high on their agenda for the start of a new rehab centre, even though we did not have a couple ready to go to Birmingham in England for training. Dean Ramjoomia had originally been earmarked for this venture, but this was not confirmed.
We were encouraged when Abass Buffkins, a Muslim drug addict, was not only supernaturally delivered, but he also became an avid student at an evening Bible school. His prowess was such, also in his church, that we had liberty to use his testimony in a tract as we did with that of Zulpha and Abdul Morris in 2002.
I discovered that the invitation to the International conference in Nairobi was a part of God’s strategy. The Nairobi conference ran parallel to a traumatic event at home. While I was still in Spain, our son Danny was rushed to hospital after his appendix had burst. He turned out to be allergic to the medication given to him. According to reports it was touch and go or we could have lost him.
Rosemarie sensed that this was an attack from the enemy while I was away. She alerted prayer warriors at home and abroad. I got the news at a strategic moment in Nairobi, when we were not making much headway to get a draft on paper that we could report back to our respective sending bodies. When someone at the conference tried to share something about spiritual warfare, I had the opportunity to chip in. The impact was tangible when I reported how I had just heard how our son had escaped death. In the months thereafter we heard from different people how they had been interceding on Danny’s behalf.
Convert Care
When Esmé Orrie was about to celebrate her 50th birthday, Magdalene approached us with the request whether we could celebrate this at our home. (Esme was not only persecuted out of her home in Mitchells Plain and terribly harassed by the family, but she was also completely ostrasized by her mother and children). Her new family had become the other converts and friends in our ministry.
The occasion turned out to be also a red-letter day, not only for Esmé, but also for June Lehmensich. Due to the apartheid prejudices and practices of Cape society, quite a few families were ripped apart. June was one of those who had been completely cut off from some of her relatives. What a joy it now was for her to meet some of the relatives, who had come for Esmé’s birthday.
When a building was coming into the frame for use as a discipling house, there were still no house parents available. We approached Dean and Susan Ramjoomia, hoping that they could start it off until such time when they would go to Durban for missionary candidate orientation. They agreed almost immediately, but felt that they would only want to go to Durban in January 2003.
Things started to happen in a big way when Zulpha Morris, a Muslim lady from Mitchell’s Plain, became a Christian through divine intervention in July 1998. Through a further vision she was challenged to convert her home into a shelter for abandoned babies and abused women. In spite of many attacks and difficulties – also from the side of the government – she persevered. Miraculously her Muslim husband sacrificed his house and even his garage for the venture. She received assistance from many churches – also from overseas. Soon the Heaven Shelter of Rambler Road in Beacon Valley (Mitchells Plain) not only received visitors from all over the world, but many Muslims also came there for prayer, knowing very well that the prayers would be offered in Jesus’ name.
Rosemarie did regular Bible studies with a few women. This was fruitful when Zulpha and her husband decided to start a weekly cell group of Muslim background believers from the Mitchells Plain area. Soon quite a big group was gathering at their home every week, often including more than 20 Muslim background believers.

Cape Town emulates Sodom
Sexual perversion became a spiritual stronghold, which soon had the country firm in its grip. The new government since 1994 outlawed racism, but it opened the floodgates of sexual perversion with laws to legalize abortion and allowing gay tourism to thrive.
Cape Town took the continent-wide lead to emulate Sodom when the Western Cape’s person responsible for tourism seemed to have a free hand to promote the Mother City to compete with San Francisco and Sydney for the title of the gay capital of the world. I was rather sad to read that support for the gay movement was forthcoming from the Dean of St George’s Cathedral, the church that played such a big role in opposition to apartheid. Louis Pasques made a point of it to share his personal experience and deliverance with the dean of the cathedral, but that appeared to be like water on a duck’s back.
A casino in Goodwood with all the known vice surrounding such institutions - at the site where in former years agricultural shows and evangelistic meetings were held100 - typified the moral degradation of the metropolis. A 24-hour prayer watch was needed to counter this. Our Hendrina van der Merwe, faithful prayer warrior of our Bo-Kaap group, had been praying for years for such a prayer watch.
The evident spiritual warfare around the World Parliament of Religions was fuel to set up an all-night prayer meeting on the Grand Parade on short notice. Just at this time Cees Vork and Pieter Bos101 started corresponding about their intentions to come to Cape Town. It was clear that God was at work orchestrating things when Mike Winfield and others were simultaneously busy with ‘Closing the Gates’ meetings, where we were looking at the sinful roots of our society. It was special that we could gain from Nim Rajagukguk sharing of what had been happening in his home country Indonesia in the preceding years.

Towards a 24-hour prayer watch
In September 1999 a new type of initiative had emerged worldwide. God started to speak nationally about 24-hour prayer watches. We felt that this is what Cape Town needed more than anything else.
What better place for the 24-hour prayer watch could be found than the Moravian Hill Chapel in District Six that now belonged to the Cape Technikon? Murray Bridgman, a local advocate had similar ideas. But I played Jonah in respect of the responsibility for initiating a 24-hour prayer watch in the City.
In February 2000, Susan and Ned Hill, a couple from Atlanta (USA) linked to the Blood ‘n Fire Ministries, visited the Mother City on an orientation visit after they sensed a call to come and minister to the poor and needy in South Africa. When they visited the District Six Museum – at that time temporarily housed in the Moravian Chapel – they learned of the tragic story of the former cosmopolitan slum area of the Mother City. With Susan Hill’s vision for prayer it was only natural that they got linked to the prayer watch movement. Susan came into the picture as a possible coordinator for a prayer watch to be started in the City Bowl. During 2002 and 2003 she organized prayer events at the Moravian church every third Saturday of the month.
In 2002 the government gave the Moravian Hill complex back to the original owners. Hendrina van der Merwe, our faithful but sickly prayer warrior, had been praying for years for a 24-hour prayer watch to be started at the Moravian Church. She hoped to be part of the beginning of it before her death. However, when she got accommodated at the historic St. Andrews Presbyterian Church102 in Green Point towards the end of 2003, we all thought that this building should be the venue for the prayer watch. When this turned out not to be practical, I approached the Moravian Church towards the end of 2003 formally, pointing to the origins of the modern prayer movement going back to Herrnhut in 1727. The request was approved, along with permission to have monthly meetings with Muslim background believers in the District Six church where I received my initial spiritual nourishment in my childhood.

Rumblings at the Moriah Discipling House
An inappropriate reaction from our side to a manipulative phone call from someone in the Moriah Discipling House on my birthday in 2001 set off a chain reaction that resulted in our asking Dean and Susan Ramjoomia to cease their ministry there. The next two and a half months kept our stress levels extremely high. Carelessness on my part, by just continuing with ministry on Friday 15 March 2002 - after travelling for 20 hours by bus throughout the night after attending a WEC national committee meeting in Durban - sparked off a stress related loss of memory the next day. (I did not even know how many children I have. After a day in hospital and further medical treatment, I was cleared with the instruction to come back after a year.
The rest of the year 2002 was very stressful with the ministry at the discipling house bringing us to the brink of resignation more than once. It was a special blessing when the relationship to Dean and Susan Ramjoomia could be restored at the wedding of Shubashni, one of the Discipling House occupants in October 2003. Our joy was marred when soon hereafter Shubashni was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in a terminal stage. In mid-2005 I had the unenviable task to bring a message at the first funeral of one of our Muslim background believers!

The going gets rough
We had been taking some photos at Sedgefield and Knysna of beautiful waves during a time of holiday in July 2003. Somewhere we found Psalm 93:4 engraved on a stone. That was exactly the Bible verse that Rosemarie received on the day of her Confirmation in the Andreaskirche of Mühlacker way back in the mid 1960s. ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!
The publication of a second booklet of testimonies, true-life stories of Muslim background believers from the Cape as Search for Truth 2, was quite a trial as one hassle followed the other. The first draft had already been on my computer in the first half of 2002, but the actual printing only took place in January 2004.
After going to the doctor for the blood pressure check-up at the end of September - without having any complaint - he suggested a PSA blood test because of my age. The physician hereafter referred me to an urologist, who did a biopsy on 7 October 2003 – just to make sure!
Perhaps the arch enemy tried to knock me out. I was so confident that the result of the biopsy would be negative because I had no physical discomfort up to that point in time and the doctors to whom I had spoken pointed out that the PSA count was only minimally above normal – a high count would have pointed to cancerous activity. Neither of them had initial reason for concern. There could be other causes of the high count like infection.

A strange dream
At this time Rosemarie had a strange dream in which a young married couple, clad in Middle Eastern garb, was ready to go as missionaries to the Middle East. Suddenly the scene changed. While the two of us were praying over the city from our dining room facing the Cape Town CBD, a massive wave came from the sea, rolling over Bo-Kaap. The next moment the water engulfed us, but we were still holding each other by the hand. There was something threatening about the wave, but somehow we also experienced a sense of thrill. Then Rosemarie woke up, very conscious that God seemed to say something to us through this dream. What was God saying?
The day after Rosemarie's dream we heard about a conference of Middle Eastern Muslim leaders in the newly built Convention Centre of Cape Town. We decided on short notice to have our Friday prayer meeting there instead of in the regular venue, the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk. Lillian James, one of our prayer partners, was on hand to arrange free parking for us near to the Convention Centre.
The Friday afternoon Rosemarie and Rochelle went to the nearby Waterfront where they literally walked into a bunch of ladies with Middle Eastern garb. The outgoing Rochelle had no qualms to start chatting to one of them. Having resided among Palestinians in Israel, she is quite fluent in Arabic. Soon they were swarmed by the other women who were of course very surprised to be
addressed in their home language by a White lady with an American accent. A cordial exchange of words followed.
Rosemarie was reminded of her dream, sensing that God might be sending in a wave of people to Cape Town from Muslim countries. We should also get ready however to send young missionaries to that area of the world when it opens itself up to the Gospel. Shortly hereafter we heard of various groups of foreigners who had come to the Mother City, including a minority group from China.

A wave of opportunity
In 2003 Rosemarie and I were seriously praying about a change of ministry. After almost 12 years at the Cape in the same ministry, we thought that we should have a change for the last stretch before retirement. With our youngest daughter about to finish her schooling at the end of 2004, I thought that we might even relocate. But no ‘doors’ opened with regard to a move overseas. Instead, we felt increasingly challenged to reach out to refugees and foreigners, for example by using English language teaching as a compassionate vehicle. (In a similar way we had intended to initiate a rehabilitation programme as a loving outreach to the Muslim Community, hoping that some of them may discover the love of God demonstrated in Jesus sacrificial life and death.) We prayed that the Lord would give us more clarity with regard to our future ministry by the end of 2003.

The unity of the body – a matter of priority
When I was in hospital for my operation, I was challenged anew to take the City Bowl 24-hour watch as a matter of priority for the first half of 2004. The unity of the body of Christ, i.e. believers in the crucified and risen Saviour, has been very much on our hearts. We believe that the prayer watch could be a decisive vehicle to make this more visible - to be used as a powerful means to take the city for God. When Rosemarie challenged me about my indecisiveness in certain matters, I was just busy revising a manuscript Some Things wrought by prayer. I discovered how radical I had been in earlier days. The issue of worship on a Sunday – with its pagan background that had estranged us from our Jewish roots - were bogging me once again as I was reading Jewish authors. I was ready to be radical to resign from the Cape Town Baptist Church, but not ready to join another church fellowship. The unity of the body of Christ was also the issue which held me back from taking a step, which could rock the boat of the Church in the Cape Town City Bowl. Aware that the house church movement in China is the closest to New Testament Christianity in our day and age, this was now my model. But I was also oh so wary to start yet another church fellowship. I preferred to procrastinate and resemble Jonah on this issue, to the frustration of Rosemarie. She liked the fellowship at the Calvary Chapel, especially the good exegetical preaching of Dmitri Nikiforos who actually once had our daughter Magdalena in his Sunday School class (His wife Karen is the daughter of Graham and Dawn Gernetsky, a previous pastoral couple of the Cape Town Baptist Church. I had my reservations about monologue-type sermons on biblical grounds.
We felt quite uncomfortable for months on end as different issues such as the lengthy monologue-type sermons, especially when the Holder family returned to the USA. We really enjoyed Jeff’s preaching. Yet, we hung in there especially because we still had two children in the church by the end of 2005.

P.S. (Check for doubles in following paragraphs)

A new crisis
He had hardly started when a new crisis developed around a very trivial matter. Brian took me and Jeff Holder into his confidence. It was good that I had refused nomination to the deaconate more than once and Jeff was a new man on the block. Yet, I was also attacked at this time for ‘laundering money’ from overseas. The member of the church council who came with the accusation had been a trustee of the Dorcas Trust on behalf of the church. He should have known better. (When I did not want to keep the money earmarked for our Discipling House in our private account until the Dorcas Trust would be finalised, I had asked Alan Kay as the administrator whether we could keep the funds temporarily in the church account of the church. This was now interpreted as money laundering.) A new crisis developed in the hurch council over some gay organist who had played there. Suddenly we heard that three influential members resigned. A few other members also left the church in the wake of the saga. We also felt like leaving but we decided to stay on because of our children. Just as there had been the consideration of saving a sinking ship and giving support to Louis, the new interim pastor in 1995, it was again the children which still kept us there. Not many months down the road also John Welsford, the youth pastor, resigned and soon thereafter his father who had put it many hours of voluntary work to get the church books on par, also decided to leave. It seemed as if the church went from one crisis to the next.

A new Pattern of Crises
As years went on Rosemarie and I got quite close to Louis and Heidi Pasques. On many a Monday we would go to some place or have a picnic together. Not very long after our return from Europe in 2000, a new pattern of crises had become evident. Louis took me into his confidence that there was a crisis in their marriage. Disunity within the church executive started to come into the mix. I initially withheld such information from Rosemarie. From our side, we did share some of the frustrations we experienced in our ministry with Louis and Heidi, notably those from the Discipling House. Invariably we would also pray with each other for family matters.
Coming from a broken family herself, Louis explained one day, that Heidi had to be taken somewhere for spiritual and psychological assistance after she had suffered burnout. Between Louis and Alan Kay, the administrator, some differences between them now also got blown up out of all proportion. A rift between the two of them developed, which was of course very unhealthy for the church as a whole. Things went from bad to worse until Louis was given leave of absence and Alan was more or less forced to resign as administrator. Finally Louis also resigned and their marriage fell apart as well after devastating facts surfaced.

A ‘global Church’ in the City Bowl
Jeff and Lynn Holder, who had been missionaries in Botswana on behalf of the Southern Baptists of the USA, came to Cape Town as the co-ordinators for Southern Africa in 2002. The multi-national character of the Cape Town Baptist Church appealed to them. Despite a leadership crisis there, they decided to join that congregation, rather than others nearer their home. Due to Jeff’s dedicated ministry our congregation became in due course the catalysts for new missionary work to the Northern Cape and ‘forgotten’ tribes of Namibia. How wonderful it is that the Lord in his mercy allowed me to see some of these Remaining Unreached People Groups now getting evangelised.103
When I preached at the Cape Town Baptist Church one Sunday at the beginning of the new millennium, I asked those in the congregation to raise the hand who was not born in South Africa. I was surprised myself how many hands were raised. By this time there were quite a few Blacks attending the church. Apart from a substantial group from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the former Zaire and Congo-Brazzaville, there were also quite a group of Angolans. We also have had individuals from other nations attending regularly.
Towards the end of 2001 Africa Inland Mission (AIM) approached Louis Pasques to use our congregation for some practical assistance for Brazilian missionaries, such as learning English (Frances, the wife of Abe Jacobs, the new AIM leader, had been a member of the congregation before their marriage). Soon the congregation became a base from which Brazilian missionaries operated, like before they moved on to Mozambique. However, a separate Bible Study in Portuguese also developed on Sunday mornings where I also occasionally spoke.104
A group of young people from Botswana came to study in the City, staying in a hostel near to the Baptist Church. This was of course up the ally of the Holders who had ministered in Botswana in earlier years. Soon a whole bunch of Tswana-speaking youngsters were attending the church some of them getting special teaching from Jeff and Lynn using the Experiencing God material of Blackaby.
Our son Danny was the leader of the worship team at this time. He now intertwined songs from the other cultures and languages. In due course the fellowship became one of the first churches in the Cape Town City Bowl with adherents and visitors from many nations on any given Sunday.

A ministry to foreigners
During 2003 it seems as if the Lord was leading us more and more to a ministry to foreigners. While Lynn Holder’s husband Jeff preached one Sunday, Rosemarie received a vision of our Moriah Discipling House to be used for refugee-type foreigners. In our recruiting for a couple as house parents of the place, the Lord had to correct us because we thought that a Cape ‘Coloured’ couple would be the ideal because the understood the culture of the Cape Muslims best.
Around the turn of the millennium Rosemarie was battling with the discipling of new Muslim background believers (MBB’s) and general convert care. The bulk of them were females. We were glad that we could hand over the responsibility for the medical/hospital ministry to Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague. At the end of 2002 we were praying again that the Lord would give us more assistance.
At the beginning of 2003 Lynn Holder had been praying how she could get involved. At this time I approached the Atlantic Christian Assembly (ACA), as part of an effort to promote the hand-made 3D cards, which the MBB’s had been making. The Lord had undertaken wonderfully so that we could pay these ladies, giving them some regular income, although we hardly sold cards.
Anthony Liebenberg, the pastor, had good memories of the time when he was youth pastor of the ACA. Our son Danny joined his cell group and he also played in the music group of their church on Sunday evenings. The prophetic word spoken about Danny to be a link to other believers on the day we were sent out by our home church in Holland, had obviously already been partially fulfilled because the Lord had already wonderfully used him at the German School to bring new life to the Christian Union there, especially when a youngster, Chris Duwe, came to the Cape in 1996 during their Abitur (A-level) year.
By 2003 Anthony Liebenberg had become the senior pastor of the the Atlantic Christian Assembly. Because of some internal decision the congregation would apparently not allow people from outside to come and promote issues. Anthony would do it on our behalf. Because of the good rapport we had with him and the link via our son, he did it much better than I could have done. Anthony also spoke a prophetic word over us, that we would get assistance soon. This was fulfilled when Lynn Holder joined Rosemarie with the making of the 3D cards, to be followed by Rochelle Malechowski soon thereafter.

The travelling bug in the family
The travelling and missions bug seems to have bitten all our children. Influenced by Siggi Steger, who studied and operated successively at Cornerstone Christian College and the German Stadtmission, our son Rafael had opted to do his post-Matric year with the Teemobil, the evangelistic vehicle of Youth for Christ in Germany in 1999. After finishing Bible School he went to the USA for cross-cultural experience, jobbing there. This was followed by a stint in East Germany, which led to him returning to Chemnitz, where he now teaches English, while ministering with a very interesting combination of the Salvation Army and the Jesus Freaks.
Our eldest son Danny had an initial stint with Trans World Radio in Pretoria and working for a few years as electrical engineer with a German firm in the Cape suburb of Diep River, after his university studies, applied to work with Operation Mobilisation (OM) in Germany, to do a year of volunteering there. In the headquarters in the Southern German town of Mosbach he was especially engaged in the preparation of the massive 2003 European operation of Teen Street, leading a team thereafter to Slovenia.
We mentioned already how our daughter Magdalena went to the USA and Vavoua for her post-matric year. Sammy chose to do a year of studies in sound engineering after Matric, arguing that he did not do the German Abitur (A levels) as his two older brothers had done at the German school. In 2004 we allowed him to do a DTS with the Media village of YWAM in Kalk Bay the first half of the year.
Almost the whole family was present at the wedding of Johannes, Rosemarie’s third nephew who married in 2004. Sammy stayed on in Europe, doing some casual work in the second half of the year and earning the funds to go and assist missionaries in Kazakstan in December 2004 for a month. Rosemarie and I were very uptight with this idea, remembering how we had almost lost him due to double pneumonia after our return to South Africa in 1995. We knew that winter temperatures in the part of Central Asia where he would be heading, could easily drop to minus 40 degrees. However, Sammy was adamant, insisting that he saw that as a divine commission. He was vindicated. During the month he was there the temperatures were quite moderate and it turned out that he was assisting to prepare Gospel material for an unreached people group that the Lord had just started to bring to Cape Town. It was very special when he brought audiovisual resources along, which we could pass on to persons from that people group with whom we had come into contact while he was in Kazakstan.
Tabitha, the youngest of the siblings, was very unfortunate. Her post-matric year really turned sour. For her first choice, a DTS at Muizenberg, she was turned down when the course was full. After a burglary at the new DTS in Durban for which she could still enroll, she was told a few days before the course was due to start, that the leaders decided to postpone the start there. She untimately landed in a less well run DTS in Jeffrey’s Bay. There the outreach side of the trainng, the proposed trip to Brazil, could not take place. Spiritually her DTS was rather traumatic, wheras her older siblings all gained a lot from their post-matric year.

20. Publication Fleeces

Rosemarie was never really supporting my writing activities. In fact, it caused tension in our marriage because my mind would often stray because of my love for research and writing. I contributed a great deal to the tension by not finishing manuscripts. I would start with something, but when I would find something interesting in the course of my research, I would just wander off on a tangent. Another factor was that I hardly got any clear encouragement to proceed with publication. Added to that was the fact that I was rather hesitant to see books printed that would just gather dust on bookshelves.
An open letter?
The idea of an ‘open letter’ to all Capetonian clergy arose in 1998 when I was very strongly impressed by the guilt of the church in general, not only in the establishment and spread of Islam, but also through the pervasive replacement theology that is still keeping Judaism and the Jews side-lined. (According to the replacement theory the Church is the ‘new Israel’, substituting the old nation that was elected by God to be a blessing to the nations.) The Bible is very clear on the role of Jews and the nation of Israel as the apple of God’s eye. I was saddened to discover in my research how the Church at the Cape treated Muslim slaves and how Christians expediently kept the Gospel away from Cape Muslims because of material gain, notably when the slave owners at the Cape interpreted the ‘placaat’ (decree) as a threat, believing that their slaves would become free if they were baptized. .

Nudges to get manuscripts printed
By the beginning of 2002 I had about a score of different uncompleted manuscripts on my computer or on CD’s. March 16 of that year suddenly brought matters to a head. After my temporary loss of memory, a day in hospital and further medical treatment, Rosemarie nudged me to try and get at least some of my manuscripts printed. The first was to be Search for Truth 2, a booklet with testimonies that had been on my computer for months already. The experiences with the first rendition were very positive, with requests coming in for translation into other languages. (I was not excited about this idea because the stories were actually from the Cape, considering that the stories would then have to be rewritten.)
There had also been some requests coming in for a reprint of Op soek na Waarheid from the Boland, for which I gave the right of way if the people wanted to finance it themselves. Furthermore, I thought that it would be more effective if we printed the names of the persons because the PAGAD element and related fears were a thing of the past. The request resurfaced in 2006, also for a reprint of the English translation. My fleece this time was that all the persons concerned should agree to have their names printed. One person was not ready yet.
On the other hand, the convincing lives of two other Muslim background believers encouraged us so much that we printed their testimonies as tracts in 2002. Their testimonies were promptly included in Search for Truth 2. The publication of the second booklet of testimonies, true-life stories of Muslim background believers from the Cape as Search for Truth 2, was quite a trial as one hassle followed the other. The first draft had already been on my computer in the first half of 2002, but the actual printing only took place in January 2004.
At the end of 2001 the Rand as a currency had taken a major plunge. In a telephonic chat with our friend Mark Gabriels in the USA, he was concretely inviting us to come over as his guest. I mentioned the currency situation as a major deterrent for a South African to go overseas. (After the success of his first major publication Islam and Terrorism in the USA in 2002, Mark invited us once again to join him on an itinerant trip through the States.) We did not see our way clear when we were required to pay the air fare to the USA up front, later to be reimbursed. However, the idea now also surfaced of trying to get my manuscript about Gabriel and other angels in the Bible, Talmud and Islamic literature published in the USA. Mark would write an autobiographical introduction, using his surname as a catch phrase. (We knew that there would be no market in South Africa for material like that).
In 2005 I also recorded a radio series on the run-up to the first Global Day of Prayer. When we were about to get the manuscript printed locally, our well-known missionary colleague Patrick Johnstone proposed that I should attempt to prepare the manuscript for international publication. That turned out to be easier said than done. Attempts to get two other manuscripts on Cape mission history published nationally were also unsuccessful.
Cancer!!
When a phone call came from the hospital on Thursday 9 October 2003, I was caught off-guard. Without any ado the urologist, Dr Aldera shared the result of the biopsy: I was having prostrate cancer in an early stage. Through an extra-ordinary set of circumstances, the Lord however prepared me for the diagnosis. At that time – on 8 October 2003 to be exact – I was encouraged by the ‘Watchword’, as the Moravians have been calling the Old Testament Scripture for the day traditionally: ‘I will not die but live and proclaim what the LORD has done’ (Psalm 118:17). This became the cue for me not only to update the ‘open letter’ that I had given the title My spiritual Odyssey, but also to change the title to I will not die but live. God’s Word obviously had to get pre-eminence in respect of Greek mythology.

Seed for confession seems to germinate
Many people prayed for me, including public anointing at our church. This encouraged me to be more open to divine healing, especially when two PSA tests pointed to a decrease of the cancer! The seed for confession and prayer in respect of Islam appeared to have started germinating by November 2003 in Paarl at the National Leadership Consultation of CCM which I initially would not have attended because of the pending surgery. I was not so keen anymore to be involved with the organisation which was supposed to be a networking body. It appeared to me completely unsatisfactory. Coming together only twice a year and have hardly any contact in between was to me too meagre. Whatever I had tried in terms of getting the co-workers together for prayer, it reaped very little response.
Because I had not been admitted to hospital, I thought that I should attend the consultation at Paarl. There I was really encouraged!! It seemed as if the seed of prayer and confession had at last started to germinate. When Kobus Cilliers, a missionary linked to Overseas Missionary Services (OMS) and a missionary from Mozambique suggested the issues, it was duly accepted by the consultation! After this conference Western Cape delegates were given the task to work on a joint statement.

Much time to pray
When a further PSA test on 23 November showed a new increase of the cancer, I sensed that I should not play around. Although I dearly wanted to participate in the continental prayer convocation that took place in Cape Town from 1-5 December, I immediately booked myself in for the operation, undergoing surgery on 3 December.
God could speak to me clearer because I had so much time to pray in hospital. I felt that I should stop attempting to find someone else to co-ordinate an effort to start a 24/7 prayer watch in the Cape Town City Bowl. I had been trying for years to work towards a more visible expression of the Unity of the Body of Christ, with very little success. The end of the story was that I knew that I should take responsibility myself.
I worked not only on the above manuscript, but I also updated material that I had written on the occasion of my wife’s 40th birthday under the title ‘On Eagles wings’. I proceeded to try and finalize SOME THINGS WROUGHT BY PRAYER. We prayed for someone to edit this manuscript and get it ready for a possible publication. Heidi Pasques, a friend, was on hand to help with that. However, I had no inner liberty to attempt to get it published at that stage.

A penny drops
During the time in hospital and the period of recuperation I was challenged anew to tackle the issue of the 24-hour prayer watch for the City Bowl. On Sunday 28 December we heard that two friends, Beverley Stratis and Heidi Pasques, wanted to speak to us. The same evening they shared that the Lord somehow impressed on them very starkly that the spiritual stronghold Bo-Kaap and the disunity of the churches in the City Bowl were two forces which prevented a spiritual breakthrough. Rosemarie and I had been praying for divine confirmation by the end of the year whether we should remain in the Mother City or relocate. Our youngest daughter was scheduled to matriculate at the end of 2004. This seemed to us an appropriate time to move on after 13 years in the city where I was born and bred.

We were surprised on the one hand that the penny dropped with two people who could have heard our challenges in the Cape Town Baptist Church over many years. I could almost laugh at the suggestion of the two intercessors, because the two of them must have heard more than once how I appealed for believers to come and join us for prayer towards the start of a vibrant Church in Bo-Kaap, the residential area that became such a Muslim stronghold because of apartheid after Christians and churches had moved from the area in the wake of Group Areas legislation. In stead of laughing, however, Rosemarie and I were over-awed. We sensed that this was God at work. We were encouraged that the Lord now used them to confirm that we should not relocate as yet and that we should tackle the two issues that had been concerns for us so long with even more urgency, namely church unity, including the 24-hour prayer watch in the City Bowl and a ministry to foreigners.
As the co-ordinator of the City Bowl Minister’s Fraternal, it was fairly easy for me to start organising, emailing many pastors and inviting believers at different churches. The Lord had already given us a fairly ‘neutral’ venue for the start of the effort, the desolate Moravian Church in District Six, which had been earmarked for monthly meetings of Muslim background believers. The result of the invitations to the beginnings of a prayer watch was not encouraging, to say the least. Nevertheless, with a few believers we decided to pray every first Saturday of the month in the Moravian Hill Church.
I felt very much challenged to attempt a 24-hour prayer watch in the City Bowl the first week of February, as Jericho Walls had suggested. The first feelers were not positive enough to nudge me into action. However, a phone call by Trevor Peters, a car guard at the Groote Kerk, a former gangster and drug peddler, did just that. I was not aware that he had been in touch for months with Reverend Angeline Swart, the present leader of the Moravian Church. In very short time, I managed to put a programme together and approached various speakers with whom I had been in contact over the years.
That week also became the first intense contact with Gary Coetzee, who started a new church, the Rock Fellowship near to Bo-Kaap.
We were blessed to hear a few days before the event that Superintendent Fanie Scanlan of the Cape Town Central police station had a room for us for 24-hour prayer. The institution in Buitenkant Street was notorious in the apartheid days as Caledon Square and was thus a neutral venue.105 After the week of prayer at the Moravian Hill Church, a few of us went to go and pray there every Wednesday morning. At the end of 2006 we were still doing this.

Moves towards a Global Day of Prayer
I felt very much challenged to attempt a 24-hour prayer watch in the City Bowl the first week of February as Jericho Walls suggested. The first feelers were not positive enough to nudge me into action. A phone call by Trevor Peters,106 a car guard and tourist guide at the Groote Kerk, did just that. I was not aware that he had been in touch for months with Reverend Angeline Swart, the present leader of the Moravian Church. In very short time, I managed to put a programme together, approaching various speakers with whom I had been in contact over the years.
We were blessed to hear a few days before the event that the superintendent of the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street, notorious in the apartheid days as Caledon Square and thus a real neutral venue – had a room for us for 24-hour prayer. After the week of prayer at the Moravian Hill Church, a few of us went to go and pray there every Wednesday morning.
Daniel Brink, the Jericho Walls leader in the Western Cape, phoned me to approach the Moravian Church leaders for permission to use the District Six building to host the launch of the 7-days prayer initiative on 9 May 2004.107 I gladly obliged. In the run-up to this event, some of us were reminded of the special prayer occasions of the late 1990s. At the launch of the 7-days prayer initiative, I approached Bennie Mostert, the national leader, to write a forward to a manuscript containing my researches on the answers to prayer at the Cape through the centuries. I had written them as two booklets ‘Some Things wrought by Prayer’ and ‘More things wrought by Prayer.’108 The 7-days prayer initiative moved through the country, a week apiece of 24 hour prayer at a different city or town, culminating in the first Global Day of Prayer on 15 May, 2005.
The Lord encouraged us when I was asked a few months later to approach the Moravian church leaders for the use of the complex where I had received my theological training from 1971 to 1973 to host the launching of the 7-days initiative.
At this occasion, on 9 May 2004, I approached Bennie Mostert to write a forward for my researches on the results of answers to prayer at the Cape through the centuries. Earlier I had already submitted a draft of ‘Some Things wrought by Prayer’ to Elisabeth Jordaan, one of his co-workers.109 The 7-days initiative event was the start of the initiative went around the country until 15 May 2005, the first Global Day of Prayer.

A former Freemason Lodge to become a Prayer Room?
We were still wondering whether it was feasible to go ahead with plans to have a 24/7 week of prayer in the City Bowl at the beginning of February 2005, when Trevor Peters phoned me. This happened just as my own faith had started to wilt on the matter.
At the monthly prayer for the City on Saturday 8 January (2005), it was decided to press ahead with another week of prayer from 30 January to 6 February as a next step towards the goal of a 24-hour Prayer Watch in the City Bowl. One thing led to the other within a week, until it was finalized that the week of prayer was to be held at Moravian Hill, to be followed thereafter with a prayer watch at the Buitekant Street police station. Superintendent Scanlan put to our disposal a room called Die Losie, a former freemason lodge in the police station. This was a significant step in the spiritual realm. On Sunday 23 January, 2005 the station was anointed and prayed over, signalling - as we excitedly thought - the ushering in of the victory of the Lord in the Mother City! (Until about 2003 the command structures of the famous/notorious Caledon Square police station had been firmly in the hand of freemasons.) As we were praying in the third story board room, I suddenly noticed that I had the Tafelberg Dutch Reformed Church opposite me. I was reminded that this was the church from which Ds Koot Vorster, a Dutch Reformed Church minister, the brother of a Prime Minister and a top Broederbonder, operated. I heard somewhere that he was the one responsible for the request to the government in 1948/9 to get the prohibition of racially mixed marriages into the statute books. At some stage the Lord had to deliver me from resentment when I heard that the denomination had been digging in their heels when the government under Prime Minister P.W. Botha was ready to repeal the law in the late 1970s. (This effectively blocked my return to South Africa.) Up there in the police station it was my privilege to express forgiveness in a prayer once again.
A divine hand possibly operated when Director Booysen came to the same police station with an excellent track record. The new director, who was soon also the acting station commander, came from a background as detective when he was involved in quite a few high profile cases like the murder of Mrs Maryke de Klerk, the ex-wife of a former State President, F.W. de Klerk. Here was a police agent who made no decisions without first praying about it. In his own words he would first ‘discuss the matter with the Lord’. No wonder that the crime in the Mother City dropped to its lowest figure for years by the end of February, 2005. The arch enemy was not sitting still however. In the same week City newspapers blasted out how three women were mugged in Deer Park, Vredehoek, i.e. a mere kilometre away from the Buitenkant Street police station, so to speak just up the road and not far from our home. It was nevertheless significant that not a single one of the victims was hurt and that three suspects of a gang of five were arrested a few days later.

No small Breakthrough
Our joy at the perceived victory to get the freemason stronghold Die Losie turned out to be premature. A few days later Superintendent Scanlan informed us that Die Losie was not available for our prayer purposes, but that we could have another room. In due course we prayed in his office every Wednesday morning. Yet, we experienced it as a victory to invite Eben Swart, an expert on Freemasonry, to lead us in prayer on 11 May 2005 at 6 a.m. in Die Losie. This event highlighted to us the need to inform the church leaders and the church at large of the demonic roots in many a Church building via Freemasonry. From June 2005 the room was to become a regular venue for the monthly prayer meeting. It remains a challenge to continue attempting to take back what satan has stolen.
We nevertheless experienced it as no small breakthrough when Michael Share, the leader of Cops for Christ, informed us that he would be able to address the Christmas celebration of 2005 at the Central Police Station. At that occasion Director Booysen, in thanking us, did not hide the fact that he attributed the relative success of the station to the regular prayers on Wednesday mornings. Beverley Stratis had an inspired idea when she bought a cake on her birthday, had it cut in pieces. Mpo ??, who regularly prayed with us, distributed the pieces of cake on the logistics floor where we were praying in the office of Superintendent Scanlan.
Heidi Pasques started a new job in Bellville, whereafter she could not attend regularly anymore. But the Lord brought in new warriors like Vlok Esterhuyse and his wife Lynn. Theresa Reid, a committed believer, brought in a new touch when she would hug and greet all and sundry. It might not have been appreciated by everybody, but it could have contributed to general acceptance for us as a group. When we wanted to use Die Losie again for a week of prayer prior to Pentecost in 2006 there was no opposition whatsoever. In fact, thereafter it became the new venue of our weekly events on Wednesday mornings. When the police station and its new commanding Officer, Superintendent Gerda van Niekerk, received quite a few accolades in due course, we could do nothing else but give God the glory for his faithfulness and answering our prayers.

Prayer against Satanist Infiltration
Whereas the apartheid regime government had an obsession with race laws, the secular government since 1994 legislated against it. The new regime however has taken sexual immorality on board; passing laws that give the impression that homosexuality, abortion and prostitution are the most normal things in the world. Atheist and even satanist infiltration in the government had to be suspected. The efforts between 1995 and 1998 to get religious broadcasting banished – albeit that the impression was given that all small radio stations were under scrutiny – tend to fuel that suspicion. During 2006 there was another attempt to remove Radio Pulpit, a station that was broadcasting nationally, from the airwaves.
But also within denominations interfaith was gaining ground so that the unique features of Jesus were gradually eroded. Parallel to this, acceptance of homosexuality was gaining ground at a rapid pace, notably in the Anglican and Dutch Reformed denomination. A move by concerned pastors of the Cape Town City Bowl led to a declaration to be read in churches at Pentecost 2004 that included the sentence ‘We implore Christians to observe marriage as the ultimate and unique expression of the relationship between one man and one wife.’ It was generally felt that a status confessionis had been reached. The Church had to speak out against the sinful practice of homosexuality as she failed to do with regard to apartheid. So to speak at the last minute, the public reading of the declaration in the churches from pulpits was postponed at the request of the Groote Kerk ministers, not to jeopardize the discussion at their General Synod, which was to be held in October 2004. The decision at that synod in Hartenbos was however nowhere unambiguous, merely appealing to church members to be loving and not judgmental towards homosexuals. However, the lack of comment on the actual practice was leaving a loophole which was to ferment causing trouble a few months later.
Matters came to a head when the Constitutional Court ruled shortly thereafter in November 2004 that gay marriages were not a violation of the constitution. Pastors could thus theoretically be charged if they refused to marry lesbians or homosexuals. The spokesman of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) added to the confusion in the television discussion. This troubled Rowina Stanley, the prayer coordinator of the Woodstock Assemblies of God sufficiently to bring this up for prayer at the monthly Prayer for the City event on 4 December, 2004 outside the District Six Moravian Church. We put prayer against satanist and homosexual infiltration into the Church on the agenda for 2005. Rowina unfortunately pulled out of our regular monthly meetings because of other commitments, but in their church a few prayerful women they thereafter started with early morning prayer every Saturday morning. We resumed our sunrise monthly prayer event on Signal Hill in 2005. But that was not the only battle to be engaged in the new year.

A pyrrhic victory?
The gay lobby showed exceptional efficiency during 2006. All odds were stacked against them to get same sex marriages legalised. Almost all the major religious groups - with the lonely exception the spokesman for the SACC – and traditional leaders came out against a law that had no scriptural and popular backing. Very cleverly the gay lobby played the card of discrimination, which in South Africa found very eager and sensitive ears because of the heritage of apartheid. They managed to get the ANC, which had a massive majority in Parliament, on their side. Evangelical Christians had organised very well under the leadership of the Marriage Alliance, but they could never win without the backing of the ruling ANC. The law allowing same sex marriages took effect on 1 December 2007. The question is: was the gay victory pyrrhic?
In Parliament Kenneth Meshoe, the leader of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), warned that the country was inviting God’s wrath through the passing of this law. This seemed to get a prophetic dimension when crime and violence spiralled in the first two months of 2007, despite the vitriolic assurance by the State President that crime was not out of control. On the flip side, this seemed to be God’s way of stirring thousands to prayer in a way reminisicent of 1994 when the country seemed to be heading for a bloodbath of terrific dimensions. God has already raised people to pray for the removal of the gruwel, the abomination, as Cedric Evertson, a prayer warrior saw the new law.
When only Murray Bridgman was there alone with me on Signal Hill for our monthly prayer event of 2 December, I was initially somewhat disappointed. We were in the clouds, but not in a pleasant way, cold and wet. Murray had so much wanted to introduce me to Cedric! A cell phone call was enough to get Cedric to join us for prayer simply in the car. How exciting it was to hear from Cedric how the Lord has been leading him. The Holy Spirit touched his heart to stand in the gap like a Moses on behalf of the nation. To this end he would go to Tygerberg man alone to pray there in the morning, three days a week.
We decided to relocate our prayer meeting to Tygerberg for 3 March 2007 and let Cedric lead the group in prayer. There the fighting ‘gloves’ were put on as we prayed for all laws that encourage sexual immorality and promiscuity to be turned around as the immoral apartheid laws had to be removed from the statute books! There was one big difference though. We did not want to wait another forty years! And we shall continue to pray for a revival, which we see as the best counter, the ultimate answer to the problems of gangsterism, drug addiction, crime and violence.

An Event Film
When the movie The Passion of the Christ was released in March 2004, it was clear that this would be another event film. For Nur Rajagukguk, a missionary colleague who had worked in China years before, it was very special to watch the video version in our home together with two Uyghur female physicians from China. Nur Rajagukguk had a special burden for the Uyghur, a Muslim tribe in the Northwest of the vast and populous country. For years she prayed for those people, without seeing any change. And now God brought some of them to Cape Town. Within months we had contact with more Uighurs who had come to Cape Town.
At this time we were introduced to Leigh Telli who loves the Jews. Her husband, a North African Arab, comes from Muslim background. An old vision of us was revived, serving to confirm our calling of ministering to foreigners and linking our ministry to Messianic Jews in an effort towards reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape. On 19 February 2005 a few believers from both Jewish and Muslim backgrounds were present at a seminar in the suburb of Durbanville. At that occasion Leigh Telli and the author shared respectively on 'What are God’s purposes for Isaac's and Ishmael’s descendants in these last days?' We proceeded with the printing of an A4 manual of with the talks of Leigh and me at the seminar. The manual also included some paintings of Leigh. On the cover a Jew and a Muslim are depicted in discussion.

Declining Leadership Positions
My radio ministry with CCFM appeared to have made some impact. When Andrew Mc Donald, the African leader of Trans World Radio (TWR), however phoned me with the request to lead the programmes for the outreach to Muslim countries of the continent, I did not have to pray much. No Jonah stint was needed. We knew that our Muslim outreach work at the Cape was still far from finished.
Rosemarie and I were approached by more than one member to be nominated for the position of national leaders of WEC prior to the annual conference in the Free State in 2004. But we had no liberty to accept nomination. Also at the conference itself near to the little town Senekal we were nominated again in a plenary session to join the leadership team. We explained that the Lord had confirmed through the tidal wave of opportunity that we felt that we needed to remain in Cape Town. It was also no Jonah stint when I resigned from the national committee, enabling Freddie Kammies and Lazarus Chetty to be elected as representatives for the Western Cape.

Nudges towards academic Accreditation
During a two-month stint of home assignment in Europe a few months later, we also visited Cees and Marika Rentier in the Netherlands. We had been working with them in earlier years in Zeist and here at the Cape respectively. Cees felt that I should try to get my manuscript Roots of Islam published in the Netherlands. He referred me to two publishers of Christian books. However, after the necessary enquiries, neither of the two publishers saw their way clear to proceed further with my manuscript. Was yet another one going to the scrap heap? However, I was not terribly perturbed. I believed if the Master could use it, this would be published in his time.
Somewhere along the line, the idea also surfaced to get some academic accreditation for my research. Increasingly Bible Schools wanted their lecturers to have a Masters degree. I made an enquiry with Dr Christof Sauer, who had been a SIM Life Challenge missionary colleague and coordinator of our BI winter course before being appointed at UNISA for post graduate studies. The ‘fleece’ I put out there was however negative – UNISA would not accept work such as mine, in which the staff would have had minimal input. Yet, knowing about my research and work on Christian-Muslim Dynamics, he brought me in touch with Drs. Muhammed Haron, who showed interested in getting my work published in some form. He offered to be one of my supervisors towards a Masters and/or Ph.D. degree. I had heard that the Baptist Seminary had bursaries available for post-graduate studies via Pretoria University but I preferred UWC where I hoped to study Arabic as a part of my studies. Wasn't my reason initially to meet and influence Muslim students?
At the occasion of a public lecture at UWC I chatted to Professor Conradie and gave him a CD with the mansucripts I had written up to that point in time. When he did not respond, I made no effort to prod. I regarded that as a 'fleece', whether I should engage in academic studies. I had no hesitation to encourage my Indonesian colleague Nim Rajagukguk to engage in doctoral studies there and get involed in Campus studies. Eric wood

The Road to the Global Day of Prayer
In the run-up to the Pentecost Global Day of Prayer of 2005 I used much of the material of ‘Some Things wrought by Prayer’ for a radio series via CCFM which I called The Road to the Global Day of Prayer.
In the aftermath of our seminar in Durbanville in February 2005 a two-weekly gathering with Bible Study ensued. This led to closer contact with Kobus Smith and Neville Truter, a missionary colleague who also attended these occasions. The idea came up to make an attempt at rewriting the radio series for publication. Leigh Telli was willing to make a painting for the cover. Bennie Mostert wrote a forward, a part of which we wanted to use for the back cover.
Because of the content, I deemed it fit to send the manuscript to Patrick Johnstone, the author of the well-known book Operation World, in the UK. He encouraged me suggesting that we should also think of attempting to prepare the manuscript for international consumption. He gave excellent pointed constructive criticism. Attempts to get a local editor for this work were initially unsuccessful.
In the meantime, I had been praying regularly with Heidi Pasques, Trevor Peters and Beverley Stratis at the local police station every Wednesday morning. Heidi took up the challenge to edit and rewrite the manuscript. After a few months she had to give up the attempt though, because of too many other commitments.
In the interim I had the idea to revamp my research on the Spiritual dynamics at the Cape into smaller units, which I called The Mother of the Nation and Missionary Snippets at the Cape.110 When I visited Saki Mispach, a Muslim friend of District Six and an avid reader at the end of June 2006, he told me about a Book Fair that was about to be held in the International Convention Centre, suggesting that I should try and get the one or other of my manuscripts published. This I did, sending my manuscript Mission Snippets from the Cape thereafter to at least six different publishers. However, not a single publisher replied outright positively. One of them suggested that I try Kwela Books, which I did in December 2006.
At one of the preparatory meetings for the 2006 Global Day of Prayer event I had a short chat with Graham Power, the main human initiator of the Newlands event in 2001 and the subsequent stadiums events throughout the continent. He told me that he had someone, Anne Warmenhoven, who was also working on a publication from their side. While he was still on a sabbatical in August 2006, I linked up with him. He brought me into contact with Anne Warmenhoven, who wanted to see if anything could be done in terms of integrating the material. After a further week or so she concluded that the material could not be married. Thus yet another manuscript went to the pile of unpublished material.

The Seed of Confession germinates
Confession was one of the issues that featured prominently in the Newlands event of 2001 and in the run-up to the first the Global Day of Prayer. From Holland I had entered into correspondence with a few White Dutch Reformed ministers in South Africa since 1979, impressing on them the need for confession as a prelude to racial reconciliation. The powerful impact of confession and restitution, which I had experienced within the confines of Moral Rearmanent, was obviously working through. The Reformation Day statement that became known as the ‘Witness of the Eight’ of 31 October 1980 - seemed to have given the confession ‘snowball’ momentum. It was an encouragement to me that two members of the Dutch Reformed Church delegation, whom I had met at Schiphol Airport, were in this group, viz. Professors Heyns and Jonker. That Professor Willie Jonker was among this group was not really surprising to me. At the Dutch airport he had taken me aside to explain that he was not a member of the Broederbond. Two years later, a bigger group of Dutch Reformed theologians published a confession. Indeed, the good seed of confession appeared to be germinating.
I was following the developments in the country closely via the weekly international edition of The Star of Johannesburg in the late 1970s. I was sad to hear of the ambivalent role that Professor Heyns was still playing as the chairman of the Broederbond. He seemed to have made amends thereafter. In the 1980s Professor Heyns went on to become one of the divine instruments of change in his church to take the denomination away from apartheid thinking and attitudes. My flurry of letters might even have made some contribution to change.
I really rejoiced when I heard how Professor Willie Jonker started the ball of confession rolling at Rustenburg in November 1990, confessing in his personal capacity and on behalf of his denomination. The government of the day and the Afrikaans press slammed the Rustenburg confession in general, but in the spiritual realm a deep impact was definitely made.

Little Movement in Respect of Guilt towards Islam
On the other issue that was close to my heart, confession of the role of Christians with regard to the origins and spread of Islam, there was no movement in South Africa. Yet, apart from the flicker of hope, which I had experienced via Kobus Cilliers, and the colleague from Mozambique in November 2003, hardly anything of consequence happened. In the aftermath of the conference we worked on a document that we subsequently called a manifesto because other missionary colleagues had problems to use the term confession. The result of the discussion with a few colleagues on 23 April 2004 at the home of Manfred Jung was to be sent to Professor Greyling and Herb Ward, who had co-ordinated our training course at BI in previous years. When I returned from Europe a few months later, I found that this was not done. In fact, within CCM I was maligned at the CCM leadership conferences of 2004 and 2005 in my absence and the manifesto sent to the scrap heap of unused material.
From a completely unexpected source assistance came when the annual national Missionary Congress, organised by UNISA, was held in Stellenbosch in January 2006. The two main plenary lectures were held by Professor Farid Esack and Dr Allan Boesak. The former confessed in his personal capacity and on behalf of Islam what his religion had done in bringing the peoples of Africa in neo-colonial bondage. In his paper Dr Boesak intimated the issue. Very much aware of he had helped to cause the spread of the religion at the Cape on dubious premises, I deemed this the chance to get some movement. After pointing to his role in my life and honouring him publicly for it, I suggested that Boesak should take a leading role in getting the church to repent. He felt though that he was not the right person to do that, which was quite comprehensible in the light of negative publicity and his imprisonment not that long ago.
The CCM leaders’ consultation in Constantia in December 2006 did not deliver any spectacular goods to encourage me to get excited, but there was just enough happening to remain a partner in the movement.

Resignation as Team Leaders
Rosemarie and I were not aware that we were actually busy with another version of Jonah during 2005, that the Lord was pointing us again to the people from the nations that had been coming to Cape Town. We were so busy with all sorts of other good things. But we were not in the centre of God’s will for us. He had to use a rather traumatic situation in our team to bring us back to the vision he had given us in October 2003 that we should focus on the foreigners.
The situation in our team led to a stage where Rosemarie and I decided that it would be in the best interest of our team to resign as leaders. After talks with our national leadership, who specially came from Durban to discuss matters, a new structure of regional leadership was put in place. I was to be part of this umbrella structure until the end of July, the date we had set for terminating our position as leaders. Personally, the two of us were encouraged by Isaiah 43:18 to expect a 'new thing' that has been sprouting.

A 'new Thing' sprouting
During the first term of 2006 an OM missionary, Shipley Jacobs, had started to work more closely with us. He also had a vision to minister to foreigners. In the course of looking for a neutral venue where we could help the sojourners from other countries with English lessons, Shipley suggested that we pop in at the home of Theo Dennis, one of the OM leaders in the Western Cape. When Theo shared from their ministry in Coventry in the UK with the title Friends from Abroad, I once again had a sense of home-coming, especially when he mentioned that the group does not operate there under this name anymore.
The very next day I took Rosemarie along to him, starting discussions for the establishment of an alliance with other agencies and local churches to be called Friends from Abroad. Both of us felt that this was the new thing that has been sprouting, a renewed challenge to get involved with foreigners.

(check for doubles: I made a mistake by mentioning the name Friends from Abroad in correspondence to our leaders, although everything was very much still in an orientation stage. This was to cause a serious problem. We were nevertheless completely very surprised when our national WEC leaders would not give us a ‘green light’ to continue working within this context as WEC missionaries, without giving a proper reason. We still thought that this was merely due to bad communication. We asked to meet the full committee. On 27 and 28 April 2006 we were more or less given an ultimatum, to work within a structure that was doomed to fail. When one of the leaders asked whether the Lord was possibly not leading us out of WEC, it surely was a prophetic word, but for us very hard to swallow. In our hearts we wanted to remain in WEC until the end of our ministry days. This led to a severe crisis, with the result that we had a letter of resignation already on our computer on 29 April, just ahead of the national conference that was due to start the next day in the Cape, in Stellenbosch. The Lord intervened via a SMS from someone who knew nothing of what had transpired. The divine instruction via this channel was to wait on the Lord. This kept us from formally handing in our resignation at that occasion.

Our Nerves stretched as never before
I made a mistake mentioning the name Friends from Abroad in correspondence to our leaders, although everything was very much still in an orientation stage. This was to cause a serious problem. We were nevertheless completely surprised when our national WEC leaders would not give us a ‘green light’ to continue working within this context as WEC missionaries, without giving a proper reason. Towards the end of April things followed each other up in quick succession, so that a letter of resignation was already on our computer on the 29th of March.
We had another Jonah experience – this time together as a couple – when a friend sent us a warning email out of the blue and encouraging us with Psalm 7:14 to wait on the Lord. The next few weeks were not easy though, but the Lord carried us through in a special way as we did the ‘Experiencing God’ course at the church. Yet, for weeks on end we could not understand why God allowed us to stay in the mission because it only got worse.
We had not yet fully recovered from these shocks when the lack of news from our daughter in the Netherlands strained our nerves further. She had sent an SMS from Scotland in mid April that she was heading for Holland from where should would send us her new number. We were not unduly worried initially although we were very concerned about her life-style. (She was evidently not having spiritual fellowship and involved in a special relationship with a Spanish friend we had not yet met and about which she had not informed us.) When there was initially no news, we still took it in our stride. But when she also did not phone for Mother’s Day nor congratulate Tabitha on her birthday on the 25th – as we erroneously thought - we were terribly worried. A few days later the fear that she might not be alive was allayed after we had also alarmed our friends in Holland. The circumstance prepared us in some way for the rather disappointing news a few months later that she was expecting our first grandchild.
When two of the leaders from Durban were in Cape Town once again, Rosemarie and I took time out to seek the will of the Lord whether could still proceed with WEC in South Africa. We came to the conclusion that our leaders were operating in an Old Testament way - where kings and prophets more or less determined what is to happen. In so many words, one of our leaders responded in this way when we raised our objections against hierarchical structures, which we perceived as going against the spirit of the WEC ethos.111 After we had intimated that we considered resigning, we were advised that we would then have to go to Holland, our sending base. We felt that we could only do this in August at the earliest because we still had short-termers with us.
We discerned that our own understanding of the Word differed strongly with that of our national leaders. We had a problem on our hands because we feared that leadership could be abused in an authoritarian way. Somewhere in between we also had a telephonic battle with our leader in Holland, who insisted that we should come to Emmeloord at a time when both they and their deputies would be present. In the end we re-scheduled our itinerary, adding Spain to our schedule.
We were advised by our counsellor to speak to Trevor Kallmier, the international director of the mission who was to be in our region for the conference of the Evangelical World Alliance. Subsequently, a new structure was implemented out which enabled us to continue with WEC in South Africa, albeit with reservations and even though all the differences were not completely resolved. We were especially blessed when the leadership offered us a sabbatical. Because we did not want to delay the actual start of the ministry of Friends from Abroad unduly, we decided to use only seven weeks for an extended holiday cum home assignment. This enabled us to be present for the birth of our granddaughter. Maggie, our daughter, had moved back to Spain with her partner when the coasts of medical expenses in Holland turned out to be prohibitive, even though she is a Dutch national.
It helped us on a visit to the Dutch headquarters in September 2006 to discern that miscommunication once again had led to a series of events about which we had become quite resentful. We returned to South Africa quite hopeful for a new start.

In October 2006 we were back at the Cape, all set to get going with Friends from Abroad. We were however hardly back when the ‘battle’ resumed. We were very sad to read notions in the minutes from the national committee of WEC, which were distributed widely, that reflected quite negatively on us. From our colleagues we furthermore had to find out that they had attempted in vain to request the leaders to wait for our pending return before taking drastic decisions. This was not heeded. We requested the minutes to be rectified but no action followed. We were especially sad that a situation arose whereby we had no say in the running of the discipling house, which came into being through our endeavours and which had been running through gifts from our family and friends in Germany and Holland. It was now more a matter of time before we would finally resign. Yet, we resolved that we did not want to be like Jonah on this score. We still wanted to leave WEC in victory, asking God to lead us clearly and unambiguously in the new thing, which we believed was still sprouting.

Equipping and empowering people from the nations
One of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad with which we started before we left for Europe was the fortnightly fellowship, Bible Study and prayer with people from an unreached group in respect of the Gospel. (One of the visions of our new endeavour was to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, similar to the way I had been impacted while I was experiencing an (in)voluntary exile in Holland.)
One of the first believers coming from the group in question had already started with a ministry, first producing cassettes and later CD’s that were sent back to their home country. As we were talking one evening, the idea crystallized of getting my manuscripts on CD as well. The recordings and script of the radio programmes around the Samaritan woman of John 4 was to be the first one to be prepared for distribution.
Through this contact we resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. In 1995 he initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. We thought he could be a valuable complement to our Friends from Abroad concept, making use of indigenous Christians.
On Thursday 23 November 2006 we invited Pastor Gary Coetzee over for a meal. The Rock Fellowship had not only been faithfully supporting our ministry over a lengthy period, but we sensed a kindred spirit in him both for the city and to impact people from the nations that had been coming to Cape Town.
The next week, on Thursday 30 November, we had the Friends from Abroad meeting, the first since our return from overseas. Here the Lord clearly over-ruled. I had invited our friend Pastor Bruce van Eeden, whom we had been assisting to pioneer an EBC congregation in Newfields, to come and share for about ten minutes at our meeting. What a blessing it was for those present to hear how God has been using this brother from the Cape Flats in China and India.112 We heard at the meeting how the Lord put Africa on his heart in recent years after an invitation to Uganda in 2003. After his return he received the vision to challenge believers of 7 countries around the lakes of Central Africa to reach the northern part of the continent. Another visit to Central Africa in April 2006 led to a conference where steering committees were formed for Burundi, DRCongo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda as a gateway to the northern countries of the continent.
The rest of the evening was devoted to discussing issues he had raised, as well as praying for the Africa Arise missions consultation on Saturday 9 December. The inspiration for this initiative is a contemporary and adapted paraphrase of Isaiah 60:1 ‘Africa arise, your light has come’ The event in itself was nowhere impressive in terms of numbers, but the participants discerned nevertheless that it was a unique occasion in the spiritual realms.

Is my writing activity idolatry?
In the early morning hours of 1 December 2006 Rosemarie noticed that I was awake. She could not sleep for a while herself. She felt compelled to challenge me with the question whether my writing activity was not an idol just like I had been addicted to sport as a teenager. I knew she was right. I was going overboard - to get I was like Jonah printed in some form before 6 December.
I was indeed all set to get up, have my quiet time and continue with the book. Instead, now I had to go to the Lord in travailing confession. After an inner battle I was ready to stop with everything, at least for a time. I discovered that HIS(s)tory at the Cape should come to the front of the queue of unfinished manuscripts, to be pasted on the website for which we had just started to do some preparatory work.
God used Rosemarie to correct me to apply the brakes when I wanted to rush ahead with that manuscript. I discovered that HIS(s)tory should come to the front of the queue of unfinished manuscripts, to be pasted on the website, which we wanted to start. (The idea of a website was however not confirmed, and then shelved).

P.S. After the OM ship the Doulos left in 1993 after being here for many months, Bruce van Eeden was very sad but deeply challenged. This and a few other factors led to him attending the Global Consultation for World Evangelisation (GCOWE) in Seoul in 1995. There he was impacted so much by the needs of the unreached people groups of the 10/40 widow. He could not simply carry on business as usual like other delegates from South Africa seemed to be able to do. He started the movement "TEN FORTY OUTREACH" the next year. The Holy Spirit moved him to prayer and tears how he could get involved practically. He received China and India, the two most populous countries of the world as a challenge to pray for, while he continued working vocationally as a builder, erecting the building of the Evangelical Bible Church fellowship that he planted in Newfields near to the notorious township of Hanover Park.

When Pastor van Eeden’s daughter was appointed as a stewardess with the SA Airways, this afforded him with the opportunity to travel to China and India cheaper than you and I. In the former country God used Bruce to impact the life of a communist leader and in India he was God's instrument to lead many short term teams from South Africa to minister there. God used him to challenge and equip Indian evangelists who took the Gospel to the unreached tribes of their country. Over the last ten years more than 300 Christian fellowships could be planted in this way.

In the latter half of 2006 the Lord put Africa on his heart. This led to a conference three months ago where he received the vision to challenge the believers of 7 countries around the lake region of Central Africa to reach the northern part of the continent. Burundi, DRCongo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda could thus become the gateway to the northern parts of our continent.

Epilogue:


In need of counselling
After the WEC conference in Stellenbosch in May 2006 we experienced the most difficult period of our ministry to date. In ongoing discussion with our leaders we could not identify ourselves with their way of giving leadership. In fact, it traumatized us so much that we needed personal counselling. Our nerves were on end and we had no energy left to continue with our missionary work. The advice of our counsellor helped us to carry on. He challenged us, never to leave a ministry in defeat.
We had not yet fully recovered from the shocks when the lack of news from our daughter Magdalena in the Netherlands strained our nerves further. She had sent an SMS from Scotland in mid April that she was heading for Holland from where should would send us her new number. We were not unduly worried initially although we were very concerned about her life-style. She was evidently not having spiritual fellowship and involved in a special relationship with José, the Spanish friend we had not yet met. When there was initially no news, we still took it in our stride. But when she also did not phone for Mother’s Day, we were terribly worried. A few days later the fear that she might not be alive was allayed after we had also alarmed our friends in Holland. The circumstance prepared us in some way for the rather disappointing news a few months later that Maggie was expecting our first grandchild. She had by this time moved back to Spain with her partner when the coasts of medical expenses in Holland for the birth of the child turned out to be prohibitive, even though she is a Dutch national.
When two of the leaders from Durban were in Cape Town once again, Rosemarie and I took time out to seek the will of the Lord whether we could still proceed with WEC in South Africa. We came to the conclusion that our leaders were operating in an Old Testament way - where kings and prophets more or less determined what is to happen.
In so many words, one of our leaders responded in this way when we raised our objections against hierarchical structures, which we perceived as going against the spirit of the WEC ethos.113 After we had intimated that we considered resigning, we were advised that we would then have to go to Holland, our sending base. We felt that we could only do this in August at the earliest because we still had short-termers with us.
We discerned that our own understanding of the Word with regard to leadership differed strongly with that of our national leaders. We had a problem on our hands because we feared that leadership could be abused in an authoritarian way. Somewhere in between we also had a telephonic battle with our leader in Holland, who insisted that we should come to Emmeloord at a time when both they and their deputies would be present. We were thankful that we could still re-schedule our itinerary, adding Spain to our schedule. We were especially blessed when the leadership offered us a ‘sabbatical’, an extended time out. Because we did not want to delay the actual start of the ministry of Friends from Abroad unduly, we decided to use only seven weeks for an extended holiday cum home assignment. This enabled us to be present for the birth of our grandchild.
We were advised by our counsellor to speak to Trevor Kallmier, the international director of the mission who was to be in our region for the conference of the Evangelical World Alliance. Subsequently, a new structure was implemented, which enabled us to continue with WEC in South Africa, albeit with reservations and although all the differences were not completely resolved.
It helped us on a visit to the Dutch headquarters in September 2006 to discern that miscommunication once again had led to a series of events about which we had become quite resentful. We returned to South Africa quite hopeful for a new start.

In October 2006 we were back at the Cape, all set to get going with Friends from Abroad. We were however hardly back when the ‘battle’ resumed. We were especially sad that a situation arose whereby we had no say in the running of the discipling house, which came into being through our endeavours and which had been running through gifts from our family and friends in Germany and Holland. It now became more a matter of time before we would finally resign. Yet, we resolved that we did not want to be like Jonah on this score. We had to face the truth of the word that we were being led out of WEC. We still wanted to leave WEC in victory, asking God to lead us clearly and unambiguously in the new thing, which we believed was still sprouting.

Equipping and empowering people from the nations
One of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad with which we started before we left for Europe was the fortnightly fellowship, Bible Study and prayer with people from an unreached group in respect of the Gospel. (One of the visions of our new endeavour was to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, similar to the way I had been impacted while I was involved in an (in)voluntary exile in Holland.)
One of the first believers coming from the group with which we were now working, had already started with a ministry, first producing cassettes and later CD’s that were sent back to their home country. As we were talking one evening, the idea crystallized of getting my manuscripts on CD as well. The recordings and script of the radio programmes around the Samaritan woman of John 4 was to be the first one.
Through this contact we resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. In 1995 he had initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. We thought that he could be a valuable addition to our Friends from Abroad concept, making use of indigenous Christians.
On Thursday 23 November we invited Pastor Gary Coetzee over for meal. The Rock Fellowship had not only been faithfully supporting our ministry over a long period, but we sensed a kindred spirit in him for the city and to reach the nations that had been coming to Cape Town.
The next week, on Thursday 30 November, we had the Friends from Abroad meeting, the first since our return from overseas. Here the Lord clearly over-ruled. I had invited our friend Pastor Bruce van Eeden, whom we had been assisting to pioneer an EBC congregation in Newfields, to come and share for about ten minutes at our meeting. What a blessing it was for those present to hear how God has been using this brother from the Cape Flats in China and India.114 We heard at the meeting how the Lord put Africa on his heart in recent years after an invitation to Uganda in 2003. After his return he received the vision to challenge believers of 7 countries around the lakes of Central Africa to reach the northern part of the continent. Another visit to Central Africa in April 2006 led to a conference where steering committees were formed for Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda as a gateway to the northern countries of the continent.
The rest of the evening was devoted to discussing issues he had raised as well as praying for the Africa Arise missions consultation on Saturday 9 December. The inspiration for this initiative is a contemporary and adapted paraphrase of Isaiah 60:1 ‘Africa arise, your light has come’ The event in itself was nowhere impressive in terms of numbers, but the participants nevertheless discerned that it was a unique occasion in the spiritual realms.
For years I had been receiving the information of Wheels for God’s Word. It all started in September 1995 when Pastor Raymond Lombard from Cape Town was moved by the Holy Spirit to bring the Gospel to the African continent on wheels. The movement has sent over ??? thousand bicycles and motorcycles to ?? African countries. Thousands of the old Heart of Man
charts were also distributed at the same time.

Prayer on the local CCM Agenda
When I discovered prayer on the agenda of a meeting of the local CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) forum scheduled for Tuesday, 13 March, 2007, I really did not expect much. When 90% of the meeting revolved around another proposed visit of Jay Smith, it merely confirmed my prejudice. Prayer was the last topic on the agenda and it confirmed indeed my assessment of that as a matter of priority in CCM. When we got to the end, I suspected that it would possibly hardly be discussed. When I was nominated to chair the Forum, I knew my answer. I could never lead a club where I did not feel myself on the wave-length. The reason I gave for declining was however very truthful: I wanted to establish Friends from Abroad that was about to be launched.
I was rather taken by surprise when someone suggested that we should an hour of prayer before the next meeting. This was quite a new sound. I sensed that this was a divinely inspired move. Was the seed that we have tried to sow in this regard finally germinating? Even more surprising, I was asked to be the CCM prayer co-ordinator of the Western Cape. There was no way of course that I could decline this. On more than one occasion I had all but resigned when CCM as a body appeared to be rather indifferent to the necessity of intercession and confession in Muslim evangelism. Unfortunately this was yet another fly by night. At the few occasions.

Addendum


More Encouragements
The regiogebed that started in Holland in 1988 had different shoots. One of these was that parents of children started praying for the schools. Believers of Zeist-West, including our friends Hans and Els van Wingerden started praying for the primary school that their children attended and when our son Danny started off at the Christelijk Lyceum, the local High School, we were involved in a similar prayer group just prior to our departure for South Africa in January 1992.
Yet, when another off-shoot, the corporate prayer movement started in 1996, still very few people in Holland took any notice. Holland was heading to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime.
Ten years later however, prayer in the workplace was becoming an accepted phenomenon in the Netherlands. More than 100 companies participate. Government ministries, universities, multinational companies like Philips, KLM, and ABN AMRO - all allow groups of employees to organize regular prayer meetings on their premises. Trade unions even started lobbying the government for the recognition of the workers' right to prayer in the workplace.
At the end of February 2007 we were greatly encouraged to hear facts which we perceived as answers to prayer. The annual comparative statistics of the Cape Town Central Police Station - where we prayed every Wednesday morning - showed a marked decrease of crime almost across the board. The few exceptions show only a marginal increase. That the station commander, Ms Gerda van Niekerk, received various accolades was also for us a great encouragement, for which we gave God the glory and honour.

During the week of prayer and at the occasional Wednesday morning Rev Tim Smith attended after policemen had come to his home for prayer. (Tim Smith is a minister of the Anglican Catholic Church had attended our home ministry group in the mid 1990s). He was challenged not only to challenge his ministerial colleagues offer prayer to policemen, but also to invite colleagues of other denominations to invite law enforcement agents to be prayed for before they go out on new shifts. He invited his superior and other denominational colleagues to come and prayer at the police station on Tuesday. They seemed to be quite excited. There initiative unfortunately did not deliver any goods.

No Jonah this time – really?

When I went to the City Bowl Ministers' Fraternal on Thursday 4 October, 2007 I intended to go and say good bye to the colleagues. I had by now finally given up that networking was possible with those colleagues. Since 1995 when I joined the prayer times as the initiative of the late Edgar Davids and together with Louis Pasques, we saw it growing initially in a healthy weekly fellowship of evangelical pastors. But then it dwindled, not only in numbers. Not even the annual Carols by Candlelight could be organised as a joint event. The Groote Kerk had been a major stumbling block in networking over the years. They would not join our monthly combined services and only hesitantly opened their traditional Ascension Day service for the closing of the 120 days of prayer in 1999. ( I was allowed to speak on condition that I limit myself to seven minutes and give them the script of my message beforehand. For the sake of the Unity of the body I agreed to these rather distrustful conditions.)
The Lord humbled me when the Groote Kerk ministers suggested intensifying networking – they wanted to open up their Robben Island monthly services for ministers of other denominations. This took me really by surprise. In the Winter of 2008 Rosemarie and I went there, taking along our son Sammy and his fiancéé Sheralyn.
Even though this was not more than a service with one family there, we were blessed. In the run-up to the 2009 Pentecost Global Day of Prayer and the implementation I was once again very disappointed by the participation of local colleagues, but in the preparation of the event I had started working more closely with John Kadende, a Rwandese pastor and his refugee church. I knew that networking with believers from different backgrounds would make the Father happy and that this should remain a focus of my ministry. I was now turning my attention to those believers among the refugees who were really interested in networking and praying together. That however also turned into another fata morgana. I linked them up with Woodstock Baptist Church in 2010, in an effort to network in using the church building for services. When this did not materialise, I still preached there occasionally, but the connection became very loose. A connection with a fellowship of Malawian believers did not grow beyond occasional sermons.


October 2008
Robben Island??

In my email to Bennie Mostert I wrote:
I pray and trust that Jericho Walls may consider inviting political parties to add to the above the biblical injunction 'to love the stranger in your gates', which came so strongly to the Church the past year. It would be great, I think, if all parties could be challenged to dare to put - as a matter of priority - the repeal of the Acts permitting abortion and same-sex marriages. Keeping in mind that righteousness and justice exalt a nation, I though that we should add - as another matter of priority - a law on the Statute books that would make discrimination against foreigners an offense. I was very much blessed at the end of the year pastors' breakfast at the Groote Kerk Deli at 55 Kloof Street. I happened to sit next to Alan Noble, the pastor of Holy Trinity Church, who had come with Jacques Erasmus. As Rosemarie and I left, we noticed that Chris Saayman, the minister of Tafelberg DRC, who had Bo-Kaap and the Muslims at heart, was parked next to us. A little chat prepared a short meeting which I subsequently had with him on Wednesday 10 December 2008. It looked promising that we at last might get at least two of the local churches interested to see home churches planted in the former Muslim stronghold. Getting them interested in outreach to the foreigners incarnationally seemed however still on another page.

A month or two ago I was approached by the INCONTEXT team of Mike Burnard after recommendation by Floyd, to lead a workshop on Islam at a conference here in Bellville. The same conference with three international speakers was also to be held at the end of September and the beginning of October in Durban and Windhoek. During the preliminary discussions, I suggested our colleague Dave Foster to lead the worshop in the Durban sector and mentioned that I could lead one together with Baruch on Reconciliation between Jews and Muslims. I didn't check the dates immediately. When I approached Baruch subsequently, he was unavailable - hoping to go to Israel to a convocation in Jerusalem. This is the one to which Rosemarie and I actually also wanted to go at exactly that time.
On June 14 Mike Burnard emailed me for confirmation to lead the workshops in Cape Town and Windhoek. After a subsequent phone call from Tess, his personal assistant, I said I would pray for clarity, to give them a reply by June, the 30th. I mentioned to her that we also considered going to Israel at that time. Rosemarie and I now started praying for a confirmation either way where I should be before the 30th of June. We were open for both possibilities. I would have loved to conduct the workshops in Cape Town and Windhoek but this opportunity to go to Israel could be a last opportunity.

On Monday evening June 27 we were praying concretely with baruch, Karen and a few other believers that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the Jerusalem convocation or do the workshops. A letter which I received from Germany, informed me that I am eligible to receive a monthly pension of 129 Euro, retrospective since 1 January 2011. I don't know how they got to my address. Possibly they enquired via the Moravian Head Office where I had been paying into the pension fund in the few years while I was pastoring in Germany and Holland from 1973 to December 1980. On Thursday morning, the 30th June, during my quite time I felt that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for all the funding necessary for the Jerusalem convocation, even though the situation in Israel is very unsettled and there might be war at that time because of the threats of the Palestinians.

I informed Mike of my sadness to have to renege on my earlier commitment. This was no Jonah stint because I really would have loved to conduct the workshops in Cape Town and Windhoek.

I would have loved to respond more fully, but I prefer to herely suggest some guidelines. I don't want to create more disunity by entering the debate. It is of the essence that we achieve unity, as I said in my earlier email. May I request all of you - as leader of both minute organisations Friends from Abroad and Ishmael Isaac Ministries - to stop these debating emails. This is not saying that they are not interesting, but I believe that they are unnecessarily time consuming both for writer and reader.

In state of writing a lengthy response, I suggest that you briefly respond if you could agree to the following:
1. We will not do anything unless we have unity and that we have to bathe the process forward in prayer.
2. We want to contribute towards reconciliation between Jews and Muslims.
3. Let us address Cape Muslims and Jews at first, not necessarily via a written public confession at this stage.
4. Our intention is to get Cape Christians to see more clearly the need for confession of wrongs to Jews and Muslims.

In a second round I could give you some motivational input to these points if required. As a next stage I could sketch possible ways forward for us as team.

Ashley

P.S. I have consciously limited the scope of our apology/confession to the Cape, even though the original effort was stimulated by the Lausanne III conference last year. (Both Jews and Muslims were first wronged here at the Cape before they moved to (or came to) other parts of the country.)

Almost a Jonah again

The present debate around the effects of slavery is not helpful. God has used confessions in the past – both personal and collective ones - especially when they have been prepared by prayer. But not all confessions are edifying. That is also true. The content and timing are crucial.

w.r.t. point 1 above, I don't thing there is any need to clarify any parameters.

Regarding points 2 and 3, may I take that we all understand for ourselves that we believe that faith in Jesus/Yeshua is an important ingredient and could be a valuable instrument towards achieving reconciliation? Yet, while we believe that this could open people of other faiths to the truth of the gospel, we would not like to abuse such a confession/apology as a proselytising method.

Regarding point 3, we all would agree I trust, that it is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare hearts to accept our collective apology or confession.

Regarding point 4, we would love to operate as swiftly as possible to get as many South African Christians as possible to be willing to agree, but we must be careful not to rush anything or even vaguely attempt to press something ripe. I am very happy though that there seems to be agreement now already that prayer is going to make the difference. If something is to ripen, then it is the readiness of Muslims and Jews to accept our expression of regret with grace and forgiveness. Otherwise it may indeed be a case of throwing pearls before swine.
On the other hand, confession may never be cheap. Genuine remorse should also ripen. God knows our hearts. I believe that it is the prayers of South African followers of our Lord that ripened the hearts of deceived and deluded Christians in the 1980s to discern that apartheid is sinful and a heresy. I dare say that next to these prayers, the Rustenberg confession of November 1990 by Church leaders was a divine vehicle which spared our country a massive civil war and ushered in our democracy. (I am also aware that there are still individual Christians around who still yearn for the meat pots of apartheid - as if their products tasted so great.)

At this stage South African Christians at large are probably not ready yet for some major confession that need to be done for all the wrongs perpetrated to Jews and Muslims. (I am not referring here to expressions of regret that could offend Muslims or Jews.) It would be wonderful though if in our confession to Jews we could also include a) the high-jacking of the Jewishness of Jesus or doing as if the 'my people' is referring to the Church where Israel was meant in the context
In the confession to both Jews and Muslims the example of doctrinal bickering and biblical distortion, e.g. justifying violence with Luke 14:23 ('Force them to come in') should be readily agreed to now already.

If we are in full agreement on the above 4 points, I want to suggest a way forward for us over the next few months.

If you disagree on any of the above point, I want to request you to phone me promptly so that we can thrash it out personally rather than via email debate.

Trusting to hear promptly from all of you in some way. I really hope that we can give Theo and Marcus something concrete to take along to the Lausanne follow-up event in JHB later this month. South African Church leaders should be leading the confession.

Love,
Ashley