The Mother City of the Nation November 2013

The Mother City of the Nation

- the redemptive character of Cape Town

Content

1. Swimming against the Stream

2. Special Church Planters at the Cape

3. Cape Female Movers of the Nation

4. Foreigners who assisted the lower social Classes

5. A Cape Revival impacts the Nation

6. Politicians for the Underdogs

7. Leaders in Human Rights Propagation

8. A special Slum Area

9. Church Opposition against Apartheid

10. An Island that blessed the World

               11. The most colourful Suburb of South Africa!

12. The Blood of Cape Martyrs

13. Marches to Freedom

14. Redemptive role of Informal Settlements

15. The Aftermath of Political Violence   

16. Compassionate Initiatives with a Ripple Effect

17.  Spiritual Battle on the Mountain Tops

18.  Cape Flats Townships in Transformation

19. ‘Down and Outs’ in Mission

20.  The Pulling of the Trigger?

Introduction:

          I returned to Cape Town, the city of my birth in January I992 - after being overseas for many years. I was sometimes challenged, but more often blessed as I experienced and researched the exciting epochs in the history of the Mother City of South Africa. Time and again I discovered with much excitement how the Cape had actually impacted world history. I pray that the reader will be blessed and challenged in a similar way.

          Having been involved in missionary work and in the prayer movement here at the Cape for over twenty one years, I included down some of the things we experienced over the years.

          I was born in Bo-Kaap in 1945 and raised in District Six and Tiervlei (the ‘Coloured’ section of Parow Valley that was later called Ravensmead). I spent my first nine years in the bubbling cosmopolitan District Six when Christians, Muslims and Jews were still rubbing shoulders there harmoniously.         

          I am sure many Capetonians will be surprised to read how the citizens of those parts of our city - and others from the disadvantaged communities of the apartheid society - have been impacting the rest of the Cape Peninsula and even influenced issues and matters throughout the country. I am very well aware that the Cape has sad legacies as well, but in this treatise I consciously choose to emphasise the positives. In the parallel booklet - Mysterious ways of God - I touch on some of the negatives, nevertheless trying to get some balance. South Africa has been the pariah of the world for a long time. It is appropriate that the heritage and legacy of the Mother City should become a blessing to many in the nation and perhaps even in regions further afield.

          With regard to nomenclature in a country where race classification has been a hot potato, I am aware that the classification as Coloured has given offence to many in the racial group into which I was classified. In this study I put ‘Coloured’ consistently between inverted commas and as capitals when I refer to the racial group. To the other races I refer respectively as Black and White - written in capital letters - to indicate that it is not normal colours that are being referred to.

          I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my wife for the encouragement to get my material published, initially on the internet. First and foremost however, I wish to give all the Glory to God for His enabling!! The bulk of the material has been taken from hitherto unpublished manuscripts, e.g. SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS AT THE CAPE, SOME THINGS WROUGHT BY PRAYER and THE ROAD TO THE GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER. These documents are to be accessed at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com.

          I pray that readers may be blessed and challenged as I have been in the course of the research and the collating of the material.

 

Ashley D.I. Cloete

Cape Town, November 2013

Abbreviations

AAC - All African Convention

AE - Africa Enterprise

ACVV - Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouevereniging (Afrikaner Christian Women’s Association)

AEF - Africa Evangelical Fellowship

ANC - African National Congress

APO - African People’s Organisation

AWB – Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

AZAPO - Azanian People’s Organisation

CAD – Coloured Affairs Department

CAFDA - Cape Flats Distress Association

CRC - Coloured Representative Council

CCM - Christian Concern for Muslims

CCFM - Cape Community FM (radio)

CODESA - Convention for a Democratic South Africa

CSV - Christelike Studentevereniging (Students’ Christian Association)

CPTA- Cape Professional Teachers Association

CPSA – Communist Party of South Africa

DEIC - Dutch East India Company

DRC - Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk)

Ds. – Dominee (equivalent of Reverend)

DTS - Disciple Training School

GCOWE - Global Consultation for World Evangelisation

ICU - Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa

IDASA – Institute of Democratic Alternatives of South Africa

IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party

LMS - London Missionary Society

MECO - Middle East Christian Outreach

MERCSA Muslim Resource Centre of South Africa

MJC – Muslim Judicial Council

NEUF - Non European Unity Front

NEUM - Non-European Unity Movement

OM - Operation Mobilization

PAGAD - People against Gangsterism and Drugs

PAC – Pan African Congress

PCR - Programme to Combat Racism

SACC -South African Council of Churches

SAMS - South African Missionary Society

SIM - Society of International Ministries

SPG - Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

TEAM - The Evangelical Alliance Mission

TEASA -The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa

TEPA - Teachers’ Educational and Professional Association

TLSA - Teachers’ League of South Africa

UDF - United Democratic Front

UNISA - University of South Africa

UCT - University of Cape Town

UWC - University of the Western Cape

V.O.C - Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagne = United East India Company

WCC - World Council of Churches

WEC -Worldwide Evangelization for Christ

YWAM - Youth with a Mission

YMCA -Young Men’s Christian Association

Z.A. Gesticht - Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht (South African Foundation)

                   1. Swimming against the Stream

          As a rule, European colonists came to the Cape with racial arrogance. The prowess of Western civilization served to entrench racism, which had already been prevalent for centuries. The Greek classification of ‘Hellenes and barbarians’, which was fairly neutral with hardly any racial connotation, was replaced by ‘Christians and heathens.’ The former were Europeans and the latter the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa and all new areas that were being discovered.

            Yet, the Mother City of South Africa played a significant role as a vanguard in the fight against the dignity of indigenous people and in opposition to the trade of human beings.

Providence at Work                                                                                                                        

Providence had a hand in developments at the Cape of Good Hope.  Even before Jan van Riebeeck set his foot on our shores on 6 April 1652, God had intervened. Already in 1619 the Dutch had intended to create a half-way station between Europe and the East. The British had similar ideas. The shipwreck of the Haarlem in 1647 gave the decisive input. Significantly, Leendert Janzoon and Nicolaas Proot, two from the stranded crew, motivated the beginning of such a station with the need of bringing the Gospel to the indigenous Khoi in their memorandum to the East India Company in Amsterdam. The Cape primal people made a very favourable impression on them. The ship-wrecked Dutch were forced to stay here for five months, until another homeward bound ship could pick them up. It is very special that the Remonstrantie, which was written by the two Dutchmen, contradicted the common view held of indigenous people of their day and age. The two Dutchmen highlighted ‘a popular error’: ‘Others will say that the natives are savages and cannibals, and that no good is to be expected from them.’ The Khoi at the Cape impressed them as possible candidates for ‘the magnifying of God’s Holy Name and to the propagation of the Gospel.’ Before this, the interest in the Khoi was completely mercantile, occurring at a time when spices and profits came before souls and patriotism. Of course, there was economic interest as well, especially when the Dutch discovered that the soil at the Cape was fertile and that the indigenous people, because of their cattle, could be an asset.

Heroism at the Cape

Materialism and corruption was rife in the early days of the Cape. Materialistic ambition was part and parcel of the cultural baggage that was imported from Holland.

          Yet, a special example of heroism that occurred on June 1, 1773 has thankfully also been fully recorded. Wolraad Woltemade, a dairyman and humanitarian colonist of German origin saw the ship De Jonge Thomas driven ashore in a heavy gale near the mouth of the Salt River. The officials of the Dutch East India Company were preoccupied with saving the cargo, leaving the ship’s crew to perish, when Woltemade came past on horseback. He rode into the waves, bringing back two men holding to the animal’s tail. He repeated this act until he had saved fourteen of the crew. He went into the sea once more, but was overcome by the waves and drowned. The DEIC honoured his memory by naming a ship De Held Woltemade (The hero Woltemade). A train station has been named Woltemade, and a statue has been erected in the grounds of the South African Mutual Insurance Company in Pinelands in memory of his bravery.

Early evangelistic Beginnings in the Mother City 

In different parts of the world Christian clergymen and missionaries played a major role not only in the fight against ideologies and barbarism, but also in protecting the indigenous people against colonial exploitation. South Africa was no exception.

The first serious effort of swimming against the stream of racial and religious prejudice in the 18^th century to evangelize the Cape slaves – many of them Muslims - is said to be that of Ds. Henricus Beck, a Groote Kerk minister, after his retirement in 1731 (Haasbroek, Die sending onder die Mohammedane in Kaapstad en omgewing, 1955:58). A group of evangelical Christians gathered around Ds. Beck. His pioneering labour provided the spadework for the first missionary to South Africa, the dynamic German Moravian missionary Georg Schmidt, who started lively Christian groups after his arrival in July 1737. The prayerful Schmidt was initially mocked by the colonists for wanting to reach out to the Wilden, the indigenous Khoi, whom they disparagingly called Hottentotten.

             The widow Aaltje van den Heyden, one of Beck’s church members, played an important part in the mission work to the slaves after the death of her husband in 1740. She supplied the bulk of the funds for a sanctuary in Long Street, a Christian oefenhuis (practice house).  This would decisively influence religious life at the Cape for the ensuing decades. It has been reported that Georg Schmidt soon had a small congregation of 47 and that he was in contact with 39 Whites (Schmidt, Afrika en die Evangelie [pamphlet], Genadendal, 1937). The evangelical group in the Mother City laid the foundation for what was intended to be a sanctuary for the slaves, the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht (Z.A. Gesticht), on the corner of Long and Hout Streets.[1]

The first Converts of Georg Schmidt     

Georg Schmidt was a powerful evangelist. Various sailors on his voyage to the Cape were touched and converted. Both corporal Kampen and his successor at the military base at Zoetemelksvlei described Schmidt as their spiritual father (Cruse, Die opheffing van die Kleurlingbevolking, 1947:147). Georg Schmidt refused to be side-tracked through conversions among the colonists, preferring to go to those people who had not heard the Gospel at all. His sense of purpose is demonstrated by the fact that Schmidt moved on from Zoetemelksvlei to the Sergeants River soon after the conversion of Kampen, to get to the original reason for his coming - to evangelise the Khoi. 

          In the beginning of 1742 Schmidt was very frustrated and despondent after long years of toil and little to show for it. He worked hard amongst the resistant Khoi. Schmidt gradually overcame the ‘apathy of his flock’ with ‘labour of love and patience of hope’ (Du Plessis, A History of Christian Missions in S. Africa, 1911:54). It was however no cakewalk in the light of the growing opposition against his work. Only after almost five years the first of them came to faith in the Lord, at first two men. To his own surprise also an intelligent strong-willed woman wanted to become a follower of Jesus. Schmidt had to overcome his own sexist prejudice. At first he found only three men suitable for baptism. Quite prejudiced towards females, he did not expect much, but Schmidt was very surprised by the answers of the woman whom he gave the name Magdalena at her baptism. A second female was baptised with the name Christina.

          Schmidt wrote to Zinzendorf that he intended to return to Europe, partly because of the indolence of his resistant Khoi folk, and also because he did not receive helpers. But then the fruit came in the form of the first converts.  Schmidt came to the Mother City to greet his friend and benefactor, Captain Rhenius, who was about to leave the country for his retirement. During this visit to the Cape Schmidt picked up the letter of ordination from Count Zinzendorf. In March 1742 he thus at last had the ordination in his possession to baptize suitable candidates that he had ministered to. The Count encouraged him in the same letter to baptize his converts ‘where you shot the rhino’, i.e. at the river.   Schmidt now however made a grave mistake by mentioning the baptisms during a short visit at the military post Zoetemelksvlei. In no time this news got to the Reformed clergymen at the Cape.

          The baptism of five Khoi caused a huge problem among the Cape clergymen. Schmidt was harassed and asked to leave because he was not ‘properly’ ordained. Count Zinzendorf, the leader of their Moravian Church at the time, had ordained Schmidt by letter. Cape residents described the impact of Schmidt’s ministry to Nitschmann and Eller, two Moravian missionaries en route from Ceylon in 1742. In their assessment they stated that Georg Schmidt had accomplished in three and a half years ‘what others would not have affected in thirty years’ (Du Plessis, A History of Christian Missions in S. Africa,

1911:56). Georg Schmidt left in 1744, hoping to get a Dutch Reformed ordination in Holland. This would have enabled him to return to the small flock he had to leave behind in the Overberg. But that was not to be. Schmidt died before he could hear of the resumption of the missionary work in Baviaanskloof in 1792.

Impact of Schmidt’s Converts

Schmidt must have impacted the lives of his Khoi congregants in Baviaanskloof quite intensely. His prayerful example continued to influence events at the Cape long after he had been all but forced to leave. It has been reported that Schmidt continued to pray for his Khoi flock without a shepherd in Africa until old age in the East German village of Niesky, where he went to be with his Lord in August 1785 with a prayer for South Africa on his lips. 

          The seed that Schmidt had sown at the Cape during his stint of not even seven years germinated, both in the Mother City and in Baviaanskloof, the later Genadendal. Schmidt was said to have been ‘n man van sterk geloof en ‘n bidder (Schmidt, Afrika en die Evangelie [pamphlet], Genadendal, 1937).[2]  Apparently this example rubbed off on his converts, e.g. on Vehettge Tikkuie, who received the name ‘Magdalena’ at her baptism. Khoi Christians reported that she was often found on her knees in prayer. On top of this she taught the believers from the copy of the ‘New Testament’, which she had received from Georg Schmidt before his (en)forced departure. On Sundays ‘de oude Lena’ would walk to the pear tree where Georg Schmidt had preached, to read the ‘New Testament’ and pray with her folk. Almost 50 years after Schmidt had left, Khoi witnesses said that they came together at her home every evening where she prayed with them. If one takes the finance minister of Ethiopia mentioned in Acts 8 as the absolute first indigenous evangelist, we can now say that Magdalena was definitely the first of Sub Saharan Africa. But she also became the first known indigenous female church planting evangelist of all time, albeit that it happened by default. 

               Magdalena Vittuie was the first known indigenous

                              Female church planting evangelist

                                 

          Quite soon after the arrival of the dynamic Ds. Helperus van Lier at the Cape in 1786, the legacy of Schmidt worked through when Van Lier was present at the deathbed of another convert of the missionary pioneer. He saw how the Khoi believer died ‘in volkome rus en vrede van sy siel en in vertroue op die Here.’(Schmidt, 1937:6)[3] It made such a deep impression on Van Lier that he mentioned this in one of his letters to his uncle Professor Petrus Hofstede, an influential academic in Rotterdam, who was at that stage still an opponent of the Moravian Brethren. Van Lier became a major instrument not only in getting the Moravians back to the Cape in 1792, but he was also instrumental in sowing the seed for the first mini-revival at the Cape.[4]

A Cape social Revolution

As a result of the vision of the young reformed pastor, Dr Helperus van Lier, about 60 Christians in Cape Town and its surroundings set aside one day in the week as early as 1788 for the religious teaching of ‘the heathen’ at the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht in Long Street, which is now a missionary museum. Cape Town evangelicals were among the worldwide leaders in this regard at that time.

            A ‘revolution’ in which Ds. van Lier was used, brought a change in the attitude of many White believers towards slaves and other people of colour. Initially slaves were not allowed near the entrance of the church after the closing of services and they were punished if they dared to attend the funeral of one of the colonists. Prejudice against missionaries was still prevalent when Van Lier arrived, but the youthful minister dared to challenge the church through his fiery sermons and personal example. The young dominee literally caused a spiritual revolution at the Cape, shortening the duration of sermons and prayers during church services. He also increased house visitation. Believers were encouraged to get involved with the spreading of the Gospel. The historian Theal reports that when Van Lier was in the pulpit, people hardly dared to sleep in church because ‘at times it seemed as if he would jump from the pulpit’ (Theal, History and Ethnography of Africa Vol. 4, 1964 [1907]:379’).  Furthermore, his preaching was full of earnest appeals and ‘…women were often moved to tears, and sometimes fell into hysterics’.  Van Lier was very zealous, spending much of his time visiting people from door to door ‘...holding prayer meetings and encouraging works of benevolence’(ibid, p. 379).

            Van Lier was a great visionary, seeing the need for learning the heart language of the people to be reached with the Gospel. He was one of the first to start learning Malayu, the trade language, with the object of reaching out to the Cape Muslim slaves. 

The international Influence of Van Lier

Almost single-handedly Van Lier set the evangelical world ablaze. His letters from the Cape to Europe were very influential.  His testimony - in the form of six letters to Rev John Newton - was originally written in Latin and translated by the well-known poet William Cowper. The title of the booklet: Power of Grace, illustrated in six letters from a Minister of the Reformed Church to the Rev John Newton was published in Edinburgh by Campbell and Wallace in 1792.  Van Lier’s story of the influence of divine grace in his life seems to have made a lasting impression on Rev. Newton who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists. This is supported  when one considers that the famous hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ came from Newton’s pen. Van Lier’s humility came through when he insisted that a pseudonym - Christodulus, (slave of Christ) and not his own name - be used with the publication.

          Several of Van Lier’s letters were attempts to get the Moravians missionaries back to the Cape.  In Europe there was a significant increase in missionary interest towards the end of the 18^th century. The 24/7 Moravian prayer chain in Herrnhut that started in 1727, was still going strong. In England evangelicalism was gaining ground. The effect of William Carey’s book  An enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathens (1792) had a tremendous effect in Britain and North America.[5] Intensive prayer preceded the revival of 1792-1820, when no less than twelve mission agencies came into being.  In London and Rotterdam two interdenominational missionary societies were founded in 1795 and 1797 respectively.

          Van Lier’s correspondence continued to have an impact in Europe. Through his evangelical zeal Van Lier, along with William Carey’s book, laid the foundations for the founding of a missionary society at the Cape. Van Lier’s letter may have influenced his uncle not only to attack the ‘onverdraagzaamheid’ (intolerance) in the Church in Holland, but also to challenge the general arrogant attitude towards ‘de heidenen’ (the pagans). God used Hofstede to such an extent that religious tolerance increased significantly in the Netherlands towards the end of the 18^thcentury.

         

A Cape Minister with a Heart for Slaves and Khoi

A special result of Dr van Lier’s ministry was that South Africans started going to the mission fields themselves. Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the SAMS in April 1799 at the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht .He had died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only twenty eight. Ds. Vos, who was later to become the first foreign missionary of South African origin, took up where Dr van Lier had left off. [6] Ds. M.C. Vos cannot however be regarded as one of Van Lier’s ‘trophies’. He had been called by God independently as a juvenile. Ds. Vos' ‘heart was grieved at the neglect of the immortal souls’ of the Cape slaves. As an orphan with a sizeable inheritance, he had a yearning to study theology. To this end he resorted to the unusual step of getting married, on condition that he would leave his wife after two years to go and study in Holland.

          In 1794 Dominee Vos returned from Holland. There he had been touched anew by the Holy Spirit to return to his home country to minister to the slaves and the Khoi, taking up the legacy of Dr van Lier.  Although Ds. Vos soon moved to Roodezand (Tulbagh), Dr van Lier’s influence was felt all over the Western Cape. In the Mother City itself, Mechteld Smith, a widow who had been discipled by Van Lier, was performing a similar role to that of Magdalena Tikkuie in Genadendal. God used her - along with Ds. Vos - as the main regional role players to advance the evangelical cause at this time.  

          Maart, a slave from Mozambique, was blessed ‘with strong intellectual endowments’. He responded so well to the five years of Christian teaching under Ds. M.C. Vos that the London Missionary Society (LMS) thought of educating him ‘... to qualify him to accompany some other missionaries to... introduce into his native country ...that gospel which brings healing and salvation in its wings’. (??) The prevalent racial prejudice however prevented this happening. Ds. Vos’ use of new methods of evangelism and his positive view of people of colour was not appreciated by all and sundry.

The first Missionary Society outside of Europe

Yet, the legacy of the late Dr van Lier made great strides. A special result of Van Lier’s ministry was surely when South Africans started going to the mission fields themselves.  Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS), the first missionary society outside of Europe in April 1799, at the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht on the corner of Long and Hout Streets.  He had died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only twenty-eight.

          The first missionaries of the SAMS at the Cape were significantly not inducted in the Groote Kerk or even in Stellenbosch, but in Roodezand (Tulbagh) where Ds. Vos was the minister. It comes therefore as no surprise to find that a second missionary was inducted there on 3 October 1799 in the home of Mechteld Smit(h), in the presence of forty-seven SAMS members.

           In 1802 Ds. Vos left Roodezand, returning to Holland, from where he was sent as a missionary to India and Ceylon (called Sri Lanka today) in 1804. The seed sown by Van Lier and Vos germinated. In due course also local folk ventured into missionary service, notably Cornelis Kramer and Jan Kok. Cornelis Kramer was the first Cape Christian to offer his services for missionary service. Originally he wanted to proceed to Holland to study for the ministry, but the call to accompany the missionaries who were proceeding northward seemed so clear, that he dropped his original intention, joining William Anderson. Kramer helped starting the mission station Klaarwater, which became the focus of the missionary work amongst the Griquas. Albeit that several attempts were needed, the mixed race Jan Kok obtained permission to accompany the British missionary Edward Edwards. Jacob Links was the first indigenous convert and church leader of the Wesleyan Mission. On a somewhat different page, various missionary exploits transpired in Genadendal and some proceeded to other places further afield in the early 19^th century.

2. Special Church Planters at the Cape

          Two of Georg Schmidt’s converts in Baviaanskloof were God’s special instruments to impact Cape Church History.  Dr Helperus van Lier had the vision see indigenous missionaries out to spread the Gospel and getting them involved in church planting. After him Dr van der Kemp of the London Missionary Society and the South African Missionary Society had similar views. It would however take many decades after Van der Kemp’s death before serious church planting by indigenous believers would took place at the Cape. Cornelis Kramer, Jan Kok, Jacob Links and Cupido Kakkerkak in far-away Bethelsdorp remained exceptions. The missionaries seemed not to have encouraged independent indigenous endeavour.

The World’s first indigenous Female Church Planter[7]

It does not do justice to the contribution of the prayerful Magdalena to leave it to the few lines in chapter 1. Here I will however also have to confine me to a summary of her life and the influence she exuded.

          Much to the surprise of Georg Schmidt an intelligent, strong-willed woman wanted to become a follower of Jesus. Schmidt had to overcome his own sexist prejudices. Georg Schmidt initially only attended to males. At first he found only three men suitable for baptism. In the conversion and baptism of the intelligent Vehettge Tikkuie, there was a clear supernatural element. Schmidt only proceeded to test her Bible knowledge on 4 April 1742. Quite prejudiced against females, he did not expect much, but Schmidt was very surprised by her answers. He had little choice than to baptize the intelligent Khoi woman as well, giving her the name Magdalena,[8] hoping possibly that she would also spread the news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ like her biblical namesake. She had been exceptional, progressing quickly from the Dutch ABC manual, to read the New Testament in that language.

          Andreas Sparrman, a Swedish traveller in the Cape Colony during 1775 to 1776, reported how he had heard of an aged Khoi lady, who was building on the foundations laid by a German missionary. On Sundays ‘de oude Lena’ would walk to the pear tree where the pioneer missionary had preached, to read the New Testament and pray with her folk. Over 30 years after Schmidt had left, Khoi witnesses said that they came together at her home every evening where she prayed with them. In addition to this, she taught the believers from her New Testament.

           At the arrival of three new Moravian missionaries, Christian Kühnel, Hendrik Marsveld and Daniel Schwinn on Christmas Eve 1792, Baviaanskloof Khoi had the New Testament ready that ‘de oude Lena’ received from Georg Schmidt. Magdalena herself could no longer read, due to failing eyesight, but the woman whom she had taught ‘opened the sacred volume and read the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel with considerable fluency’. Even though Magdalena could not remember anything Georg Schmidt had taught her personally, her example and teaching was evidently still in operation.

          When the missionaries came to the region where Georg Schmidt had baptized his five converts 50 years prior to their arrival, they found a fellowship that had been held together by the prayerful Magdalena.

Another special Missionary

Hans Peter Hallbeck, the first Swedish missionary to Africa, came to Genadendal in December1817 in response to the call of the so-called helper conference for a leader. He was fluent in German and English, having spent a few years apiece in England and Herrnhut. In Genadendal Hallbeck got going almost immediately with all sorts of projects. He established a social fund for assistance to the local folk from Genadendal during crop failures, started an evening school for older children who left the regular school. On the prompting of Lord Charles Somerset the mission took over and renovated a Leper Asylum in Hemel an Aarde, near to Hermanus. Hallbeck was quick to act on the suggestion and the encouragement of the British visitor La Trobe, to send a party of missionaries to the Eastern Cape.

A missionary Contingent from Genadendal

This happened in 1818. The party included Genadendal-trained artisans and the Xhosa woman Wilhelmina, next to four German missionaries. Schmitt, their leader, appealed for people to come and help with the missionary effort at Witte River, where elephants, rhinoceros, buffaloes and other wild animals abounded in the surrounding hills. The missionary spirit of Herrnhut prevailed at Genadendal where there were now some devout Khoi and Xhosa believers. At the end of that year (1818) sixty-eight people had moved to the Witte River. Also in the group there was Daniel Kaffer, the first Black to be baptized at Genadendal in 1808. He was a Tembu, who had been enslaved by the Portuguese in his youth. After the slave-ship on which he was travelling had been captured by the British, he was set free in Cape Town from where he proceeded to Genadendal. The new Moravian mission station started in the Eastern Cape was called Enon.          

          A decade later Richard Bourke, the acting Governor, was visiting the Hemel en Aarde asylum for lepers near Hermanus. He called Hallbeck to Caledon. There he requested the Moravians to instruct the Tembu’s in the Eastern Cape. This resulted in a personal visit to Enon. From there he took along another missionary and three men to explore the region. 

          It was decided that missionaries from Enon would take a few artisans with them to assist in the establishment of a mission station. This happened at short notice. Among the pioneering group to be sent was Wilhelmina Stompjes, who regarded it as a call from the Lord. She would have preferred to bring the Gospel to her own people, the Xhosa’s, but even so it was for her the fulfillment of a long-standing desire. More inhabitants of the Moravian stations later followed the first party, responding to the call to spread the Gospel.

Special Pioneering Work                                                                                                                                The missionary work at Shiloh was special in every sense. Exceptional was already the way it started, with believers from the earlier Moravian mission stations joining the missionaries. At the end of the first year thirty people from the western settlements formed the nucleus of the new station. Another hall-mark was the racial harmony that characterised the mission station in a war-torn environment. At the end of 1829, 88 Xhosas and Tembu’s lived in the settlement with 31 Khoi. Even some San joined the fray, enjoying the protection which the presence of the missionaries afforded. Another special facet at Shiloh was the role of an indigenous woman with regard to the newcomers. ‘More than the missionaries, Wilhelmina succeeded in gaining their confidence’(Krüger, The Pear Tree Blossoms, 1966:174).           

          Johann Adolph Bonatz, the protégée of Wilhelmina Stompjes from the days of her teaching in the Kindergarten in Genadendal, had exceptional educative talent. As he took over the leadership of the school at Shiloh, the institution prospered. He himself went on to become the missionary among the Blacks par excellence, putting various translations into Xhosa to paper. Increasingly, Wilhelmina became ‘the advisor and support of the missionaries, besides having to act as the sole interpreter.’ Her translations were of a special order. She did not simply render the German words of the missionary into the corresponding Xhosa. Instead, she regarded his thoughts and words rather as being in the nature of an epigram, ‘which she then expanded to include what she considered would be suitable for the listeners and easily understood’ (Keegan, Moravians in the Eastern Cape, 2004:22). In the next chapter we will highlight the contribution of Wilhelmina Stompjes.

Indigenous Leadership blocked and stifled

The vision of Van Lier, Van der Kemp and the Moravian Bishop Hallbeck at Genadendal to empower Khoi and slaves for leadership diminished significantly during the 19^th century. Their vision was unfortunately blocked and almost stifled by the tendency of missionaries and clergymen from Europe and North America to dominate proceedings. The gifting of people of colour was simultaneously not appreciated sufficiently. A sad development of the last decades of the 19^th century was that this combined with ambition and rebellion by a few ministers of colour who evidently did not understand the nature of the Gospel properly. Serious independent church planting by indigenous believers occurred only in the 20^th century and then initially very much in protest against White domination. Many house church initiatives remained fairly unknown, such as the Universal Church of Africa, which started in the Goodwood acres in 1913. It was not universal at all though, only planting daughter fellowships among ‘Coloureds’. This is one of the few groups that did not dwindle into obscurity after a number of years.

Opposition to White arrogance and or condescension in multi-racial denominations was a common characteristic of those ministers who broke away to start their own denominations. It is logical to deduce that they had bad examples of Whites who lorded over them, not allowing their understudies to develop their full potential. (The bulk of the churches among people of colour were started at the Cape by missionaries from overseas or as offshoots from already existing mission stations. This remained the case until deep into the 20^th century.)

Cape Churches work together      

A lone exception to the racial arrogance of the time was the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht on the corner of Long and Hout Streets, situated on the fringes of the town centre next to Schotse Kloof. Lutherans, Reformed believers and other Christians worshipped together (Els, Kerkplanting by die Suid-Afrikaanse Sendingsgenootskap - ‘n Sendingswetenskaplike ondersoek na gemeentevorming in die Suid-Afrikaanse Gestig, 1971:128) there with the common goal to reach the spiritually lost with the Gospel.  That would of course not have occurred without the customary condescendence of the era.

          To counter the influence of the Dutch, Lord Charles Somerset, one of the British governors, brought in Presbyterian clergy from Scotland.  The likes of the prayerful Andrew Murray, father of the famous namesake, effectively curtailed Somerset’s well-meant but bigoted nationalism.  Due to their influence, the Cape became possibly the first truly bilingual society outside of Europe.  The British governor's plans faltered in Bo-Kaap, where the Scottish ministers resided. In fact, they gave the name to the area, Schotse Kloof (Scottish Glen). The cordial harmonious relationship between churches seems to have operated in the city for quite a few years.

Turn of the tide in favour of Biblical Christianity

South Africans were among the world leaders in church cooperation when the Evangelical Alliance was formally started in 1857 in Cape Town. In fact, at this occasion the founders declared that an Evangelical Alliance existed in the Mother City in all but name already in 1842. The South African Evangelical Alliance thus functioned long before it kicked off formally in England and six years before it started in Germany. They referred to the move when pastors of different churches had a weekly prayer meeting a few years after the slave emancipation.  The South African branch of the Evangelical Alliance was the first outside Europe.

          Cape Evangelicals got together in Cape Town in 1842 to work out a strategy to reach the lost of Southern Africa. Dr G.B.A. Gerdener records how - within five years after the centenary of the start of Georg Schmidt’s endeavour - ‘concerted action had arrived.’ At that stage there were only 9 mission societies in South Africa, the bulk of which had to be contributed to the endeavours of Dr John Philip. (In 1937 – another century on – South Africa had become the best occupied mission field in the world with 1,934 Protestant missionaries and 658 Roman Catholic priests, according to the World Mission Atlas.)

Denominational Networking

A special feature of the mission effort of the early 19^th century was the apparent lack of denominational rivalry. Thus Anglican church services were first held in the Groote Kerk. The endeavour of the missionaries spawned the working together of the Cape churches in the run-up of and around the slave emancipation in 1838. 

            The praiseworthy step of the gifted mathematician and theologian Dr James Adamson to operate as lecturer at the South African College (forerunner of the University of Cape Town) in 1836, ‘in order that its total collapse and disappearance might be prevented’ (Rodger, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Cape Town, A Centenary Record, 1929:24) however unfortunately induced a period of racist turmoil at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.

Martinus C. P. Vogelgezang is a Cape colonist who was deeply affected by the 1909 earthquake. He was a teacher, who also received missionary training. In 1837 Martinus Vogelgezang applied to be ordained, but he did not find favour with the Dutch Reformed Church authorities. Not having obtained the expected university theological training (in Holland), they referred him to the ruling for missionaries. ‘onder geene andere wijze, en onder geene andere bepalingen... dan betrekkelijk het ordenen van zendelingen’.[9]

          In the spiritual realms the church ruling was to influence the Cape in no uncertain way, a blessing in disguise. On 17 October 1738 Vogelgezang resigned from the Dutch Reformed Church to start the first denominationally independent fellowship. Later he became a powerful preacher and church planter at the Cape. Undeterred by the rebuff from the big church at the Cape, Vogelgezang preached the Gospel among the slaves with unprecedented zeal. He initially operated from his shoemaker’s shop in Rose Street, part of present-day Bo-Kaap.

A Fore-runner of Church Apartheid

While Dr Adamson went to Scotland, Ds. Stegmann officiated at both the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. Dr Adamson resigned to focus on his work at the fore-runner of the University of Cape Town that he had helped to establish. Dr Morgan joined St Andrew’s at the end of 1841 but he could not appreciate Adamson’s networking with the Lutheran Rev. Stegmann. As the new incumbent minister, Rev. Morgan wanted to preach on every alternate Sunday at the better-attended evening services, but Ds. Stegmann was unwilling to share the pulpit with him in this way. The German preacher appears to have been unreasonable, insisting on officiating at all the evening services of St Andrew’s. Morgan promptly refused Stegmann permission to continue preaching there.

          The split that occurred at St Andrew’s in 1842 was clearly the result of personal rivalry between Stegmann/Adamson on the one hand and Morgan on the other side of the divide. At a time when the missionary work started to flourish, a rift reared its head in the St Andrew’s Church. On 20 April 1842 a ‘vergadering van ontevredenheid’ (a meeting of dissatisfaction) took place at the former theatre. Stegmann encouraged the big slave audience to return to the Scottish Church, but only one person responded positively. The rest refused. He had however caused much of the discontent himself.

          The former theatre hereafter functioned as a separate church for freed slaves. This angered the colonists tremendously. Hearing that slave children were being taught in the building complex enraged the colonists.  So many of them were still illiterate! The angry Whites pelted the building at Riebeeck Square with stones. Hence the church got the name St Stephen’s, named after the first Christian martyr who was stoned to death. 

Start of the Volkskerk van Afrika

Reverend Joseph John Forbes started off as a teacher who was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1918 at their Buitenkant Street fellowship on the outskirts of District Six. He withdrew from the church owing to differences on the colour question, accepting a call to the Congregational Church soon hereafter. There he did not last long, starting his own church and denomination, the ‘Volkskerk van Afrika’, in Gray Street (District Six) on 14 May, 1922. This visionary had the courage of his conviction to start a denomination for the uplifting of the poor from the Cape to Cairo. That is the reason he gave his church a continental name. His leadership qualities had clearly been overlooked and spurned because thereafter he became one of the greatest church planters at the Cape.

A strong element of ‘Coloured’ nationalism was present when Joseph Forbes started his ‘Volkskerk van Afrika’. In 14 years there were already 13 branches, 6 normal schools (as opposed to night schools) and the orphanage at Jonkersdam, which was later transferred to the Lawrencia Institution in Kraaifontein. Interesting about this denomination is that they have a special anthem, which is still sung at their annual commemoration, hailing the protea as ‘blom van ons vaderland.’ (Flower of our fatherland).

Other denominational Ministry among Locals at the Cape         

In the case of Alec Kadalie, he went to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, whose leader since the 1930s was Dr Frances Herman Gow. The latter was born at the Cape in 1890 from a ‘coloured’ mother and an Afro-American father. Dr Gow was all too eager to use people of colour. He was educated in America and became a Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Africa in 1956. For six years in the 1920s and 1930s he was principal of Wilberforce Institute in Evaton that had been co-founded by Charlotte Maxeke after her return from studies at the Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio. The denomination - with its origins among the Blacks of the USA - was a great propagator of the indigenisation of the Church at the Cape. Under Dr Gow’s leadership the denomination expanded rapidly with congregations in different parts of the Peninsula.

            Another Cape-bred church plant grew out of evangelism in the 1930s. The depression of the early 1930s appears to have caused a new fire for evangelism. When John Crowe listened to a Salvation Army open-air service in Adderley Street in 1932, he was touched.  How happy his prayerful mother was when he shared that he had decided to follow Jesus! Almost immediately the 18-year old Crowe wanted to share the Gospel with other people in the neighbourhood of Roggebaai, near to the ship dockyard. He struck a partnership with his namesake John Johnson, getting involved in open-air services at different places. Later they were especially active on the Grand Parade, Cape Town’s equivalent of London's Hyde Park Speakers' Corner, where various political groups and others had their meetings. Harold, John Johnson’s brother, joined them at a later stage. When people started committing their lives to Jesus through their ministry, they received permission to conduct meetings in one of the Railway cottages, which soon became too small. They then rented a wood and iron construction called the ‘Tin Shanty.’ An evangelistic outreach was gradually picking up via Bo-Kaap and District Six in the first half of the twentieth century. Soon also the ‘Tin Shanty’ had become too small. In the 1950s the fellowship was allowed to use the hall adjacent to the Holy Trinity Church in Harrington Street that belonged to the Church of England in South Africa.

          Starting their outreach in the Dockyard, the church group which had started operating from the ‘Tin Shanty’, called themselves the Docks Mission. From its earliest years prayer and fasting belonged to the practises of the denomination. Many a Friday night was used for an all night prayer meeting. No wonder that God gave the new denomination phenomenal growth. Not only were new churches started on Brown’s Farm (Ottery) and Factreton, a new housing scheme, but also in rural areas.

Life-changing Ministries

Evangelistic outreach was gradually picking up via Bo-Kaap and District Six, two residential areas predominantly inhabited by people of colour in the first half of the twentieth century. Open-air services were prominent in this drive - with the Salvation Army, the Docks Mission, the Cape Town City Mission and the Baptists of Wale Street and Sheppard Street (District Six) in the forefront.

            From their early beginnings the Docks Mission also started outreaches at the prison in Tokai, at the nearby Porter Reformatory, at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital, and later at another institution for delinquents in Wynberg called Bonnytown. Many lives were changed through these ministries. After the services at the Docks on Sundays, some members went to Somerset Hospital to pray with nurses there. A branch of the Hospital Christian Fellowship (now called Health Care Fellowship), which operated at Somerset Hospital for many years, benefited greatly from this assistance. Docks Mission members made a national impact through ministry to prisoners on Robben Island. Docks Mission's Pastor Walter Ackerman thus witnessed to and challenged Nelson Mandela. After his release in 1990, Mandela often referred to the Christian teaching that he received over the years as an important contribution to his emphasis on forgiveness and refraining from revenge.

3. Cape Female Movers of the Nation

          Until well into the 20^th century women were hardly expected to make any contribution in society, least of all in missionary and church work. Typical of this time is that one of the most famous female South Africans, Olive Schreiner, wrote her famous book The Story of an African farm in 1883 under the male nom de plume Ralph Iron. All the more it is surprising what individual women had achieved at the Cape in the late 19th century and early 20^th century.

Great indigenous Females

In chapter 1 and 2 we referred briefly to Magdalena Tikkuie in Genadendal. We should also highlight the contribution in this chapter of another indigenous female that was impacted in Genadendal and who influenced missionary history tremendously. We definitely have to elaborate on the contribution of the remarkable Xhosa female Wilhelmina Stompjes, who came to Genadendal due to the colonial war on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. At Genadendal she cared for the children of the missionaries, learning German in due course. She was among a group that left Genadendal in 1818 to found the mission station Enon in the Uitenhage district of the Eastern Cape. This was the result of her persistent pleas, which included a request to Rev Ignatius La Trobe on a visitation to Genadendal in 1816 (Keegan, Moravians in the Eastern Cape, 2004:3).

          Wilhelmina Stompjes was an enterprising lady, who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the newcomers, more than the missionaries. The settlement which was started in 1828 received the name Shiloh. The Blacks called it Ebede, meaning place of prayer. Carl and Wilhelmina Stompjes were among the group who started this venture, operating as translators. Daniel Kaffer became backslidden, leaving Wilhelmina Stompjes as the sole translator.

          Magdalena Tikkuie and Wilhelmina Stompjes ploughed the ground for equality of women by doing work for which women would normally not have qualified. As the translator of missionaries, Wilhelmina Stompjes was perhaps one of the first worldwide. She soon more or less ran the school for their children at the new mission station. Johann Adolph Bonatz, her Genadendal protégée, had exceptional educative talent. When he took over the leadership of the school at Shiloh, the institution prospered. He himself went on to become the missionary among the Blacks par excellence, making various translations into Xhosa.

          Increasingly, Wilhelmina became ‘the advisor and support of the missionaries, besides having to act as the sole interpreter.’ Her translations were of a special order. She did not simply render the German words of the missionary into the corresponding Xhosa. Instead, she regarded his thoughts and words rather as being in the nature of an epigram, ‘which she then expanded to include what she considered would be suitable for the listeners and easily understood’(Keegan, ibid p. 22). ‘She added picturesque illustrations and vigorous exhortations of her own and her private conversations proved a blessing to many’ (Krüger, The Pear Tree Blossoms, 1966:174).

          Keegan narrates how the situation at Shiloh became so dangerous at some stage that Bishop Hallbeck seriously considered abandoning the mission enterprise there. In fact, an instance is told how the missionaries would have been killed if Wilhelmina Stompjes did not intervene resolutely: ‘She then violently berated Maphasa, who was so dumbfounded that he quietly retreated with his men’ (Keegan, 2004:22). Johann Adolph Bonatz remained in Shiloh for twenty-six years, becoming the real pioneer of the Moravian Mission in the east.

Innovative Cape Novums

Jane Philip, the wife of Dr John Philip, broke ground for the liberation for women. She was paid for the bookkeeping that she did for the London Missionary Society. This work was customarily done by men.

          Worldwide the Cape came up with a novum: nationalistic compassion. In 1820 the St Andrew’s Friendly Society was set up to provide relief and medical aid for the Scottish community and in 1829 the St Patrick’s Society was founded to accomplish the same thing for the Irish. In 1843 St Stephen’s members started a system by which members contributed sixpence to one shilling (sterling) a month to cover the cost of medicines in the event of sickness or the need of burial. For modern ears it may sound strange to read that the aim of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, which was initiated by Jane Philip, was ‘to alleviate the sufferings of deserving persons’. However, to the missionaries and evangelicals must be contributed ‘the strongest philanthropic impetus’ (Nigel Worden, Elisabeth Van Heyningen and Bickford-Smith Vivian, The Making of a City, David Philip, Cape Town, 1998:121). In their view, care of the soul was closely linked to the relief of the suffering. The parable of the Good Samaritan has always been the paradigm of border-crossing benevolence. Jane Philip also founded the Bible and Tract Society, distributing religious literature to the poor, as well as being prominent in establishing mission schools in Cape Town.

Women spearheading missionary Work

A special feature of the 19th century is that a Cape-based missionary agency actually owes its existence to a woman. Mrs Martha Osborne was forced to leave India due to illness. In England she was thoroughly impacted by the Holy Spirit after conversion during a meeting of D.L. Moody, a well-known American evangelist. Her husband became seriously ill soon after his retirement, and eventually died. A newspaper reported negatively about conditions among British soldiers in Cape Town. The presence of ‘dens of the lowest description’ there gripped her. This became Martha Osborne’s call to missions. She came in 1879, devoting herself to work among the Cape soldiers.

          In South Africa she initiated evangelistic missionary work in Cape Town, Natal and Zululand. She founded a Sailors’ Home, a Ladies’ Christian Workers Union, the Railway Mission and the South African YWCA (see below).  In 1890, she married George Howe who had been working alongside her with a similar vision. During the South African War the couple established no less than 27 Soldiers’ Homes. During a visit to England Martha Osborne challenged Spencer Walton, an evangelical Church of England member, to come and join the outreach at the Cape. Walton was the first director of the Cape General Mission. After a merger it became known as the South Africa General Mission, at last becoming the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF).[10]  

          May, Emma and Helena Garratt, three sisters from Ireland accepted an invitation to visit the various stations of the South Africa General Mission. May Garratt responded positively to that invitation. Bible readings among the police led to the establishment of a Christian organization and other outreach forms. The other two sisters also got involved in various outreaches in the country. Thus the Africa Evangelistic Band (AEB) came into being through the evangelistic activity of Emma and Helena Garratt. The Pilgrims, as their workers were called, evangelized in same-sex pairs, discipling new believers as they criss-crossed the country, bringing life to many a spiritually dead church.

The Beginnings of the YWCA

The author of The Romance of the three Triangles is convinced that the work of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) ‘had its inception in the mind of God’ (Nowlan, The Romance of the three Triangles, 2001:3). The Ladies Christian Workers’ Union was formed in Cape Town at the suggestion of Mrs Martha Osborne. In August 1884, during a visit to the Mother City by Dr Andrew Murray for evangelistic services, this organisation was formally established under his chairmanship. At one of the Ladies’ gathering the role of young women and the best way to help them was discussed. Mrs Osborne’s sister succeeded in gaining the interest of many Christian friends. It seemed as if the matter ended there, even though a great deal of interest was expressed.

          The women continued to pray, asking God for further guidance. There was an urgency now to find a suitable venue to which they could invite young women. For weeks they prayed to this end.

          At this time the affluent Bam family of Cape Town had sent their two daughters to Germany for schooling. During their stay there both girls contracted Typhoid Fever, dying of it subsequently. In this time of grief their father heard indirectly of the desire of the Ladies Christian Workers’ Union to befriend young women in Cape Town. He wrote a letter in which he expressed his desire to devote the house, which was the birthplace and home of his deceased daughters, to the work that the Ladies Christian Workers’ Union had in view.

          The hearts of these women were filled with praise and gratitude to God for his gift through Mr Bam. They had asked for one room. God gave them a building in Long Street[11] with many rooms, which almost immediately became a venue for services and conferences plus a substantial library via a gift of books from the YWCA in London. Bible classes on Sunday afternoons were popular and well attended. Furthermore, in the winter months, a special kitchen provided soup for the poor.

          At a public meeting on the 6^th May 1886 presided over by Dr Andrew Murray, it was decided to inaugurate the work of the YWCA. The building was dedicated for use by young women as a safe place and also intended as a place of rest for Christian workers and missionaries coming to town. From its inception, a basis of faith became the framework within which membership would operate. The dependency upon God was epitomised by a week of prayer, first used in the second week of November. Later the second week in March became the week of evangelism. When special needs arose, it was quite normal that the leaders would call for ‘quiet days.’ ‘It has always been the great desire of the members that the organisation should never lose the spirit of waiting on God to know how and for what to pray (Nowlan, ibid p.24). On 5 June 1901 the committee of the former union resolved to discontinue using the name Christian Workers’ Union. It had by then done its job to instil dignity and self-confidence in many a young woman.

The Schreiner Siblings

The contribution of descendants of missionaries could fill volumes. The Schreiner siblings have a special place in this regard. (see also chapter 6) Interesting personalities at the Cape were the novelist Olive Schreiner and her brother, William Philip Schreiner, who was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony for a few years. (Olive possessed strictly speaking only a tiny link to Cape politics through her husband.[12] The close links between Judaism and Christianity in the Cape Colony before 1875 is represented in the ancestry of the Schreiner siblings. Their father Gottlob Schreiber was a German missionary at the Wittebergen Mission Station. Their mother was British and said to be of Jewish descent. If the Schwabian-born and Basle (Switzerland)-trained missionary seemed to have been quite dull, quitting the ministry and thereafter venturing unsuccessfully into retail business, the devout mother, born Rebecca Lyndall, should go down into mission annals as one of those special unknown women who raised exceptional children.

            The married surname Stakesby-Lewis of the lesser-known eldest sister of the Schreiner siblings (H)ettie, passed to posterity the Stakesby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street, District Six. Olive Schreiner died in Wynberg in 1920, but as a tutor of Cissy Gool, nee Abdurahman, she would influence the politics at the Cape for many years thereafter. 

The Legacy and Memory of Olive Schreiner                                                                                           The legacy and memory of Olive Schreiner would surpass her politician brother by far, even though her contributions to humanity were only really discovered late in the 20^th century. South Africa is indebted for this especially to Ruth First, the wife of Joe Slovo. Ruth First was killed by one of the most brutal of the apartheid machinations - a letter bomb.  That tragedy helped perhaps to highlight the Olive Schreiner biography, which Ruth First and Ann Scott wrote in 1980. Their study provides testimony of Olive Schreiner’s ‘continuing ability to speak to new generations’ (Rive, Olive Schreiner, Letters 1871-99, 1987:vii). All her life she fought against injustice, including discrimination of women. Writing in 1954, D.L. Hobman (Olive Schreiner, her Friends and times, 1954:2) said that ‘there was a time when this woman was acclaimed as poet, prophet and pioneer.’ Olive Schreiner’s prophetic role in human relations – which was accompanied by ‘the reformer’s zeal’, is noteworthy. In a continent where the separateness of English, Dutch, Jews, Indians and native Black inhabitants was rife, ‘her voice proclaimed that all in the world is one’ (Hobman, 1954:2). Long before anybody dreamed of a rainbow nation, Olive Schreiner highlighted ‘the marvellous diversity of races among us’ (Cited in First and Scott, Olive Schreiner, 1980:194). In a letter to her brother, William Schreiner, dated 24 April 1909, she stated her intention to read a paper to White workers, urging them to stand by the African in the coming years (First and Scott, 1980:253).

Even on world politics Olive Schreiner wrote prophetically, for example in 1919: ‘But America and Russia are the two points at which the world’s history is going to be settled.’ Her keen interest in science made her prophesy atomic energy in 1911, albeit that it was still to take a few decades before Albert Einstein made the breakthrough: ‘Already today we tremble on the verge of a discovery... through the attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling some widely diffused... natural force.’ More accurate was her suggestion in the same book Woman and Labour, ‘The brain of one consumptive German chemist who, in his laboratory compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of modern people than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms’(All quotes from Hobman, 1954:3).

Olive Schreiner became very famous as a pioneer of positive feminism worldwide and as authoress. She would dwarf her brother William in due course. Through her novels Olive Schreiner put South Africa on the literary map of the world. She distinguished herself through her love for the Afrikaners. The family furthermore had an ear and eye for the underdogs of Cape society. Olive did much towards reconciliation between the two main White people groups of South Africa, a fact which became widely known. Few know of her contact with Anna Tempo, a daughter of Mozambican slaves. Anna Tempo initiated a project in District Six, by which care was taken of unwedded mothers and prostitutes. She became the matron of the Stakesby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street. Affectionately she was called Nannie by all and sundry. The Nanniehuis in Jordaan Street, Bo-Kaap – named after her - became the model for similar projects in other parts of the country after Anna Tempo had been awarded the King George Coronation Medal in 1937 for her work.

 

Another special Cape Female

Marie Koopmans-de Wet harvested perhaps the best epithets of all Cape women, although she was never involved in active politics or the like. One of these epithets was ‘the bearer of public conscience.’ No wonder that the scrupulous and racist imperialist Cecil John Rhodes described her as ‘a dangerous woman, and I fear her more than the whole Afrikaner Bond’. Using her pen to great effect, Marie Koopmans-de Wet came up not only for the rights of the underdog Afrikaners of the late 19^th century and their language, but also for the prosperity of all population groups. The Mother City is indebted to the ‘indefatigable fighter for the preservation of Cape Town’s historic beauty.’ It was possibly through her influence that Cecil John Rhodes bought the property of the Kirsten family which later became Kirstenbosch under Professor Pearson and his successors, one of the best botanical gardens in the world. That Devil’s Peak became state property and prohibited domain for city expansion, was surely also coming from this sort of influence. Officially of course, Rhodes got the name for it.

Spiritual Vitality of praying Women                                                                                          

Under the category of female shakers and movers I would like to group together many unknown heroines, of whom more than 90% could be found in one of the church prayer groups. The disregard and suppression of Black women with regard to leadership was very common. Instead of becoming bitter and resentful, however, Black women especially appeared to have accepted male leadership gracefully. Until the late 1940s, church groups organised activities among these women. The manyanos (the Xhosa word for prayer unions) tended to focus at the Cape around church-based voluntary associations. They would often allow the men to formally open meetings, in which women participated as speakers. Thus one finds included in a report of the Primitive Methodist Church an evangelistic campaign by Johannesburg women in the Free State. Thirty-three people were impacted under the preaching of three different women from the 22^nd to the 24th September 1919 (cited by Deborah Gaitskell in Elphick et al, Richard Elphick, and Rodney Davenport, Christianity in South Africa, 1997:253). The manyanos turned out to be instruments of Black empowerment second to none. Here women leaders would not only pray and preach, but their dignity and political awareness also developed.

            The practice and hurts of apartheid society accounted in the 1950s for the reshaping of their meetings, to provide more practical instruction and community activism.

            Whereas White and some ‘Coloured’ church women’s groups concentrated on fund raising, Black women amended their name soon to ‘Prayer and Service Union.’ The social and mutual support offered by prayer groups helped compensate for the isolation and poor social structures which Western missionaries held up as models. Testimonies, preaching and spontaneous prayer became the lifeblood of Black Christian groups. In the prayer groups they could develop their potential as orators without first having to be literate. By accepting a role in moral teaching of their adolescent children, Black Christian women turned their backs on certain pre-Christian norms, for example those by which female relatives other than the mother had been providing sex education. In general, the spiritual life of manyano women appears to have been more creative and vital than that of the other racial groups. Dawn prayer meetings and nights of prayer were quite common.

The Removal of ‘Coloureds’ from the Common Voters’ Roll

If it was ever said that women are generally less sensitive about political injustice, this was proved wrong when the rights of ‘Coloureds’ to vote was taken away in the most crude way. The National Party government created a situation via the Senate to change the Union constitution to achieve this. The attempt of the new Nationalist government of 1948 to get ‘Coloureds’ removed from the common voters’ roll ushered in the Defiance Campaign of 1952. The Supreme Court nullified the initial legislation of 1951, heightening awareness of the shrewd moves of the National Party to bulldoze through the abhorrent legislation.

             Fairly wide-spread indignation over the events led to the founding of the Black Sash. The Group Areas legislation, Bantu Education, Passes and other laws joined groups which had previously differed on minor issues. We salute a small group of White heroines, who bravely swam against the stream of race discrimination under the common denominator of The Black Sash. The black robes of the women who rose in protest, signified their mourning over the erosion of justice in the country.

Compassion became the hallmark of the Black Sash. The Athlone Advice Office – very near to the Black township of Langa, was the brainchild of Noel Robb, a resident of the posh Bishopscourt. This was a Western Cape model serving as an example for compassionate work elsewhere. The Athlone Advice Office was started in 1958 as a bail fund facility, to enable mothers who had been arrested and imprisoned, to return to their homes and children. In a sense it was an extension of another Black Sash Western Cape initiative, the Cape Association to Abolish Passes for African Women (CATAPAW), which was founded in 1957, in co-operation with a few other groups. CATAPAW collected evidence for submission to the Secretary for Native Affairs to highlight the hardship and injustices of the pass laws.

Noelle Robb was very much involved with both the Black Sash and the Christian Institute. She assisted Blacks who experienced problems because of the many legal entanglements spawned by the apartheid society.  Over the years Black Sash campaigned against oppressive legislation continued unwaveringly. Alongside such campaigns, Noelle Robb and others were actively involved with the victims of apartheid. The Advice Offices have been playing a unique role.

South Africa may walk tall in the tradition of women who have trodden difficult paths but who paved the way for a nation that can now boast with one of the highest ratios worldwide of females in Parliament and in the Cabinet.

          4.  Foreigners who assisted the lower social Classes

Foreigners played a positive and negative role at the Cape down the centuries. The early Dutch and German settlers brought with them social evils which fortunately found an effective counter and correction with the first French Settlers. Theft, land grabbing, drug and alcohol addiction were evils that have been treated rather one-sidely in South African history books. More than any other city in South Africa, Cape Town profited from an influx of foreigners in the two decades around the turn of the 20^th century. An interesting feature of the resistance against oppression of all sorts was the assistance rendered by foreigners. We concentrate in this chapter on special positive contributions of a few other foreigners.

Incitement as a Virtue?

Typical of the branding of Khoi is that of the mission historian Du Plessis, stating that the Khoi were ‘unmitigated thieves’ (A History of Christian Missions in S. Africa, 1911:26). However, in the primal Khoi society theft was severely punished. The thief would be beaten over the back till blood flowed down the body. Spilhaus (The First South Africans, 1949:96f) points to the other side of the coin: Dutch colonists inciting Khoi to steal from English ships and setting a bad example with bribery in bartering. In fact, Jan van Riebeeck, our founder, had no scruples to buy slaves with ‘valsch geld,’to make ‘Hottentotten stomdronken’ and thereafter robbing them of their livestock.[13] Spilhaus concludes that it must have been difficult for Khoi to appreciate the enormity of theft as a crime in European eyes.  

          Inciting people to rise up in revolt would probably normally not be counted as virtuous. However, strange legislation led to a cycle of violence and repression at the Cape. By 1808 it was fairly easy for two Irishmen, James Hooper, a labourer and Michael Kelly, a sailor, to incite slaves of the Swartland wheat farms. Along with two slaves, Abraham and Louis, they succeed to organise a protest procession. According to Richard van der Ross, the light-skinned mulatto slave Louis, who originated from Mauritius, actually led the revolt.  Other slaves accepted Louis, who had already been a mulatto at the time of his enslavement, as a leader. He purportedly pretended to be a Spanish sea captain, promising freedom to all when they incited other slaves and Khoi.

          Hooper and Kelly deserted the group on 24 October 1808. The march to the Mother City, demanding emancipation from the governor, seems to have been the first of its kind (worldwide?). Unfortunately, also the pattern of government oppression took its course when the British arrested 326 men. Louis, Abraham and Hooper were hanged. 

         The battle by the missionaries Dr van der Kemp and Dr Philip against the maltreatment of Khoi and slaves in the early 19^th century paved the way for legislation towards the equality for all people in South Africa and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The compassionate work of London Missionary Society (LMS) missionaries like Rev James Read, Dr Johannes van der Kemp and Dr John Philip on behalf of the underdog slaves had the moral power of biblical truth on their side, but they were often unfortunately opposed by their missionary colleagues. That the above-mentioned missionaries equated darker-skinned people with them proved very difficult for many of their colleagues to palate. That they married slaves discredited them in the eyes of the rank and file colonists and their missionary colleagues.That Dr van der Kemp married a teenage slave who was 45 years his junior, made him completely despicable.

 

Advocacy on Behalf of the socially Downtrodden

Nevertheless, the battle that raged at the Cape around the Khoi and the slaves – in which Dr Philip and Dr Van der Kemp played a big role - had worldwide ramifications when it aided the cause of the abolition of slavery. Dr John Philip discerned that the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 caused the price of slaves to rise, leading to the enserfment of the Khoisan. Between 1808 and 1826 the price of slaves rose by 400% (Theal, Records of the Cape Colony, Vol.29:427). In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Earl Bathurst, Dr Philip called attention to several hardships suffered by the Khoi, such as the pass regulations, which prevented them from settling where they chose and sometimes led to the splitting of families. These were felt to be legitimate grievances, which would ultimately lead to the Ordinance 50 of 17 July 1828.

            During Dr Philip’s visit to England in 1826, he met the evangelical parliamentarian Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. The latter had close links to William Wilberforce, the staunch fighter for the complete emancipation of slaves.  In his subsequent correspondence with Buxton, Philip linked the slave issue to the situation of the Khoisan in the Cape Colony. Already in his first comprehensive report on the LMS stations, he did make a distinction though between the problems with the Khoisan and those pertaining to slaves (Eric Walker, A History of Southern Africa, 1964:153). Ordinance 50 of 1828 and last not least the publication of Dr Philip’s two-volumed Researches in South Africa were major factors in the run-up not only to the Great Trek of colonists to the interior, but also to the final emancipation of slaves worldwide.[14]

An ambivalent Dr Philip

Dr Philip’s role in the proclamation of Ordinance 50 has sometimes been exaggerated. John Philip however definitely played a crucial role in the run-up to this ordinance and he became a prime mover both in the eventual formal abolition of slavery in 1834 and in its implementation at the Cape in 1838. Yet, this decree dramatically changed the legal standing of the Khoisan, putting them on an equal footing with the colonists. It is doubtful if William Wilberforce would have been able to succeed with his pioneering in the battle against slavery without the support from the Cape. Dr John Philip unwittingly paved the way for apartheid (Eric Walker, A History of Southern Africa, 1964:152), when to some extent he ‘as a convinced segregationalist’... opposed indiscriminate mixing of races.’ His motive was solid, rather to be regarded as a precursor of Black Consciousness, opining that the Khoi would ‘never become civilized until they stood on a legal equality’.

          Dr Philip undermined his own efforts by the unloving way in which he presented his case. His writing - painting the picture at the Cape in a distorted way, exaggerating things here and there - became one of the causes of the Great Trek, as expounded by the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief in his manifesto. All London Missionary Society (LMS) emissaries of the Gospel were hereafter suspect in the eyes of the colonists, while the Moravian Mission at Genadendal became the model. This diabolic situation was a direct result of Dr Philip’s harsh criticism of the colonists. Not so long before him the Moravian missionaries had also been villains in the eyes of colonists - accused of corrupting the Khoisan and encouraging laziness.

            The Moravian missionaries stayed clear of the debate, cleverly theologising around it. Thus their leader at this time, Hallbeck, called slavery the blackest of evils, which must certainly lead to the destruction of any country (Krüger, The Pear Tree Blossoms, 1966:195). But the Moravian Brethren did not feel themselves called to fight slavery. Their attitude was ‘to become slaves to the slaves and free men to the free, in order to win some for Christ’ (An adaptation of 1 Corinthians 9:19ff). The absolute distancing themselves from politics was a tradition of the Moravians, which was not always helpful, making it difficult for the LMS missionaries to make a clear prophetic stand on ethical and racial issues. Because of their a-political stance the Moravians suddenly became the role models. The precedent was set for the unbiblical notion ‘not to mix politics with religion.’[15]

Gray and Grey at the Cape

The education and training of indigenous people was being advanced from the 1850s by two influential men whose surname sounded the same – the Governor Sir George Grey and Bishop Robert Gray. Robert Gray became the dynamic first Anglican bishop of St George’s Cathedral, arriving in 1848. Sir George Grey came to the Cape as Governor a few years later, in 1854.

          Bishop Robert Gray visited Genadendal shortly after his arrival. He was especially interested in the teacher training school, considering soon hereafter whether Anglican students could be trained there. He planned to establish mission stations among the Blacks, with a missionary, a teacher, an artisan and an agriculturist for every station, combining spiritual and temporal education such as the Moravians were involved with. Bishop Robert Gray started the mission station Abbotsdale near Malmesbury in 1870.

          Prince Victor, the German ruler who did so much for the indigenous people through his generous gifts to the training school and who offered to finance the extension of the institution to double the intake, died. With that the opportunity to develop a large non-denominational training centre at Genadendal, had passed. Bishop Robert Gray made his own arrangements, establishing Zonnebloem College in the Motehr City for the sons of Black chiefs.

Work among the Poor, Prostitutes and ‘fallen Women’

Between 1845 and 1873 several state-aided schemes brought British settlers to the Cape. Women were especially valued, ‘both as domestic servants and for their reproductive capacity’. The English Fund for Promoting Female Emigration brought a category of British females to the Cape, which created new problems. This was partly due to an administrative failure as there were no facilities available for the women while they looked for employment. The Gentoo, the boat on which these women sailed to the Mother City in 1851, in due course gave a nick-name to prostitutes – ‘gentoo’s’.

          Bishop Gray distinguished himself through various ministries of compassion. Thus he brought out a party of ladies to work among prostitutes and ‘fallen women’ in 1868. ‘Georgie’ Handlye assisted Rev. Lightfoot, who moved to St Paul’s Mission in Bo-Kaap in 1880, to care for the urban poor. Harriet Humphreys and Alice Pocklington went to stay at the Bishop’s cottage at Kalk Bay, to work among the local fishing community. Mary Anderson-Morshead, the youngest of the group, helped to start the first Refuge for Penitents which began with three girls. In 1870 ‘St George’s Home’ moved to an old Dutch homestead in Keerom Street. The Refuge, a renovated outbuilding opposite the mission house, contained beds for 20 former prostitutes. The inmates were expected to learn skills and contribute to their living expenses by working as laundresses. Destitute and pregnant girls also found their way to The Refuge. Among the first was a little girl who had been ‘thrown away’ by her mother. Here her motherly ways caused her to be called Mammatjie. If ever a child was hurt or needed some attention, they found Mammatjie ready to administer comfort.

Pan Africanism at the Cape

A move at the Cape supplied the seed for the birth of Pan Africanism on South African soil. Francis Joseph Peregrino was a Ghanaian who had an office in Tyne Street, District Six.  As a recruiting officer for Jamaicans, he not only looked after their interests, but he also sought to promote broader Africanism. In the draft constitution of the ‘Coloured Men’s Protectorate and Political Association... of the Cape of Good Hope,’ which he founded in 1890, an article states that the organization endeavoured to ‘become part of the Pan African Association of England.’ He also compiled A Short History of the Native Tribes of South Africa (1900).

His father Francis Zaccheus Santiago Peregrino came to the Cape in 1900. Only two weeks after his arrival in Cape Town, F.Z. S. Peregrino began publishing the South African Spectator, ‘exclusively in the interests of the Colored People', which for over a decade focused on what he was best known for. In it he promoted ideas of Pan-Africanism and provided news of the activities of Black people around the world.                       

Africa for the Africans                                                                                                                       The slogan ‘Africa for the Africans’ has often been branded as Black racism.  It is hardly known that a White missionary from New Zealand was actually one of the first protagonists of the principle. Joseph Booth, who was born in Derby, England, wrote a booklet with the title Africa for the Africans in 1897. He worked as a farmer in New Zealand until he experienced a missionary call in 1892. His unorthodox approach to mission work and his schemes for African self-help and advancement eventually created friction with colonial authorities. He was barred from Central Africa around 1903 as an alleged supporter of African religious separatism (Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge, Volume 4, 1977:10). Booth came to Cape Town in October 1903, with the intention to build Pan-Africanism and to see British status coming into being for all Black people in the British Empire.

                Joseph Booth was back in Cape Town in 1912-13, living off rent from boarders in his home. One of these boarders was said to be the great Dr Don D.T. Jabavu.[16] Booth drew up an ambitious scheme which would train Blacks in modern skills, to give them a base for greater self-assertion. But nothing came of the schemes. He enlisted support from Sol Plaatje[17] and Rev. John L. Dube, a Methodist minister. Plaatje and Dube would become two prime movers towards the formation of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1914 Joseph Booth went to Basutoland (today’s Lesotho), where he worked as an independent missionary.

            In the USA a separate church had been started among Negroes as the American Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). Bishop Levi Coppin was sent came to the Cape as the first AME Black bishop. The AMEC headquarters were in District Six. 

            Another influential figure was Henry Sylvester Williams, a black lawyer who hailed from Trinidad in the West Indies. When he and Bishop Levi Coppin saw how the ‘Coloureds’ were distancing themselves from the ‘Africans’ (Blacks), they feared that the ‘Coloureds’ might be the next to be segregated residentially (Blacks had been dumped in Ndabeni in 1901).[18] They saw all the ingredients of divide and rule when John Tobin, one of the early leaders of the African Political/Peoples’ Organization (APO), looked for reconciliation between ‘Coloureds’ and Whites who also spoke Afrikaans. Tobin and his supporters were angered by what they regarded as the betrayal by the British in the run-up to the Anglo-Boer War.

            Apart from the local version of Black Consciousness which was started by the Peregrino’s, father and son, the other version was imported, started by the Jamaican Marcus Garvey. By the end of 1921 there were four branches of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the Cape Peninsula. Eventually divisions existed in Goodwood, Parow, Claremont, West London (Rondebosch) and Cape Town. Black Unity, Black Consciousness and Black Liberation were the slogans of the movement.

Paternalism breeds Secession

All along there was a lot of goodwill among Whites. The problem was that even radical thinkers among them hardly ever consulted people of colour. Joseph Booth was the great exception. Proper consultation could possibly have averted many a crisis. From the earliest days at the Cape the ‘natives’ were regarded as inferior, their culture despised. Paternalism was rife.

            This gave rise to the secessionist ‘Ethiopian Movement’. The ‘Ethiopians’ have been typified by the sentence: “We have come to pray for the deliverance of Blacks’ (Cited in Elphick et al, 1997:212). The ideological link went back to the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 and the Church, which developed in that country without the mediation of western missionaries. The term ‘Ethiopian’ was derived from the concept that the first indigenous church on African soil started in Ethiopia. By 1902, Ethiopianism was used for the entire indigenous Church movement. For the ‘rebel’ Black churchmen, Ethiopia was the model land where Blacks were ruling their own country. It was only natural that the ‘Ethiopian’ Methodists of South Africa would link up with them. The ‘Ethiopian’ movement started in different parts of South Africa as breakaway congregations from the Methodist mission churches. In a sense the good teaching of the Methodists backfired when they tried to make the indigenous believers independent, because the missionaries kept on patronizing their congregants of colour.

            The AME Church played a significant role in the liberation struggle by enabling South Africans of colour to study in the USA. Among the very prominent ones were the social worker and teacher Charlotte Maxeke and Frances Gow. Charlotte Maxeke toured the USA in the 1890s with an African choir. She remained in the States to study at Wilberforce University in Ohio, where she graduated in 1905, the first Black woman from South Africa to earn a bachelor’s degree. After her marriage to a South African overseas and their return, they impacted many Blacks. One of these persons empowered at the Cape was the influential Zaccheus Mahabane. He joined the Congress movement in 1917 after hearing political speeches by Charlotte Maxeke and her husband Marshall Maxeke.  Charlotte Maxeke founded the women’s league of the ANC. Cape-born Frances Gow returned from the USA with a doctorate, becoming a bishop in the denomination in 1956.

Missionary Input from the Caribbean          

Walter Winckler, the son of German missionaries, who was born in Jamaica and who laboured in Surinam (South America) as a missionary, worked alongside indigenous ministers of the Moravian Church to achieve independence from Germany. Winckler, who later ministered in Mamre, linked up with a gifted Genadendal trained minister and teacher, Daniel Joorst,[19] in the battle of the South African branch of the denomination to receive autonomy from Germany. Another stalwart in this fight for ecclesiastical independence was Rev. Daniel Wessels,[20] the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) fighter,  Their efforts were crowned with success when the Moraviese Broederkerk, the Western Cape Province of the denomination, was given the status of autonomy in transition in 1949, worldwide the first of the former missionary dependencies. They would be granted 450 pounds sterling annually, to be decreased gradually until 1960. The Western Cape Moravians in South Africa thus became the first of the former mission fields worldwide to be granted independence in 1960.

5. A Cape Revival impacts the Nation

The South African branch of the Evangelical Alliance that started formally in 1857 was the first one outside Europe. This was the start of the worldwide movement, which again brought the major correction in Lausanne in 1974, after Marxists had successfully infiltrated the World Council of Churches.

The start of the Alliance in Cape Town led indirectly to the opening of the Stellenbosch DRC Kweekschool in 1859.  At this occasion Professor N. Hofmeyer complained that no effort was made to bring all Christians of the country together. A committee organized a conference fairly quickly. Some 400 delegates from the Dutch Reformed, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian and Presbyterian churches converged on Worcester in 1860 for the epoch-making conference. Worldwide it was one of the first of its kind.

          An interesting view expressed at the conference in Worcester was: ‘the home of every Christian should be a mission station’. The success of Worcester led to a similar one in Cape Town in Januar 1961. A special innovation – worldwide perhaps a first – was that the conference was conducted in two languages on alternate days, Dutch and English.

Start of the Revival

The churches which had sent delegates to the 1860 conference in Worcester experienced a special move of the Holy Spirit. This started happening 50 days after the Worcester conference.

          The role of young people definitely has to be mentioned. In fact, it was in the youth meeting in the church hall where an unnamed ‘Coloured’ teenage girl dared to call for a song before her prayer, as was the custom. After the typical racially prejudiced hesitation of the time, Ds J.C. de Vries, the minister, allowed her to go ahead. During her prayer, a sound came from afar, getting increasingly louder until the building felt as if it was shaking. Everybody hereafter seemed to have prayed simultaneously, almost oblivious of the other participants. Dr Andrew Murray, who was called to come and listen to the ensuing noise, had great trouble in bringing order in the chaos. A visitor who observed his efforts from the doorway, warned him in English: ‘Be careful what you do, for it is the Spirit of God that is at work here.’

Each one seemed so burdened by his load of sin that they continued to call upon God for forgiveness and cleansing with an intolerable weight of guilt, sin and shame.

Revival Fires spread from the Boland

Hettie Bosman, a teacher from the Karoo, was visiting Worcester. She had been praying for revival for years. She married a pioneer missionary and took revival with her into the mission field. A hunger for revival broke out in all directions. The Stellenbosh Seminary started by John Murray and Nicholas Hofmeyr in 1859, could hardly cope with all the new students after the revival. Missions and evangelism commenced and within ten years after the revival had started in Worcester, the Dutch Reformed Church had more than 12 mission stations established in and beyond the Cape Colony.

          The movement of 1860 stirred every part of the community and soon it was widespread. Even on remote farms people experienced conversions. A group from Worcester went out to tell of God’s dealings. Prayer meetings started all over the district with people of all races crying out to God not to pass them by. Revival moved to Beaufort West with a tremendous force from 6 -13 January 1861, four months after it commenced in Worcester. Prayer meetings, often lasting all day, were held four times a week and meetings were held everywhere on the Lord’s Day, in homes, under a tree and at farm houses. Church was too small for the crowds. God’s grace was flowing so widely that farmers in the remotest areas were touched.

Different Denominations impacted

It is striking that the Worcester revival spread from the conference of Christian leaders to different church backgrounds. Within months the move of God spread to Wellington, Swellendam and even to Cape Town, more than 100 kilometres away.

          The fire also spread to the Free State, Transvaal, and many other towns. The next year the revival also moved eastward across the Karoo and to the Northwest as far as Calvinia. Prof. Hofmeyr and Rev Van der Rijst, a missionary, kept on praying for revival for 6 years. While Professor (then Ds) Nicholas Hofmeyr was the minister there, he could initially not motivate his congregation to come to prayer meetings. At Calvinia the Holy Spirit then swept away fierce resistance. In 1860, spontaneous prayer meetings started in the congregation, growing as a movement without the help of the clergy.

          Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, the son of a LMS missionary pioneer and the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Paarl, initiated the Whitsuntide prayer meetings between Ascension Day and Pentecost in 1861. The Pinksterbidure would impact Afrikanerdom for many decades. Gottlieb van der Lingen was also God’s instrument and catalyst for De Gereformeerde Kerkbode, which later became Die Kerkbode.

Revival in the Mother City

Like Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Church, Andrew Murray had a great love for and interest in children. The very first book he wrote was Jezus de Kindervriend (1858). At the Cape, the Dutch Reformed Church penetrated into the fisherman families of Roggebaai near to Green Point, where they opened the second church school on 15 April 1861. In spite of the well-known revival of Worcester, Dr Andrew Murray was not yet so famous when he served as the minister of the Groote Kerk in the Mother City from 1864. His booklet Abide in Christ, which was originally written in Dutch, a daily devotional for a month, was meant as a manual and guide for the many converts in Worcester, when Murray saw them becoming gradually less committed. Within four years, more than 40,000 copies were sold. However, he only published a translation of it eighteen years later, the first of his English books.

          Andrew Murray was to impact the Christian world like few before or after him. The pattern of 31 or 52 chapters (intended respectively for daily use during a month or once a week for a year) was a favourite with him, a model that was to be emulated by many to this day for devotional diaries or prayer books. Abide in Christ was said to have started a revival in China.

          In February 1865 Andrew Murray started with services in Roggebaai every Thursday evening with a ‘full house.’ On the other side of the Groote Kerk, Murray started with services in a house in Van de Leur Street in District Six.  Soon a parish of the mother church was started in Hanover Street, at that time called Kanaalstraat, where race and class discrimination started to play a role. The ‘Dreyerkerk’ as the church became known later, was obviously intended for poor Whites and ‘Coloureds’. Nevertheless, especially for the parishes of Roggebaai and Hanover Street, ‘the services could not be long enough in duration.’

         

6. Politicians for the underdogs

          In this chapter we look at four male politicians and a few women from diverse backgrounds who were advocates for the under-privileged and disadvantaged communities. The first male was born on the island of St Helena and raised in Cape Town. The second was the son of a German missionary, who was married to a British woman with Jewish ancestry. The third male politician highlighted raised in the Cape rural town of Wellington and in the city, but studied medicine in Glasgow, Scotland. The last male hailed from the Cape Anglican mission station Abbotsdale. Of the exceptional women some had to fight for voting rights. Only one of them became known outside of South Africa.

Saul Solomon

One of the greatest Cape politicians of the nineteenth century was the Jew Saul Solomon (1817 –1892), who came to the Mother City from St Helena.[21] He was one of the first students at the South African College (School), the parent institution of the University of Cape Town. The Solomon clan was one of the most distinguished families at the Cape for decades, many of them involved with the philanthropic movement, in which Christians and Jews worked cordially side by side.

            Influential Jews like the bulk of the Solomon clan turned to Christianity – without however severing their Jewish roots. Henry Solomon, having learned Hebrew in his youth, went on to study Arabic and he devoted much of his energy to social work amongst the Cape Muslims – notably together with Rev. Joel Rabinowitz, another gigantic Jewish personality at the Cape.

          The Jewish-raised Saul Solomon, a product of the Lovedale educational heritage of the Glasgow Mission, became a prominent politician. Although Lilliputian in stature, the leading characteristic of the moral giant was his ‘desire to champion any section suffering under any disability whatsoever – civil, political, or religious... He was an earnest and powerful protector of the natives, and was frequently referred to as the negrophilist member...’ (of Parliament,  Louis Hermann, A History of the Jews of Cape Town, 1935:85).

             Against the background of the traditional legacy of the deceit and lies of politicians, he was known to have ‘less cunning but more foresight.’ (Hermann, 1935:87) Already in 1855 it was said of him: ‘If ever he loses the support of his constituency … it will be in consequence of his being too truthful to his convictions and too uncompromising to expediency’ (Hermann, 1935:87). This breed of Jewish background Christians was rare indeed. Saul Solomon was described as a ‘fearless negrophilist’, hosting at his home the Zulu king Cetshwayo, who was defeated by the British in 1879.

             Saul Solomon's original election promise had been "to give my decided opposition to all legislation tending to introduce distinctions either of class, colour or creed"). Throughout his political career he strictly adhered to this manifesto - declining cabinet posts in order to be free to vote according to his beliefs. He thus assumed a very unique role in parliament, being a watchdog critic, as well as sometimes the power behind the government, depending on its policies.

          In the first Cape Parliament in 1854, he presented his "Voluntary Bill" (intended to end government subsidies to churches and to ensure equal treatment of all beliefs. The bill was turned down. He proceeded to put it to Parliament every year, only for it to be repeatedly rejected, until it was finally passed by the Molteno government in 1875.

          Solomon joined the movement for responsible government in the Cape and helped to institute it when it was established in 1872. The leader of the movement, Prime Minister John Charles Molteno, was an old friend and a great admirer of Saul Solomon's politics. The two men were both businessmen from poor immigrant backgrounds, who had outlooks that were relatively liberal for the times, and saw eye-to-eye on a number of issues. In fact, according to Saul Solomon's official biography, Molteno only accepted the office of Prime Minister after insisting that it first be offered to Solomon, who turned it down however, due to his delicate health.

When White settlers of the Eastern Cape wanted stricter labour laws to encourage the Xhosa to leave their lands and work on the settlers’ plantations, they had a staunch opponent in Saul Solomon. He took a strong stance against the separatist movement and for a united, multi-racial Cape Colony. Once, when he was addressing Parliament about the need to enforce the racial equality that the Cape's constitution called for, the Separatist representatives all stood up and walked out on him. After a second's pause, he reportedly declared: "I would rather address empty benches than empty minds!" (Wikipedia, retrieved on 1 July, 2013).

William Philip Schreiner                                                                                                            

One of the special missionary kid siblings, William Philip Schreiner was the younger brother of author and political activist Olive Schreiner. A moderate politician, he tried hard to prevent the South African War and later was a champion of African civil rights. Very little is known about the contribution to racial reconciliation of William Philip Schreiner who became Attorney General in the Cabinet of Cecil John Rhodes. William brought the rare touch of integrity back into Cape politics.

The Colonial Secretary, Jan Smuts, proposed finding a political solution to the economic problems of the region: the only viable solution seemed to be the unification of the colonies. In order to establish a political framework for the unification, a National Convention was called, chaired by the Chief Justice of the Cape, Sir Henry de Villiers. It comprised solely of White representatives of both government and opposition various colonies from Southern Africa as well as the two Boer republics.

In the intense discussion prior to and during the National Convention he fought valiantly for the franchise of people of colour. In 1893, probably when William P. Schreiner was considering entering politics, his famous sister Olive Schreiner wrote to him: ‘...You have none of the vices that are almost indispensable to a successful politician...’ (Rive, Olive Schreiner, Letters 1871-99, 1987:227). It surely was a compliment to his integrity and impartiality that she also wrote – probably referring to his practice as a judge. ‘I really shouldn’t be afraid of being tried by you if I were a Kaffir’(Rive, 1987:227).

South Africa profited greatly that he did not heed her advice not to enter politics, albeit that a bit more negotiation at his entry into politics might have stood him in good stead. The Prime Minister, Cecil John Rhodes, declined to demand the resignation of Sir James Sivewright, a Cabinet Minister.[22] Rhodes invited Schreiner to become Attorney General not long after the three moral musketeers of Parliament had resigned from the Cabinet in protest. Not only did William P. Schreiner enter politics, but he also took the extraordinary step of joining the Afrikaner Bond. He quarrelled with Rhodes because of the diabolical Jameson Raid. The Cape Times (1 January 1896) denounced the base attempt to grab the gold fields of the Reef, which Rhodes had sanctioned, as ‘a colossal blunder.’ A leader of the same newspaper at the time turned out to be quite prophetic, warning that it might bedevil relations between the Afrikaner and English. This tension eventually led to the South African War in 1899.

In 1898 Schreiner became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, succeeding Cecil John Rhodes. He however resigned after only two years in office. His cabinet split because of the disenfranchisement and treatment of the Cape rebels in the South African War and the application of martial law in the Colony. (Influential men were being arrested arbitrarily – even in districts where no military operations were in force – and were being imprisoned without trial.)

Blunders and Reparation

Schreiner blotted his copy-book when he resisted the request of the Coloured Men’s Political Protection Association, a group which resented their exclusion from defending the city. When the ‘Coloureds’ forwarded a resolution, asserting their loyalty and willingness to ‘repel the treacherous foe’, Schreiner did not dare to take the risk of offending the White electorate.

            Another blunder occurred when Schreiner referred to Blacks as ‘our greatest enemy’. Yet, the quality of the trust he enjoyed amongst influential Blacks was shown when John Tengo Jabavu bailed him out on this occasion in his Zulu newspaper Imvo. Schreiner amply made good these lapses in his valiant fight for the franchise of all people.  In the reaction to the first session of the National Convention, he agreed with his brother-in-law Samuel Cronwright Schreiner, that northerners were only too anxious to disenfranchise the Cape Natives. Therefore he fought with much realism, asking that the Cape ‘non-Whites’ may retain their existing right to sit in Parliament (Thompson, 1960:341). Merriman, the Cape Prime Minister, who opposed every motion in this direction, sarcastically jotted in his diary: ‘...after Schreiner had expressed his opinion 64 times’ (Thompson, 1960:345). This shows how passionately William P. Schreiner fought the cause of the voting rights of people of colour. When the draft South Africa Act was put to the vote in the Cape Parliament, it was carried with ninety six for and only two against. The votes against were cast by W.P. Schreiner and J. Gordon Sprigg, another valiant principled Cape politician, who was Prime Minister four times in his career.

A costly Catch-22 Situation

The crushing of the Bambatha Zulu Rebellion in Natal in 1906 signalled the end of an era of military and violent resistance by Black people against dispossession and oppression in South Africa. In 1908 W.P. Schreiner defended Chief Dinizulu after the Bambatha Rebellion. In order to do this, Schreiner resigned from the work of the National Convention. This must have been one of the most difficult decisions ever for him. The Zulu rebellion was caused by the poll tax, which was an effort to relieve the shortage of labour on the White farms and the mines. From 1 January 1906, the government of Natal had ordered every male over the age of eighteen years – irrespective of race - to pay one pound sterling per year. Disaffection and resistance grew throughout Natal because of this. Blacks were charged and sentenced for trivial reasons, which of course increased the discontent which grew into a rebellion.                              

Schreiner’s ‘quixotic decision’ to defend Dinuzulu - and not attend the first sessions of the National Convention - proved costly for all people of colour in the country. The staunch supporter of Blacks would probably have stuck to his guns in the National Convention (Thompson, The Unification of South Africa 1902-1910, 1960:146). He would have put up a much better fight for a Federation of States, where each province would have kept decisive powers in important matters. Only the Natalians fought for this course, but they did it so unconvincingly that those in favour of Union – instead of Federation – easily won the day.

            The memory of W. P. Schreiner should be honoured by all South Africans.  For the second time he led a non-racial delegation to London in 1909, this time to fight the colour bar in the Union constitution. The mission was unfortunately unsuccessful. Schreiner became a Senator after Union and from 1914 until his death he was High Commissioner in London.

Dr Abdullah Abdurahman enters the Arena

Abdullah Abdurahman was raised in the Cape rural town of Wellington and in the city. He went to Glasgow, Scotland to study medicine. Dr Abdullah Abdurahman returned from Scotland, where he had qualified as a medical doctor. The plight of people of colour influenced him to get politically involved at the beginning of the 20^th century.  The stature of Dr Abdurahman, the dynamic medical doctor, grew meteorically as a politician after he had witnessed the merit of Blacks during the Bubonic Plague in 1901.[23]  The number of Cape Muslims had already been significantly reduced because of various epidemics.

          The influx of Whites to the Mother City due to the War (1899-1902)  - following on the earlier increases, because of the discovery of diamonds and gold in other parts of the country after 1869 - significantly diminished the population percentage of Muslims. Suddenly the Cape Muslims had become a minority in the city by a big margin. A spirit of antagonism against Whites amongst ‘Coloured’ people spread hereafter like wild fire.

          Abdurahman became one of the ‘plague doctors’, treating many of the Muslims. He saw how this issue was abused, when the Blacks were dumped in the ‘location’ of Ndabeni.  After a protest in which a few imams were involved concessions were issued to them with a stern warning:  ‘if disturbances continued, Muslims would also be placed in a location’ (Van Heyningen, Cape Town and the Plague of 1901, in Studies in the History of Cape Town, Vol.4, 1984 [1981]:101). In politics things can sometimes turn around very swiftly. Dr Abdurahman gained a seat in the Cape Town City Council through the backing of the Afrikaner Bond (Davids, The mosques of BoKaap, 1980:181). Calling the party that was started in 1902 the African People’s Organization (APO), the roots in the Black continent was emphasized. Non-racialism was to be the hall-mark of the District Six-based party. Blacks were excluded from participation in the politics of the country already in the run-up to the formation of the Union in 1910. Dr Abdurahman would dominate the politics for the disenfranchised at the Cape for more than 30 years.

Dr Abdurahman’s Role in Education

The establishment of the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) emerged out of increasing racial segregation in the Cape. Under Abdurahman’s influence Harold Cressy, a leader in the APO, organised the TLSA. Harold Cressy was the principal of Trafalgar High School in District Six, the first with training for ‘Coloured’ learners to Matric. At its launch in June 1913 the TLSA had fewer than a hundred members. However, over time the organisation grew and became influential in Coloured politics, producing some of the Coloured community’s leading intellectuals. Thus the TLSA was a pioneering teachers’ association representing the interests of Coloured teachers in Cape Town. It gradually spread and established branches even in remote villages and towns in the Cape and became home to two-fifths of all coloured teachers in the country. In fact, the TLSA came to represent by far the largest professional group within the Coloured community.

Teachers and Preachers in League   

A major vehicle of protest at the Cape was the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), which was founded in 1943. It had the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) as one of its most influential affiliates. Teachers had taken the lead countrywide in the resistance to the oppressive government, due to the lead given at Genadendal and the mission and church schools which fanned out from District Six. The churches made ample use of the government aid of 50% with which to equip their schools.

            By 1936, a year after the Genadendal Training School was forced to close down, 90% of all ‘Coloured’ teachers held certified qualifications, working in relatively well equipped buildings. Compare that with the situation among the Blacks where in the 1960s, unqualified teachers still had to contend with double shifts of overcrowded classes, often without the most basic teaching facilities, and no churches supporting them.                                                                                       

            The description of the role of the TLSA by Vernon February, a Capetonian who went to study in Leiden (Holland) and where he got his doctorate, is probably not exaggerated:  ‘there is no parallel in the world where a mere Teachers’ Union played such a vital role in the politicization of a particular oppressed group’ (February, From the Arsenal: Articles from the Teachers’ League of South Africa (1913-1980), 1983:21). The TLSA was however not a normal Teachers’ Union, because also clergymen were associate members.[24] In fact, the strength of the organization was that it worked so closely with the churches. The Declaration to the Nations of the World in 1946 started a process by which the struggle in South Africa was to become increasingly internationalized.

From Abbotsdale to District Six

From the Malmesbury geographical area the statesman Jan Smuts and Daniel Malan, the arch protagonist of apartheid hailed. The same area also gave the country one of its greatest unsung heroes. The Anglican mission station Abbotsdale, once started by Bishop Gray, produced a ‘Coloured’prodigy with the name of Johnny Gomas, who would influence matters in the country in no small way. As a juvenile he was taken to Kimberley, where he was attracted to the militancy of the African National Congress (ANC), as it was demonstrated in the strike organized by them in 1919.

When the Communist Party of South Africa moved their party newspaper Umsebenzi to Cape Town, Johnny Gomas became a regular contributor. At this time, the existence of a large number of unskilled and unemployed ‘poor Whites’ posed a danger to the State. Because of mechanised production, there was resistance by White artisans who now saw unskilled Black and ‘Coloured’ workers as an even greater threat. White trade unions rejected co-operation with Black unions after 1924, producing strong anti-Black worker policies instead. The Pact Government of 1924 had set out to protect the Whites. The ‘Civilized Labour Policy’ dictated that Blacks should be hired last. Thousands of them were sacked to make way for ‘poor Whites’.  Gomas displayed exceptional optimism, ignoring anti-Black attitudes and social exclusiveness of the White trade unions. In his writings via the pages of Umsebenzi, he emphasised the temporary nature of the obstacles to class solidarity.

 Start of political Agitation at Funerals

Three months after the Native Administration Act[25] was passed in December 1927, three Blacks were accosted in Paarl by a White policeman who demanded to see their passes. When they ran away instead, shots were fired; one of them was killed. A second person was seriously injured, dying in hospital ten days later. Johnny Gomas created a tradition of political agitation at funerals, by distributing pamphlets for a meeting on Christmas Day, 1927: ‘Show your respect to your dead and injured comrades by attending in thousands’ (Doreen Musson, Johnny Gomas: Voice of the working Class, 1989:36). This led to a public meeting in Huguenot, near to Paarl, attended by about 400 people of colour, addressed with words which were described as ‘highly inflammatory.’

Johnny Gomas and his mentor James la Guma, another prominent Cape ‘Coloured’ activist, were trade unionists who were committed to justice and non-racialism from an early stage of their lives. La Guma called his Fifteen Group of District Six for a special meeting in 1935 when the threat of Blacks to be stripped or deprived of their franchise became stronger. He concluded: ‘We need an organization of all the oppressed.’ A new political party was promptly formed – the District Six-based National Liberation League (NLL). In Cissy Gool, the daughter of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, they had a ready-made president. The NLL became one of the main forces in the All African Convention (AAC), which met from 15 to 18 December, 1935, with more than 400 delegates. The AAC can be regarded as the precursor of the United Democratic Front (UDF) of the 1980s. That congress was characterised by great enthusiasm and determination.

Cape Women leading the Way                                                                                                               The Cape indirectly played a role in the fight for voting rights for women globally. The wife of Saul Solomon got involved in this movement after their emigration to Great Britain at the beginning of the 20^th century. The worldwide feminist movement received a major push through a book by Olive Schreiner entitled Woman and Labour (1911). Olive Schreiner was so much of a pioneer of positive feminism that Vera Brittain referred to that book as the ‘Bible of the Woman’s Movement.’ Britain saw this book as ‘insistent and inspiring as a trumpet-call summoning the faithful to a vital crusade’ (Cited by Hobman, Olive Schreiner, her Friends and times, 1954:2).

            Very significant was Olive Schreiner’s participation in the Cape female suffrage movement, although she was aware that politicians were merely interested to use it as a lever for petty gain. The Women’s Enfranchisement’s League (WEL) was proud to have her as member and also very proud of her influence on women in Britain. The alignment in national politics was copied in the WEL When the Transvaal and Natal societies insisted that the goal should be for the vote to be given to White women only, and not also to people of colour, Olive Schreiner immediately resigned.

            At the Cape itself, the Non-European Women’s Suffrage League got underway in 1938 in District Six, with Ms Halima Ahmed as the leading light at a time when women were hardly found in politics anywhere in the world. She became better known as Halima Gool after she married Goolam Gool. In August 1938 she delivered the inaugural address of the Women’s Suffrage League in the Cosmopolitan Hall in Pontac Street, District Six. She became the first secretary of the national Anti-Coloured Affairs Department (CAD) movement in 1943.

Even more famous was her sister-in-law, Zainunissa (Cissie) Gool, who became a respected, outspoken and controversial City councillor for 24 years on behalf of the National Liberation League (NLL). She was the first woman of colour in the country to serve in local government. Known as the "Jewel of District Six", she represented the people of that constituency in the council until 1951. Tutored by Olive Schreiner and Mahatma Ghandi, Cissy Gool was someone with stature, one of the country’s first females to obtain a Master of Arts degree, but also someone who was critical of the APO policies of her father, Dr Abdurahman. The NLL started a periodical, The Liberator, in 1937, which was hailed as ‘part of a worldwide movement against imperialism’. In 1951, she appeared in the Cape Town magistrate’s court for holding a public meeting, and was also active in the Franchise Action Council that was the predecessor of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation (SACPO). Cissy Gool resigned from the City Council in the same year,

When James La Guma discerned that Whites were usurping leadership in the NLL, he asked them to step down. This led to some infighting, resulting in the NLL becoming a spent force by the early 1940s, although Cissy Gool-Abdurahman was still a City Councillor on that ticket. In 1954 she was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, which effectively halted her above-ground political activities. In 1962, Cissie received an LLB degree from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and was admitted as an advocate to the Supreme Court. The illustrious Cape female politician served in that capacity until her death in 1963.

         Cape women were also pioneering in the field of publication when a people’s history booklet on Claremont was produced by the United Women’s Organization as part of its campaign against the Group Areas removals.

7. A special Slum Area

The vibrant slum area on the one side of the Central Business District of the Mother City formed a socio-economic unit with Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock until the implementation of Group Areas legislation in the 1970s.

            It is interesting to note that the part of the city, from where Islam and many church denominations launched out to the rest of the Cape Peninsula, was also the residential area where Judaism became firmly established after the influx of East European Jews at the turn of the 20^th century. Denominations from all over Europe and North America had mission congregations in the area. In the first decades of the 20^th century the few hectares of District Six were more cosmopolitan than any other suburb of the African continent.      

The African Political/People's Organisation                                                                                                                         District Six has no equal in the influencing of political opinion in South Africa. At the beginning of the twentieth century a number of political organisations initiated by ‘Coloureds’ existed, most of which dealt with the question of the franchise. The exception was the South African Moslems' Association (SAMA), which mobilised its members around racial segregation in urban areas that was being introduced as a result of the Bubonic Plague that hit Cape Town in 1901. SAMA did not restrict its membership to Muslims only. John Tobin and W. Collins, a lay preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, were both active in that organisation. The African Political or People's Organisation (APO) as it was later known, was founded in 1902. Its first president was W. Collins, but very soon Dr Abdurahman took the lead. The APO mooted the idea of an organisation for ‘Coloureds’ that would not be organised around a single and specific issue only. The APO, although it recruited its members from the relatively small group of educated and economically comfortably off ‘Coloureds’, was to become the most influential political organisation for almost forty years. Although it collapsed as an organisation in the early 1940s, having to give way to more radical organisations, the APO shaped Black political thought and culture for decades after its demise.

Strategies of Resistance of the APO

The APO had as its original aims 'civilising' objectives as were prevalent at the time, advocating Victorian sincerity and abstinence. However, it additionally emphasised unity amongst ‘Coloureds’, promoting education, opposing "class legislation" (i.e. discriminatory colour legislation) and defending the social, political and economic rights of ‘Coloureds’. However, after the Anglo-Boer War/South African War when the possibility of a White minority state was first discussed, the APO focused its attention on the franchise question and with it, the issue of education as a means to qualify for the vote. Social and economic issues became secondary. Nonetheless the APO garnered support very easily in the ‘Coloured’ population. Within two years of its founding it had more than 2 000 members in thirty-three branches. Strategies employed by the APO were non-confrontational forms of protest and appeal. They included attempting to influence liberal White parties to take forward the cause of ‘Coloureds’. An example would be mobilising the small ‘Coloured’ vote in favour of the White South African Party.  In return they expected that the party would placed the situation of 'Coloureds' on their agenda. Other forms of actions were petitions, resolutions and deputations to the pertinent authorities, based on debate and consultation that had taken place in the various branches. The APO also exerted pressure on the Cape Progressive Party, requiring from its sister party in the Transvaal to campaign for the vote for ‘Coloureds’. In the Transvaal ‘Coloureds’, just like Africans, were subject to pass legislation. This was another issue to which the APO devoted attention at its national conferences of 1903 and 1904.

Isolation in the ‘Coloured’ Community                                                                                             The APO (African Political/People's Organisation) experienced some political isolation in the ‘Coloured’ community. F.Z.S. Peregrino and John Tobin and their supporters distanced themselves from the APO, fearing that its stance was too radical. However, the APO found political allies amongst Africans. Hence when Dr Walter Rubusana, who was the editor of Izwi Labantu, convened a South African Native Convention to formulate an African response to the draft South Africa Act, Abdurahman encouraged all APO branches to send delegates to that Convention. He also informed Rubusana through the newspaper of his cooperation and intended to form an alliance. Consequently the APO was co-responsible for the reaction of the Convention to the draft Act. This included an appeal to Britain to reject the draft Act in that form and a request for "equal rights for all civilised men".

Deputation of Blacks to London                                                                                                           At the 1909 annual conference of the APO the decision was taken to send a deputation to London to lobby opposition to the draft Act. A Draft Constitution Fund was duly established. The delegation, comprising eight 'Coloureds' and Africans - and led by the White politician and lawyer William Schreiner, put up a brave fight against the draft Act, despite being attacked for their efforts by Africans, 'Coloureds' and Whites, as well as the official delegation led by J.X. Merriman, the Cape Prime Minister. However, all the lobbying was in vain, as the draft Act was approved by the British Parliament without any contradiction. Instead, it was hailed as a great sign of reconciliation between the English and Afrikaans speaking South African Whites.

The Constituency of the African Political/People's Organisation

A tricky problem for the APO was how to garner the support of all sections of the ‘Coloured’ population, not just that of the educated and artisan classes. The years following World War I offered an opportunity to address this problem, as its aftermath entailed general economic depression for the majority of South Africa's people. At the 1919 conference of the APO, therefore, a name change of the organisation was proposed, which would indicate new programmatic attempts to address the social and economic needs of 'Coloureds' and point to a greater involvement with people's concerns. The name was consequently changed from "African Political Organisation" to "African People's Organisation". This attempted change in direction expressed itself in the founding of the APO Building Society in 1919. In 1923 an APO Burial Society was established to arrest the pattern of pauper's burials for indigent Coloureds. These organisations proved to be quite successful, outliving the APO. Indeed, these organisations exist today still on the Cape Flats of the Western Cape. However, the APO did not succeed in its expressed aim to recruit support from the ‘Coloured’ working class for either the parent organisation or the Building and Burial Societies. The subscription fees were too high for most ‘Coloureds’. Hence these attempts at the social and economic amelioration of lower class 'Coloureds' ultimately benefited the already economically more advantaged 'Coloureds'. However, the APO realised that it would need the support of both rural and urban workers if it were to enjoy a national legitimacy.                   

Black Politics forged in District Six and its Surrounds                                                                                                    James M. Thaele was born in Basutoland in 1888 and was reputed to be the son of a Basuto chief and a ‘Coloured’ mother. From 1906 until about 1910, he studied at Lovedale, where his early propensity for high-flown language and affected habits of dress marked him as a showman. In 1913 he went to America, where he remained for about 10 years. He studied at Lincoln University, completing a B.A. degree and later a bachelor's degree in theology in 1921. He returned to South Africa, strongly affected by the Garveyist movement. His subsequent writings and speeches reflected a militant race consciousness and mistrust of Whites, including missionaries.                                                                                                                        With his brother, Kennan, Thaele organised a strong branch of the ANC in Cape Town, and by the late 1920s, aided by the Communist-backed activists Elliot Tonjeni and Bransby Ndobe, the western Cape ANC, with Thaele as president, had spread its influence throughout the wine-producing districts as far east as Worcester and Swellendam. Thaele, dressed in "white sun helmet, white suit, white spats, white gloves, and carrying a walking stick," became a familiar figure on the Cape Town Grand Parade, addressing groups of ‘Coloured’ and Black workers at lunch hour. Dubbing himself "Professor," he established a one-man college in Cape Town, offering instruction to Blacks studying for the Junior Certificate (Grade 10) and matriculation exams. He also edited an ephemeral newspaper called The African World, and wrote bombastic pieces for The Workers' Herald, the organ of Clements Kadalie's Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union.                                                                                                               Isaac Bangani Tabata was born near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape and educated at Lovedale and Fort Hare. In 1931, he left university and moved to Cape Town, where he worked as a truck driver. He joined the Lorry Drivers' Union and became a member of its executive. He also joined the Cape African Voters' Association. In 1933, he started attending meetings of the Trotskyist-oriented Lenin Club and subsequently was instrumental in founding the Workers' Party of South Africa, an offshoot of the Lenin Club. He assisted in founding two organisations, the All-African Convention (AAC) in 1935 and the Non-European Unity Movement in 1943, later known as the Unity Movement of South Africa. As an organiser of the AAC, Tabata made annual trips to the Transkei in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The political necessities of the time forced the people to organise on a nation-wide scale. Tabata was banned in 1956. In 1961 he established and became President of the African People's Democratic Union of Southern Africa as a unifying instrument following the Sharpeville massacre of the previous year. In his 1962 Presidential address Tabata depicted the working class as the historical unifier of the disparate structural locations of oppressed peoples. Tabata went into exile in Zambia in 1963 and also lived in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. He was married to Jane Gool, also a political activist. Through fierce intellectualism and the unquenchable thirst for human freedom, I B Tabata made an indelible mark on the history of the liberation struggle.                       Two other personalities were instrumental in the spreading of the 1920 version of Garveyism at the Cape.[26]  One was S.M. Bennett Ncwana, who started the paper The Black Man in 1920. The second was the above-mentioned ‘Professor’ James Thaele, who was described by the South African police as ‘intensely anti-white in sentiment’, stating openly that he did not trust or wish to associate with any White man (Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa, 1990:254). As president of the Cape branch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the forerunner of the ANC, Thaele introduced symbols and rituals of Garveyism into the organization. Already in 1918 a mass meeting had rejected the principle of segregation. Bitterness was expressed more vigorously in 1923 when the Urban Areas Bill came before Parliament. Selope Thema of the SANNC told Jan Smuts, the Prime Minister, in Cape Town: ‘We have a share and a claim to this country. Not only is it the land of our ancestors, but we have contributed to the progress and advancement of this country … we have built this city’ (Cited in Bickford-Smith et al, The Making of a City, 1999:90). A local version of Black Consciousness was developed by Johnny Gomas in District Six.

Cross-cultural Mixing

District Six was the launching pad for a whole spectrum of diverse socio-cultural practices and dynamics, from indigenous church planting to vice like prostitution and gangsterism, from Panafrican notions, Garveyism (Africa for the Africans) and anti-segregation politics to that of adaptation and compliant ja-baas opportunism.                                                                                                       The Cape Coon movement, with its traditional tweede nuwejaar marches through the city, has its roots in the arrival of the Confederate raider the Alabama in July 1863. The ship which burned 65 Union vessels of various types in the cause of the Southern states, made a much-needed refitting and reprovisioning visit to Cape Town. Captain Semmes and the Alabama made a deep impression on the people of Cape Town and in particular the people called 'Coloured'. The song ‘Daar kom die Alabama’ is still sung by the coons. From New Year’s Day troupes from all over the city’s ‘Coloured’ townships dressed like Al Jolson-type minstrels, tour Capetown singing and dancing. Their prime musical instrument was the banjo. Understood as fighting slavery, people of colour around the world who had some knowledge of the American Civil War, saw the Alabama at that time as a vehicle in that battle.                                            Long before homosexuality came into prominence, ‘moffies’ were already parading in the coon troops.  Occult Islamic-related ‘fafie’, tokolosh and doekoems belonged as much to the area as ‘Christian’ shebeens. Jewish synagogues, many churches and a few mosques operated harmoniously in close proximity to each other.

            District Six was the home of the Eoan Group that was started by Helen Southern-Holt, A British immigrant, in 1933. Born by ‘my first desire in giving help to the coloured community was to start classes for clear, articulate speech (Eoan, Our story, 2013:2) The Eoan Group was South Africa’s first grassroots opera, dance and theatre company. John Ulster, a young Moravian teacher gathered a group of singers from the ‘coloured’ community with his brother dan as their first conductor.[27] In 1943 Southern-Holt invited Joseph Salvatore Manca to join the Eoan Group as choral conductor. The production of grand opera, full scale ballets, dramas, choral concerts and arts festivals as well as the education of numerous singers, dancers and actors count among the wide range of cultural achievements of the Eoan Group from 1933 until the late 1970s. Situated in District Six and later in Athlone, the Eoan Group played an important role in Cape Town’s cultural life. For many of those involved with the group in those days, it was their life’s calling, despite the difficult circumstances caused by Apartheid policies.  The Eoan Group performed operas of international standard in the City Hall. Very few South Africans got to know that Johaar Mosaval, the solo dancer in Gloriana, an opera specially composed by Benjamin Britten in 1952 at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, was born at 1 Little Lesar Street, District Six.[28]

Opposition to Segregation in District Six

District Six/Bo Kaap possessed many ingredients to be the harbinger for a more compassionate, egalitarian and democratic country. Surely not without merit, Richard Dudley (in Jeppie/Soudien, The Struggle for District Six, 1990:200) demonstrated how the bubbling former ‘slum area’ functioned as the cradle of ‘a national solution for all of South Africa and the structures and ideas upon which a truly national liberation movement came to be based.’ Along similar lines, Yousuf Rassool (District Six, lest we forget, 2000:193) referred to the Freedom Charter of the ANC as ‘nothing but an imitation in many respects’ of the ‘Ten Point Plan’ of the Unity Movement.  If one considers the similarity between the Freedom Charter and the People’s Charter of June 1948, they do indeed display great similarity.[29] The 322 delegates at the latter occasion demanded the right ‘to stand for, vote for and be elected to all the representative bodies which rule our people.’  In a sense it became a spur for apartheid legislation, because the new National Party government, with Prime Minister Hans Strydom of ‘baasskap’ fame at the helm, soon hereafter reacted with initiatives to end representation of Blacks in Parliament and the removal of the ‘Coloureds’ from the common voters’ roll of the Cape Province.

A self-educated Professor in District Six

Christian Ziervogel, a little known self-educated evangelical ‘Coloured’ man who had to leave school in the fourth grade, wrote a booklet in 1938 which he titled Brown South Africa. Ziervogel stated prophetically: ‘The eyes of the world are on South Africa, and her place among the nations will be determined largely by the measure of wisdom which is brought to bear upon the adjustment and solution of her problems.’ This voice of profound wisdom was however overheard or ignored.  Was it because he was only the caretaker cum librarian of the Hyman Liberman Institute or was it because he belonged to the group called non-White? Or was the booklet too unknown? Perhaps all three reasons applied. Yet, he was called professor by fellow District Six Capetonians, who recognized his vast knowledge, which he picked up from second-hand books that he had bought on the Grand Parade. There he was preaching regularly, part of a rich tradition of evangelists who knew the Bible well, but who had little formal schooling. As one of the Fifteen Group of Jimmy La Guma and the core group of the New Era Fellowship, the studious Ziervogel probably influenced Isaac Tabata, Cissy Gool and others. That his booklet has hardly been quoted or included in bibliographies indicates that very few scholars knew about it.

Renewal or Demolition of District Six?[30]

Slum conditions in District Six had not been addressed yet in the 1930s. Renewal of the District was closely connected with proposals for the Foreshore development. Demolition of the existing houses was seriously debated in February 1940 when the scheme was advertised in the Provincial Gazette and in local newspapers. Associations and the public were given six weeks to make recommendations and objections. The Non European Unity Front (NEUF) with its base in District Six was soon leading the protest movement under the leadership of Cissie Gool, a city councillor. Protest against the scheme hinged on what the workers’ organisations regarded as the threat of segregation. The ‘remodelling of District Six’ involved the demolition of three thousand buildings and the evacuation of 29, 595 people. The Cape Times reported the objections of businesses in District Six as well as the deputation of the NEUF, led by Cissy Gool. The delegation foresaw that the entire population of the area would be pushed out, forcing the poor to a distant suburb where they would be faced with bus or train fares which they could not afford. Opposition to the scheme was fanned by revelations about conditions on the Cape Flats. Soon the Cape Argus featured banner headlines on behalf of the NEUF: MIGRATION TO THE CAPE FLATS OPPOSED. The scheme was indeed nothing else than ‘disguised segregation.’ Their fears became reality all too soon, with the difference that apartheid was not attempting to disguise anything.

            In 1940 the protesters were successful in getting city councillors on their side.  Councillor Louis Gradner suggested in a packed Liberman Hall in District Six on 25 July 1940 that they had been tricked into believing that the scheme was a provisional one: ‘What the Council is proposing to do under the guise of slum clearance is to disperse 27,000 ratepayers who were born and brought up in the district…’ The discussion led to the full council approving the Amended Town Planning Scheme on 27 May 1941 with 22 voting in favour and only three against.

          There was plenty of evidence that segregation was on the increase. State-sanctioned residential segregation was due to become policy because the ruling United Party had it in their plans and the Nationalist Party was actively propagating apartheid.

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. This came to pass not merely via the formal theological studies, but especially also through the extra-mural activities, such as those of 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. That people from different races entered and left the premises brought us the chagrin of the government. More than one student was interoggated by the ‘Special Branch. A teacher to whom I gave private German lessons confided that he had been approached to spy on activities at the seminary.

         The Seminary was very much involved with the activities of the Christian Institute. The posh residential area Bishop’s Court, the University of Stellenbosch  - a bastion of apartheid - and the Black townships were places that a 'Coloured' would not visit normally. We were also privileged to get visiting lecturers from around the world like Professor Eberhard Bethge, the biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who came to the seminary in District Six.

            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. Once a month he would forfeit his own lecture to take us, the full-time students, to places like Ravensmead for special lectures by Professor Willie Jonker from Stellenbosch. These lectures were initiated and facilitated by my friend Jakes. They developed into a sort of harbinger of the Broederkring,[31] a circle of Dutch Reformed clergymen and academics from different racial backgrounds. The Broederkring would give the White DRC and the apartheid government quite a few headaches in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[32]

            In another initiative Robbie Kriger[33] 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 in October 1973.  This was typical of the position of the Seminary in opposition to the regime. Dr Naudé was lodging with the Schlimm family where he heard about my immanent departure for Germany. (I was due to take up the position as assistant minister in Koenigsfeld (Black Forest) and about to link up with my darling Rosemarie.[34] 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 operated and studied. 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.

Opposition to Group AreasLegislation                                                                                       One of the most effective campaigns against apartheid was launched in the area as a result of the Group Areas proclamation of 11 February 1966. It is noteworthy that the first two phases of resistance with regard to District Six was started by a prayer campaign. Four days after the notorious proclamation, a twelve man steering committee proposed a ‘Peninsula-wide prayer period’.  This was possibly one of the first times that a city-wide prayer event like this was mooted at the Cape. Syd Lotter, a trade unionist, appealed to ‘all the churches and mosques... (to) ...call a day of prayer on which our people can give vent to their humiliation and frustration, to the Almighty’ (Cited in Jeppie/Soudien, The Struggle for District Six, 1990:148). Of special significance was the response of Muslims to this call. Two weeks after the declaration, several thousand people crowded into the four mosques of District Six and Walmer Estate.  In the Muir Street mosque alone, 3000 assembled, with many hundreds spilling into the streets surrounding the mosque.

The government’s reaction was a stepping up of harassment. ‘Spyker’ van Wyk, the notorious Gestapo-like Special Branch agent, intimidated the movement by visiting all the members of the District Six Defence Committee.

Significantly, the second phase of resistance with regard to the removal of ‘Coloureds’ from District Six was also started by a prayer campaign. The vehicle for carrying the campaign was the District Six Ministers’ Fraternal, an energetic group of clergymen from a few local churches. Father Basil van Rensburg, who was based at the Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church and who came to District Six with advertising skills in September 1978, launched a fundraising initiative, along with the new prayer campaign: ‘our aim is to start in a small way with Holy Cross as a nucleus and gradually to build a forceful campaign of prayer and action until official thinking on District Six changes’ (Cape Argus, 5 September 1978). The parish priest of St. Philip’s Anglican Church expressed some of this commitment as he invited other congregations to join in prayer: ‘May we all by the Power of His Holy Spirit seek nothing else but a miracle from the Lord.’ (Jeppie/Soudien, p. ??) Lay people were well represented in the Friends of District Six movement, an offspring of the District Six Ministers’ Fraternal. The members came not only from the above-mentioned churches, but also from other circles, notably Muslims and Jews. They included some Whites. Among those who joined were the Black Sash, the National Council for Women, the Civil Rights League and the Institute of Race Relations. Whites were encouraged to refrain from buying property in the maligned and stained District Six.

The Example of President Abraham Lincoln   

After leaving South Africa in January 1969 for Germany, the author was personally moved to fasting and prayer for the Communist world after reading Wurmbrand’s story on board of the passenger ship Pendennis Castle.[35] Along with believers in different parts of the world, I hereafter started to pray regularly for persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe and China on Fridays.

          Back in Cape Town in the last quarter of 1970, I was still far from being a faithful prayer warrior, but I definitely sensed a need to pray for our country. Early one October morning in 1972, while I was on my knees praying at the Moravian Seminary in District Six, I felt constrained to write a letter to the Prime Minister. In this letter, I addressed Mr Vorster with ‘Liewe’ (dear). That was definitely something extraordinary. My natural feelings towards him were not charitable at all. In this letter I challenged the State President to let himself be used by God like Abraham Lincoln in the USA, to lead the nation to the ways of God. In my opinion no head of state personified a humbling before God in history more than Abraham Lincoln. (On no less than nine separate occasions during his 49 month reign as president, Lincoln called for public penitence, fasting, prayer and thanksgiving.) In Southern Africa, Michael Cassidy used Lincoln’s example to challenge John Vorster and Ian Smith (of the Rhodesia of the 1970s, to do the same by giving them a copy each of Lincoln’s biography with the title Abraham Lincoln, Theologian of American Anguish. (Cassidy himself would be God’s instrument in the turbulent 1985 to call the National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR) from 10 to12 September. He was also divinely used as a pivot towards the calling of a national day of prayer by this group on October 9, less than a month later.)

Personal impact of the Hippie Revival

My two years of full-time study at the Moravian seminary included a good mix of evangelistic activity and ecumenical activism. Our full-time student Fritz Faro really got enflamed by the evangelistic zeal of the Jesus People. Along with Gustine Joemath, our other two full-time student, we tried to accommodate that. At the same time, we deemed it necessary to challenge – unfortuantely unsuccessfully - the apparent Jesus People acceptance of the racist South African way of life.                                                                             We also sharpened our axes for White liberals who professed to be against apartheid, but who were not prepared to suffer for their convictions. Thus we decided to challenge the St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Green Point. Outside this church complex a notice board welcomed all races. In our own denomination we had also been fighting racist traditions

            Reverend Douglas Bax and his St Andrews Presbyterian Church passed the test with flying colours. Thereafter he became a close friend of our seminary. Douglas Bax would also become a staunch fighter against racial oppression in the Presbyterian Church, notably playing an important role when that denomination pioneered Church opposition to the racially tainted Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act.

A Revival among District Six Youth

The flip side of the Islamic resurgence in the wake of the Group areas legislation was a mini-revival amongst young people of District Six.  Under the leadership of Clive and Ursula Jacobs at the Sheppard Street Baptist Church bubbling youth work developed which included a youth week with the charismatic Pastor Andy Lamb as the preacher. At this occasion Eddie Edson came to faith in Jesus as his Lord. (Edson would be a major role player in the run-up to the city wide prayers of the mid-1990s and the subsequent Global Day of Prayer). Youth rallies were held in neutral venues like the Palace Bioscope (Cinema), which even turned out to be too small.
The use of the relatively big Church Hall of Holy Cross displayed that there was a non-denominational flavour of the movement. That this was no superficial 'happy clappy' occasion, can be easily discerned.

Many young people turned from drugs and gangsterism to Christ. Some started cottage meetings and open air services were held. Prayer meetings were conducted in the surrounds of Woodstock, Salt River and District Six. Eddie Edson was pivotal in much of this. From this movement many young people went to night Bible Schools and colleges. Many of them became pastors and leaders in their churches. around 50 young people from this revival became pastors or pastors' wives.

         

No Joy for the Government!

The National Party government had little joy from its conquest of District Six. The opposition was very effective. In 1971, plans for a multi-million rand luxury suburb for Whites had to be abandoned because of massive public protest. Two large oil companies had to dump plans to open service stations there - with reverberations in Holland when protesters there cut the petrol hoses at Shell service stations.

The desolate District Six – after the Group Areas removal of the inhabitants, would be a constant reminder of the injustice perpetrated, pricking the conscience of Whites. For decades marches to Parliament would start from Keizergracht, the former Hanover Street of District Six. On 11 February 1981 Rev Karel August, once my student colleague at the Moravian Seminary in District Six and the last minister there before the closing due to the Group Areas legislation, delivered a powerful sermon in the Black Theology mould, which kept the memory of District Six alive. Pointing to the prominent quisling tax collector Zaccheus (Luke 19), Kallie August challenged the audience, which consisted probably of just as many Muslims as Christians. With the example of Jesus who looked up to the traitor, the audience was given a tool to win collaborators like Zaccheus over to the cause of justice for the oppressed!!

A powerful Session of Confession

A special prayer event occurred outside the District Six Moravian Church on 1 November 1997 with confession around the apartheid era national sins. Significant moves transpired in May 2004 at and in the church building adjacent to the Seminary - the former Moravian Hill manse. They ultimately led to the first Global Day of Prayer. The Western Cape arm of Jericho Walls, called Global Prayer Watch, filled the first 7 days with day and night prayer at the Moravian Church premises in District Six, starting at 9 o’clock in the Sunday evening on 9 May 2004. Communities, towns and cities in South Africa were challenged to pray 24 hours a day for 7 days. The 7-day initiative culminated in the first Global Day of Prayer the following year.

9. Church Opposition against Apartheid

          Long before racial segregation and apartheid became government policy, quite a few Cape Christians saw the Unity in Christ as an important biblical tenet. Furthermore, many people will be surprised to hear that arguably the most effective Church opposition against apartheid ironically came initially from the Dutch Reformed Church. The Anglican Bishop Trevor Huddleston and others were making some inroads elsewhere through their stand against the race policies that became official after 1948, but the most effective counter came quite surprisingly from within the ranks of the denomination, which was led by racist ideologists. I do not refer to the warnings by people like Ds. Ben Marais and Professor Keet, but specifically to the stand of a ‘Coloured’ Dutch Reformed clergyman. He was Eerwaarde (Reverend) I.D. Morkel, who in turn influenced a dynamic mover, a young clergyman, Ds. David Botha of the Wynberg Sendingkerk.

ANC Leaders teach the Unity in Christ

Generations of political leaders in South Africa, particularly within the ANC, drew on Christian values for the building of a broader political unity. Coming from the African background of a broad humanity, ubuntu, there was - they believed - an ethical imperative to move beyond narrow identities of family, clan and race.  The thinking of White and ‘Coloured’ churches was bedevilled by the neat separation of politics and religion. Long before White and ‘Coloured’ churches embraced the concept, Blacks already saw the importance of the Unity in Christ. One of the pioneers at the Cape was Rev. Zaccheus Richard Mahabane, a Methodist minister, who was posted to Cape Town in 1916. He joined the Cape African Congress in 1917 after hearing political speeches by Charlotte Maxeke and her husband.

          In 1919 Rev. Zaccheus Richard Mahabane became president of the Cape African Congress.  In 1924 he was elected president-general of the national ANC and again from 1937 to 1940. He maintained in 1925 that‘the universal acknowledgement of Christ as common Lord and King (would) break down the social, spiritual and intellectual barriers between the races’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:384). He propagated moderate conciliatory views of compromise, for instance he deemed a separate voters’ roll for Blacks acceptable if Whites found the prospect of a common roll too menacing.

          The White-led denominations were out of touch with the spiritual dynamics of the resistance against the heretical ideology which became government policy from 1948. Helen Joseph, a Jewish anti-apartheid campaigner bemoaned in respect of the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s: ‘The Church turned its back on the ANC, [but] the ANC never turned its back on the Church’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:386).

          The deep religiosity and prayerfulness of that campaign was described by Tom Lodge: ‘a mood of religious fervour infused the resistance.’ He went on to note: ‘When the [Defiance] Campaign opened it was accompanied by days of prayer, and volunteers pledged themselves at prayer meetings to a code of love, discipline and cleanliness… and even at the tense climax of the Campaign in Port Elizabeth people were enjoined on the first day of the strike “to conduct a prayer and a fast in which each member of the family will have to be at home;” thereafter they attended nightly church services’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:386).

Reconciliation of the Races

Various Church leaders have been working towards reconciliation of the races of our country. The Cape played a significant role in this process down the years. The above-mentioned Methodist minister Rev. Zaccheus Richard Mahabane was among the first who consciously sought to reconcile the polarised races. He was at heart a moderate ‘whose political philosophy was grounded in a hope that Christian ethics would eventually prevail in shaping South Africa’s race policies` (Karis and Carter Vol 4: 65). As a leading personality in both the ANC and the All African Convention (AAC), he did his best to promote the reconciliation of these organizations, but unity proved elusive and a merger was unfortunately not reached. For many years Mahabane was a proponent of unity among South Africa’s three disadvantaged groups. He cooperated with Dr Abdullah Abdurahman in calling the series of ‘non-European’ conferences that met between 1927 and 1934. When the Non-European Unity Movement was formed in affiliation with the AAC in 1943, he became its president.

Dutch Reformed Church Opposition against Apartheid              

Ds. David Botha opposed the apartheid policy long before the famous Dr Beyers Naudé. (Botha later became the moderator of the Sendingkerk, the ‘Coloured’ sector of the denomination.) The ring (presbytery) of Wynberg agreed unanimously with the motion tabled by the dynamic Rev. I.D. Morkel, to oppose apartheid on scriptural grounds.[36] The participants at this meeting included quite a few Afrikaner dominees because there were still very few ministers of colour ordained in that denomination. The ring protested against the proposed legislation of the new regime, appealing to the government urgently not to implement apartheid laws (Botha, Die Opkoms van ons Derde Stand, 1960:127).

          That the Malan Cabinet ignored their protests was not as deplorable as the fact that the very same dominees who voted in October 1948 did not pitch up when all ministers of the Sendingkerk were invited to a meeting to discuss the legislation. Although 28 congregations were represented,

only two white dominees attended this meeting. Another meeting on 14 October 1949 resolved to encourage believers to retreat into a day of prayer on 16 December 1949 ‘to be relieved from the apartheid affliction’ (Botha, 1960:127). 

          The Wynberg Dutch Reformed Mission Church, with Rev. David Botha as its minister, spearheaded an effort toward reconciliation. In a letter to the (White) moderator dated 29 October 1949, the church council deplored the deterioration of relations between the mission church and its mother. In the letter the church council furthermore protested sharply against the apartheid policy with the implied inferiority of ‘Coloureds’.

          The spiritual value was limited from the outset because an activist political undercurrent was clearly present in the date set for the corporate implementation, 16 December 1949 - to be followed by a public meeting in the City Hall the following day. The Afrikaans daily Die Burger in its report of the City Hall meeting scathingly referred to the event as a ‘sogenaamde Kerklike Konvensie’, a so-called church convention.

          Afrikaner solidarity - probably via the Afrikaner Broederbond connections - tragically undermined the principled stand of White Dutch Reformed dominees in the ‘Coloured’ Sendingkerk. They had still agreed in October 1948 that ‘no ground for colour apartheid can be found in Holy Scripture’ (Botha, 1960:127). To Afrikaners it was especially painful that Rev. David Botha, the young Dutch Reformed Sendingkerk dominee, graced the meeting with his presence. 

          It was nevertheless pathetic how Botha's speech in the City Hall was reported in Die Burger. In a letter to the editor of the Afrikaans daily Rev. Botha complained about serious distortions, also pointing out important omissions from his talk. Amongst other things Botha had noted in his speech that the church has no right to criticize the state unless she can show a positive way. More important was his strong plea for intercession and his reference to the main weapons of the Church, viz. the Word of God and prayer. Botha also mentioned that ‘the whole audience in front of me was urged to pray for revival instead of having a critical spirit.’ None of these notions was reported in Die Burger.[37]

White Dutch Reformed Opposition

In 1950 Professor Ben Marais wrote a controversial book Kleurkrisis in die Weste. The resulting controversy caused the popular preacher to be effectively silenced by the tactics of the secretive Afrikaner Broederbond. Church councils had to make sure that he would not be invited to preach. In 1956 the Stellenbosch academic Professor Barend Keet raised the question in his book Whither South Africa whether apartheid or the better sounding term ‘separate development’ could be applied in a just manner as claimed by his church. Five years later – thus a year after Sharpeville - he and eight other Afrikaner theologians answered the question with a resounding NO in their book Delayed Action. They spelled out clearly that apartheid implied discrimination.                         

          One of the leading Dutch Reformed ministers, the gifted Ds Beyers Naudé, was seriously challenged. In Wellington, the first congregation that he served as a hulpprediker (assistant pastor), he immediately became uneasy when he saw that the training was inferior at the Sendinginstituut, where ministers were trained who would serve the daughter churches (Colleen Ryan, Pilgrimage of Faith,

 1990:31). On a personal level the heritage of the pioneer missionary Georg Schmidt impacted his life when he met his wife. She was the daughter of Emil Weder, a Moravian missionary in Genadendal. (The name Emil Weder still lives on in the name of the local High School). After seeing the degenerate ‘Coloureds’ in the Karoo town of Loxton where he was a pastor subsequently, Beyers Naudé was reminded of the cultured educated people of colour he had encountered for the first time in Genadendal during the time of courting. The question came to him ‘why it was not possible to have this in other parts of the country’ (Ryan, 1990:33). The seed for the multi-racial Christian Institute was sown into the heart of the former Afrikaner Broederbond leader whose father had helped to found the secret organization with lofty ideals for the upliftment of Afrikaners.  

A prime Mover of racial Reconciliation                                                                                     Rev. Theo Kotze, an Afrikaner Methodist, was a prime mover of racial reconciliation at the Cape in the 1960s and 1970s. Kotze’s ministry has been described as ‘combining church growth and integrity on the one hand, and evangelism and social justice on the other’ (Jean Knighton-Fitt, Beyond Fear, 2003:94). With his wife Helen and their children the Kotze family formed a formidable team, the talk of the town. At the Cape Theo Kotze was one of the first Christian Institute (CI)[38] members, forming an ecumenical Bible Study group using CI material.

          A demonstration of the fine balance of biblical compassion and social involvement became evident in his ‘Straight Talking’ columns of the Sea Point Vision church magazine that Rev. Kotze started in March 1964. On the cover of the first edition is written: ‘Wide Vision, big Thinking, Great Faith, Stout Effort, God’s Husbandry... bring results.’ The youth work of the congregation impacted the 'Ducktails', the White gangsters of the area, in no uncertain way. ‘Club Route Twelve’ was led by Derek Kotze, the eldest son of the family.

          Nelson Mandela and his colleagues had been on Robben Island for almost two years when the Cape Methodist Synod appointed Theo Kotze as Robben Island chaplain. Among his Methodist congregants there were big name political detainees like Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Stanley Mogoba.

Strategic Youth Ministry

Down the decades ministry among young people would raise future leaders. Jimmy Ferguson came to South Africa as a missionary, running rallies alongside local South Africans. Youth for Christ (YfC) became an international Christian organization with its core mission and vision that of communicating the life-changing message of Jesus Christ to young people.  Jimmy Ferguson pioneered YFC’s ministry at the Cape where the organization started nationally already in 1946. YFC South Africa in its early years was born out of a middle class ministry to White high school learners, also providing a valuable service to predominantly suburban churches through training, rallies and camping. Bill Parker and Nico Bougas[39] were two prominent YFC members during the 1950s and 1960s at the Cape, who were also very much involved in ministry at the life insurance pioneers Old Mutual, where they worked.

          Evangelistic outreach with Christian Students’ Association (SCA) students at Harmony Park in the mid-1960s contained seed for spiritual revival. It also contributed to the spiritual maturing of leaders such as Rev. Abel Hendricks, who led the 1964/5 camp along with Rev. Chris Wessels. (In later years Abel Hendricks became President of the Methodist Church and Chris Wessels a respected leader in the Moravian Church. Allan Boesak, Jattie Bredekamp, Esau Jacobs, Franklin Sonn and David Savage are but a few from that era who subsequently became influential members in their respective denominations and in society at large.)

Hippies radiate Revival

In the early 1970s Brian O’Donnell owned the Hippie Market of the city as well as a night club called The Factory. When he was spiritually revived, he decided to conduct an outreach on Monday nights and later also at Green Point Stadium. A supernatural intervention occurred when Brian asked Dave Valentine to pray about assisting him in some way at his Hippie Market. Dave misunderstood this completely. After prayer about the matter he had liberty to resign from his well-paid job as engineer to work full-time for the Lord, trusting God for the needs of his family with four children.

Under John Bond and Paul Watney’s ministry, the Harfield Road Assembly of God, situated halfway between the Cape suburbs of Claremont and Kenilworth, experienced a mighty revival known as ‘the Hippie Revival’. In 1971 it was still very much of an orthodox lone ranger of the denomination among the Whites at the Cape. This would change drastically within a few years because of the Hippie movement. Young people who had been following an alternative life-style of sex and drugs were drastically changed. The congregation welcomed drugged hippies with sandals or bare feet that no other church would have allowed to enter. Many of them were supernaturally delivered from their addiction.

The Jesus Movement was the major Christian element within the hippie subculture. Members were called Jesus People or Jesus Freaks. It came to Cape Town from Johannesburg in the early 1970s. Brian O’Donnell and Dave Valentine soon became the prime movers here. Back-slidden to all intents and purposes, Brian took Dave, a nominal Methodist young man, along to their church.

Impacts on Society

The bubbling young believers would go to Thibault Square with a loud hailer. At the altar calls many would kneel there on the square committing their lives to the Lord. The special move of the Holy Spirit ultimately led to an invitation to Nicky Cruz, the former Mau-Mau gang leader of New York, to share at a meeting at Green Point Stadium. At this occasion Graham Power was divinely addressed and challenged for the first time. (Decades later Graham Power would be God's channel to initiate the prayer event of Newlands on 21 March, 2001.)

Dave Valentine enjoyed not only the vibrant singing there, but he was also divinely touched at that occasion by the singing and speaking in tongues at the Harfield Road Assembly of God. At least two of the hippies of the revival became leaders in their own right.

Former drug addict Marge Ballin started ministering to drug addicts after her conversion. When she discovered how many females became prostitutes because of this addiction, she was impacted, starting to minister to them intensely. A link to Youth with a Mission brought her to Amsterdam where she reached out to prostitutes for five years. After her return to the Cape she resumed the outreach to prostitutes which highlighted the need for a holistic ministry. In due course she established a safe house for the rehabilitation of females from this background in the suburb Observatory.

Herschel Raysman, another former hippie, became the leader of the Beit Ariel Messianic Jewish congregation in Sea Point at the turn of the millennium.

Charismatic Renewal erupts at the Cape                                                                                                    Already in 1964 the Cape-born David du Plessis, nicknamed ‘Mr Pentecost’, introduced the charismatic renewal to the Roman Catholic Church. Before he came to Cape Town, the high profile Archbishop Bill Burnett had a spiritual conversion experience. This influenced his subsequent thinking. The charismatic renewal thereafter also started to impact individuals of other mainline churches. When Archbishop Burnett came to the metropolis' Anglican Cathedral in 1974, the movement received a major push. More and more clergymen experienced a similar spiritual renewal. Dean King, a clergyman at St George’s Cathedral at the time, describes the ensuing situation in the Anglican Church as follows: 'Real Christians now became Bible-carrying Christians and the exorcism of demonic spirits and healing of the sick became experienced realities. The hills were alive with the sound of music, guitars appeared in churches everywhere; testimonies astounded us; lives were undoubtedly changed; faith became alive for people…Young men developed vocations to the ministry in fairly large numbers, and the criteria for this were often their acquaintance with the Spirit and their certainty that they had found the way.'                                       

A negative element of the movement was that many believers, for example those who did not practise speaking in tongues, were confused and left outside, questioning the depth and reality of their own faith. The turmoil in his bishopric however did not affect the clear witness of Archbishop Burnett with regard to the government. Apartheid was now rightly seen as the worship of a false god.

In Cape Town the Archbishop’s residence, Bishopscourt, became a centre of renewal, and developed a community. Several young men who thought they might be called to ordained ministry went to stay there to test their vocations. Dying parishes were revitalised, and people were healed. But when the synod of the big and unwieldy Diocese of Cape Town refused to divide it into smaller and more easily manageable ones, Bill Burnett resigned, and devoted himself to the Support Ministries Trust. He founded it to promote charismatic renewal in parishes. Internationally a similar organisation called Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) was started. His successor as archbishop, Dr Desmond Tutu, displayed tendencies of being a prayerful evangelical as a bishop and in his function with the South African Council of Churches (SACC), e.g. when he retreated for a time of prayer and fasting in mid-1981. After he had received the peace Nobel prize in1984 however, there appeared to have occurred a shift. 

The charismatic renewal played a significant role in breaking down the racial barrier. Thus it would ultimately become no exception for a few Whites to regularly visit the Roman Catholic Church in the ‘Coloured’ township of Bonteheuwel in the 1990s.

          While apartheid continued to rule the country, the charismatic movement had made important breakthroughs in opposition to it. Those denominations which blocked the move of the Holy Spirit on doctrinal grounds suffered greatly as scores of young people started leaving their ranks. Some of them joined the new charismatic fellowships that started from the 1980s.

Golden conciliatory Words

Some of the most powerful conciliatory words were uttered by messengers of the Gospel. John de Gruchy, Professor of Religious Studies at UCT, wrote in 1986 about ‘an amazing sense of hope amongst many South Africans, even amongst those whose present struggle seems so hopeless … a hope that justice will ultimately triumph … an expression of confidence in the God of justice and peace’ (Cry Justice, 1986:46).

          In 1973 Dr Naudé and other members of the Christian Institute refused to testify before a government commission because it was not judicial and not public. This was a legal offence and led to a trial in November 1977.  In cross-examination Naudé was asked how he saw the relation between reconciliation and identification. He replied with the powerful words: ‘No reconciliation is possible without justice and whoever works for reconciliation must first determine the causes of the injustice in the hearts and lives of those … who feel themselves aggrieved’(Printed Cry Justice, compiled by John de Gruchy, p.171).

   In August 1973 we had Rev. Bongonjalo Claude Goba of the Congregational Church[40] as a guest speaker at our youth service on compassion Sunday. 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! A real struggle ensued 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.

          At the end of that year Robbie Kriger[41] a part-time seminary student colleague, was prominent In another initiative. Dr Beyers Naudé was invited to address a youth rally on Youth Power in the Old Drill Hall. Soon thereafter I left for Germany, basically to marry my darling Rosemarie, not expecting to return unless some miracle would happen. But I was determined to labour from abroad toward that end. In fact, I targeted 1980 as a goal for a return with my wife and children.

         

Prayer as Part of the Process of Change

Towards the end of 1974 and for several months thereafter, a large number of Black student leaders were arrested and detained without trial by the security police. Some were held in solitary confinement.                 During that time a prayer vigil was held at St George’s Cathedral, where various people committed themselves to prayer within 24-hour sessions by name for some student. The reflection of Professor Frances Wilson for 13 February has been printed, including notes on Nyameko Barney Pityana, who went on to become a top academic and administrator of UNISA: ‘For such a man as he to be incarcerated is a judgment not upon Barney but upon the society which has acted so violently against him’ (John de Gruchy, Cry Justice, 1986:126). All students were finally released without being charged of any crime.

          After the West had refused to help them in the battle against the apartheid regime, the ANC turned to the Soviet Communists. The military situation on the country’s borders spawned White believers of South Africa to form a group called Intercessors for South Africa. This was initiated by Dr Frances Grim, leader of the Hospital Christian Fellowship, which had its national headquarters in the Capetonian picturesque suburb of Pinelands. He discerned the growing moral dangers: ‘Most people seem to be too busy making money, enjoying themselves... to notice the dangerous downward trend in the country’s morals’ (Pray or Perish, ??). Dr Grim initiated a National Day of Prayer, called for 7 January 1976. However, this was not perceived by people of colour as something to join. In fact, few people from these ranks knew about the day of prayer. The all-White organizers had still not recognized the need to draw in people from other racial backgrounds for the event that they had staged. Yet, this move may have stemmed the tide of Communist-inspired revolution, to which the Soweto June 16 upheavals in 1976 could easily have led. Grim gave a challenging title to a booklet that was published by his organisation: Pray or Perish. At any rate, God was already at work.

Mysterious divine Ways

During my visit to the Cape in 1978 with Rosemarie and our son Danny, I experienced an unprecedented roller coaster experience. At a brass band festival in the Moravian mission station Goedverwacht we met Chris Wessels who encouraged us to attempt to get back to South Africa to come and work on one of the mission stations. We were so thankful that we could assist the previous year when he was incarcerated at some unknown place. I was surfing on the crest of a wave of anti-apartheid activism, putting the final touches to my manuscript Honger na Geregtigheid. That visit and meeting Moral Rearmament[42] cronies I had met in Caux (Switzerland the previous year, made me very determined to fight the government. Therefore I went out of my way to attend the meeting of the Moravian Church Board. Rev. Habelgaarn, the chairman at the time, clearly tried to keep me out, but via Rev. Martin Wessels, another member of the Church Board, I managed to find out the venue and the time of their next meeting. In my activism I was well-nigh unstoppable! Known as one of the rebel seminary guys of the early 1970s, Rev Habelgaarn and his conservative Church Board were possibly happy that I was now pastoring a congregation in Holland.

            My first question – on behalf of the Dutch colleagues – must already have angered the senior pastors, enquiring after the incarceration of my friend Chris and what the Church Board did to get him free. They must have thought what this little brat thought to question them in this way, coming from outside? 

            At my request – inspired by the suggestion of Chris Wessels – to try and bring about a crack in the apartheid wall through a pastoral stint of say three years in a country congregation – Rev. Habelgaarn literally exploded. ‘We don’t want tourists here!’Nobody in the room objected to this rude explosion. I was too inexperienced to know that this is the normal way in which dictators operate. I was after all an outsider!

            That almost floored me. Sad and angry I left that meeting. Looking back, I can understand so well why the Church Board preferred to keep disgruntled young rebels like me exiled...

            A few days later I received the next near to fatal blow. When our funds had run out, we were unable to fly back to Johannesburg, I was so happy to find out that there was a special fare on the train. ‘But we discriminate here you know’, was the honest reply of the young Afrikaner official at the Cape Town train station to my naïve request. I was hoping to travel in the same compartment with my wife and son. That this request needed a decision at Cabinet level should not have surprised me either. When I hereafter earned the status of a‘honourary White’ and VIP treatment from the President and his Cabinet, it finally knocked me out. I was so angry and bitter that I did not want to return to my home country after this trip again.

A Farewell Gesture of Solidarity

I was brought me to a point of utter frustration and despair, deciding to leave South Africa - never to return! After arrival in Johannesburg by train a few days later, I was still fuming in anger. When Howard Grace, a British Moral Rearmament (MRA) full-time worker, wanted to introduce me to the influential Professor Johan Heyns, I was definitely not prepared and interested to meet the chairman of the Afrikaner Broederbond!

            Dr Beyers Naudé would become God’s instrument when it looked as if apartheid and disappointment in our Moravian Church leadership had knocked me out with regard to a return to the Republic of South Africa. I knew that he was under house arrest at the time and only allowed to speak to one person at a time. I didn’t even expect to be able to speak to him. I merely intended the visit to Dr Naudé’s home church to be my farewell gesture of solidarity with the politically oppressed of the country. God ultimately used the banned Dr Beyers Naudé and the congregation where he worshipped to bring me to my senses and to repentance.

            After the red-letter Sunday I wanted to make amends for my racist bias. 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. I repented of my folly, starting not only by meeting a delegation of the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland a few months later, but I also started corresponding with Professor Heyns. On the Schiphol Airport of Amsterdam I pleaded with the highranking delegation of DRC ministers to get my brother Beyers Naude unbanned. Later I heard that they did this. Dr Beyers Naudé was unbanned a few years later. My subsequent correspondence with Professor Heyns might also have contributed to some extent to bring change. (In 1982 Professor Heyns publicly rejected the notion that Apartheid was the will of God. He caused a storm at that year’s synod by openly supporting mix race marriages.) He ultimately became a divine conduit to get the Dutch Reformed Church to change their stance. For this he paid with his life, gunned down on 5 November 1994. The assassin has still not been brought to book.

Church Defiance of Apartheid

The plight and determination of women of KTC, Nyanga and Crossroads in the winter of 1981 probably played an important role in resistance to apartheid. Pivotal was the support of Celeste Santos, a Roman Catholic nun. It was very special to have experienced this from close range when we shared a home with Celeste, her husband Rommel and his two brothers for three months from April to June 1981.                                                    Churches thereafter started to take a clearer stand in opposition to apartheid laws. Rev. Rob Robertson and Rev.  Douglas Bax played a crucial role in the political stand of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa as a denomination. Already in 1970 Rob Robertson moved that its General Assembly take up the study of non-violent means of social change. This fell into abeyance until 1980-1981, when the convener of the Church and Nation Committee asked him to write a full report with proposals for the Assembly (the equivalent of a synod in other denominations.)                                                                                                                       As a result the Assembly in September 1981 adopted the first official resolutions of a Church body in South Africa to implement civil disobedience against apartheid. Rob Robertson included other radical proposals, particularly that people be encouraged to exercise inter-racial con­tact and fellowship. They were challenged to refuse to apply for permits to visit the homes of someone from another race. The Assembly itself should in future refuse to apply for the permits its commissioners were required to meet in residential areas other than that of their own race. These proposals were defeated, but at least the other proposals were adopted.[43] The next day newspaper posters lined the Johannesburg streets with massive black letters: CHURCH TO DEFY MARRIAGE LAW. A few Presbyterian ministers married a number of racially mixed couples. The marriages were registered in a register kept in the central office of the PCSA. When other Churches also supported the Assembly's decision on the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, this sparked a political debate that even­tually led to the abolition of this keystone of apartheid legislation and with it the notorious section 16 of the Immorality Act which prohibited sexual intercourse between Whites and any other race.

            With great thankfulness we discovered that we had unwittingly been contributing in a small way by sowing some seeds towards the repeal of these laws, as well as the one against influx control that prohibited Black women to be with their husbands in the cities of South Africa. It also gave me great satisfaction that church involvement increased in other parts of the country.

            Church defiance of Apartheid, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. Allan Boesak, would ultimately lead to a big conference in Rustenburg in November 1990, which was a major catalyst of change in the country at large. Michael Cassidy and Ray McCaulay were other important role players to prepare this event.

The Birth of the End Conscription Campaign                                                                                           Prayer and fasting transpired in St George’s Cathedral, where the church leaders had evidently repented after their negative response to Rev. Wrankmore in 1971. Rev. David Russell and Dr Ivan Toms, a young physician who served at the SACLA[44]-initiated clinic in Crossroads, were two people who were allowed to pray there, with some publicity given to their endeavours (King, A Good Place to Be, 1997:67). In 1983 a small number of White conscientious objectors – who faced severe penalties – heeded a call from the Black Sash and launched the End Conscription Campaign (ECC). Dr Toms became the driving force of movement, which encouraged Whites to refuse to serve in the apartheid-inspired South African Defence Force. In August 1984 the ECC declaration maintained that conscripts were used to defend apartheid and wage war on the frontline states. In spite of the arrest of Michael Evans, the Western Cape chairman, the ECC conducted a highly publicized Troops Out (of the townships) campaign. The centre-piece was a 21-day fast by Ivan Toms in St George's Cathedral. This culminated in Toms addressing a packed City Hall Meeting in August 1986. The May 1986 Emergency outlawed calls for an end to conscription, which greatly impeded subsequent ECC campaigns. The organisation was effectively banned in August 1988.

10. An Island that blessed the World

            All over the world prisons served as places of reform and renewal. South Africa is no exception. Robben Island and Table Bay have a long recorded history, preceding that of the settlement at the Cape in 1652 by quite a number of years. The notorious part of its history also has some sad precedents. The English used the island as a penal colony in 1615 and the Dutch used Table Bay in 1636 as a depository for mutineers who were thrown overboard with leaded weights tied to them (Worden et al, The Making of a City, 1998:15).

            But there is also another side of the coin. Jan van Riebeeck had the foresight to launch the conservation of the continent in 1654, planting the first vegetable garden on Robben Island. He had kiln built to burn shells for the production of lime.[45] This was the first industry of the Cape Colony.

          Unfortunately negatives were soon to follow. It is a sad indictment on colonial history that whereas the Mother City was regarded as the centre of civilisation in the mid-nineteenth century by the colonists, the Xhosas associated it with ‘the stronghold of the white man’s power, the place of banishment.

          In this chapter we want to concentrate on the positives. The example of Joseph in the Bible comes to mind. So many religious and political exiles were banished to Robben Island and imprisoned there. Many got strengthened there, giving hope to their followers.       

Robben Island – imprisonment gives Birth to Faith:                                                                                                  

The 1960s and 1970s saw the increased enforced habitation of political prisoners on Robben Island. The infamous island gradually became the ‘University’ of the New South Africa. Many of those who were incarcerated there became government leaders after 1994. The government was quite successful in creating fear of imprisonment on Robben Island among all South African communities in the 1960s. What they did not reckon with was that God would use the brutality of the system just as he had heard the groans of the Israelites in Egypt in preparation of their final liberation. For Njongonkulu Ndugane, who was sentenced to three years on the island because of his political activities on behalf of the Pan African Congress of Azania (PAC), his time there became a turning point in his life. The son of an Anglican priest found himself wrestling with God asking the question: ‘How could a good God allow so much suffering in my country and now on the island? It was in the course of that wrestling with God that I found inner peace, as if God laid his hand on me. It was in a prison cell that I felt the call of God to serve him in the ordained ministry’ (Njongonkulu Ndugane, A World with a Human Face, 2003:5). In June 1996 he was ultimately elected as successor to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In this office he was instrumental in the renovation of the Church of the Good Shepherd on Robben Island, and in the re-consecration of the sanctuary ‘as a symbol... of future hope.’ They also made a statement to the effect of claiming it as ‘a place of pilgrimage and reconciliation. The island of incarceration has become an island of faith,’...  It is part of that spirit of hope, that reconciling effect that people who were incarcerated on the island can bring to the world’(Ndugane, 2003:3).

          The most famous of all prisoners on the island was of course Nelson Mandela. Already as a political prisoner Mandela displayed a commitment to pragmatism, which helped him and his colleagues to gain many privileges. Other qualities for which he became renowned - forgiveness and refraining from revenge - were imputed via Christian teaching by people like Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission and the Methodist stalwart Rev. Theo Kotze, who was also the Western Cape leader of the Christian Institute. After his release in 1990, Mandela often referred to the Christian teaching that he received over the years as an important contribution to his emphasis on forgiveness and refraining from revenge. It was these qualities that enabled and allowed him to treat even his enemies cordially and with respect. On this basis Mandela ultimately led the country towards national reconciliation.

          Like all other prisoners Nelson Mandela was required to perform certain chores. He had to clean the Kramat (shrine) of Shaykh Mattara on Robben Island while he was incarcerated there.  Another type of cleaning took place inside Mandela, as Archbishop Tutu put it so aptly: ‘Those twenty-seven years and all the suffering they entailed were the fires of the furnace that tempered his steel that removed the dross. Perhaps without that suffering he would have been less able to be as compassionate and as magnanimous as he turned out to be’(Desmond Tutu, No future without foregiveness, 1999:40).

Unity between Rival Parties Forged

Around 1960 there was great rivalry between the ANC and the breakaway PAC. In circles close to the ANC even the use of the word Azania was anathema. The Black Consciousness movement of the 1970s was not as anti-White as the PAC-related groups but it was still nearer to it than to the charterist ideology that had non-racialism as its hall mark. Under the spell and leadership of Nelson Mandela, young Black Consciousness prisoners on the island gravitated towards the ANC. In her book Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (2003:162), Fran Buntman summarizes the process as ‘the re-establishment of the Congress tradition as hegemonic in the liberation struggle.’ She also pointed out (p164f) how Robben Islanders played a big role in the formation and shaping of the United Democratic Front (UDF).

Counterproductive Repression

The transformation of our country has quite a few prominent examples of political activists who experienced a divine touch while they were incarcerated. Apartheid repression had a counterproductive and blessed effect on certain individuals. Some of the best examples of this phenomenon in respect of Robben Island revolve around two impressive personalities, Dennis Brutus and Bishop Stanley Mogoba. Dennis Brutus was active in the ‘convention’ movement and a fervent organizer of the Malmesbury Convention of July 1961 which sought unity between ‘Coloureds’ and Blacks. Dismissed from teaching later in the year and placed under a ban, he went to study law at the University of the Witwatersrand where he became quite active in the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). After leaving the country secretly in 1963, Dennis Brutus was arrested in Mozambique and returned to South Africa. He was convicted for violating his ban and sentenced to 18 months on Robben Island. In 1966 he left the country on an 'exit permit' (not allowed to return to his home country under the apartheid regime). In London he re-established the South African Non-Racial Open Committee for Sport. More than anybody else he was responsible for the expulsion of South Africa from the Olympic Movement. From 1971 he was a professor for English at Northwestern University in the USA.

          Stanley Mogoba was likewise originally a teacher and merely a passive adherent of the Pan African Congress to whom young people came to for advice when he was arrested. The main evidence against him was that he was accused of advising the young people to burn a Dutch Reformed Church whereas in his own words ‘I had strongly advised the young people against this. So I went to gaol for having saved a Dutch Reformed Church … part of the time in isolation. During that time I prayed and read the Bible from cover to cover for it was the only literature (available)…’[46] On Robben Island Stanley Mogoba met Dennis Brutus. While cleaning the passage outside Mogoba’s cell, when no one was listening, Dennis Brutus talked to him. He brought him a book, The Human Christ, that brought about Mogoba's call to the ministry. It touched him very deeply to encounter the sorrow of Christ when he discerned that the young man of Matthew 19 left, ‘unable to take the final step to true fulfilment.’ Mogoba was himself very unhappy hereafter, pondering what all that meant, thinking that he should serve Christ in a new way once he would leave the island. ‘But it was only when I said “I will follow you now, I am prepared to give my entire life to you and enter the ministry” that my sorrow left me and I experienced a sense of joy…’

The Black Townships impacted

Christmas Tinto was one of the most colourful struggle personalities. After his release from incarceration on Robben Island in 1973, he and Oscar Mpetha were instrumental in linking the old guard Cape township politicians up with the young Black Consciousness revolutionaries like Cheryl Carolus, Johnny Issel, Trevor Manuel and Zoli Malinde who came through in the wake of the post-1976 riots. This was the pristine beginning of the UDF, which got the final nudge through a speech from Dr Allan Boesak in Johannesburg. Quite aptly the movement was started in the Western Cape, in the Rocklands Town Centre of Mitchells Plain in August 1983. Deservedly, the old Cape trade unionist Oscar Mpetha was elected the first president of the UDF, with Tinto as his deputy. After the failing health of the old stalwart, Tinto succeeded Mpetha. This choice was strategic, impacting the Black townships because the public face of the UDF had been very much determined by ‘Coloureds’ like Allan Boesak, Dullah Omar and Trevor Manuel.

A special Training Institution

In the impressive study Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid, Fran Lisa Buntman showed how the island developed from a place where mere survival was the top priority into a special training institution where inmates however at first had to fight for the right to engage in studies. This was ultimately allowed right up to tertiary training. Michael Dingake 'could boast three academic degrees obtained through correspondence with the University of South Africa' (Cited in Buntman, 2003:272). More than merely the attaining of academic degrees, the prisoners impacted not only each other intensely, but many warders were changed as well. An interesting case was Aubrey du Toit, a former prison warder, who credited Nelson Mandela for encouraging him to study academic Afrikaans. Another prisoner advised him to follow a career with the insurance giant SANLAM, where he was holding a senior management position by 2002 (Buntman, 2003:262). Neville Alexander, a former prisoner, highlighted an important contribution in his book Robben Island: the Politics of Rock and Sand, viz. planning for the future. 'Perhaps one should go even beyond that and talk about nation building and the preparation for life in a post-apartheid South Africa' (Cited in Buntman, 2003:81). Walter Sisulu referred to the acquisition of negotiating skills which the inmates developed on the island. In fact, he suggested that the actual negotiations around the future of the country started on Robben Island (Cited in Buntman, 2003:170).

The Country changed

Via the intervention of the astute opposition politician Helen Suzman, the international media got more and more focused on conditions on Robben Island. Prison reforms had started to be implemented through Victor Verster already from 1959. The changes in the prisons became in a sense fore-runners for change in the country at large, where Nelson Mandela was undoubtedly the pivotal figure on the island. His special contribution there was that he succeeded in empowering and developing new leadership that did not depend on any one individual. After 1982 when Mandela and most of the Rivonia leadership was removed from the island the Robben Island community and the ANC actually flourished. The Robben Islanders benefited greatly from contemporary factors in 1989, viz. the end of the Cold War and the attitude of the new pragmatic president F.W. De Klerk. The latter finally conceded much more in terms of White rights and privileges than he had envisaged when he engaged into negotiations with Nelson Mandela and his cronies. The first democratic government of South Africa - and every subsequent parliament since then – consisted of a large component of ex-Robben Islanders. The Zulu-Xhosa tribal clashes that were feared very much in a post-apartheid South Africa turned out to be a non-event. The conciliatory example of Nelson Mandela surely played a big role. The friendships forged on Robben Island with Zulu leaders like Jacob Zuma formed however just as much a contributory factor.

Flexibility versus Rigidity

Fran Buntman (2003:288) highlighted a difference between Robben islanders and ANC exile politicians, viz. flexibility versus rigidity. This was demonstrated by the leadership styles of the first and second presidents of democratic South Africa. Although Nelson Mandela had a 'stubborn streak', often putting party and personal loyalty above reason, he consistently showed flexibility and a willingness to learn from the mistakes and experiences of others and his own. The rigidity of Thabo Mbeki on the other hand, who earned his stripes in the party while in exile, caused the death of thousands of HIV/AIDS patients. Buntman referred in this regard also to Terror Lekota who showed the same willingness to stand for principle when he risked his premiership of the Free State as he did when he risked his national and prison standing on Robben Island. Buntman (2003:289) goes on to conclude that wthin the ANC leadership 'Robben Islanders tend to be among the most open to new ideas, challenges and change'.

Spiritual Cleansing at the Cape

At the beginning of 2001 the Network of Prayer in Southern Africa( NUPSA) revealed plans, encouraging and challenging intercessors throughout the country. They stressed that spiritual warfare included confession and the cleansing of South Africa from offences against God. Elisabeth Jordaan, one of the leaders, stressed that ‘...One of the major things that needs to happen to prepare the nation for repentance is that we need to be convicted by the Holy Spirit of our sin as a nation. Without this conviction there will be no Godly sorrow and no repentance brought about by the Holy Spirit.’ For the second half of the year 2001 NUPSA envisaged dealing with the issue of cleansing the land. 

During August and September 2001 the atonement of Jesus was called upon. Prayer on sites of offence was performed simultaneously in all 9 provinces.  At the Cape, this happened on Robben Island on the first weekend of September 2001. For this prayer exercise, Johan de Meyer of the Western Cape office of NUPSA compiled a manual together with Mike Winfield and Marilyn Graham. Former prisoners on the island who had become believers, like Vernon February, and the former hardcore Communist, Dr Crosby Zulu, joined in the programme. In the introduction to the manual, the redemptive potential of Robben Island is stressed. It highlights how Oliver Tambo, the leader in exile of the ANC for many years, who had been a close colleague and friend of Nelson Mandela, once said that the ‘tragedy of Africa, in racial political terms, has been concentrated at the southern tip of the continent, and in a special sense, on Robben Island...’ The purpose of the prayer venture of September 2001 was ‘removing the offences of generational sins so people’s lives can be touched and changed by the love and mercy of Jesus’ (De Meyer et al, ?? 2001:7).

A Dark Cloud?

We need however also mention a negative of Robben Island. While the island experience helped the inmates to overcome tribal and party rivalries through intense friendships which straddled the traditional schisms, a threat to democratic rule was nevertheless inherited by the tendency of the ANC to silence, oust or condemn its critics. Yet this was less the case on the island like in exile. Their dynamic leader Nelson Mandela who displayed a wonderful propensity to listen carefully to everybody, was sorely missed after 1999 when external criticism were all too often dismissed as racism, or viewed as unjustified and illegitimate by definition. (The people person Mandela was so loyal to his party and Cabinet that he condoned poor performances by Cabinet members. This gave a negative legacy to the country, which constitutes a dark cloud. The results of the poor performance of his ministers in the Departments of Education, Home Affairs, Justice and Health are still not overcome. Easy bail, corruption and a tendency to condone sexual immorality combined to form a bad omen. The only silver lining broke through when Dr Nkosana Zuma surprisingly succeeded in bringing some order into the Department of Home Affairs in 2009. Corruption in that department was so rife that change seemed impossible before she took over. Since she left to become General Secretary of the African Union in 2012, that department deteriorated yet again. Some reprieve was experienced at the Regional Refugee Office in Cape Town after The Cape Times had highlighted the recurring irregularities in June 2013.

The quest for control, which was already evident on the island and especially in the ANC in exile, went berserk at the election conference in Polokwane. In a well-orchestrated coup Julius Malema and his ANC Youth League succeeded in ousting Thabo Mbeki and others in his faction of the party. They brought in the corruption-tainted Jacob Zuma, who would be indebted in this way to Malema and his cronies for many a year to come.Malema himself was expelled from the party subsequently. Having already tasted power and obviously eying the presidency for himself, Malema started his own party in July 2013, less than a year ahead of the national elections.

11. The most colourful Suburb of South Africa!

Bo-Kaap is known in tourism circles by its houses in bright colours. Also in another sense it is arguably the most colourful residential area of South Africa. Few suburbs – perhaps even worldwide - can match the chameleon-like changes that this locality went through in a religious sense. Many changes were caused by political machinations.  Together with Onderkaap, the later District Six, the town was given a special stamp of what would become in due course the Mother City of the nation.

Starting off as a farm where Jan de Waal gave his name to the street that runs through the middle of the suburb - Waalstraat. The area was soon inhabited by quite a few slaves. The bulk of them hailed from Indonesia and Bengal. The mix of cultures in the suburb is aptly seen in the names of early inhabitants. The surnames indicate where they had been born. Thus one can read how the fairly affluent Saartje van de Kaap married Achmat van Bengale. (She became a beneficiary of one of the first mosques when colonial Britain took over the occupancy of the Cape.)

Early Bo-Kaap Spiritual Dynamics

Cape spiritual dynamics had an interesting interplay in Bo-Kaap. Tuan Said, a religious convict from the East, was released from Robben Island in 1744. The same year the dynamic Moravian missionary Georg Schmidt was more or less forced to leave the Cape because he had baptised five Khoi. The grave of Tuan Said became one of the first kramats (shrines) on the Tana Baru Cemetery of Bo-Kaap.

        To the influential Tuan Guru, the name given to Shaykh Abdullah ibn Qadi Abdus Salaam, who had been interned on Robben Island from 1780, has been attributed a renewed prophecy of a ‘holy circle’ of shrines about this time. The Kramat (shrine) on the (in)famous island was already in place since Shaykh Mattara died there in 1754.

     In March 1793 Dr van Lier, the dynamic young dominee of the Groote Kerk that was so mightily used by God, died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only 28 years, the same year in which Tuan Guru was released from Robben Island. Tuan Guru utilised the insecurity of the Dutch authorities at the Cape to the full - it was just two years prior to the first British take over. Tuan Guru became the driving force behind a madressa (Qur’an school) and the first mosque in the Bo-Kaappart of Dorp Street in 1794. (That is the same street where Jan de Waal's big farm-house still stands today.) The madressa became a mosque in 1794 - the first of South Africa. Tuan Guru’s special contribution ushered in an Islamic revival at the Cape among the slaves. The Islamic reveil was given a major push by the materialist Dutch colonists who encouraged their slaves to become Muslims because a 1770 placaat (decree) of India, that a baptised slave could not be sold, was also applied to the Cape.  Furthermore, slaves felt very unwelcome in the two big churches of the day, the Groote Kerk and the Lutheran Church in Strand Street. By 1800, those benches in the back corner of the Groote Kerk which had been reserved traditionally for the use of slaves, were empty every Sunday. The saying went around that ‘De zwarte kerk is de slamse kerk.’ - the mosque is the church for the slaves. Bo-Kaap had become the cradle of Islam in South Africa.

A unique Theatre

Very few theatres in the world can boast to have been offering performances in four languages as a matter of course. When a settlement grew at the Cape around the Fort and menial work could be done by imported labourers, the garrisoning troops had more opportunity for organised leisure. In the 18th century these troops were mostly mercenaries – especially German. Cape Town had been establishing itself as a port of call for the ships of many nations by the middle of the 18th century. Cultural life in the town was stimulated by the contact. The Dutch colonists and officials did not incline toward frivolous entertainment, but officers of the garrisoning regiments readily took part in dramatic performances.  In 1688 the first French Huguenots arrived. When the British took over from the Dutch as colonial masters in 1795, the fourth European language was added.                                                                                                                               The African Theatre in Bree Street, also called Komediehuis, started off with a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV in 1801. The first time racial exclusion was practised in public space appears to have occurred at the African Theatre. After a fight at the premises in 1829, all slaves and free Blacks were barred from attending and three policemen were later on duty during performances ‘to keep all black boys out’ (Cited in Worden et al, The Making of a City, 1998:145).  This did not help to keep the financec healthy. By 1840 the theatre was very poorly patronized and it was finally put up for sale.

Angry Whites pelting their former Theatre

The Presbyterian Dr James Adamson and the German Lutheran Rev. Georg Wilhelm Stegmann engaged in combined outreach.  Soon after his ordination as a Lutheran minister, Stegmann felt the need to do something for the slaves.  He was asked by Adamson to join him in the ministry to the ‘Coloureds’. Stegmann was proficient in the Dutch language and consequently took a more active role in the teaching and preaching activities at St Andrew’s Mission. Adamson would preach in English in the morning and Stegmann in Dutch during the late afternoon service.

          After Dr Adamson’s return from overseas with extra funds to buy the old theatre building that augmented local donations significantly, he sided with Stegmann in the dispute that arose there after the arrival of Rev. Morgan. Hereafter the German was more or less forced to leave the church. By this time meetings and school classes for slave children were held at the poorly patronized theatre, the Komediehuis in Bree Street.      On 20 April 1842 a ‘vergadering van ontevredenheid’ (a meeting of dissatisfaction) took place at the former theatre. Stegmann encouraged the big slave audience to return to the Scottish Church, but only one person responded positively. The rest refused. He had however caused much of the discontent himself.

          The former theatre hereafter functioned as a separate church for freed slaves. This angered the colonists tremendously. Hearing that slave children were being taught in the building complex enraged the colonists.  So many of them were still illiterate! The angry Whites pelted the building at Riebeeck Square with stones. Hence the church got the name St Stephen’s, named after the first Christian martyr who was stoned to death.  

Cape Islam on the Backfoot

The Muslims would not have their own way in the field of religion.  Through ministry of Christian compassion during smallpox epidemics, many a Muslim heart was opened up. The charitable concern of Dean Thomas Fothergill Lightfoot of the St Paul’s parish of the Anglican Church during the smallpox epidemic of 1858 was e.g. making a deep impact, preparing many a Bo-Kaap Muslim for the Gospel.  Dean Lightfoot referred to an increase of ‘catechumens’ (candidates for confirmation) after the epidemic.

          In Schotse Kloof proper, the area above Buitengracht Street that got its name from the Scottish ministers who resided there, various mosques were built in the course of the 19^th century, mainly because of internal quarrels. European Christians unintentionally brought with them the baggage of racial and religious superiority, which did not stop at the church door. This happened literally after the arrival of Archdeacon Nathaniel James Merriman in 1849, scheduled to start his ministry as leader of a new diocese Grahamstown. He described how at St George's Cathedral two or three Muslims ‘with their red handkerchiefs on their heads’ came out of curiosity to see the new Archdeacon, but ‘the attendant official turned them out and shut the door in their faces!!!’.

          The churches were too occupied with their own internal issues to see the need of bringing the Gospel to the ‘Malays’ who were perceived to be inferior. At this time, the work of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) suffered due to a lack of funds. The need for a special mission to the Muslims was nevertheless definitely felt and a sub-commission was specially formed for this purpose. Speaking on behalf of this sub-commission, Rev. G.W. Stegmann insisted on a final decision in 1873. Yet, Muslims were still coming to faith in Christ. In the annual report of the SAMS of 1875 it is mentioned that 7 of the 18 new members to be confirmed were Muslims. It is ironic that Christians have saved Islam from extinction at the Cape again and again, directly and indirectly.

Two Jewish Brothers enrich the Cape                                                                                            Two Jewish brothers, Jan and Frans Lion Cachet, enriched the Cape profoundly. Frans had a short stint at St Stephen’s after the younger Stegmann had left the post vacant. He thereafter took over at the Ebenhaezer Church in Rose Street after the sudden death of Rev. Vogelgezang.  This congregation was at this time linked to the Congregational Church (Frans LionCachet, Vijftien jaar in Zuid-Afrika, 1875:82). Ds. Frans Lion Cachet initiated the remarkable innovation of teaching Arabic to pupils. This was a display of keen insight since the Arabic script was common at the time among the Muslim slaves. He also had evening classes with the intention of enabling the children and adult pupils to read and understand the Qur’an and to compare and judge for themselves.

          Ds. Jan Lion Cachet, his brother, was originally a teacher who later became a professor of Theology. Jan Lion Cachet became one of the stalwarts in the fight for the recognition of Afrikaans. It is significant that this warrior - who was born and bred in Holland - had to remind Afrikaners that the language of Holland was not feasible in this part of the world. He did this at a time when the White Afrikaners[47] were about to give up the fight for their language (Dekker, Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis, 1980:32). It is tragic that the Afrikaners made an idol out of the language, building a monument for it in Paarl. In terms of spiritual warfare, we discern how easily satan can turn a worthy cause into idolatry.[48] It honours Afrikaners that from their ranks, Theo du Plessis dared to point out, through his research into the history of Afrikaans, that the monument for the start of the language should have been built in Bo-Kaap and not in Paarl. Achmat Davids, a resident of Bo-Kaap in his life-time, hereafter highlighted in his doctoral thesis how Afrikaans was first written in Arabic script in Bo-Kaap.

Christians to the Rescue of Islam

Cape Islam was rescued from outside, in the form of reprieve from Christians in a surprising combination. Genuine compassion was displayed by Mr Petrus Emanuel de Roubaix - who was a director of the SAMS and a Cape parliamentarian. (A shift possibly occurred within the SAMS, away from an outright evangelical position to a more humanist approach). Kollisch praised the philantropist De Roubaix’s ‘indefatigable zeal in the cause of civilisation and progress’ (Maximilian Kollisch, - The Musselman Population, 1867:44).  Due to De Roubaix's intervention, Abu Bakr Effendi, an imam from Turkey, was brought in to try and stop the doctrinal fighting in the mosques.[49] Effendi was however nowhere the final answer when he caused doctrinal disunity himself. The name of the Shafee Mosque in Chiapinni Street that was built in 1876, now reminds one of the Shafee versus Hanafee Islamic struggle, which was caused by Effendi. His greatest contribution was probably the writing in Afrikaans of the Bayan al-Din, a religious text, written phonetically in Arabic script.

          The resuscitation of Islam was aided by racial prejudice.  The hatred and prejudice of rank and file Whites knitted Muslims together to fight for the survival of their religion at the Cape. Various epidemics, e.g. of smallpox, almost brought Islamic numeric growth to a halt, but the opposition to health measures and the carnal responses of the local newspapers made martyrs out of the Cape Muslims. This functioned as the glue which reunited the different factions.

          In spite of being so controversial, Effendi injected new life in Cape Islam. Under his influence there was an increase in religious services and ‘a stronger feeling of brotherhood was engendered amongst Muslim boys … and conversion to Christianity practically stopped’ (Worden et al, The Making of a City, 1998:189).

Colonist Prejudice towards Cape Muslims

Colonists had great prejudice towards Cape Muslims, who were generally referred to as Malays because of the Malayu language which was the lingua franca of the slaves. 

          The general attitude of Christian missionaries towards the Cape Muslims as a people group was however fairly positive, but this appears to only marginally influence the rank and file colonist. The positive view of Christian missionaries was for example reflected in the report of a mission Committee in 1847.  This report described the Muslims as ‘an industrious, thriving people, many of them wealthy, and generally speaking, they manifest an intelligence of mind and a respectability of character decidedly superior to most of the other classes of the coloured population’. This was in keeping with the philanthropic spirit of the period after the emancipation of the slaves. The cordial atmosphere changed when the attitude in society towards Muslims turned around significantly in the last quarter of the 19^th century.

          An objection to hospitalisation was that the food was not ‘hallal’ (ritually clean). Hospital regulations rejected the food that was brought from home. During the 1807, 1812, 1840 and 1858 smallpox epidemics, the Cape Muslims endured these indignities in silent protest. In 1882 they openly showed their defiance by refusing hospitalisation, quarantine, vaccination and fumigation. The view that their religion is ‘superior to the law’ (Cape Times, 1 August 1882) made middle-class Cape Town furious against them and newspapers started to scorn them. The suggestion was made that the ‘Malays’ should be accommodated in separate residential areas (Lantern, 9 September 1882). As soon as their demands were met, provision was made for the ablution ritual and nurses were drawn from their community, the Cape Muslims complied with the regulations. But dangerous seed had been sown, which was to germinate in due course (The seed of residential segregation re-surfaced in the establishment of a ‘location’ for Blacks in Ndabeni at the turn of the century when the Bubonic Plague hit the Mother City and still later with racist apartheid laws of the 1950s and 1960s, e.g. the Group Areas Act).

          The communal life had the imam in the centre. The Muslims consulted him on all occasions. Visiting the sick was part and parcel of his religious obligation. Therefore they rallied together in anger when the ‘infidel’ authorities ordered that the imam should not visit his congregants during the time of an epidemic. This ultimately led to the riot led by the cabdriver Abdol Burns. (see chapter 13)

Residential Apartheid established 

Dr Abdurahman appeared to have become fairly accommodating with regard to racial segregation and less principled after his second marriage with Maggie Stansfield, a local Christian. He co-operated in the government ‘Commission of Enquiries Regarding the Cape Coloured Population’ without even a single note of dissent, albeit that through this co-operation he achieved the building of the Schotsche’s Kloof flats for Muslim occupation. This was the beginning of Bo-Kaap becoming a Muslim stronghold.  The recommendations of this commission laid the foundation for apartheid legislation like residential areas for different races. In the twilight of his illustrious career Dr Abdurahman was unfortunately known for bad compromises.      

The Malay Quarter falls apart – literally

Bo-Kaap was threatened from yet another angle after Dr Abdurahman’s departure from the political scene. At this time the slamse buurt, the ‘Malay Quarter’proper, was also falling apart physically. White speculators pocketed exorbitant rents, not concerned with the condition of the houses on their properties. The invasion of non-Muslims as subtenants resulted in the over-crowding of the ‘Malay Quarter’. It deteriorated gradually into slum conditions.  Even the pride of the Cape Muslims, their artisans, was affected so that the author Lewis (‘Cape Muslims’ in Ellen Hellman and Leah Abrahams (eds), Handbook on Race Relations in South Afica, 1949:649) wrote about the disappearance and even ‘death of the Malay crafts’.  However, he over-stated his case somewhat by speaking of the ‘disintegration of community living’ (p.598). The old houses of the original ‘slamse buurt’ (Malay Quarter) with the borders, Dorp, Strand, Rose and Chiappini Streets, were deteriorating fast towards the end of the 1940s, but the Islamic community was still clinging to each other, with Bo-Kaap and District Six as an axis around which much of the subculture revolved.

Bo-Kaap saved by far-sighted People

Far-sighted people like Dr Izak David Du Plessis, a lecturer from UCT and a famous Afrikaans poet - along with other Whites like Dr E.G. Jansen - had a deep sense of cultural history.  Dr Du Plessis especially was loved by many Muslims of the Bo-Kaap and appreciated by them for his efforts to get the Malay Quarter restored to its former glory.  It is appropriate to highlight that when the Malay Quarter was definitely threatened with extinction, Du Plessis rallied many friends - almost all White and Christian - to fight for the restoration of the dilapidated houses. In altruistic manner Du Plessis passed the honour to the group headed by Dr E.G. Jansen, who subsequently became the Governor General of the Cape Province.  Du Plessis described them as ‘...untiring idealists who realize that the Malay Quarter is the pivot of Cape Malay life’ (Du Plessis and Lückhoff, 1953:12/13).  They succeeded to get 15 houses restored in the block between Rose, Wale, Chiapinni and Longmarket Streets. The rest of the Bo-Kaap continued to deteriorate.

          At the request of the government Department of Community Development, the City Council drew up a scheme for the general rehabilitation of the area.  In 1966 Mr P.W. Botha had a number of houses built in his capacity of Minister of Community Development. How sincere he was, was never clear. It really was a question whether it was not merely a gesture to placate the opposition after the furore and outcry after the District Six proclamation of 11 February 1966.  Soon Botha was to show his true colours when he became the Minister of Coloured Affairs. Yet later, he was known as the unbending almost callous ‘groot krokodiel’ as Prime Minister and State President.

          Also on the Christian side, there was a threat at this time. Only a remnant of St Stephen’s Church members had remained when many moved away to other parts of the Peninsula. The maintenance of the building became a big burden to the church. Rev. P.S. Latsky, who served the congregation from 1930, had a heart for the historical value of the building. He fought successfully for its preservation when developers wanted to use the church and the adjacent lot for a parking garage in 1949.

The Legalizing of racial Separation

At a time when Islam was reeling, the legalizing of racial separation in 1948 saved the day for Muslims. When the Nationalist government took over in that year, it soon became clear that people of colour would be discriminated against. Islam at the Cape was embattled once again because its adherents were grouped with the ‘Coloureds’. 

          The dubious honour goes to Dr Izak David Du Plessis for the application of apartheid ideology to the Cape Muslims. He contributed in a big way to the ‘redefinition of ‘Malay’ as an ethnic designation in terms of the larger racialist scheme of apartheid’ (Chidester, Religions in South Africa, 1992:167). He wrote books about the Cape Muslims, their culture and history. Originally the term ‘Malay’ denoted a religious and not a racial group in his writings.

          Muslims (like all peoples of colour) were divided with regard to the opposition to the oppressive laws.

'Group Areas' promotes Islamic Expansion

Already in 1940 the report of E. Beaudouin, which was presented to the Cape Town City Council, envisaged three ‘Slum Clearance Projects’, viz. (a) District Six, (b) the Malay Quarter, (c) the Docks Area. With regard to the latter area, also called Roggebaai, the eviction of ‘Coloured’ inhabitants caused no upheaval. Thus the Baptist Church in Jarvis Street became the home of the Cape Town Photographic Society. Many who did not know anything about Islam, now came to know Muslims. They somehow spread the confusing message hereafter unwittingly that ‘we have the same God’.

          Bo-Kaap became even more of an Islamic stronghold. Those churches below Buitengracht Street that chose to stay put, namely St Paul’s (Anglican) and St Stephen’s (DRC), merely survived. Their members hereafter often had to travel great distances to attend services.

Political Inertia and Indifference of Christians

The clampdown of the government on all political activity of resistance in the 1960s caused fear and a relative indifference in the oppressed communities. In some cases sheer opportunism and convenience occurred – such as to achieve the right to remain living in Bo-Kaap. Some Christians deemed it an appropriate reprisal to turn to Islam to vent their anger.  Opportunistic vultures of colour - people who had seen their own communities destroyed - were just waiting for the government to change its mind on Bo-Kaap with its scenic beauty. Prior to the District Six boycott, this part of the city - with its excellent views and proximity to the central business district of the city - was expected by many to follow suit, also to be declared a White residential area. The influence of Dr I.D Du Plessis who might have put up a fight on their behalf, was waning by this time.

The final Rescue of Bo-Kaap

The revival of Islam at the Cape in the late 1960s coincided with the dual Group Areas proclamations: District Six was declared a White residential suburb in 1966 and Bo-Kaap was to become a ‘Cape Malay’ pocket. The latter area was thus perceived to have been reserved for Cape Muslims.[50] By becoming a Muslim, one received the right to remain in or move into Bo-Kaap. Some Christians decided to become Muslims so that they could remain in the area.  Christians and their churches were required to leave Bo-Kaap.

          Deputy Cabinet minister Blaar Coetzee and his assistants at the government department, which was ironically called ‘Community Development’, continued with the evictions of people in Walmer Estate, which is situated adjacent to District Six. Who could blame those people in the area who became cynical? The rejected people had seen their community systematically destroyed. White Portuguese-speaking settlers, traders and other people who saw the clock ticking against them after the Frelimo take-over in Mozambique, started to move into Walmer Estate.  

          Whites came to the rescue of Bo-Kaap once again in the wake of the District Six promulgation in 1966 in more than one way.  Yet, Mr P.W. Botha, Minister of Community Development and later Prime Minister, was far from happy. He went ahead with plans to have Bo-Kaap declared a White residential area.

          Another Du Plessis was the heroe of Bo-Kaap, but only very few inhabitants know that. It surfaced that Mr P.W. Botha was quietly planning the re-zoning of Bo- Kaap as a White residential area. Ian Du Plessis, a civil servant working in the Department of Housing, proved to be quite a thorn in Botha’s flesh. Botha was furious, especially when he found out that his plans for Bo-Kaap were leaked to the press. Ian Du Plessis had been responsible for this. He had unsuccessfully tried to counter what he termed ‘Botha’s folly’ for District Six. This time he was more successful when Rykie van Reenen, a journalist with Die Burger, exposed the vicious plans to evict the Bo-Kaap residents.  Mr P. W. Botha fumed in anger, but Bo-Kaap was saved once again, this time from apartheid demolition.

          The government of the day got a fright through the effect of the successful boycott to purchase property, organised by the church-based Friends of District Six.  If the government had their way here and in Walmer Estate, the Nationalist government would have been able to steam roll through other areas as well.

          Muslim entrepeneurs sensed the chance of making big profits in Walmer Estate, buying up property for a song. Portuguese-speaking White people had started moving there. When the Muslims started coming in, they left one after the other. This resulted in the previously out and out Christian suburb becoming Islamic, although it still has only one mosque which had already been built in 1923. This was the first of many new Cape suburbs to become Islamic in ownership and cultural flavour in the 1990s and thereafter.

Interest in Muslim Outreach ushered in

Ds. Davie Pypers became a pioneer missionary to the Cape Muslims after he had become a minister at St Stephen’s. It is fitting that the initiative for the resumption of evangelistic work among the Cape Muslims in the second half of the twentieth century was undertaken by the South African Missionary Society. Ds. Pypers, who became a full-time missionary for this purpose in July 1961, was joined by Pieter Els who had been challenged to reach out to Muslims with the Gospel along with two other student theological colleagues, Willem Louw en Coen Brand, while they were studying at Stellenbosch in 1960. A witness group - spearheaded by White theological students - was started in Stellenbosch in the 1960s, reaching out to the Muslims of Idas Valley, the local ‘Coloured’ residential area.  

          The stalwart work of women in breaking down the prejudice of Muslims has too often not been duly recognized. Johanna van Zyl and Ria Olivier kept the loving outreach to Muslims in Bo-Kaap and other places going, along with other women of the Vrouesendingbond (Women’s Missionary Guild). That Johanna van Zyl could write in the August 1974 edition of Die Ligdraer about her 25 years of work amongst children in Bo-Kaap is an exception that only amplifies the rule. The fact is that whereas a few Cape Muslim women came to faith in Christ, conversions among their male counterparts remained rare to this day.

A significant Power Encounter

When Ds. Davie Pypers commenced work in 1956 as a minister of the Dutch Reformed St Stephen’s Church in Bree Street - which was quite prominent in the Bo-Kaap in those days - he discerned the need for increased prayer for the Muslims of the area. Soon he initiated praying for Bo-Kaap and the Muslims living there. Together with two other Dutch Reformed Church colleagues, he interceded every Monday for the area that became even more pronouncedly Islamic in the wake of the envisaged implementation of Group Areas legislation.

          Davie Pypers was called to become the missionary to the Cape Muslims on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church, linked to the historical Gestig (Sendingkerk) congregation in Long Street, the church where once people from different denominations worshipped, the cradle of missionary outreach in South Africa.[51] He had hardly started with his new work when a challenge came from a young imam, Mr Ahmed Deedat, to publicly debate the death of Jesus on the Cross.  As a young dominee David Pypers prepared himself through prayer and fasting in a tent on the mountains at Bain’s Kloof for the event on 13 August 1961 at the Green Point Track.

The Green Point Aftermath

The Green Point event thus resulted in a victory for the Cross, when Mrs Withuhn was miraculously healed in the name of the resurrected Lord.

What was perceived as the defeat of Ahmed Deedat and thus of the Muslims at Green Point, called for revenge. Deedat stated publicly that the original motivation for these public debates was his humiliation at the hands of Christians. He was not going to accept defeat lying down.

          The impact of the miracle was almost nullified by the news that came from another part of the world that same day. The report of the building of the Berlin Wall resounded throughout the world! A new type of battle was cemented - the ‘cold war’ between Soviet Communism and Western Capitalism!

The Islamic Crescent was subtly linked to Communism in opposition to the Cross. (This was to happen again in reverse in 1990 after the demise of Communism.

Injections for Outreach to Muslims

The German missionary couple Gerhard and Hannelore Nehls had to stop their work in Johannesburg with the Bible Band for health reasons. When they saw Bo-Kaap at the beginning of 1975 for the first time, it immediately called forth a resonance in their hearts.  Soon the focus of their ministry changed, although they were formally still missionaries of the Bible Band. In the mid-1970s the missionary effort to reach out the Muslims at the Cape was revived through the pioneering work of the Nehls couple, who laboured hard for many years without seeing much in terms of fruit or local recognition. Nehls started with regular outreach to Muslims in Salt River in 1980, later calling the mission agency Life Challenge. 

          Support from the Cape churches was almost non-existent at the time. In fact, the churches remained rather indifferent to Muslim outreach in general. Even denominations that were very much involved in evangelism, like the Docks Mission and the City Mission, had little vision for the Muslims on their doorstep. Suburbs like Woodstock and Salt River had become increasingly Islamic, due in part to this indifference. Prostitution, drug abuse and the sale of houses to Muslims who had been tenants, were however the major factors, which pushed many Christians out of these residential areas during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A major contribution by Gerhard Nehls was that he linked up with Alain and Nicole Ravelo-Hoërson, who respectively came from Madagascar and the island Reunion as Bible School students. John Gilchrist (Jesus to the Muslims) and Fred Nel (Eternal Outreach) joined forces with Nehls, Alain and Nicole in 1982 under the umbrella of CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims). They later held annual conferences for all co-workers, in addition to a leadership consultation once a year. 

                   A Xhosa-speaking female started Muslim outreach in

                   Bo-Kaap as preparation for missionary work

Significantly, one of the founder members was Gloria Cube, a Xhosa-speaking female, started with Muslim outreach in Bo-Kaap as preparation for missionary work with Africa Evangelical Fellowship.[52]

A Catalyst for the Death of Apartheid 

Quite a few people of colour left South Africa because their skin pigmentation prevented them from using their talents to the full in their homeland.  Some of them had roots in District Six and its surrounds.

The history of the cricketer Basil d’Oliviera, one of the greatest cricketing all-rounders that South Africa produced, is perhaps the best known in a long list of Capetonians of colour who emigrated to receive recognition. The cricketer, who was raised in Bo-Kaap’s Bloem Street, went on to play for England in an illustrious career. Batting magnificently for Worcestershire in 1968 against the Australians, the Cape all-rounder made his selection – now a British citizen – a mere formality. Surprisingly, the England selectors seemed to have bowed before pressure from somewhere to omit him initially from the England team touring squad scheduled to come to South Africa at the end of that year. When one of the players withdrew due to injury, 'Dolly' – as he was affectionately called – could not be overlooked any more. He was fairly promptly named as a replacement.

          Prime Minister Vorster and his government were not impressed, declaring that they were not prepared to accept a team that had been thrust upon them with political motives. The decision to disallow Basil d’Oliviera to represent his new home country England, sparked off international sporting fury. This ushered in the isolation of the country for many years in sports, arguably the most important incident to usher in the swann song of apartheid.

Culture

On the female side, 'Cape Malay' cuisine definitely made its mark.  Boeboetie, samoosa's and koeksisters made the ladies from Bo-Kaap well known. Bo-Kaap and District Six formed together a hub in various facets of sports with cricket and rugby the more prominent.

We saw how Islam took over the mantle from Communism as a threat to world peace when Saddam Hussein marched into Kuweit with his army. That event became the catalyst for many Christians to start praying against the ideology of Islam as a spiritual force. The exposure of the violent nature of the religion – in sharp contrast to the politically correct view of Islam as a peaceful religion – may ultimately lead to its demise as a political ideology, as it happened to Communism.

Personal Involvement

I never thought that I would one day live in the suburb Tamboerskloof which I perceived as a White Afrikaner stronghold of the Mother City. The desperate need for accommodation for our family of seven and many negatives in January 1992 brought us looking there although it was well above our upper financial faith limit. We received accommodation there as a divine opening and a gift - within walking distance to the German School. We enrolled our children there because of their lack of sufficient knowledge of English and Afrikaans.) This location brought Rosemarie and me to do some prayer walking in nearby Bo-Kaap.

          Our Bo-Kaap prayer walks resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer from 73 Wale Street. (These prayer meetings had been initiated and led by a SIM Life Challenge missionary, until his departure for Kenya, prior to our arrival in Cape Town. The prayer meetings focused on reversing the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap, which had become a spiritually dark Muslim stronghold.  This evolved into a monthly event – interspersed with prayer evenings for Bo-Kaap, Sea Point and the Middle East due to the participation of Elizabeth Campbell. (She had and still has a passion for Jews.) At one of these meetings, Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background follower of our Lord, suggested a lunchtime prayer meeting on Fridays- at the same time that Muslims attend their main mosque services.

These prayer events started in September 1992 in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street near Heritage Square. When the building was sold a few years later, the weekly event switched to the Koffiekamer at 108 Bree Street (The venue was used by Straatwerk for their ministry to the homeless, street children, and to certain night clubs.)  In addition to prayers for a spiritual breakthrough in the area, a foundation and/or catalyst for many evangelistic initiatives was laid at the Friday lunch hour prayer meetings. The vision, to get prayer groups formed all over the Peninsula - so that the spiritual eyes of Muslims might be opened to Jesus as the Saviour of the World and as the Son of God - never took off. Here and there a prayer group started and petered out again. Two prayer groups operated in Plumstead and Muizenberg for a few years apiece. The leaders of the respective prayer groups, Sally Kirkwood and Gill Knaggs, later got involved with the Cape prayer movement.  The Friday lunch hour prayer meetings continued in the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk until July 2007, when it was relocated to our Discipling House in Mowbray and moved to another day of the week.

I had heard my mother mentioning that I was born at St Monica’s Maternity Clinic in Bo-Kaap. Ministry at that institution subsequently played a special role in our getting to know quite a few Cape Muslims. After initial scepticism because of her skin colour and foreign accent, Rosemarie would immediately get complete trust from the patients when she mentioned that her husband was born at the self-same maternity clinic. The friendships to a Bo-Kaap family brought Rosemarie to a handcraft club and thereafter into many other activities with ladies of the suburbs. She was always the only Christian in the group.

12. The Blood of Cape Martyrs

            Tertullian, the North African theologian coined already the adage centuries ago that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. The Cape had a variation in the early days of the colony when Muslim convicts formed the backbone of Cape Islam. Much of this sort of history was locked up for ages in archives and still much of the unrecorded legacy of martyrs must still be unearthed. Of Tuan Guru, one of those banished Islamic leaders from the East, we have some information. In the previous chapter we noted already how his special contribution ushered in an Islamic revival at the Cape among the slaves.

            Through the ages the mystery of Tertullian’s adage has been proven to be true. Of course, this is the bottom line of the Christian message. Jesus was persecuted and crucified innocently as a run-up to his resurrection.

           

Run-up to a special Funeral

1960 became a year of nation-wide turmoil in the run-up and aftermath of the riots in the Cape Black township Langa. Sharpeville became nationally and internationally more wide-known. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), led by the dynamic Robert Sobukwe, was a Black nationalist break-away from the ANC. Sobukwe, a pioneer advocate of Black Consciousness, believed that the Blacks had to throw off the shackles of oppression themselves before they could accept Whites as compatriots and fellow Africans. In the view of the PAC, the ANC commitment had become diluted because of the presence of other races. The pass laws were first introduced with the sole purpose of channelling and directing cheap African labour into White farms and other establishments. The pass book was thus to them ‘a badge of slavery’. Thousands of Blacks would leave their passes at home and present themselves at police stations all over the country for arrest. They would fill prisons to overflowing and make influx control unworkable.

With a strong emphasis on non-violence Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan African Congress of Azania (PAC), had called on thousands of Blacks to leave their discriminatory passes at home on the 21st March 1960, and present themselves at police stations for arrest. They would fill prisons to overflowing and make influx control unworkable. Cape Town was one of a few places to respond enthusiastically to the call. The tide of insurgency here led to a mass march on 30^th March 1960 after a brutal attack on striking Langa residents. Knife-edge tension was building up throughout the Western Cape.

Thirty thousand protesters walked from Langa to the City along De Waal Drive. Philip Kgosana, a young student, was the regional secretary of the PAC. He joined the marchers belatedly, but immediately took command of the ‘most remarkable march in South African history to date’. Now and then he stopped the marchers and taught them about non-violence.

The idea of taking the passes to police stations en masse had already been mooted by the ANC. By doing this a few days ahead of the mother organisation, the PAC in this way actually upstaged the ANC.

PAC-led pass Campaign succeeds at the Cape                                                                                  The PAC-led campaign faltered everywhere the next few days except in Cape Town. In the week prior to the 21^st March, ‘war prayers’ were offered ‘on the sandy hills of Nyanga West almost every night, and recited the famous war songs and prayer of the great Xhosa warrior, Ntsikana’ (Philip Kgosana, Lest we forget, 1988:20).[53] Philip Ata Kgosana, a young student who hailed from the north, was the regional secretary of the PAC. Already from midnight on Sunday 20 March a large crowd gathered at Bunga Square in Langa. In a roaring speech Kgosana passed on the final instructions of Sobukwe - there was to be absolute non-violence! ‘Anyone who agitates for violence or starts violence... we will regard as a paid agent of the government... The white rulers are going to be extremely ruthless. But we must meet their hysterical brutality with calm iron determination...’ (Kgosana, 1988:105). In his motivational address the young Kgosana whipped up the crowd with an appeal and a call to action to ‘throw our whole weight... to defeat forces of oppression... We are either slave or free men – that’s all... We are fighting against a Calvinistic doctrine that a certain nation was especially chosen by God to lead, guide and protect other nations... Fellow Africans, the hour for service, sacrifice and suffering has come. Let us march to a new independent Africa with courage and determination. Forward to independence! To independence now! Tomorrow the United States of Africa!’ (Kgosana, 1988:103,107).

On the morning of 21 March 1960 – the same day as the notorious massacre of Sharpeville - thousands of Blacks congregated at the Philippi police station, forming an orderly line, declaring that they had come to hand in their pass books and wanted to be arrested. The bemused policemen at the station took their names, telling them to go home and await a summons to appear in court. The crowd left peacefully, leaving great piles of pass books at the police station.

The PAC had called a meeting for the same evening to take place at Langa to report on the progress of the anti-pass campaign. Many turned up that evening, unintentionally defying a ban on meetings in Langa that day, under the impression that they would receive an official response to their protest (Gerald Shaw, The Cape Times, an informal history, 1999:159). At the meeting covered by Cape Times reporter Terry Herbst, the meeting had just been opened with prayers when ‘a strong force of police drove up in a Saracen armoured car and wire-meshed troop-carriers formed up alongside the road’. An officer with a loud-hailer ordered the crowd to disperse and then proceeded, before the crowd had broken up, to order a baton charge. This was the first of several charges. The enraged crowd retaliated by throwing stones at the police, who opened fire in return with sten guns and small arms.

Fortunately the police soon retreated to their station soon hereafter, covered by machine-gun fire. Otherwise the casualty toll would have been worse than Sharpeville. Yet, two men were shot dead and 49 people were injured. Richard Lombard from Walmer Estate, the driver of the Cape Times vehicle, was battered and burnt to death in an outburst of mob hysteria. Seven buildings including two schools were destroyed by fire in a wild night of violence.

Now rendered unenforceable, the pass laws were suspended on Saturday 26 March. This sent a wave of hysterical jubilation among Blacks. The entire Black population of the Peninsula seemed to throw their weight behind the PAC campaign, which included a very effective stay-away and crippling Cape industry significantly. The tide of insurgency here led to a mass march on 30^th March 1960 after a brutal attack on striking Langa residents. Knife-edge tension was building up throughout the Western Cape.

A Treacherous Response to peaceful Protest

Colonel Ignatius Terblanche, who had been called urgently to the scene, was overwhelmed when he saw the size of the crowd. ‘He fell to his knees in the police station and prayed before embarking on a daring quest for peace – which, without doubt, clashed with the views of the government’ (Heard, 1990:96). Divine peace must have overpowered him as he went outside to lead a small party of unarmed senior officers.  The scene witnessed and described by Tony Heard, a journalist of the Cape Times and a later editor of the Cape Town morning paper, belongs to sacred history, including very special words, unheard for an Afrikaner, the son of a bankrupt ostrich farmer, speaking to a Black. Heard reports Terblanche’s first remark and the reaction, after he was introduced to the young student as follows: “Mr Kgosana, I speak to you as one gentleman to another. Please, would you ask the crowd to be quiet?” Kgosana was given the use of a loudhailer and … said in a loud voice in English: “Let us be silent... just like people who are going to a graveyard... Quiet descended abruptly on the scene...’

Kgosana agreed to disperse the crowd after an undertaking by Colonel Terblanche that he would meet Mr F.C. Erasmus, the Minister of Justice, later in the day to discuss their grievances. ‘He complained about Africans being hurled from their hostel rooms in the townships by police trying to force them to go to work that day and earlier’ (Heard, 1990:97). The young Black student from Pretoria and the trusting thirty thousand were to be tricked. Kgosana was summarily arrested when he arrived for the meeting. Tony Heard testified later to this fact. The journalist was convinced that Terblanche had been sincere, but that his Cabinet Minister had let him down. ‘The available record leaves Terblanche an honourable man and condemns Erasmus’ (Tony Heard, The Cape of Storms, 1990:99). Terblanche and Tony Heard became strange bedfellows when both of them became a prey to racist vendettas. The Star quoted the then 84-year old Terblanche in July 1987: ‘I was blamed for not using force, even among my colleagues’ and there were suggestions that promotion was withheld because he failed to obey orders.  (Tony Heard harvested the wrath of his employers when he dared to follow his convictions to interview Oliver Tambo, the leader in exile of the ANC. His dismissal was performed in such a shrewd way that there was just enough time between the interview and the sacking as editor to prevent a direct connection.) 

Police Brutality creating Martyrs

Few countrieshave more martyrs of police brutality than South Africa. Tension rose to breaking point. Tony Heard (1990:101) suggests that there ‘was no further inclination to accept the white government’s assurances.’ The breach of promise on 30 March 1960 has to be regarded as the start of the violent struggle against apartheid. Sharpeville had been bad enough, but now Blacks were convinced that the Afrikaner government could not be trusted.

          Police hereafter surrounded the Black townships, combined by a military cordon, to crush all further resistance. A state of emergency was called from March 30 to August 31, 1960 during which twelve thousand people were detained around the country. The pass laws which had been temporarily suspended on March 26, were reinstated. On 8 April 1960, the ANC and the PAC were banned. By 11 April the strike was broken and the cordon lifted, but the three weeks of protest shook the country. This situation continued on a more subdued note for quite a few months.

          The Cape remained part and parcel of the revolutionary ferment for some time – notably through POQO in the Paarl area towards the end of 1962. (The splinter group calling themselves POQO meaning alone – beyond talking, beyond negotiation - was particularly strong in Paarl. It started with the goal of purging the country of Whites. The PAC slogan of the 1990s ‘one settler, one bullet’ has its origins in that movement.)

          Large-scale capital flight seemed to bring Harold Macmillan’s speech in the parliament into fulfilment, viz. that the wind of change has also hit South Africa.

The Black Christ travels the World

Born in Cape Town in 1940, Ronald Harrison spent most of his youth in District Six and completed his education at Harold Cressy High School. His artistic abilities manifested at an early age, and in his teens he displayed a keen interest in the political scenario of South Africa. One of his main role models was South Africa's first Peace Nobel laureate, Chief Albert Luthuli. This became the inspiration for an oil painting, The Black Christ, which caused an immediate stir when it was unveiled in Cape Town.  Black Christ was unveiled in 1962 at St Luke's Church in the Cape suburb of Salt River. The young artist chose Chief Albert Luthuli as a model for the face of Christ. The two centurions depicted John Vorster and Hendrik Verwoerd, arch-proponents of apartheid. For his bold act and defiance, refusing to divulge the whereabouts of the painting, Ronald Harrison had to pay a high price – incarcerated, tortured and harassed. His health was seriously impeded, but he was also offered a bursary to study in the USA. The government responded by offering him an 'exit permit', which meant that he would not have been allowed to return to his home country after completion of his studies. Many people of colour left South Africa in the 1960s in this way.  Ronald Harrison then rather turned down the offer to study overseas. Also socially he was deprived when two broken engagements ensued. Partly as a result of the interrogatory torture inflicted to him, 'I was hesitant to commit to marriage' (Ronald Harrison, The Black Christ, 2006:99). After being smuggled out of the country, The Black Christ painting turned to become seed of liberation, used for fund-raising overseas to defend apartheid victims via the Defence and Aid Fund in England.

Death of an Imam in Police Custody

Hard-handed brutality of the police made martyrs of many religious or political prisoners at the Cape. In recent decades there were fortunately some committed people who refused to succumb to the normal South African ‘way of life’ of convenience and comfort. Rev. Bernard Wrankmore had been an Anglican chaplain to seamen when he was especially challenged to pray for the beloved country in 1971.  Just at that time, Wrankmore saw the dossier of Imam Abdullah Haron, who had died while in police custody on 27 September 1969. Mrs Catherine Taylor, an opposition Member of Parliament, had brought up the issue, which the government of the day evidently wanted to squash. The Imam Haron case highlighted for Rev. Wrankmore the fact that South Africa was now misled by a delusion – just like the Germans had been under Hitler. He decided to retreat for prayer and fasting to St George’s Cathedral for the situation in the country. However, Wrankmore was refused permission to do so by the Archbishop and the Dean of the Cathedral. Instead, he requested and received permission to pray and fast in the Muslim shrine near to Lion’s Head.

          Wrankmore came into the frontline of opposition to Prime Minister Vorster, when he requested an inquiry into the death of Imam Haron. He added weight to his protest through a drawn-out fast. A friend who had visited him at the shrine near to Lion’s Head, put newspaper reporters on his track. It was definitely not Wrankmore’s own idea to get media attention.  Initially the effort of the cleric seemed in vain, as Prime Minister Vorster remained unbending. Eventually a judicial inquiry followed when Advocate Wilfred Cooper came into the picture. His intervention highlighted the conditions in prisons where opponents of the government were also tortured to death. The highlighting of Imam Haron’s death was important because policemen and torturers hereafter were more careful. Still, this did not prevent the death of Steve Biko in 1977.

Cape Victims of the freedom Struggle

Many people went in and out of prison or were banished to forlorn country towns during the apartheid era for the flimsiest of reasons. I almost suffered the latter fate for refusing to participate in the Republican festivals of May 1966 and influencing children at the school where I taught to do the same. A brilliant teacher colleague, Armien Jardine, was sacked for the same reason.

         Soon after our arrival as a new pastoral couple to reside in Zeist (Holland) in 1977, I heard that Chris Wessels, a minister colleague and long-time friend had been imprisoned and that nobody from his family knew where he was incarcerated. He was neither formally accused nor 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.

Thereafter 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 got other countries to write to the S.A. Embassies in their respective countries. We heard later that this move possibly saved Chris’s life.

Ashley Kriel, a 20-year old activist from the Cape township Bonteheuwel, was killed by police on 9 July 1987 for his role in advocating anti-apartheid actions. At that time it was reported as follows: ‘Mourners carrying the coffin of Ashley Kriel as they scrambled for cover when the police tried to enforce Government restrictions on funerals. Mr. Kriel died in a scuffle with police last week.’ Ashley Kriel became the face of Cape martyrs in our road to democratic government. On his release from prison in February 1990, Nelson Mandela acknowledged Ashley Kriel's sacrifice for the freedom struggle.

A Father pays a high Price for his Faith

Ali Behardien, a Cape Muslim accountant from Paarl, courted major problems when he became a conscious follower of Jesus in 1985. His own father suggested that he should leave the region. He then went to Mmabatho in the apartheid-created ‘homeland’ of Bophuthatswana where he stayed for six and a half years. Thereafter he returned to the Western Cape where he engaged in theological studies, finally attaining a Ph.D. under Prof. Dirkie Smit. In 1994 he addressed the Toringkerk Dutch Reformed congregation in Paarl, sharing his testimony of how he became a follower of Jesus. Soon hereafter his son was shot and killed by an unknown hitman draped in 'Yasser Arafat gear'. That garb soon became known as the People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) hallmark in the Western Cape. Just like Professor Johan Heyns, a prominent Afrikaner theologian, who was also assassinated at that time, the killers have still to be identified.  This was a high price Dr Behardien had to pay for his faith as a father because the young man had actually been raised as a Christian. But perhaps this was also some of the seed of martyrs at the Cape.  More Cape Muslims came to the Lord in the years hereafter than before. A new quality came to the fore – folk who were fearless and not clearly scared off by islamic intimidation.

Opposition to PAGAD

The 10-week teaching course ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour’ emphasized prayer as an integral part of ‘spiritual warfare’.  Just before the course was scheduled to start, there was an arson attempt on the intended venue, the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne. When Muslims offered to help with the repair of the damage done, the suspicion was confirmed that satanists were not really behind the arson attack as had been suggested by a Cape Argus reporter. The reason that the first course was held at St James Church in Kenilworth from 3 September to 5 November 1996 was exactly because we wanted to use it as a ‘Gideon’s fleece’ (compare Judges 6:36-40), a test to make sure that we had God’s will in it. A Lebanon-type of scenario - with Christians and Muslims fighting each other – had become a very real possibility. We did not know at that time that Lansdowne was a major People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) stronghold. In fact, PAGAD was virtually unknown before August 1996. Since then, conflicting reports were published about the intention of Muslims – notably that of the radical Qibla faction of PAGAD - to attempt the Islamization of Africa from the south and starting in the Western Cape.

A Drug Lord shot and killed

On Easter Sunday 1999 one of our co-workers called us, telling us that Glen Khan had been shot and killed. The Mitchells Plain gang leader and drug lord whose wife had been a secret Christian believer for some months, was assassinated on Easter Sunday - only a few days after he had committed his life to Jesus as his Lord.

          Two weeks prior to Khan’s assassination, Rashied Staggie, a famous Cape drug lord, had been shot and hospitalized. Staggie made the news headlines from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus Christ. At the funeral of Glen Khan in the Shekinah Tabernacle - the church led by Pastor Edson - Rashied Staggie who had just come out of hiding, professed his faith openly. This became the start of a trickle of Muslims turning to Jesus, especially in the Mitchell’s Plain area.

               The new babe in Christ gave a powerful  

                            message to the packed church

When ‘Brother Rashied’ was called up to give a tribute at the funeral service, it caused quite a stir because the media had evidently been tipped off that the changed drug lord 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 service that was relayed via the public addressing system. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of gangsters. Staggie, who had been reading the Bible in the preceding weeks avidly, challenged his followers present, quoting from Scripture that the Lord was the one to take revenge: ‘My kom die wraak toe’.  He emphasised: 'We are not going to retaliate!' Coming from someone who had virtually escaped death after an assassination attempt, the message could hardly miss the mark.

Sequel to a Funeral

The PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) movement, which was actually led by drug lords posing as businessmen and who were purporting to be the guardians of good morals, seemed threatened after the funeral of Glen Khan.

                   In the wake of Glen Khan's funeral on 7 April 1999 and Staggie's powerful testimony on that occasion, Muslims started turning to Christ more than before.  Suddenly PAGAD was marginalized. It was not surprising that they now frantically sought to obtain credibility. It was however quite unexpected that they had become willing, almost eager, to speak to a church leader. This was God supernaturally at work, but Pastor Eddie Edson and his pastor colleagues were not immediately aware of it. When ‘Muslim leaders’ wanted to speak to Edson, a confrontation was feared, because reports were coming in of Muslims who turned to Christ in the wake of the Khan funeral, some in trains. Intercessors were called in to bathe the proposed meeting in prayer.  A general crisis was feared once again. A direct result of all this was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI) - church leaders who tried to mediate between PAGAD and gang leaders.

The best Answer to Terrorism

Events at the Cape gave to the world what is possibly the best answer to terrorism – united prayer! The miracle elections of 1994, the marginalising of PAGAD in 199 and the end to the bombing spree at the turn of the millennium cannot be explained rationally. All three occasions were, however, preceded by a volatile situation when Christians were challenged to pray more than they were used to do. The Al-Qaeda brains behind the vicious attacks should have second thoughts, considering that their deeds may usher in the demise of their religion!

            While he was in hiding at the Cape, Mark Gabriel started with significant research on jihad (holy war), studying Arabic Islamic literature and finishing his manuscript in 2001 in the USA, where he had moved to in the meantime. The September 11 event of that year made his book on the topic a bestseller when it appeared at the beginning of 2002. It came out under the title Terrorism and Islam. The book turned out to be a major factor in the exposure of the violent side of Islam, going into its fourth print already by April 2003.

            The Al-Qaeda related attacks, like the one in Madrid in 2004 and in London on 7 July 2005, were attempts to shock the West into submission to Islam. This is how Amir Taheri, an Iranian commentator, explained the shock motive in The Times on Friday, the 8th July 2005, the day after the London tube train disaster.

Disasters like these gave a ready market for books that expose the violent nature of the Medinan version of Islam. These were the instructions of the prime Islamic prophet Muhammad in the last part of his life. It is not impossible that Muslims may start turning their backs on a religion marked by terrorism and violence – a religion that blinds young people to such an extent that they volunteer participating in suicide bombings. The view that Islam means peace, along with the earlier teaching of their Prophet that there is ‘no compulsion in religion’ (Surah 2:256), was dwarfed by actions in Madrid, Amsterdam and London.

When Pastor Umar Mulinde was almost fatally onjured after some Muslim posing as a congregant, threw acid on him on Christmas eve 2011, there was no any reaction from the Muslim World. That is after all what is done to apostates. And  he was on top of it pastoring a congregation with a big percentage of converts from Islam and also known to be friendly to Israel and the Jews.  

After acid was thrown on two Jewish British teenagers in Zanzibar during Ramadan, a  rare display of outrage followed. Farid Ghadry, the co-founder and President of the Reform Party of Syria wrote unprecedentedly The Times of Israel under the caption I indict my religion: ‘Yes, I indict it for ignoring the terror against two innocent British teens in Zanzibar who were doused with acid… ‘Where are our Muslim leaders to speak out against such terror and to commit, once and for all, to its eradication?[54]

More and more it became known that Muhammad actually ordered his followers in the latter part of his life to ‘instil terror in the hearts of those who do not believe in him’ (Surah 8:12). He also exhorted them to ‘fight against unbelievers (8:65), slay them (9:5), punish them by their hands’ (9:14), and ‘subdue them’ (9:29).

13. Marches to Freedom

            The Mother City saw various political marches over the centuries. The first was probably the one in 1808 when slaves were led in protest by two Irishmen. Oppressive legislation led to a cycle of violence and repression. By 1808 it was easy for Hooper, an Irish labourer and Kelly, an Irish sailor - along with two slaves, Abraham and Louis - to rally slaves of the Swartland wheat farms for a protest. Hooper and Kelly deserted the group on 24^th October 1808. The march to the Mother City, requesting emancipation from the governor, seems to have been the first of its kind worldwide. During the protest, the pattern of government oppression of later centuries took shape when the British arrested 326 men. Louis, Abraham and Hooper were hanged. 

            White colonists who protested after the sale of the African Theatre (or Komediehuis) because it had become a place of worship of former slaves must be regarded as reactionary. That definitely does not fit into the marches to freedom.

Muslims on the March                                                                                                                              We briefly referred to the religious protest of Cape Muslims around their burial rights in chapter 11.The protest march in the city occurred when the Cape authorities, alarmed by a smallpox epidemic that was sweeping through the colony, closed the Tana Baru Muslim cemetery in Bo-Kaap. The Muslims perceiving their right to bury their dead in the Islamic custom threatened, defied the law and rioted. Allister Sparks (The Mind of South Africa, 1990:81) called it ‘the first instance of spontaneous civil disobedience by South Africa’s powerless people of colour.’ They were represented in their dispute with the Cape Government by an educated cab driver, Abdol Burns. He came to play an important role as negotiator for the Cape Muslims from 1875 to 1886 in their tussle with the Cape Government on the cemetery issue.                                                                                                                                                From his evidence before the Parliamentary Select Committee it became clear that Burns was not prepared to concede any of the rights of Cape Muslims on cemeteries. Burns’ central argument was that Muslims must carry their dead to their last resting place. This he put as a religious law, sacred to all Muslims. ‘The cemetery riots of 1886 are probably the most significant expression of civil disobedience of the nineteenth century Cape Muslim community... The closure of their cemeteries, in terms of the Public Health Act No. 4 of 1883, moved them to an emotional frenzy which united them to ward off what they regarded as external interference in their religion’ (Achmat Davids, The Mosques of Bo-Kaap, 1980:62).

Non European Unity Front March

On Easter Monday 1938, the Non European Unity Front (NEUF) was started. It was officially launched in January 1939, with Cissy Gool as President and James La Guma as the organising secretary. A year later, on Easter Monday, 27 March 1939, twenty thousand people gathered on the Grand Parade for a rally of the NEUF, the biggest demonstration the Mother City had seen up to that moment. In a moving ceremony, Cissy Gool lit a torch which was passed on to the masses who likewise had torches. The National Liberation League (NLL) anthem, which was written by James La Guma and Johnny Gomas, was sung as the crowd marched to Parliament, led by the Moravian Hill Church Brass Band.

Dark folks arise, the long, long night is over... Dark folks are risen and the DAY is here.

Anti-Pass Mass March

1960 became a year of nation-wide turmoil in the run-up to and aftermath of Sharpeville. The Cape was no exception. Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the Pan African Congress of Azania (PAC), evinced a strong emphasis on non-violence. He called on thousands of Blacks to leave their discriminatory passes at home on the 21st March 1960 and present themselves at police stations for arrest. They would fill prisons to overflowing and make influx control unworkable. Cape Town Blacks responded enthusiastically to the call.

Thirty thousand protesters walked from Langa to the City along De Waal Drive. Philip Kgosana, a young student, joined the marchers belatedly, but immediately took command of the ‘most remarkable march in South African history to date’. Now and then he stopped the marchers and taught them on non-violence. A dissident almost caused a revolt by denouncing non-violence, calling the crowd to sack Parliament. Kgosana decided on his own to lead the marchers instead to Caledon Square, the headquarters of the police, because the houses of Parliament were surrounded at this time by a massive build-up of troops. A tragic massacre was thus prevented. In all likelihood such a tragedy was possibly averted for another reason: Kgosana mentions how for two months before the event, people in Nyanga West had been praying every night to God to deliver them from the oppression they experienced because of the pass laws.In the previous chapter we highlighted the tragic outcome: the trust of the Blacks was betrayed.

The March of Repression of Religion                                                                                                                The decision of the government to outlaw the activities of the UDF and sixteen anti-apartheid organizations, including the Congress of South A

frican Trade Unions (COSATU), turned out to be completely counter-productive. The message of 24 February 1988 was clear: any opposition to the apartheid regime would not be tolerated - not even peaceful protest. Sweeping, ridiculous restrictions were placed on funerals; hymns, songs and sermons were forbidden and tickets were issued by the police to limit funeral attendance (Peter Walshe, Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa, 1995:123). Allister Sparks, a well-known journalist, who witnessed the ‘Trojan truck massacre’ of 1985 in Athlone, reported how the police were demanding that the parents of killed youths sign a pledge that no more than 50 people would attend the funerals (Sparks, The Mind of South Africa, 1990:82).

          Unlike in October 1977, when the Christian Institute and other organizations were banned, the Church rose to the challenge. Dr Allan Boesak, the leader and founder of the banned UDF, defiantly preached in his Sendingkerk congregation in Bellville South on Sunday 28 February 1988, choosing Luke 13:31-35 as his text. He noted that Jesus chose confrontation as his response to the threats and intimidation of state power. He was truly brave in that volatile situation to quote Jesus’ words (in which the Master referred to King Herod), "Go and tell that fox...",

            The very next day, Monday 29 February 1988, Archbishop Tutu, Frank Chikane and scores of other church leaders led hundreds of protesters in the Mother City in a prayer service, marching to the South African Parliament to demand the restoration of the right of non-violent, peaceful protest. Emulating the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s, they refused to disperse and retreat when confronted by a daunting line of riot police, calmly kneeling in prayer. The clergymen were detained by the police, strictly warned, and then released. Hundreds of other marchers were hosed down with police water cannons.

Moves in a remote Free State Town       

In 1985 the ANC conference in Kabwe, Zambia was in no mood to even consider conciliation with the government. Their talk had centred mainly on the struggle. The country was going through its worst crisis ever when revolt surfaced in so many places and harsh oppression seemed to be the only answer the government under stern ‘no nonsense’ Prime Minister P.W. Botha could offer.           It was surely more than co-incidence that a lawyer with the name of Pieter de Waal took up practice in Brandfort at the time when Winnie Mandela, the wife of the most renowned South African prisoner, was exiled to the remote Free State town. Pieter de Waal was the only lawyer in the town. De Waal’s devout wife Adele became friendly with Winnie - a friendship which would influence the country deeply (Allistair Sparks,Tomorrow is another country, 1994:12). Winnie would describe Adele ultimately as her ‘white sister’. When Winnie Mandela approached Pieter De Waal after she got in trouble after the umpteenth contravention of her banning orders, he had been softened up by his wife.Due to the stipulations of her banishment, Winnie could only talk to a goup safely at the lawyers house at 44 Duke Street.

          Since the 1950s Pieter de Waal had been the tennis partner of Kobie Coetzee.  In the meantime Coetzee had become the Cabinet Minister of Justice, thus responsible for prisons. Winnie Mandela requested Pieter de Waal to approach Minister Coetzee, not only to review her banning order, but also to consider the release of her husband. In 1985 Winnie Mandela and Coetzee happened to be on the same flight to Cape Town. Coetzee’s friendliness to enquire after the health of her husband, who was in a city hospital because of an enlarged prostrate gland, was just the catalyst for her to urge him to go and visit Nelson Mandela in hospital.

          Possibly as a result of the conversation on the airplane in November 1985, Mr Cobus Coetzee visited Nelson Mandela, who had been admitted to the Volkshospitaal [55]in the Gardens suburb near to the parliament buildings. This hospital was known as a symbol of apartheid. Three beds were reserved for the maids and gardeners of top government officials. Nobody would even have given it a thought that someone like Mandela would be admitted there one day. The visit of the Minister set in motion a process of secret talks between the government and the ANC. Four years of high level talks followed in which Coetzee and Nelson Mandela found each other. At the same time Mandela was prepared for release with ‘surreptitious trips around the city’ (Bickford-Smith, Vivian; van Heyningen, Elisabeth and Worden, Nigel - Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 1999:217).

          However, Mandela proved a difficult customer, not prepared to be released on the terms of P.W. Botha, the State President. Coetzee worked hard to keep communications linesopen. Thus he allowed an Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) not only to visit South Africa, but also to visit Nelson Mandela.

          Prime Minister P.W. Botha – possibly convinced by his security advisers that successful negotiations were not in their interests – torpedoed the talks by ordering simultaneous raids on ANC bases in three frontline states, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The EPG scurried home in disarray. All hopes for peace were instantly dashed.

A dreaded Mass March

The next major event was a mass march was due to be held on 28 August 1985 to Pollsmoor Prison, to underline the UDF call for the release of Nelson Mandela, who had been transferred there on 31 March 1982. Three days before the planned march of 28 August 1985 police arrested United Democratic Front leader Dr Allan Boesak. This sparked off widespread defiance. On August 28, the army and police surrounded the Athlone Stadium, where protesters were scheduled to gather before proceeding to Pollsmoor Prison. Access to the stadium and to any other open area within a five kilometer radius was however summarily banned until midnight by the government and roadblocks were erected on access routes.

Police brutality conscientised the masses in an unprecedented way. Groups of people trying to join the march were forcibly dispersed by police in a series of baton charges. In Athlone, members of the religious fraternity, including imams and nuns, followed the wide-spread defiance of the ban. (Various efforts were undertaken to start the march, such as from UCT, UWC and Hewat Training College in Crawford. Fearing tragic confrontation, Rev. Abel Hendricks, by this time a highly respected Methodist minister, went to the commanding officer, requesting him to withdraw the police. Leading a march of about 4000 people in Athlone, the group was hereafter however confronted by police and given three minutes to disperse. The refusal to oblige was followed by rubber bullets that flowed in all directions. Women and children were randomly beaten and the forty clergy members who had formed the front line of the march, were arrested and taken to Athlone Police Station. Subsequently they were jailed for seven days by a Wynberg magistrate.

The march triggered bloody clashes between police and residents of Athlone, Philippi, Manenberg, Guguletu and Nyanga. By August 30, the death toll had risen to 28, with more than 300 others injured. The deaths were followed by funerals, which were all too often highly politically charged events.

Tragic Consequences begin to unfold

The clinic in Crossroads continued to do fine work under Dr Ivan Thoms, a young doctor, but when the proverbial chickens came home to roost in the resistance against the tri-cameral system of government, Crossroads was one of the first to erupt at the Cape. Worse was to come in 1986, when the place was virtually in a state of civil war.

          On 9 June, 1986 the Community Centre of Crossroads, which had sheltered over two thousand refugees on the chilly night before, was torched. Dr Di Hewitson and a nurse, Dorcas Cyster, risked their lives as committed Christians in their service to the battered and bruised. The SACLA clinic was located in the Witdoeke area, while many of the clinic’s workers came from the opposing Comrades’ turf. Even as they came to work, the benefactors were accused of only tending to the wounds of the enemy. In a prayer, Michael Cassidy summed up the situation, which epitomised the dilemma of the country at that time: ‘O God, only you can resolve all this. And without the power of prevailing prayer, our land will never be healed or saved.’ Cassidy sensed that ‘the Lord needs his people not just in prayer but in active peacemaking in such polarised contexts.’           Sensitivity grew among Whites, which would finally lead to President F.W. de Klerk being enabled to take the risk of asking the White electorate for permission to vote themselves out of power in a referendum on 17 March 1992. But in the years before that there was still many a tumultuous moment.

Nelson Mandela stimulates Hope for Peace

Fortunately Nelson Mandela did not let Botha off the hook after the orchestrated flop of the EPG mission. Via Niels, head of the National Intelligence Service, a meeting took place between Mandela and Botha on 5 July 1989. The sly politician called the ‘groot krokodiel’ (great crocodile) was not to get the glory for the release of Nelson Mandela. He suspiciously demanded from Mandela a public renunciation of violence which Mandela would not do without consulting his constituency.

          In August 1989 Botha was succeeded by Frederik Willem de Klerk after a ‘well-staged cabinet coup’ (Davenport, The Transfer of Power in South Africa, 1998:7). Because of the secrecy surrounding talks with the Government the new President de Klerk’s lifting of the ban on quite a few influential political organizations of the opposition in February 1990 – and the release of political detainees - took everybody by surprise. But there had been other moves in the run-up to this spectacular event.

         

The March to Freedom

The most prominently documented march in the Mother City was the one on 13 September 1989. On the 1^st of September, several groups of clerics and academics gathered to demand the right to protest. De Klerk initiallyappeared to be no different to his predecessor, when all the protestors were arrested and some of the clergymen were badly beaten by the police. So were many members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) when they protested against a new Labour Relations Act. On 2 September, attempted marches to Parliament were broken up by police using teargas, quirts and a water canon. On election night itself, many of the Cape Flats townships were turned into battlefields. As many as 23 people were killed.

          All this changed at the mammoth march of Wednesday 13 September 1989 in the Mother City. After a short service of ‘peace and mourning’ at St George’s Cathedral, thirty thousand people packed the streets en route to the Grand Parade. The city was witnessing its largest and most peaceful march since the one led by Philip Kgosana in 1960. Unlike most demonstrations since 1960, not a single uniformed policeman was in visible attendance. At the head of the march were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mayor Gordon Oliver, Dr Allan Boesak, Sheikh Nazeem Mohamed (President of the Muslim Judicial Council) and Professor Jakes Gerwel (Rector of the University of the Western Cape). Archbishop Tutu declared victoriously: ‘We are a new people, a rainbow people, marching to freedom.’ Amid cries of ‘Long live the mayor!’ and deafening applause, Gordon Oliver announced, ‘Today Cape Town has won. Today we all have the freedom of the City.’

The March to Democracy

This event triggered off demonstrations all over the country, which must have given the new South African president, Mr F.W. De Klerk, food for thought.  These events were made possible by national and international developments[56] and especially by sustained prayer. De Klerk’s turn-around in allowing the march was prepared by 13 years of urban turmoil and economic recession, all of which spawned illegal strikes, unemployment and more militant trade unions. Internationally, the era of perestroika (restructuring) had arrived in Eastern Europe. It would have been fool-hardy for De Klerk and his government to try and stem the tide. The march to freedom seemed unstoppable. But what few were aware of was that a wave of prayer for the country had been set in motion already in 1987. Thus, a visit to Singapore in 1988 by Gerda Leithgöb, at that stage an unknown prayer warrior from Pretoria, became a catalyst for worldwide intercession on behalf of South Africa. Even in remote parts of South Africa people had been praying, because of the deteriorating and explosive situation in the country. Thus vastly different groups like one in the Mother City which gathered on a weekly basis, and Black women in the Soutpans Mountains interceded for the country to be spared bloodshed, and for an end to the misery caused by apartheid.

          Ominous signs, however, also appeared on the horizon. It must have become clear to President De Klerk that a solution had to be found to stop the ongoing cycle of violence, rebellion and oppression. This had been a major characteristic of South Africa in the second half of the 1980s. In the election his party lost support to both the left and the right.

          The mammoth march must have challenged the new South African State President tremendously. De Klerk was cornered, but he was also very wise in agreeing to meet with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak less than a month later.

            A letter of confession, posted on October 4, 1989 in the Dutch town of Zeist, became the spur for the regiogebed of the same evening to devote their monthly prayer event exclusively to South Africa (In the months preceding this event, the group had discovered how powerful intercessory prayer for countries could be. They had interceded for the former communist states of Eastern Germany and Hungary, which later entered into a process of transformation.)  A week later - without the group in Zeist having any knowledge of it - the new South African President, Mr F.W. De Klerk, met Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak. That momentous meeting would help to change the course of events in the country decisively, leading ultimately to the famous speech by President De Klerk a few months later, on 2 February 1990.  

CODESA talks stalled and collapsed                                                                                                 The CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) talks at Kempton Park, which had given so much hope to the nation, were stalled when it became clear that a third force was operating, which could derail any new effort to get negotiations on track. As a consequence of these emergency meetings, a South African Council of Churches (SACC) delegation met with President de Klerk on 22 May 1992. There he however continued resisting international monitoring of violence and a time table for an interim government (Peter Walshe, Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa, 1995:150).

The work of Church leaders was cut out for them when the CODESA talks collapsed within weeks after the May meeting with the SACC delegation. A yet broader array of Church leaders was brought into play to undertake shuttle diplomacy. Thus Professor Johan Heyns, Assessor of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), was the contact with the government while Rev Ray McCauley of the well-known Rhema Church in Johannesburg, would try to draw Dr Mangusuthu Buthulezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) into the dialogue.

In a speech in December 1992 in Potchefstroom, Nelson Mandela challenged the Church to become a midwife to democracy. Significantly, he invited the Church anew to become involved in ‘national reconciliation that is underpinned by confession and restitution’ (Cited in Walshe, 1995:146). The acid test followed in April 1993, when right-wing elements assassinated Chris Hani. Miraculously the country was not dumped into a civil war of great proportions.

The Long Road to Freedom, as the autobiography of President Nelson Mandela is titled, unfortunately did not end with the peaceful elections of April 1994. For Professor Johan Heyns, his commitment towards the cause of peace cost him his life. Heyns had led his church into a turn-about with regard to apartheid at the national DRC synod of 1986. His assassination on 5 November 1994 has still not been cleared up.

Islam on the March

Islam itself got a good standing country-wide after 1984 when Dr Allan Boesak and the lawyer Dullah Omar were seen on platforms of the United Democratic Front. In the demonstrations and marches organised in opposition to the government, imams were prominently seen on TV next to Christian clergymen. The impression was spread that Islam and Christianity were equals, that the God of the Bible and Allah were almost equal in authority. Marriages between Christians and Muslims spiralled, with the Christian component invariably ‘embracing’ Islam.

          Nelson Mandela and the ANC were deceived. Islam got another major push through the new government after 1994 with over representation in Parliament. The media attention of the visit of the Black American Louis Farrakhan in 1996, seen with President Nelson Mandela on TV, contributed much to the acceptance of the religion by many Blacks. Assistance for the building of mosques from oil-producing countries helped create the impression that Islam was on the march through the continent. An extremist group PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) took on themselves to help bring to fruition the vision of an Islamic conference in Abuja in Nigeria, to make the continent Islamic by the year 2000. PAGAD attempted to make the Western Cape ungovernable and to get Islamic rule installed.

A Link to Islamic Bondage

The millions of the continent are still bound in chains of poverty and religious bondage. The question remains when (whether?) the Church would be prepared once again to unite and get its hands dirty, such as in the fight against HIV/AIDS, homelessness, poverty and drug abuse. And what about confession for the heresies, which preceded the marginalisation of Judaism in the 4^th century and led to Islamic bondage in the 7^th century? The Mother City, with a sizeable representation of the other two Abrahamic religions, has the potential to lead the world in repentance and concrete restitution.  There is still a long road ahead!

A prophetic March

When Pastor Baruch Maayan returned with his family from Israel, his intention was to help bring a vision to fruition which he already received in 1987, viz. to see a spiritual Highway coming into being from the Cape to Jerusalem. This was an integral part of the prophecy of Isaiah 19:21ff. The presence of him and his family here at the Cape until September 2013 when they intend returning to Israel, was strategic. This was part of an effective counter for a concerted effort by certain sectors which included people in government that attempted to see Israel tarnished as an apartheid-related state. Pastor Baruch Maayan and his wife played a significant role to get local believers interested in praying for Israel and Jews. He is preparing to hitch-hike from the Cape to Jerusalem at the end of 2013, together with an American believer.

                   14.  Redemptive role of Informal Settlements

          At the Cape the Black population doubled in the 1930s and again during World War II. With housing shortages as severe as in Johannesburg, Blacks went off into the bush. They were living among ‘Coloureds’, who were also coming from farms into the city. By the time that the National Party came to power in 1948, 25,000 of the 36, 000 Blacks at the Cape were living in one of thirty ‘squatter’ camps. In 1955 it was announced that Blacks would be eventually removed from the Western Cape, which was designated a ‘Coloured’ preference area. Dr Eiselen, the Secretary for Native Affairs when Dr H.F. Verwoerd was the minister responsible, was repudiated vehemently by ‘Coloured’ spokesmen at the beginning of 1955.

A Mass Removal Scheme for Blacks

The government went ahead with the removal programme in the shanty towns of which Windermere, built behind the industrial suburb of Maitland, was the oldest and largest camp. ‘Coloureds’ were first segregated from Blacks, and then sent to new exclusively ‘Coloured’ townships like Q’town on the Cape Flats. The 2,500 Black families were then screened according to Section 10 of the new Urban Areas Act. 750 families qualified for temporary residence at the Cape. Twelve hundred families were ordered to separate. Husbands could go to the hostels for single men, but the wives and children would have to return to the ‘native reserves’, later called ‘Homelands’.

          The authorities could not ‘sort out’ 500 families. ‘Squatters’ from all thirty camps were herded to the ‘Nyanga Emergency Camp’ in 1956 where they could re-erect their shacks. Most of the ‘squatter’ camps around Cape Town were dismantled by 1960, the year Werner Eiselen died. (He was Dr Verwoerd’s right hand man in the ‘cleansing’ of the Cape of Blacks.) More than ten thousand women had been sent ‘home’, that is to the Cis- or to the Transkei. Yet, despite the government’s energetic moving of people, the Black population of Cape Town grew further to 180, 000. Twenty-one years on, the Nyanga-Crossroads ‘squatters’ – with support from Church leaders - were not only showing up the sham of the apartheid policy, but inflicted the government the crucial blow, ushering in the scrapping of the pass laws.

          A new campaign to revive the removal scheme was launched in 1962. Die Burger prominently reported that some Afrikaner businessmen and farmers were willing to reduce the number of Black employees. For farmers it was of course convenient to get rid of workers in the course of mechanization while maintaining a ‘clear conscience’. The repeated argument in Afrikaans newspapers was: What is being planned in the Western Cape, is the government’s policy for the rest of the country. To achieve this, settled Black workers were also transformed into migrants. A further amendment to the Native Urban Areas Act denied rural Black men the right to seek work in Cape Town.

Resistance of Werkgenot ‘squatters’

Thousands of Blacks continued to come into the Western Cape in the early 1970s in spite of the government’s intention to finally remove Blacks from the region. About 100 shacks were built secretively at Werkgenot, near to the University of the Western Cape - unknown to almost everyone except the ‘squatters’ themselves. The plight of the Black ‘squatters’ came to the broader attention of Capetonians only in 1974. Marius de Jager, an employee of the municipality of Bellville, became aware of the Werkgenot camp during the winter of that year. On October 21 he received a phone call from Mr W.F. Coetzee of the Bantu Affairs Administration Board (BAAB) with the instruction to arrange that Werkgenot be bulldozed on the night of October 25. City engineer John Marshall, De Jager’s boss, approved Mr Coetzee’s request. The raid – fully described in Andrew Silk’s booklet A Shanty Town in South Africa, was executed ‘like a military exercise.’ Blacks took the matter to court because a shanty could not be destroyed without a court order or the permission of the landowner. Gruesome details of the raid emerged during the trial.

            About 20 shanties were erected near to the township Nyanga during February 1975. Several of them had been put up by former residents of Werkgenot. By mid-April there were over 1000 shacks and almost 4000 people. The first raid on the new camp, which had been called Crossroads, began at 5 a.m. on May 2. Thirty four ‘squatters’ were arrested for pass offences and for trespassing. During the next two months, selected shacks were knocked down and women arrested while their husbands were at work. Finally two ‘squatters’ brought a suit against the Bantu Affairs Administrative Board for destruction of property. The judge ruled in favour of the ‘squatters’, lecturing the officials to respect the little possessions the ‘squatters’ had.  The Board did not contest the ruling, but their officials continued to harass the ‘squatters’. Pretoria would of course not allow itself to be challenged by Blacks.

Parliamentary Debate

As a young parliamentarian Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, a former Sociology lecturer of Stellenbosch, dared to visit the KTC informal settlement, the year after being unexpectedly elected into Parliament for the Cape constituency of Rondebosch. There he listened in a small chapel to Bishop Matualenga’s appeal to ‘ask the government not to knock down their shacks’ (Van Zyl Slabbert, The last White Parliament, 2000:39). Slabbert was promptly charged for being in a Black township without a permit. He indicated that he would prefer to go to jail if he was given the option, almost forcing Minister M.C. Botha to back down. The magistrate saved the government some embarrassment by only warning Slabbert.

Slabbert was also taken to a shack where he met the two wives of a certain man. One of the women was paralyzed. The second wife was brought from the Transkei to nurse the paralysed first wife and to care for the six children. Slabbert was moved and challenged.

In a parliamentary debate Dr Slabbert valiantly gave an analysis of the situation, defending the ‘squatters’. The government was undeterred. A new law, the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Amendment Act of 1976, came onto the statute books. A court order would no longer be needed to demolish a shack. This was the pristine beginning of the ‘Battle’ of Nyanga which inflicted a defeat on the apartheid government in 1981. As leader of the political party which moved from seven to 27 seats in April 1981, Van Zyl Slabbert had to bear the brunt of his ‘meddling’. His whole library was destroyed after an arson attempt on his home.

Cape Build-up to Soweto June 1976

The Werkgenot ‘squatters’ were not willing to take the abuse lying down. While Parliament was debating the new law, they constructed new shacks in the bushes just off Modderdam Road, not so far from where they had been evicted. The former Modderdam Road[57]runs between Bellville Station and the N2 highway, passing the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and Bishop Lavis Township. The informal settlements of Modderdam soon became a test of the government’s renewed war against Western Cape ‘squatters’. By the end of May 1976 more than a hundred shacks had been put up and the police was now also aware of their presence.

      The first heavy winter rain fell during the night of June 2, 1976. This did not deter the police from pounding at the doors of the shanties and demanding passes. While policemen with heavy raincoats herded Black women to parked cars, about thirty ‘squatter’ men – armed with clubs, pick handles and stones - surrounded three policemen who stood apart from the rest. The ensuing battle of about half an hour was followed by a procession along Robert Sobukwe Road with a strange combination of hymn singing and the stoning of passing cars. At about 1 a.m. the police sealed off the road. The Cape Times reported the next day that 30 ‘squatters’ had been arrested and two policemen were hospitalized. Rev. Louis Banks reacted on behalf of the Western Province Council of Churches, calling the incident ‘a direct outgrowth of the law.’

Community Support                                                                                                                   Cape Town experienced a special feat in the mobilising of support for ‘squatters’ in February 1977. A rare midsummer thunderstorm struck thousands of homeless families. This started an outcry, after an aerial picture was published on the front page of the Cape Times on 9 February 1977 (Gerald Shaw, The Cape Times, an informal history, 1999:285). A generous gift by a Christian, who signed a hand-delivered letter to the editor with ‘In as much’, triggered the founding of the Shelter Fund. The letter writer regarded the morning’s editorial of the Cape Times ‘as timely and challenging as the aerial picture on your front page is distressing and frightening’(Shaw, 1999:285). The anonymous letter writer called for concerted action by the authorities and the public, asking fellow Capetonians to join him in contributing to ‘squatter’ relief. Dr Oscar Wollheim, the chairman of the Cape Flats Distress Association (CAFDA), took the initiative to administer the fund through a board of trustees. Revel Fox, a leading Cape Town architect, designed free of charge ‘starter’ houses, which in time could be extended by the occupant families from their own earnings. A pilot Shelter project was established at Valhalla Park with the object of showing what could be done in self-help low-cost housing. This was the example and foundation on which the post-1994 Reconciliation Development Programme (RDP) could build.

The Modderdam ‘squatter’ Camp – a Model of Resistance                                                      

The government’s intention with Modderdam backfired completely. What was intended to become the model for the country to deal with illegal ‘squatters’ became instead teaching in resistance. Andrew Silk (A Shanty Town in South Africa: the story of Modderdam, 1977:3) summarized the paradox of South African history so aptly, as it was practiced in a nutshell in that informal settlement: ‘The economy’s huge appetite for black labour is in conflict with white fears of being ‘swamped’, and ruled by Blacks. Modderdam was a microcosm of this classic struggle’. The men and women who fought to keep the camp were hardly known outside Modderdam and were forgotten after they had left. The first raid there on June 2, 1976 was overshadowed by events in Soweto two weeks later. Its demolition on August 8, 1977 was eclipsed by the death in detention of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, who had been tipped to be a future State President and the banning of the Christian Institute and a host of other organizations in October of that year.

Church Protest

The day’s ‘fighting’ ended with teargas, but there was little panic. That evening a protest meeting was held at St. Xavier’s Church in the White suburb of Claremont. The protesters decided to form a human chain the next morning in front of the bulldozer, forcing the police to drag them away.

          An unprecedented wave of support followed when one hundred clergymen arrived at 6 a.m. But the bulldozers did not arrive. The crowd left by 9 a.m. with a few staying behind to warn the others, should the operation begin later in the day. It is obvious that there must have been informers in the protest meeting in the Claremont church. After midday, two bulldozers arrived. Three White men including Rev. David Russell, the Anglican priest who had ruffled the conscience of the nation with his protest and fast in St George’s Cathedral on behalf of the Blacks in the ‘Resettlement Areas’, walked into the camp. Since the inception of the Crossroads informal settlement in 1975, the ‘squatter camp’ was part of this parish. As soon as the three protesters reached the first truck, Rev Russell calmly laid down in front of the vehicle. He was promptly arrested. Asked later why he did it, he said: ‘... instead of writing another letter to those in authority,  I had  to use my body where communication and words were useless, as an act to uphold and be a witness to God’s law. Just by obeying God’s law and acting according to my conscience, I felt I could communicate to these people’s hearts so that they could be made aware of the evil being done there.’

          The community workers found shelter for the women and children in church halls. Their possessions were taken to an empty Pepsi-Cola warehouse.  Three church services were held on the following Sunday. At the nearby Unibell informal settlement ministers from different races joined in the service. Prayers were offered for Rev. Russell who was still imprisoned. He refused the conditional bail – viz. that he would not enter any ‘squatter’ camps again. The second gathering was at the City Hall in the city centre. In the inter-faith service Dr Allan Boesak received a standing ovation when he announced that he would pray every day for the downfall of the Nationalist government. His repetition of that statement would become quite controversial in later years. The third meeting of the day took place at the camp itself.  Prayers were offered in a moving ceremony where the congregants held hands, sang hymns and closed the proceedings with Nkosi sikelel ‘iAfrika.

The Demolition of Modderdam

The demolition of Modderdam brought the churches into the equation significantly. A tradition had already started to see the month of August as one in which compassion was highlighted. One Sunday the ‘squatters’ had their weekly meeting. The crowd unanimously resolved to resist the government passively by simply refusing to move. They also agreed to undertake a three-day fast, and invited those outside the camp to join them. In a new stand of solidarity with the ‘squatters’, the leader of the White Women’s Movement endorsed the fast and also urged members of her organization to sleep alone at night, to symbolize the enforced separation of Black husbands from their wives. A ‘Coloured’ woman stood up during the meeting and expressed ‘Coloured’ solidarity with the Blacks. This appeared to be mere tokenism, because the ‘Coloureds’ obeyed the eviction orders soon thereafter. Yet, if the government ideologists had hoped that fights would break out between ‘Coloureds’ and Blacks, they failed dismally. Laconically, the Blacks resolved that it was better to have a hard, committed core of people who were determined to fight to the bitter end. Yet, the Modderdam camp remained in the newspapers, gaining wide support all through. When the bulldozers arrived on the 8^th of August 1977 to demolish their shacks, the press was there, as well as many supporters from the other races.

          The appeals of the White sympathizers were unsuccessful, although the actual demolishing was postponed when people obstructed the vehicles after a second tractor succeeded in freeing the bulldozer and the first tractor. The next day, a letter from a benefactor - framed by a black border - was printed on the front page of the Cape Times. ‘…The misery of the ejected ‘squatters’ with their homes in ruins, guarding their meagre possessions on the roadside, is indescribable... I have to share in the guilt of the ‘haves’ of contemporary society. I hang my head in shame and plead for forgiveness…’ Scattered skirmishes during the morning - after the police had separated the supporters from the inhabitants – converged into a major confrontation shortly after midday. A tense razor-edge situation developed, which looked like ending in massive bloodshed.  Mr Hope Plaatjie lifted his hand as once Paul, the apostle, had done before a riotous crowd, miraculously bringing down the tension. The ‘squatters’ dispersed quietly. They won the moral confrontation, leaving the field to the police to take Modderdam without bullets. The burning of Modderdam began shortly after the crowd dispersed. Social workers and ‘squatters’ reported that police had set fire to the shanties, but the inhabitants themselves also fanned the flames in their desperation.

           

The Spirit of the Migrants crushed?       

The government appeared to have crushed the spirit of the migrants completely when Werkgenot was also flattened on August 25 – the second time in three years that shacks were demolished there. The ‘squatters’ put up little resistance. The only person arrested there was a White person – Dr Margaret Nash, a member of the Christian Institute. She came to Werkgenot with a large white cross. Holding the cross up high, she walked up to her waist into a stagnant pond in front of the shacks. After she had marched to the other side, she was escorted to a police van.

          Quite surprisingly, opposition from within the National Party also surfaced. That the Kerkbode expressed regret at the timing of the demolition, was a new element. A direct attack by theological students from Stellenbosch demonstrated the growing influence of Professor Nico Smith. Superficially, it looked as if the government had won the bout. The spirit of Modderdam would be resurrected in KTC, Nyanga and Crossroads where the bulk of the ‘squatters’ had landed. Very few went to the Transkei and Ciskei as the apartheid ideologists had planned. In the ‘battle of Nyanga’ the government would suffer its first major defeat in 1981.

Farewell to Apartheid

Stellenbosch was the place where segregation ideologists like D.F Malan, Jan Smuts and Hendrik Verwoerd had studied. The university there, however, also ushered in the breaking down of the apartheid edifice among Afrikaner academics like no other place of learning in the country. At the university from where Barend Keet once opposed apartheid like a voice in the desert, a groundswell of internal opposition to apartheid semantics grew in strength which culminated in one of them, W.P. Esterhuyse, even daring to bid farewell in 1979 to the ideology in his affordable booklet that was translated two years later into English as Apartheid must die. But there was still a hard battle ahead to get the abhorrent notion of White supremacy dead and buried!                          

The organization Koinonia, which Professor Nico Smith started, brought about racial mixing at grassroots level in different parts of the country.  The movement organised inter-racial weekends in different towns and cities. Participants would always lodge with someone from a different race group. Christians of different races started meeting socially so that families could get to know and understand each other. From their ranks the Koinonia Declaration followed in 1977 when three Dutch Reformed Church dominees in the Western Cape significantly reacted against a government ruling, which made agitation against detention without trial unlawful, as well as calling for transparency regarding ‘the handling of matters relating to the security of the state (e.g. the recent series of bannings, detentions and arrests on October 19^th., 1977)’ [Hofmeyr et al, A History of Christianity in South Africa, 1991: 294]. The prayerful attitude of three clergymen came through in the first sentences of the Koinonia Declaration: ‘... We also believe that the prayers of just men have great power. We therefore urge all Christians to pray without ceasing for those in authority that... they may not be led astray by unbiblical ideologies...’ (Hofmeyr et al, 1991:292).

The brutality of the police revived the spirit of Modderdam in 1978 with repercussions in Stellenbosch. Newspapers reported how a ‘squatter’ was shot dead and ‘soon a baby was to die on his mother’s back as they were trampled by panick-stricken squatters attempting to escape yet another teargas attack’ (Quote from the Rand Daily Mail in Harvey, 2001:57). Theological students, possibly under the influence of Professor Nico Smith, wrote in the influential Afrikaans daily Die Burger: ‘God forgive us, because we know not what we have done’ (Cited in Robert Harvey, The Fall of Apartheid, 2001:57).

Compassionate Christian Outreach challenges Apartheid

The care for ‘illegal’ Black women by the White Catholic nun Celeste Santos gave dignity to the shack dwellers of the informal settlements of Modderdam, KTC and Crossroads. 

         In 1980 a young physician, Dr Ivan Toms, launched the SACLA Clinic in Crossroads as a sequel to the big inter-denominational event in Pretoria in 1979. This was the first of its kind, after various denominations had started their own ministries of compassion in the informal settlement.

          Some Stellenbosch Missiology students under Professor Nico Smith were worried that their denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), seemed to be unperturbed by what was happening in Crossroads. Prof. Smith became very controversial when he heeded their request, taking a group of DRC (White) theological students to the informal settlement in 1981. After being called to book in an aftermath of the event, Professor Smith agreed to refrain from making a statement to the secular press. He did subsequently, however, publish his statement in what became a front-page report of the Kerkbode. In his statement, Professor Smith criticized the government for its handling of the Nyanga ‘squatters’. Even more unconventionally, he lashed the denomination for its non-involvement in the situation. He and his students challenged the Dutch Reformed Church to highlight the ‘painful policy’ of resettlement and migratory labour.

Prof. Nico Smith was subsequently more or less coerced to leave Stellenbosch. For those in authority there, it was bad enough that kafferboeties[58] like Johan Degenaar, Andre du Toit and Frederik van Zyl Slabbert were teaching at the University. To have one of them in the hallowed theological faculty was completely unacceptable to the powers that be.

Crossroads and Nyanga in the Limelight

Rommel Roberts and his wife Celeste Santos were Roman Catholics, who became somewhat of an embarrassment to those church members who preferred their church ‘not to be involved with politics.’ (The couple had only been married in church, and not legally in terms of South African law of that time, which prohibited marriage across the racial divide. Thus Celeste could not adopt Rommel’s surname.)  The couple became known for their compassion for ‘squatters’ in Modderdam. Rommel also became very involved with the bus and school boycotts of 1980. They had already completely inconvenienced the Roman Catholic Church leaders by their marriage. Apart from marrying across the racial ‘colour line’, Rommel had studied at the Roman Catholic theological seminary to become a priest, and Celeste had been a nun. (The couple lodged with the author and his family in Zeist (Holland) in 1980 after having fled the country. The South African police were looking for Rommel.)

At the beginning of 1981 Celeste and Rommel Roberts-Santos were back in Cape Town. The compassion and concern of finally won the day, after Bishop Tutu, the then Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), assisted many Black women to return to the Cape. They had been ‘endorsed’ to the Transkei.

The fight on behalf of the Black women, who later moved into St George’s Cathedral, got into the news when a top American diplomat became involved. The Dutch newspaper Trouw described the outcome of the Battle of Nyanga as the first defeat of the apartheid government. The homeless people of Nyanga and Crossroads had scored one moral victory after the other, encouraging many others to resist the oppressive race policies.

          One tangible result occurred in 2001. About 2 000 members of the Ndabeni Community in Cape Town finally won their claim for land restitution after six years of negotiation. The claimants’ forebears were dispossessed of the land, a part of which is presently occupied by a naval base of the SA National Defence Force. On 13 October 2001, an agreement was signed between the Departments of Land Affairs and Defence, and The N’dabeni Communal Property Trust, finally settling the N’dabeni land claims, and giving the community 51 hectares of land.

15. The Aftermath of Political Violence

          Probably like no other city in the world Cape Town proved that the saying ‘violence begets violence’ is only the half of the truth. In an earlier chapter, we saw how the brute punishment and force perpetrated against local slaves and Khoi led indirectly to the outlawing of slavery in the whole British Empire in the 19^th century, after Dr John Philip exposed much of it, albeit sometimes in an exaggerated form.[59] A universal truth, which is ably verbalised in the Afrikaans expression nood leer bid (desperation teaches one to pray), proved invaluable at the Cape. Towards the end of t he 20^th century the fear of civil war brought Christians to pray more than under normal circumstances.

Government Oppression breeds Resilience

On the same day as the notorious massacre of Sharpeville on 21 March 1960, two men were shot dead by police in the Cape township of Langa, and 49 people were injured. The killing of peaceful protesters introduced a new dimension of police brutality. Vicious police action followed when striking workers were forcefully taken out of their houses to go and work. This was the run-up to possibly the biggest funeral that South Africa has experienced to date. On Sunday 27 March 1960, Blacks converged on Langa from places as far afield as Hermanus, Mossel Bay and Worcester (Kgosana, Lest we forget, 1988:30), for the mass funeral of those people who had been killed in the preceding days. Two hundred thousand people were reported to have attended.[60]

The end to the peaceful march by thousands of protesters against the pass laws on 30 March 1960, having left Langa for the Caledon Square Police Station in Buitenkant Street, was just as tragic. The young student leader Philip Kgosana was arrested after initially being promised that he would meet with a government representative. The imprisonment in the Roeland Street jail along with other political prisoners who were hereafter sent to Robben Island, was to usher in the increased use of the island for political purposes. The government repression brought forth resilience and a special quality among the oppressed, just like diamonds that have been exposed to extreme pressure. At the same time the consciences of Whites were pricked once again about the injustices linked to the apartheid system.

          Students’ protests for equal education in June 1972 highlighted the determination of the government to enforce apartheid, using the police force for that purpose. St George’s Cathedral became a famous venue for peaceful opposition to apartheid. Students – the bulk of them were White - were followed into the sanctuary by the policemen, who had smashed a peaceful demonstration, using teargas.

Opposition to the ‘divide and rule’ Policy

Opposition to the ‘divide and rule’ policies of the government surfaced especially in the reaction of High School pupils in the years after 1976, which sent the clear message that ‘Coloureds’ are not accepting the preferential treatment without ado.

The propagandistic abuse of the state radio gave Islam a fillip. The slur on Ayatollah Khomeini by the media at the end of the 1970s made a martyr of him in the eyes of Muslims. Because the government was seen as the oppressor, the aggressive Islamic stance of the Ayatollah was a boon for assertive Islam. The resurgence of political resistance in the 1980s coincided with hopes for religious ‘revival’. School boycotts started at two Senior Secondary schools in Hanover Park, the township which got its name from the main street of the former District Six. This had been an important part of the Islamic stronghold of the Western Cape before the Group areas evictions of the 1960s and 1970s. Typical was the graffiti slogan on a wall on Yusuf Drive in Bo-Kaap: ‘The only solution - Islamic revolution!’

Another piece of divide and rule apartheid legislation - the tri-cameral system of Parliament[61] sparked off the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF). Mobilization against the government’s proposals began on January 22, 1983 when the Transvaal Anti-SAIC (South African Indian Congress) held its first conference. In the keynote address Dr Allan Boesak said inter alia: ‘…There is no reason why churches, civic associations, trade unions, student organizations and sports bodies should not unite on this issue…’(cited in Tom Lodge and Bill Nasson, All here and now: Black Politics in South Africa in the 1980s, 1991:48). Seven months later, on August 20, the United Democratic Front was launched in the Rocklands Community Centre in Mitchell’s Plain. Fifteen hundred delegates represented over 500 organizations. Boesak brought the delegates to their feet with three little words: ‘all, here, and now. “We want all our rights, we want them here and we want them now’ (cited in Lodge/Nasson, 1991:51).

Funerals become Catalysts for Change

The government reacted with unprecedented brutality upon the UDF rallies. Many children were killed by the police. Funerals clearly contributed to bring about change throughout South Africa. Few incidents hightened political awareness more than the funeral of four Cradock United Democratic Front (UDF) activists. The funeral of the four men turned into a massive affair with buses travelling not only from Port Elizabeth but also from far away places.

          In Cape Town itself the Cradock four killings sparked off a school boycott in the Black townships that soon spread into 'Coloured' schools. A whole series of marches were held, at two universities and even from one school to another. 

          The government completely over-reacted to preparations for a funeral in Gugulethu by deploying the Defence Force for the first time for such an occasion. A door-to-door search in the township Langa and the prohibition of anybody from outside the Black townships to attend the funeral was the sort of measure to let the anger rise all around the Cape.

The Funeral of 11 Police Victims

Funerals became a part of the battle ground once again. Possibly the second biggest funeral at the Cape ever, took place on Saturday 21 September 1985 in the township of Gugulethu. The funeral had a political nature. It was the funeral of 11 victims of police action, including Ayanda Limekaya, a two month old baby who died after inhaling too much teargas.

          The start of the traditional march on 21 September, 1985 to the cemetery was described as follows: ‘Within ten minutes it has swollen to 20,000, 25,000 then it becomes impossible to estimate the numbers’ (cited in Hans Pienaar and Hein Willemse, Die Trojaanse Perd, 1986:45) - This was in spite of many roadblocks put up by the police and army to prevent people from other places joining the funeral. 

          The roadblocks could not prevent the consciences of some Whites being touched. Events followed each other up in quick session at the Cape at this time. Willem Steenkamp, a conservative writer in the Cape Times, reported in his column the following day about what became known around the world as the Trojan Horse or the Jack-in-the-Box event in Thornton Road, Athlone on 15 October 1985. The American CBS television crew had seen to that: ‘Film taken on scene shows railway policemen laying down a heavy column of indiscriminate shotgun fire...’ An eye witness described a similar scene in Crossroads three days later, printed in the Cape Times: ‘Suddenly the police jumped out and opened fire, but they did not shoot the people who had thrown the petrol bomb, they shot two men (dead) who … were walking down the road. One was standing still when they shot him, and when his friend tried to run away, they shot him too’ (cited in Pienaar and Willemse, 1986:1). The Cape exploded, and the state of emergency was extended to include the Cape on 26 October, 1985. Hans Pienaar, an Afrikaner journalist, courageously wrote in Die Trojaanse Perd about these events. Many of his Afrikaner compatriots had never heard about the event before because Die Burger and the Afrikaans press in toto withheld such information from the Afrikaners.                          

          Behind the scenes, God was at work. Not very far from Gugulethu, where the massive funeral had taken place, is the ‘Coloured’ University of the Western Cape. Charles Robertson, a White Christian and a former lecturer of that institution, was impacted during his quiet time on 22^nd September 1985, the day after the funeral.

The Opposition on the Run

When Frederik van Zyl Slabbert stepped out of party politics in the beginning of 1986, starting the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), it shook South Africa. The reason he gave was that he regarded the parliament as irrelevant to the real issue of the country, viz. the need to bring about a negotiated settlement with the representatives of the Black majority. This suddenly put even stalwart fighters like Helen Suzman suddenly on the spot. The country-wide state of emergency was re-imposed on 12^th June, 1986.

          On the other side of the political spectrum Oliver Tambo and the external wing became quite anxious not to be left out in the cold when it became known that the government was speaking to Nelson Mandela. In mid 1986 Mandela seemed to have been quite desperate to talk to the other side. But there was no one to talk to. Just at that moment it was such a special gift when Michael Young, a strategic British Conservative Party politician, came into the picture. Young agreed to Tambo’s request to set up a direct channel of communication between the ANC high command and the Afrikaner community.

          A thaw occurred in the political deadlock, which had been threatening to push the country further towards the precipice of civil war. This took place in London on 24 October 1986 in the home of Anthony Sampson, a liberal British journalist. Oliver Tambo, the ANC leader in exile, was in the British capital at this time with a delegation. Secret talks started with Rudolph Agnew, a high-ranking British businessman of Consolidated Gold Fields, which finally led to an unofficial meeting with a British Cabinet Minister. Tony Heard, the editor of the Cape Times, interviewed Oliver Tambo shortly hereafter. The publication in early November defied the prohibition to quote banned people.

Bold Men

Professor Sampie Terreblanche was a Stellenbosch academic whose ‘Rubicon’ occurred on 16 June 1976 when youths were killed in Soweto. His Odyssey out of the inner circle of the National Party continued when he was appointed to the Erika Theron Parliamentary Commission the following year. Even though the most radical recommendations of this commission that had to look into the matters of the ‘Coloureds’ were initially rejected, they were adopted one by one in later years. The foundation of the tri-cameral parliament idea was laid here and the scrapping of the Prohibition of racially Mixed Marriages Act occurred in 1985. It was his visits to ‘Coloured’ townships which brought him to the conviction that apartheid had to be ‘drastically’ reformed if not completely abandoned. He chose the historic holiday of 16 December 1984 to call publicly for the abolition of apartheid. From October 1985 he met other Afrikaner academics in an effort to look for ways to pull the country from the inevitable pending disaster it was heading for.                                         

          Terreblanche and 28 senior academics from Stellenbosch met Mr P.W. Botha, the State President, on 20 February 1987. He was so disgusted with the way Mr Botha treated them that he resigned from the National Party the following day (Harvey, The Fall of Apartheid, 2001:8). His decision to leave the National Party brought him into political isolation. The country nevertheless owes much to his challenges up to that point in time.

          The group went on to publish their concern on 7 March ‘to encourage the acceleration of reform and negotiation between credible, representative leaders of all communities… with prominent government leaders – including the state president himself’ (Cited in Harvey, 2001:9). With Terreblanche now virtually ruled out for negotiation purposes, a big responsibility fell upon the shoulders of W. P. Esterhuyse, who later played a crucial role after meeting Michael Young, a strategic British Conservative Party politician.

          At the all-White elections in May 1987, the right-wing Conservative Party under Andries Treurnicht, a former Dutch Reformed Church minister and editor of Die Kerkbode, booked gains.

            These moves led to some deep thinking. Many Whites decided to leave the country. One of them, Richard Rosenthal, a Cape lawyer and a personal friend of Van Zyl Slabbert, was all set to leave for Canada with his family, but at the same time he was challenged to do something before he would flee the country. On 23 September 1987 he delivered a ‘personal and confidential letter’ addressed to Mr P.W. Botha at Tuynhuys, in which he offered to try and ‘facilitate an exploratory process, leading to meaningful negotiations’ (Rosenthal, Mission Improbable – a Piece of the South African Story, 1998:1). He had little doubt that Mr Botha could see his proposition as ‘provocative and presumptuous’ (p.3) Because the country was ‘sliding inexorably towards anarchy or civil war’. Rosenthal decided to at least give it a try before emigrating.

16. Compassionate Initiatives with a ripple Effect

          The Good Samaritan has been the biblical paradigm for border-crossing benevolence. Built on the margins of the town on the road to Green Point, the Somerset Hospital was founded on this premise by Dr Samuel Bailey. It was intended for the outcasts of society, for merchant seamen and slaves, paupers and ‘(Nigel Worden, Elisabeth Van Heyningen and Bickford-Smith Vivian, The Making of a City, David Philip, Cape Town, 1998:121).

          Between 1845 and 1873 several state-aided schemes brought British settlers to the Cape. Women were especially valued, ‘both as domestic servants and for their reproductive capacity’ (Worden et al, 1998:178). The English Fund for Promoting Female Emigration brought a category of British females to the Cape, which created new problems. This was partly due to the administrative failure when there were no facilities available for the women while they looked for employment. The Gentoo, the boat on which these women sailed to the Mother City in 1851, gave a label by which prostitutes were nick-named in due course – gentoo’s.

Work among Prostitutes and ‘fallen Women’

Bishop Gray distinguished himself through various ministries of compassion. Thus he brought out a party of ladies to work among prostitutes and ‘fallen women’ in 1868. Mary Anderson-Morshead, the youngest of the group, helped to start the first Refuge for Penitents which began with three girls. In 1870 “St George’s Home” moved to an old Dutch homestead in Keerom Street. The Refuge, a renovated outbuilding opposite the Mission House, contained beds for 20 former prostitutes, including pregnant girls. The inmates were expected to learn skills and contribute to their living expenses by working as laundresses. Destitute girls also found their way to the Home.

          Among the first was a little girl who had been ‘thrown away’ by her mother. Here her motherly ways caused her to be called Mammetjie. If ever a child was hurt or wanted comforting, they found Mammetjie ready to administer comfort.

          Olive Schreiner distinguished herself through her love for the Afrikaners. The family furthermore had an ear and eye for the underdogs of Cape society. Through her novels Olive Schreiner put South Africa on the literature map of the world. Olive did much to achieve reconciliation between the two main White people groups of South Africa. However, few people know of her contact with Anna Tempo, a daughter of Mozambican slaves. Anna Tempo went on to start the Nanniehuis in Bo-Kaap, a ministry of compassion to ‘fallen’ young women and prostitutes.

St Monica’s Home established.

The 1914 Anglican Diocesan Mission Board (DMB) report to their synod mentioned the establishment of a ‘temporary shelter for women and girls returning to the Christian faith, or who desire to become Christians but are without Christian friends and relations with whom to take shelter’ (Cited in Pratt, 1998:132). Rev. Garabedian hoped that by accepting these girls into a Christian shelter, they would not resort to marrying into Muslim families. The shelter was at 56 Bryant Street under Miss Stollard and was opened in January 1914. In 1915 the house next door was acquired so that up to ten women could be accommodated at one time. Miss Stollard, Rev. Stephen Garabedian and a new assistant, the Rev Paul Dimishky, also did pastoral visits in the surrounding districts to investigate cases of ‘lapsed’ Christians who had been absorbed into the Muslim community.

In January 1917 Miss Frances Edwina Shepherd suggested the training of suitable ‘Coloured’ women as midwives. She had already instructed several women when they had accompanied her to deliveries. She approached Dr Murray, the Secretary of the Western Cape branch of the Medical Association, in order to get this instruction recognised. He stressed that training should really take place in a maternity home. Miss Shepherd realised that such a home could serve three purposes. Firstly, it could train ‘Coloured’ women to be midwives, secondly, it could offer a service to the entire community in the area of the Bo-Kaap and thirdly, the trained midwives could be useful as evangelists.

          A committee set up by the DMB under the chairmanship of Canon Sydney W Lavis, recommended the establishment of a training institution for ‘Coloured’ midwives. This was approved and Garth House at 108 Buitengracht Street was opened on 1 April 1917. The name was changed to St Monica's Maternity Clinic and relocated to premises next to the St Paul's Church in Bree Street.

Compassionate Identification with the Underdog

At the Cape Provincial congress of the ANC in August 1953 Professor Zachariah Keodirelang "ZK" Matthews (1901 - 1968), a prominent Black academic, just after his return from a lecturing stint in the US, proposed the summoning of a ‘national convention at which all groups might be represented to consider our national problems on an all-inclusive basis’ to ‘draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future’. The idea was endorsed by the ANC’s annual conference in September 1953.

          Whereas the Moravians were the leaders with regard to education and practical Christianity, the Anglicans and the Dutch Reformed Church, along with the Roman Catholic Church, led the field in ministries of compassion. As in so many other fields, the Mother City was prominent.

          Reverend Arthur William Blaxall, an Anglican clergyman, came to South Africa in 1923 to work with the deaf. At the Cape he was open for the need to reach out compassionately to other peripheral groups of the society like the Muslims. In the 1930s he headed the Athlone School for ‘Coloured’ blind children, which is now located in Glenhaven, Bellville South. In 1939 he opened the first workshop for blind Africans in South Africa – Ezenzeleni in Roodepoort. For many years he was secretary of the South African Christian Council, which was established in 1936 and he was also chairman of the South African branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

          Over the years Reverend Blaxall developed ‘an ever deepening sense of solidarity’ - in his own words - with the Blacks, ‘Coloureds’ and Indians in their struggle against apartheid (Karis and Carter, Volume 4, 1977:8). Trusted as a friend, he received money in the 1960s from exiled ANC and Pan African Congress (PAC) leaders and passed it on to former political prisoners and their families who were in need. This led to his arrest in 1963 and conviction under the Suppression of Communist Act.

Loving Outreach to Muslims 

The Dutch Reformed Church pioneered the work among the Cape Muslim slaves from 1731. It is fitting that the initiative for the resumption of evangelistic work among the Cape Muslims in the second half of the twentieth century was undertaken by the South African Missionary Society. Ds. Pypers, who became a full-time missionary for this purpose in July 1961, was joined by Pieter Els who had been challenged to reach out to Muslims with the Gospel along with two other student theological colleagues, Willem Louw en Coen Brand. They were studying at Stellenbosch in 1960 at this time. A witness group - spearheaded by White theological students - was started in Stellenbosch in the 1960s, reaching out to the Muslims of Idas Valley, the local ‘Coloured’ residential area.  

             The group of ‘Coloured’ churches called the ‘ring’ (circuit) of Wynberg - stretching from Retreat to Claremont including a big part of the Cape flats at that time - decided to give a bigger responsibility to the churches to witness to the Muslims and Hindu’s. The ‘Coloured’ sector of the denomination accepted Muslim Evangelism as their special task. In many suburbs they were their neighbours.

          The stalwart work of women for the breaking down of the prejudice towaqrds Muslims has too often not been duly recognized. Johanna van Zyl and Ria Olivier kept the loving outreach to Muslims in Bo-Kaap and other places going, along with other women of the Vrouesendingbond (Women’s Missionary Guild). That Johanna van Zyl could write in the August 1974 edition of Die Ligdraer about her 25 years of work amongst children in Bo-Kaap is an exception that only amplifies the rule. The fact is that whereas quite a few Cape Muslim women came to faith in Christ, conversions among their male counterparts remained rare for decades. 

Christian Compassion in District Six and Bo-Kaap

The Rev. Sydney Warren Lavis had succeeded Archdeacon Lightfoot as Priest-in-charge of St Paul’s Mission in 1905 and became its first Rector in 1913. In 1928 he became Dean of Cape Town and subsequently Co-adjutor Bishop in 1931. He was a great figure in the history of Cape Town and was extremely popular, particularly amongst the ‘Coloured’ people of the City. He battled all his life to alleviate poverty and to improve housing. Bishop Lavis Township, one of the City Council schemes, was named in his honour.

          The Nanniehuis of Bo-Kaap showed the way of compassion. Care was taken of unwedded mothers and prostitutes. Anna Tempo, the initiator of the project in Bo-Kaap, was the daughter of slaves from Mozambique. She subsequently became the matron of the Stakeby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street, District Six. The Nanniehuis became the model for similar projects in other parts of the country after she had been awarded the King George Coronation Medal in 1937 for her work.

          By the early 1960s there were 288 welfare agencies in the city, of which less than half were run by religious organizations. The Cape Town City Mission was by far the best known. The combination of evangelism and compassionate outreach – which they took from their model, the Salvation Army - became an integral part of their ministry.

More Battles on the front of Compassion        

Compassion became also the hallmark of the Black Sash. The Athlone Advice Office - near to the township of Langa, was the brainchild of Noel Robb, a resident of Bishopscourt. This was another Western Cape model serving as an example for compassionate work elsewhere. The Athlone Advice Office  was started in 1958 as a bail fund facility, to enable mothers who had been arrested and imprisoned, to return to their homes and children. In a sense it was an extension of another Black Sash Western Cape initiative, the Cape Association to Abolish Passes for African Women (CATAPAW), which was founded in 1957, in co-operation with a few other groups. CATAPAW collected evidence for submission to the Secretary for Native Affairs to show the hardship and injustices of the pass laws. The June/July issue of Black Sash of that year was devoted entirely to the analysis of the pass system with a projection of its effects on family life (Michelman, The Black Sash of South Africa, 1984:103).  The scheme to extend the system of passes to include women was responsible for widespread unrest, which matured into dramatic conflict when the government used brute force to put down passive resistance demonstrations of Blacks who were protesting against passes. A special supportive project of the Black Sash followed after Alex La Guma had been imprisoned in Worcester, just over 100 kilometres from the Mother City. The women organized transport for the families on a regular basis, giving an example to the South African Council of Churches of support to political detainees. Deservingly, the Black Sash has been dubbed ‘the conscience of the nation’, being an essentially women’s organisation committed to the protection by law of human rights and liberties.

Night Schools    

Possibly the first night schools for adults in the country was started by the missionary P.D. Lückhoff at Stellenbosch around 1940 (Coetzee, Onderwys in Suid-Afrika, 1552-1960, 1975:423.) On four evenings per week tuition was given to adult ‘Coloureds’. Ds Frans Lion Cachet conducted evening classes with a slightly different motivation, viz with the intention of enabling the children and adult pupils to read and understand the Qur’an so that they could form their own opinion about Islam.

          Within a year after the establishment of Ndabeni (or Uitvlugt as it was first called) in 1901, 6 churches were established and education for children and adults was offered through a government primary school, an Anglican school and 7 night schools. Employers in Cape Town centre were not keen on these opportunities, saying that their domestic servants were attracted to the location to attend the evening classes, and that if children were going to school it would be 'difficult to recruit servants from the juvenile ranks'. 

          The ANC in the Western Cape was virtually defunct when James La Guma, the father of the author-poet Alex la Guma, was elected secretary. In no time he reorganized things, starting an office in Caledon Street and launching the ‘African Labour College’, a night school where the students were taught socialism and the politics of the labour movement.

          Towards the end of World War II there was an evening school experiment in a Presbyterian Church Hall in Retreat.[62] It proved so successful that it finally expanded into a literacy project and an educational organization that for two decades involved thousands of Black and ‘Coloured’ men and women as learners. Thousands of Whites served as volunteer teachers. Inspired by Emily Gaika, an elderly Black woman, Oliver Kuys, an engineering graduate, started the evening school. Those who often volunteered to teach became deeply interested and involved in their work. On the other hand, the desire for education among the Blacks expanded rapidly.

          A government commission set up in 1948 concluded that the missions had done nothing but destroy Black culture. Another commission led by Dr Werner Eiselen in 1951 had to look into means of controlling Black education and further curtailing the influence of mission and independent schools.The result of the Eiselen report was the Bantu Education Act of 1953. The infamous Bantu Education came into effect in 1955, which forced churches to hand control of their schools to the government. This was followed by regulations that caused night schools to collapse in other parts of the country.

          The Cape Night Schools Association persevered with a strong determination, finding ways and means to carry on when the government stopped subsidies. In 1957 regulations stated that schools outside the townships had to secure a Group Areas permit, and then apply annually for registration with the Department of Bantu Education. Restrictions on teachers and the substitution of short-term contract labourers for the old, more permanent labourer, made many schools redundant.

UCT Student Involvement    

When the apartheid legislation prescribed education segregation at tertiary level as well, thus interfering with academic freedom, UCT students were incensed. Zach de Beer was a student leader along with Raymond Ackerman, who was also on the Student Representative Council. Together with other students Raymond Ackerman developed SHAWCO[63] Night Schools, which had grown into a chain of schools. After leaving UCT, Ackerman became the principal of them all – ‘my first experience of running a chain, though of schools, not of stores’ (Raymond Ackerman, Hearing Grasshoppers Jump,  2001:42). In the course of this involvement he met Wendy Marcus, who not only became his wife, but who later was a pivot of the expanding Pick ‘n Pay empire of supermarkets in the 1970s.

          In 1965 the SHAWCO Night School at Windermere was forced to close and finally the last of the schools of the Cape Night Schools Association, St Mark’s in District Six and the twenty-two year old Retreat Night School closed down by order of the Deputy Minister, Mr Blaar Coetzee. Maryland is a Catholic institution in Hanover Park, where Mr Harry Fortune taught for many years, long after he had gone into retirement. Harry Fortune was raised in District Six before he went back to High School as an adult. After further studies at UCT, he became a high school teacher in Bonteheuwel.

          UCT students were very much in the forefront in 1972 and 1973 in the battle for equal education and better health care for Blacks. Geoff Budlender, who also became a leader in NUSAS (National Union of South African Students) and the medical student Ivan Thoms were two of these students who would made an indelible mark on Cape History.

Black Families fight to be together[64]

Mr Veli Komani, a resident of Gugulethu township, qualified for living in the Cape because he had lived in the city for more than 15 years and he could prove that he worked for the same employer for ten years. He proceeded to challenge the vicious influx control laws when he took action on behalf of his wife, Noceba Komani, so that she could come and live with him in Gugulethu. When she came to the Cape in 1974 she was given permission to live with Veli Komani temporarily. She had to get a lodger's permit but first had to get employment. In a typical catch 22 situation she however had to be in possession of a residence permit to get the lodger's permit.  When she failed to procure this, she was required to leave. Mr Komani proceeded to the Cape Supreme Court. It took him a further three years to get a judgement, which upheld the decision of the authorities. Upon intervention by the Athlone Office of the Black Sash, a young Mr Geoff Budlender, an attorney linked to the Legal Resource Centre, was to make his mark. A brilliant performance by Advocate Arthur Chaskalson turned the tables on the government at the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein. 'It was a dramatic victory, a triumph for the lawyering of Chaskalson, Kentridge and Budlender and the tenacity of Komani'.

For quite a few years hereafter government bureaucrats sought to subvert the effect. But seed was sown. A  blow was struck against the pass laws, ultimately to be repealed in the mid-1980s.

Low-key Compassion

Through the centuries spiritual renewal was accompanied by charitable involvement with the poor and needy. The Cape Town City Mission, with its modest start at the beginning of the 20^th century in District Six, soon had no less than four congregations in District Six.

                          Pastor Fenner Kadalie was destined to become

                          the key to the massive expansion of the city’s

                           most well-known institution of compassion

Pastor Fenner Kadalie, a son of the famous trade unionist Clements Kadalie, became one of the most well-known sons of the mission. Influencd by the missionary work in District Six when he was seven years old, Kadalie was destined to become the key to the massive expansion of the Mother City’s most well-known institution of compassion. When the community was forced out of District Six by the demonic Group Areas legislation, Fenner Kadalie and his right hand, the young Bruce Duncan, gathered the scattered remnants of the District Six fellowships, ministering to their needs in their new homes on the Cape Flats. Kadalie was a catalyst for the birth of many upliftment projects in and around Cape Town.

            Under the inspiring leadership of Pastors Bruce Duncan and Fenner Kadalie, the denomination grew rapidly in the 1970s, and was involved in various ministries to those in need. Duncan became an unsung hero of the ‘struggle’ against apartheid. He was not formally involved with politics, but he dared to speak out against the injustice of it and communicated at the same time 'with anyone from Constantia to Hanover Park and gained credibility with gang lords that few others have achieved’.

            Meeting places of the Cape Town City Mission developed into fully-fledged churches. The story has been told of a young man with an 'afro' hair style who walked into one of these churches while Pastor Barry Isaacs was preaching. The young man, Lorenzo Davids, kept coming back until he eventually committed his life to Christ, serving together with Pastor Isaacs as leaders of The Cape Town City Mission in the new millennium. By organising early Saturday morning prayer meetings in the chambers of the metropolitan Civic Centre, Barry Isaacs would play an important role in spiritual renewal in the city from October 2007.

            Susan Benjamin represents one of the many success stories of the City Mission and its’ role in her life made her one of the featured women in the book, Women who changed the heart of the City.  She and her husband had been heavy drinkers when Jesus rescued them through the ministry of the City Mission. When the family was forced to leave District Six, Benjamin asked the City Mission to hold meetings in her home. That became the start of many new congregations across the Western Cape. And her children became stalwarts in the denomination.

Civil Disobedience

Richard Steele, a member of the Baptist Church, was one of the first religious objectors against apartheid. He and Peter Moll, another Baptist serving a prison sentence for religious objection at the same time, refused to wear army uniform while they were in military detention. Writing to friends in a letter on 17 May 1981, he testified to his ‘growth year’ and how he experienced it as a joy ‘to be obedient to Christ in his way of love and gentleness’ (Cited in De Gruchy, 1986:200).

            Dr Ivan Toms, a young doctor who served at the SACLA-initiated clinic in Crossroads became the driving force of the End Conscription Campaign which encouraged Whites to refuse serving in the apartheid-inspired Defence Force. That meant risking imprisonment. This also happened to many a White conscientious objector to military service.

          During 1983 sixteen (possibly predominantly White) University students, who belonged to the Students’ Union for Christian Action used street theatre at various public venues to protest against the constant harassment of ‘squatters’ at KTC, a part of the Crossroads informal settlement. All sixteen were found guilty and fined. One of the students said in her final statement to the magistrate: ‘… On August 13, 1983 I participated in a play in Claremont illustrating the injustice of removals in South Africa and calling people to respond … As a Christian my ultimate allegiance is to God who calls me into radical obedience away from evil and injustice – and in God my conscience transcends my authority of the state. Ultimately this higher loyalty to God’s kingdom relativises all earthly loyalties…’ (The full version of her statement is printed in the anthology Cry Justice, John de Gruchy, p.193-196).

Prowess in the Medical Field

Cape Town put South Africa on the map globally when Dr Christiaan (Chris) Barnard performed the world's first human to human heart transplant on 3 December 1967. This extraordinary event, which pushed the boundaries of science into the dawn of a new medical epoch, took place inside Charles Saint Theatre at Groote Schuur Hospital. After a decade of heart surgery, Barnard and his gifted cardiothoracic team of thirty (which included his brother Marius), were well equipped to perform the nine hour long operation. The recipient was Louis Washkansky, a fifty three year old Jewish grocer from Lithuanian extraction who had a debilitating heart condition. 

          At the annual Global Day of Year in the first years of the new millennium, two items that recurred again and again in the prayers were HIV/AIDS and poverty relief. In subsequent years many lives were saved with anti-retroviral medication as a result of a government turn around in the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.

Research done by the University of Stellenbosch put South Africa on the forefront of finding a cure for HIV/AIDS: A certain plant extract was found that effectively shields cells against the infiltration of the AIDS virus, thus rendering the virus powerless in its destruction of the human body. Its effect is therefore different from anti-retroviral medicine that tries to kill the virus. The research indicated that the new cure for AIDS has the ability to kill, in one minute, about 50 million cells infected by a virus. It seems that it slows down and might even stop the division and multiplication of the AIDS virus (Rapport, 25 July, 2004). Should this research prove to be the breakthrough all have been waiting for, it will not be as expensive as current products used. Believers throughout the country were encouraged to pray earnestly for the completion of research into this possible cure.

The Start of a Ministry to AIDS/HIV Patients

At a time when AIDS was still being mentioned in a hush, there was definitely no competition in compassionate outreach to the hapless sufferers. A ministry with close links to the Cape Town City Mission started when Val Kadalie had a deep concern for young people who contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). She started off as a volunteer in District Six before going for training as a nurse. Back in the apartheid years, she was invited to speak to many churches and schools to warn young people about the dangers of promiscuity and to encourage them to abstain from pre-marital sex. After Ms Kadalie became the matron of the G.H. Starke Centre in Hanover Park, the institution also started functioning as a hospice for terminal patients. She warned her staff in the late 1980s that they might soon have to treat AIDS patients, but her colleagues were not yet ready for that.

            The crunch came when she and her husband were approached to take care of a little 4-year old boy, Jason, who was HIV positive. When her husband Charles put the phone down at the electric power plant in Athlone where he worked, he sensed that God was challenging them as a couple to practice what they preached. Jason was the first of four children they cared for in succession, until all but one died from AIDS. In the process Val became a pioneer fighter for AIDS awareness throughout the country, responding to calls from churches and groups of the most diverse backgrounds.

          Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic institution in the City Bowl, performed the same compassionate work during this period, as the occurrence of HIV-positive babies started to increase. At the premises in Vredehoek where the Roman Catholics had already started caring for orphaned children and destitute elderly in 1888, they pioneered with the care of HIV-positive/AIDS babies in 1992, possibly the first outreach of this nature in South Africa. A Dutch YWAM missionary couple, Toby and Aukje Brouwer, after their successful pioneering work amongst street children, soon took on the care of AIDS babies. In 1999 they started to care for such little ones with government aid in Crossroads, a Black township. Since then, their ministry has expanded to the neighbouring country of Lesotho. On 8 December 2004 a new centre was opened in Lower Crossroads. Broken lives were restored and in the case of at least one young man, a desire was inculcated to enter missionary work.

          In the meantime HIV/AIDS became a pandemic. This spread of the disease was especially dramatic in prisons where inmates infected many new inmates. This challenge has apparently not yet been taken up vigorously. Nevertheless, gangsters were ministered to and many also came to the Lord while in prison.

          Zackie Achmat (born in 1962) is a South African activist, most widely known as founder and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and for his work on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. Achmat was born and grew up in the ‘Coloured‘ community of Johannesburg during the apartheid era in a ‘Cape Malay‘ family. Despite being a member of the African National Congress, he vigorously opposed the non-mainstream medical views promoted by former President Thabo Mbeki and other senior ANC members from his base in the Mother City.

New Ministries of Compassion

Various new ministries of compassion to the poor and needy have already arisen since the 2001 event at the Newlands Rugby Stadium and its annual repetition. One of the fruits was The Warehouse, which started at St John’s Anglican Church in Wynberg. This NGO would do stalwart work during the 2008 xenophobia-related ministry at the Youngsfield Military Camp.

In the Weekend Argus of November 3, 2007 it was reported that Adonis Musati, a Zimbabwean refugee, died of starvation on the streets of the Cape Town CBD. Even though the facts in the report were not quite accurate, the death of Adonis Musati ignited a flood of goodwill. Gahlia Brogneri, an Italian-background Christian, became God’s instrument to launch the Adonis Musati Project.  Through this endeavour she started to care for the refugees outside the Department of Home Affairs’ Foreshore premises in a holistic way. (We had been feeding foreigners in the preceding months once a week, attempting to get local churches involved. In our case, we had little success in getting the City fellowships interested.) Gahlia got many volunteers involved in the Adonis Musati Project, also assisting the refugees in finding accommodation and employment. They also helped to get people on training courses that included security and fishing.

17. A spiritual Battle on the Mountain Tops

Richard Mitchell was a young pastor affiliated to the Full Gospel Church, who came by bus from Natal to the Frontiers Missions Conference in 1983 at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where Dave Bryant was the main speaker. Richard Mitchell had been a political anti-apartheid activist and a drug addict, who came to faith in Jesus Christ in prison.

The Mother City and the wider surroundings of the Cape Peninsula were blessed by the Frontiers Missions Conference. At this conference Richard Mitchell met a young man from the Cape, Roland Manne, who had a passion for missions. Manne’s yearning to serve the Lord abroad was aborted when he contracted cancer of the bowels, dying in 1984. His commitment had by then however sown seeds that were germinating in the hearts of many young people. Richard Mitchell was one of those who were deeply moved by the testimony and commitment of Roland Manne for missions and prayer.

Waves of Prayer start at UWC

The conference at the University of the Western Cape spread waves of prayer throughout the country. Charles Robertson, who had been a lecturer at that university from 1971 to 1976, was brought into the swing of prayer events when he was approached to help fund the hiring of a bus to transport participants to the event at the historical Sendingsgestig Museum in the Mother City's Long Street. (The former Sendingkerk building was salvaged by Dr Frank R. Barlow, a Jewish academic. He had a keen sense of history. The Sendingkerk congregation had to move because of apartheid legislation. Thereafter the former church was turned into the Mission Museum).

After Charles Robertson's father died in 1979, he was thrown into deep spiritual turmoil. The business he had started was in dire straits. All that brought him to his knees in a double sense. Hereafter he broke through into a living faith in Jesus as his Lord. At the Concert of Prayer with Dave Bryant he was approached to chair the meeting as an Afrikaner. That would not be the last time either. He led the Concerts of Prayer not only at the monthly meetings at that venue, but later also at the Presbyterian Church in Mowbray where the event moved to. When Pastor Richard Mitchell came to the Cape to plant a church in Rylands Estate in 1985, he felt challenged by his background in the struggle against apartheid to bring the element of prayer into the matter as well. He approached Pastor Ron Hendricks of the Silvertown Baptist Church to bring together a few evangelical pastors for regular weekly prayer. In later years the practice found a powerful emulation in Mitchells Plain. Richard and Elizabeth Mitchell also pioneered prayer on the heights, at Rhodes Memorial and Signal Hill on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings respectively. Pastor Mitchell became a paramount catalyst for citywide prayer in the 1990s.

A Lebanon-type Scenario?

Spiritual strongholds became a focus of prayer drives that were launched by Pastor Eddy Edson from Mitchells Plain and intercessors from different churches on the last Friday of each month in 1996. The prayer drive of July 1996 started at the strategic Gatesville mosque. This was the same venue from where a fateful PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) car procession started a week later. That procession left for Salt River on August 4^th, the occasion of Rashaad Staggie’s public burning. The event catapulted his twin brother and co-gangleader Rashied into prominence.

            The prayer drives, undertaken at the initiative of Pastor Edson, unfortunately only had a short lifespan. A venture of Pastor Edson which lasted much longer was the monthly pastors' and pastors' wives prayer meeting. Yet, it took years before the racial divide was bridged. Nevertheless, they prepared the soil for the start of the spiritual transformation of the city.

            Sandwiched between the two above-mentioned processions that left the Gatesville mosque, a church service in the Moravian Church of Elsies River was to have worldwide ramifications. Mark Gabriel, the name adopted by a Muslim background believer from Egypt and a former professor at the famous Al-Azar University, shared his testimony there at a combined evening youth service on Sunday 28 July, 1996. (Mark Gabriel previously had to flee his home country where he narrowly escaped assassination because of his decision to become a follower of Jesus.) Within days, the booklet Against the Tides in the Middle East, which contained his story, was in the hands of Muslims leaders. Maulana Sulaiman Petersen, who suspected that Gabriel had contact with local missionaries, threateningly enquired after him on Wednesday 31 July, at the time when Gabriel was doing the practical part of his Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Crossroads Discipleship Training School course in the city with us. Mark Gabriel was forced to go undercover once again. The televised execution of Rashaad Staggie by PAGAD a few days later reminded him of Muslim radicals of the Middle East.

            The PAGAD public ‘execution’ of August 4, 1996 took the attention away from Mark Gabriel. When the second printing of his testimony booklet Against the Tides in the Middle East appeared in 1997, it seemed as though Cape Islam was taking the booklet in its stride.

          

A strategic Meeting on Moravian Hill

International intercession began in earnest with the identification of the 10/40 Window. These are Asian and African countries situated between the 10^th and 40^th degree lines of latitude of the northern hemisphere. They gave a geographical focus to prayer. This was a divinely-inspired window passed on by Luis Bush, an American prayer leader. It was also used by Peter Wagner, a compatriot, to rally the evangelical world in united prayer for the peoples who were still unreached with the Gospel.

At the occasion of the sending of prayer teams to different spiritual strongholds in 1997, a team from the Dutch Reformed congregation of Suikerbosrand from Heidelberg (Gauteng) followed the Network of Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA) nudge to come and pray in the Mother City. In the spiritual realm this was significant, because Heidelberg had once been the cradle of the racist Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). That the AWB town, belonging to the Transvaal Province of the old South Africa, was sending a prayer team to pray for the Muslim stronghold of Bo-Kaap, might have hit the headlines had it been publicised!!! But all this was secret stuff. It was the period when PAGAD was still terrorising the Cape Peninsula.

As part of this visit from Gauteng, a prayer meeting of confession was organized on November 1, 1997 in District Six, in front of the former Moravian Hill Church. Sally Kirkwood, who had been leading a prayer group for Cape Muslims at her home in Plumstead from the mid-1990s, played a pivotal role in this prayer occasion. Kirkwood not only had a big vision for the desolate District Six to be revived through prayer, but she also informed Richard Mitchell and Mike Winfield about the event. The citywide prayer movement received a major push. Eben Swart was asked to lead the occasion. That turned out to be very strategic. Eben Swart’s position as Western Cape Prayer coordinator was cemented when he hereafter linked up with the pastors' and pastors' wives prayer meeting led by Pastor Eddie Edson.

          The event on Moravian Hill in District Six attempted to break the spirit of death and forlornness over the area, so that it would be inhabited again. However, it would take another seven years before that dream started to materialize (and abused for election purposes in 2004). The November 1, 1997-event became a watershed for quite a few participants. Gill Knaggs, Trish and Dave Whitecross got burdened hereafter to become missionaries in the Middle East. Sally Kirkwood came to the fore with a more prominent role among 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 effect on the prayer ministry at the Cape in the next few years, and on transformation in the country at large. Winfield belonged to the Anglican congregation in Bergvliet which had Trevor Pearce as their new pastor. (The Anglican fellowship in Bergvliet got a leading role in the attempts towards the transformation of the Mother City via the prayer events at Newlands.)  The confession ceremony in District Six closed with the stoning of an altar that Satanists or other occultists had probably erected there.

18. Cape Flats Townships in Transformation

The two Cape Flats townships of Hanover Park and Manenberg both have a special link to the past. The first residents there were among those people who had been moved from District Six as a result of the implementing of the Group Areas Act. Special spiritual dynamics took place in the 1990s in those townships which impacted the whole Cape Peninsula.

Hanover Park: an Example to the Nation?

Preparations for the start of a missionary prayer meeting progressed well in the City Mission congregation of the township Hanover Park in the second quarter of 1992. Once per month their weekly prayer meetings received a missionary focus, allowing the author to come and share there regularly. Norman Barnes, a Muslim background believer and a former gangster drug addict, was the leader of the prayer group. It was thus quite easy to share with them the burden of praying for Muslims, for gangsters and drug addicts.

          A few months later Hanover Park experienced the power of prayer in a special way. Everett Crowe, a committed police sergeant, called in the help of the local churches in a last-ditch effort because the police could not cope anymore with the crime situation. Operation Hanover Park was formed. The initiative, with prayer by believers from different church backgrounds as its main component, included a ministry directed specially at gangsters. Instead of shooting at each other, rival gangs competed in football matches. Jesus-centred children’s clubs were formed in an effort to make sure that the problem of gangsterism would be tackled at the root, an effort to break the cycle of youngsters growing into a life of vice.

            The Saturday afternoon missionary prayer meeting fused into the monthly prayer event of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. The vision to pray for missionaries called from their residential area was gladly taken on board. The idea was completely new to the praying believers, but the Lord soon started answering the prayers. Within three months, the area had changed significantly. An elderly resident who had been in the township for many years, testified that Christmas 1992 was the most peaceful he had experienced there. The Lansdowne/Hanover Park/Manenberg area would be exporting quite a number of missionaries within a few years.  Ivan Walldeck, a former gang leader of the area, came to the Lord at that time, going on to became a pastor later and shot in 2013 in the course of his attempts at mediation in gang-related violence.

          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. Soon thereafter the combined prayer effort fizzled out. Gang-related crime spiralled once again. Hanover Park could have become an example to the rest of the country to show what can be done if local believers stand together in prayer perseveringly.

A famous Cape Drug Lord hospitalised

Through the late 1990s, twenty-two bombs exploded, killing and maiming hundreds of men, women, and children who happened to be in the path of this nameless cruelty. Ordinary citizens became fearful, numerous lives were lost. As chaos ruled the streets, Christians started to pray more earnestly once again.

In March and April 1999 dramatic things happened in quick succession. Rashied Staggie, by this time a famous Cape drug lord, was shot and hospitalised. Staggie made the news headlines from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus Christ.  Once again, the Cape was setting the pace in the aftermath of the violence by extremists, which might eventually prove to have paved the way for the possible ultimate demise of Islam as a political force.

          Eddie Edson, a pastor from a poor community in Mitchells Plain and a former gangster, had first hand experience of conditions as he lived in the heart of the troubled areas. He had not only been gathering pastors to pray every month, but he had also started to disciple gangsters. Believers started to pray with a new fervour and determination. Intentionally some of them turned to God in prayer, attempting to access the powers of heaven for the transformation of South Africa and all of Africa.

Renewed Interest in the Lives of Gangsters

The Glen Khan assassination of Easter 1999 was divinely used to bring churches together, not only for prayer, but to some extent also with a vision to reach out to Muslims in love.  Following Khan’s death, some churches showed renewed interest in the lives of gangsters. Pastor Eddie Edson discerned the need to disciple them, starting a programme of special care for gangsters who wanted to change their life-styles.

The attempt to assassinate Staggie ultimately marginalized PAGAD, the criminal extremist group which had tried to eliminate him. Two-and-a-half years later Al Qaeda, a similar group based in the Middle East, became a household name worldwide through the twin tower disaster in New York on September 11, 2001. This incident highlighted the violent roots of Islam in an unprecedented manner.

          The gang war spawned a significant increase in evangelistic ministry, notably at Pollsmoor prison. After operating from Tygerberg Radio, the sister Afrikaans station of CCFM in its early days, the Pentecostal Pastor Christopher Horn started working with gangsters who had turned to Christ. He subsequently became the main chaplain in the police force for the Western Cape.

Transformation of a crime-ridden Township

Manenberg was the township that depicted a change in the religious climate in 1999 more than any other. An off-sales liquor distribution centre, the Green Dolphin, changed hands dramatically when it became a church. The name Green Pastures was suggested by a resident. Even more dramatic was the turn-about of Die Hok, the former national headquarters of the Hard Livings Gang that also became a church. Pastor Eddie Edson, who had been a gangster himself in earlier days, spearheaded the Manenberg outreach.  The spiritual revolution in the notorious township received countrywide prominence through the television programme Crux on Sunday, 25 July 1999.

          Manenberg gang leaders hit back by forcibly recruiting young boys into their gangs. In April 2000 Manenberg was still making negative news headlines with the innocent killing of children in gang crossfire. Much prayer was still needed if the crime and violence was to be stopped. Pastor Edson discerned that Manenberg was a key township in the spiritual warfare in the Peninsula. He not only requested the venue for the monthly pastors and pastors' wives  prayer meeting for July 2000 to be relocated to ‘Die Hok’ , but he was also the driving force to get a 10,000-seater tent campaign into that township.  That he made Pastor Henry Wood responsible for the new fellowship at ‘Die Hok’, proved to be quite strategic. Pastor Wood impressively followed up the converts of the campaign. On 10 February 2001 a national television station, E-TV, reported this success story in their news bulletin. In the report the local police spoke of the former crime-ridden township having become relatively quiet.

          Die Hok and Green Pastures, along with other churches from Manenberg, were to play a prominent role in significantly reducing the area’s crime level in the years hereafter. The township got a personal touch when a Muslim background follower of Jesus who had been in our home and later in the Discipling House linked to our mission agency, went to minister there with the Salvation Army. In the new millennium she started working there independently with her husband.

          The gang wars erupted again from time to time. That this sort of thing often recurred during Ramadan – also in the Middle East - brought urgency to the necessity of praying for the violent nature of the Medinan Surah’s of the Qur’an to be finally discerned. During Ramadan 2013 intensive gang-related violence flared up once again.

19. ‘Down and Outs’ involved in Missions

Two centuries ago the slave Maart from Mozambique did not get the chance to become a missionary. However, the daughter of compatriots of a later generation made her mark in District Six and Bo-Kaap. In other parts of the Peninsula, ‘down and outs’ were to become special instruments to spread the Gospel.

We have noted already here and there how Cape Town slum areas, ‘squatter’ camps and townships produced special emissaries of the Good News.We add here a few more special trophies of God’s grace in this chapter.

Covert Power Encounters

Many a covert power encounter occurred under the ministry of Ds. Pietie Victor’s Straatwerk. Thus Esther Dunn, a former drug addict, was supernaturally delivered. She went to the Glenvar Bible School, which is linked to the Africa Evangelistic Band, thereafter becoming the first full-time worker of Straatwerk. Not only were drug addicts set free through the power of the Gospel, but also many a satanist. Through the ministry of Straatwerk people under occult bondage discovered that there is indeed great power in the blood of Jesus when believers stand together in prayer.

A Bergie becomes a Pastor

Pastor Willie Martheze, a qualified welder from Mitchells Plain, was still a so-called bergie, a vagrant, when he was initially ministered to.

                                                 Jesus found me first!

Humorously he would recollect how he had been such a good-for-nothing alcoholic that his own mother sent the police and the gangsters after him. ‘But Jesus found me first’, he proclaimed. Willie Martheze was radically delivered by the Gospel after attending an evangelistic service on the Grand Parade in February 1974, where the Scottish missionary Pastor Gay preached.  Soon hereafter, the latter got a job for Martheze at the Arthur’s Seat Hotel in Sea Point. The prayerful ministry of Pastor Gay in District Six caused him to attend an evening course at the Bethel Bible School in Crawford.

          Obedient to God’s voice after seeing a very destitute vagrant, Martheze followed a call to work with homeless people, with the intention of ministering healing to them.  One of the aims was to empower the homeless, to enable them to return to the homes they had left. In the spiritual realm it was significant that Pastor Martheze was allowed to use facilities at the Azaad Youth Centre, one of the few buildings that remained intact from the old District Six. (This complex was the former Preparatory School in Upper Ashley Street.) He and his wife were blessed to see quite a few of the homeless changed dramatically for the better, and some of them returned to their families.

A former Street Child starts a Ministry

Zulpha Morris, who became a follower of Jesus after receiving supernatural visions in July 1998, had much opposition when she was divinely called to take care of abandoned babies. Within less than two years, she had more than 30 children in her township home in Beacon Valley, Mitchells Plain, which underwent a few extensions. The garage was converted for accommodation purposes, and the yard at the back became a sewing workshop for women. A container, in which diverse goods and furniture had come from Holland, was part of God’s special provision to get this project off the ground. (The original content of the container was intended for our discipling house for persecuted and evicted converts from Islam.) The sacrificial work of Zulpha and her husband Abdul became a challenge to many a foreigner. In one case, a student from Switzerland, who came to Cape Town to learn English, was inspired by what he saw in Mitchells Plain. After returning to his home country, he started a home for drug and alcohol addicts there. In Cape Town itself, the ministry of the Heaven’s Shelter House in Beacon Valley,[65] Mitchells Plain, became fairly well known through some exposure in the media.

An interesting development in the District Six of post-World War II was that gangs became big business, serving as ‘secret benevolent societies’, and doing much good among the underprivileged. This tradition was still going strong in the 1990s. Rashied and ‘Brother’ Rashaad Staggie – who converted to Christianity before he was ‘executed’ in 1996 – were known to hand out money to children in Manenberg. This money was, of course, tarnished because their drug lord activities were well known. 

            The commencement in the late 1990s of the ministry of compassion to the children, who associated themselves with the Hard Livings Gang in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, looked promising.  Ayesha Hunter, a Muslim background believer, was bravely presenting the Life Issues programme via CCFM radio, while at the same time running a soup kitchen for the children of the notorious gang. She gave the group a new name, using the same first letters of the gang - Heaven’s Little Kids - a name of which they were quite proud. Glen Khan, a drug lord, sponsored the project anonymously, while he was being challenged and ministered to. He finally accepted Jesus as his Saviour, but was assassinated shortly thereafter. The benevolent ministry ceased with his death in April 1999. His funeral would turn the tables on the brains behind his assassination.

Conversions amongst Gangsters   

Because James Valentine had been a gangster, his conversion in 1957 created quite a stir, and consequently a lot of interest. Soon he was a celebrated preacher on the Grand Parade. Subsequently he became a dynamic leader of the Assemblies of God Church. Andy Lamb is another pastor with a similar background who preached - in his own words - ‘on almost every street corner of District Six’ and on many a train. As the minister of the ‘Sowers of the Word’ Church of Lansdowne, he was very much involved in the prayer drives and meetings of intercessors, which met there once a month in 1996 and in the planting of churches. The most famous of all from this category is possibly Pastor Eddie Edson, a previous pastor of the Shekinah Tabernacle which is linked to the Full Gospel denomination. He had been involved in the Woodstock gangster activities and became converted under Pastor Lamb’s ministry. He became one of the most consistent movers of the prayer movement at the Cape in the 1990s.

The Resurrection of the Cape Peace Initiative

However, ‘Coloured’ pastors hereafter verbalized their disquiet to Eddie Edson that the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI) had the effect of making PAGAD seem fashionable. Some clergymen were unhappy that Eddie Edson and the CPI pastors had been speaking to PAGAD leaders.

          At this time, Rev. Trevor Pearce from the Anglican Church linked up with Ernst van der Walt (jr.) in a vision to spread the Transformations video that was just being distributed worldwide. Pearce had been impacted by the vision during a visit to Washington D.C. He initiated a move to invite George Otis and Allistair Petrie, two leaders of the international Sentinel Group, to the Mother City for a conference of his denomination from 29 October to November 2, 2000.

         

Transformation Videos distributed

In early 1999 Ernst van der Walt jr. started working closely with Reverend Trevor Pearce in the sphere of the transformation of communities. Van der Walt (jr.) started attending the monthly pastors and pastors’wives prayer meetings occasionally. It was soon decided to put the CPI under the Transformations umbrella. He and Trevor Pearce discerned that they could combine it easily with a vision for the continuation of citywide prayer events.

          The transformation video’s first screening to a big audience in Cape Town took place at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow on 15 October 1999. Already in the short term this showing brought about substantial change in some churches. By this time White pastors started to attend the monthly pastors’ and wives’ occasion more regularly, also at venues like Die Hok in Manenberg, a former drug den.

          The distribution of a video by George Otis on the transformation of four cities became a major catalyst for citywide prayer after it had been screened in Parow. Within three months, more than 4000 copies were distributed by NUPSA (Network of Prayer in Southern Africa) countrywide, inspiring prayer for revival in many places. A result of this video was that a yearning for more mass prayer rallies developed.  Close links to the Cape Christian radio stations Tygerberg and CCFM proved valuable for the spreading of the news of the citywide prayer events.  Graham Power, a prominent Cape businessman with links to the Western Province Rugby Union, was intensely touched at this occasion to initiate a stadium event in the Mother City.

A Documentary reminds Graham Power of Cape Town

After attending an Alpha Course at their church and the formation of a cell group, Rev. Dion Forster showed the Transformation video to the group, which included the story of Cali in Columbia. There and then Graham felt a stirring deep within, wondering 'if it was possible in Columbia, why not Cape Town?' Graham Power, who is a member of the board of Directors of the Western Province Rugby Football Union, saw this Transformations documentary video in March 2000. It filled him with a strong desire to bring a prayer event to the Newlands Rugby Stadium. The story of the Mafia-style drug lords who exercised such a dominating presence in Cali (Columbia) reminded him of Cape Town.

          Soon it was agreed to add another conference, a cross-denominational one, at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in the suburb of Parow from 3 to 5 November of the same year. Trevor Pearce had a vision for citywide prayer. The Transformation concept brought evangelicals from the mainline churches and the Charismatic-Pentecostal traditions together once again.

            The CPI was dissolved formally. Yet, churches continued to play a role in bringing about peace between rival gangs. On Sunday 25 February 2001, the national television reported how local church leaders had brokered a peace accord between two gangs from Bonteheuwel, the Cisko Yakkies and the Americans. It is ironic that the violent threat from PAGAD appeared to have ushered in some transformation of the city. Another month on, and Cape Town had its first City-wide stadium prayer event at the Newlands Rugby Stadium.

                                                20. The Pulling of the Trigger?

In a sovereign move of God’s Spirit, Pastor Willy Oyegun and a group of Nigerian prayer warriors were led to come and pray in South Africa in February 1994. It was touch and go or they would have been sent back to Nigeria from Johannesburg International Airport (later renamed to Oliver Tambo Airport) without having accomplished anything. Oyegun saw Africa as a huge gun with the trigger in Nigeria and the barrel at the South of the continent, from where a revival would spread like a wildfire throughout the continent. In East Africa God laid on the heart of many a Kenyan to pray for South Africa, that was preparing for its general elections on 27 April of the same year. The ensuing miracle elections and the supernatural run-up to it had ingredients which gave us the feeling that revival was imminent. But that was not to be as yet.

Missionary Exposure from the Cape

Much of the prayer endeavours of the early 1990s were connected to missionary work. David Bliss, an American missionary linked to Operation Mobilisation, had already put the Cape on the map with his Bless the Nations conferences. Love Southern Africa events started in Wellington. Pastor Bruce van Eeden coordinated Great Commission conferences and Pastor Paul Manne organized an annual missionary event. Almost all these efforts however fizzled out towards the end of the 20th century.

          Pastor van Eeden proved the big exception in this regard. He had always wanted to see South Africans involved in missionary work. The Lord laid India and China on his heart. When one of his daughters found employment as a stewardess with South African Airways, he saw that as his chance to get involved himself. In 1995 he started a Mitchell’s Plain-based agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. For three months a year Pastor van Eeden would go and minister in India, partnering with Indian believers and taking with him volunteers from South Africa. In the first 10 years the missionary agency was involved in the planting of 320 churches in India.

Cape Town’s Anchor to the Occult cut off?

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, as they networked with Amanda Buys, a prominent teacher and intercessor of Kanaan Ministries. Amanda Buys had been involved in the counselling of Christians with psychological problems.

The 2001 Newlands prayer event was bound to be a spiritual watershed. A word from God that Amanda received on 21 March 2001 at the Transformation meeting, says it all:

‘During the prayer time God took me into intercession - I travailed much and I knew something was breaking in the heavenlies. I asked, “What is it Lord?”  He clearly showed me the Lady of Good Hope with her anchor. I then saw her anchor being cut off. God said that Cape Town’s soul had been anchored to her, that’s why we turned to drugs, prostitution, gangs, etc.

             Today this anchor was cut off and replaced with God’s anchor. I asked for scripture.  The Lord gave me Hebrews 6:19, 20

Now we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul - it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whoever steps out upon it - a hope that reaches farther and enters into the very certainty of the Presence within the veil. Where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Graham Power - a major mover of the Newlands event - had a dream in February 2002 that encouraged him to bring the stadium prayers to Southern Africa. In 2002 the prayer day started to spread throughout Southern Africa: eight stadiums were involved. In 2003 and 2004, mass prayer events were held in sports stadiums throughout the African continent.  

          An interesting dynamic was starting to take off, namely that missionaries - who had been working in other Southern African countries - started to encourage missionary work by other believers in the Cape Peninsula. Thus locals were challenged to minister to under-evangelised and forgotten peoples in Namibia and the Northern Cape. Georgina Kinsman from Mitchells Plain was among the first of a new generation of local believers to get going with church-planting in a powerful and blessed way.

Cops for Christ

It was exciting to see how in different parts of the country, the vision ‘adopt a cop’ - prayer for the police force - took off. It was surely in answer to prayer that Cops for Christ was started. The group saw themselves as stimulators and co-ordinators for prayer. Already at the City-wide prayer events of the late 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Captain René Matthee had been a regular speaker, challenging believers to pray especially for the police. Kallie Hanekom, Danie Nortje and Michael Share challenged churches in the city area and further afield to pray concretely. At a time when mobile phones were still a novelty, they developed a system whereby a simultaneous prayer request could be sent to many Christians. Believers were invited to come and pray at police stations. The Cops for Christ branch of Atlantis on the West Coast received countrywide prominence, such as in the organization and implementation of the 24-hour week of prayer from 16 to 23 May 2004 in their area. Crime reported to the local police station dropped significantly in the months thereafter.

          A special variation occurred in the violent suburb of Elsies River. Monica Williams, a compassionate Christian of the area, took it upon herself to see her suburb transformed through prayer. Reacting to a dream, she approached the local police and started caring especially for juvenile delinquents and rape victims. Within months, corruption within the local police force was exposed. In nearby Ravensmead, Lea Barends endeavoured to combat crime and domestic violence through prayer. In September 2003, she approached Freddie van Wyk of the local police station, with the request to come and pray for the staff. He was excited and soon a prayer watch started there, with five women attending every Thursday. By May 2004 ten women were attending. Within months, crime in Ravensmead had dropped dramatically; many drug lords were apprehended.

            Mqokeleli Mntanga helped to facilitate unified prayer among churches in the township of Mbekweni, Paarl. The churches there started a ‘house of prayer’ at the local police station.

From time to time drug syndicates were discovered, very often after concerted prayer. Thus a factory where drugs were produced was exposed in Woodstock at the end of the previous millennium. A Chinese syndicate brought the new drug ‘tik’ to the Cape market. By the end of 2004, the locally produced drug had become a scourge of Cape townships. It was significant that the producers operated from the posh suburb of Plattekloof. Amanda Buys and her team had just been praying intensely around the link between China and crime in the Cape. During a visit to Hong Kong in 2004, she discovered that South African abalone was sold there in many shops. The police discovered the house factory where ‘tik’ was produced towards the end of 2004, four houses from the Buys home in John Vorster Street, Plattekloof. A sad fact about these initiatives is that almost all of them petered out after a while.

New Challenges

Satan hit back via another stronghold at the turn of the new millennium – sexual perversion and drug addiction! The legalization of abortion in 1996 was not surprising because in the run-up to the 1994 elections, the ruling ANC had already envisaged that as future policy. However, it took many Christians and Muslims by surprise that homosexuality received a major boost from the secular governing style.  The new government propagandized the use of condoms in an effort to stop AIDS. In spite of warnings that condoms were really not safe to keep the HIV virus out, the slogan ‘be wise - condomise!’ was used almost unabatedly at this stage. At the Cape Town Civic Centre  - a gigantic erect penis with a condom over it - spread a debatable message to young people until it was removed – blown away by a gale. When the government changed its stance in a stated intention to follow the example of Uganda, it was already very late in the day. (By propagating abstinence from sexual intercourse before marriage and fidelity within it, Uganda succeeded as the first country in the world to reverse the ratio of HIV infected people.) However, the message of the government was ambivalent. On the one hand it turned to religion to help teach morality; on the other hand, agents like Love Life were and are still being funded. This agency has no scruples in encouraging such practices as early experimenting with sex. In this way, traditional religious morality was contradicted and undermined.

A situation had developed by the end of the previous century, which could only be countered with spiritual warfare on a national scale. A divine response appeared to follow when prayer warriors from different communities were raised up. In 1997, a team from the Dutch Reformed Church Suikerbosrand in Heidelberg (Gauteng) came to pray in the Mother City in general and in Bo-Kaap in particular. In the spiritual realm this was significant as a divine reply because Heidelberg was the cradle of the racist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in 1973, when the town belonged to the Transvaal province of the old South Africa. Bo-Kaap gradually lost its grip as an Islamic stronghold which it gained through apartheid. Many houses were sold to people who were not Muslims since the beginning of the new millennium. A portion of the new inhabitants belongs to the ‘gay’ sub-culture. The borders of the part of the city which had made the metropolis the gay capital of the continent since 1994, were now being extended into Bo-Kaap!!

Church-led Restitution?

During a visit to Argentine in 1999 Pastor Martin Heuvel of the Fountain Christian Centre in Ravensmead was challenged to apply the principal of restitution to the South African set-up. His efforts to get other White church leaders to move beyond mere oral confession and especially towards restitution for the evils of apartheid, took more than two years. Some of these personalities, who were challenged, had been involved with the prayer movement in the country for a long time. In 2002 Pastor Heuvel approached Charles Robertson, a prayer warrior of many years standing, who had been the catalyst of the monthly prayer concerts at the Cape. With him Martin Heuvel found a prepared heart. This finally led to the establishment of the Foundation for Church-led Restitution, where believers from different races and church backgrounds met from time to time. They started to discuss possibilities to nudge the Church towards meaningful restitution, especially to address and rectify the wrongs of apartheid. Charles Robertson put the challenge to South African Christians to consider seriously the options presented by the huge economic disparity in our country in a booklet published in August 2005, which he gave the title Swyg, vermy of vlug (Keep silent, avoid or flee).[66]

          Just under another decade later, Pastor Martin Heuvel linked up with Murray Bridgman, a city advocate. The duo got Karoo farmers prepared not only to talk about, but also to walk a road of restitution with some of their workers. This coincided with the land Act of 1913.

Combined evangelistic Outreach

In the build-up to the 2010 World Cup combined evangelistic outreach was prepared in many a way.  Christians from diverse backgrounds utilised the opportunities to impact communities. One of these efforts was Ubabalo – an effort to use football as a tool to reach into communities in a holistic way. After 2010 there appeared to be a decline of local Cape churches to get involved in any matters outside their own little kingdom. Prayer events for the city on Saturday mornings, the bulk of them led by Pastor Barry Isaacs, kept at least some semblance of unity momentum going.  Another effort to get believers interested in the changing of the name of Devil’s Peak in 2011 could have been a unifying moment. However, the buy-in was minimal.

          A group of believers started to use the foundation nation status of the Khoi from 2010 as a vehicle to impact the nation. However, infighting of tribal chiefs prevented this initiative to make a significant impact. After the return of the Messianic Jewish Pastor Baruch Maayan and his family in September 2010, foreigners from various African countries played an increasing positive role in the spiritual realm, notably Pastor Light Eze from Nigeria and Pastor Albert Mbenga from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Both of them showed a positive attitude towards Israel. Pastor Baruch also got many local Christians interested in the vison of the Highway from the Cape to Jerusalem, becoming the divine instruments towards a prayer room built in Vredehoek that overlooks the City Bowl.

          While the new drug ‘tik’ is still ravaging through the Cape Peninsula and AIDS is killing young and old by the hundreds, the question remains when and whether the Cape Christians will rise again in united prayer, which would ignite the revival flames that could bless the continent from Cape to Cairo and bring biblical morality in its wings. The implementation of real unity of Christians on biblical grounds in the spirit of the person and example of Jesus - without semantics and bickering around peripheral issues like baptism and preaching by women – seems to be still some distance away. Yet, the biblical norm of sharing, so that something is done to close the gap between the extremes of riches and poverty, cannot be overlooked.

          In the meantime, we live at the edge of a trigger of another sort. By being willing to get involved in programmes of restitution locally, Cape Town (and South Africa) could set a modern example. The alternative is the trigger of desperation of the masses of the poor, which would not resemble the proverbial Sunday School picnic.

          The Body of Christ in the Mother City could still make the difference by pulling the right trigger. I believe that the combined expression of the Body of Christ in remorseful confession and repentance could be a catalyst towards spiritual renewal. It would be great if local churches could muster forces in prayer and action towards Godly governance on the short term. This would be but a small - and yet significant – step. How wonderful it would be if Church leaders could be the channel, voicing regret which could ignite remorse; that so many of our forebears claimed that the Church came in the place of the nation of Israel; that some of our co-religionists like Waraqah bin Naufal have been misleading Muhammad and because of that, millions are now caught in the web of religious bondage. The acknowledgment that Islam is the result of heretical Christianity and distorted Judaism could be a possible catalyst for spiritual renewal. Even better would be if this could happen in tandem with combined loving evangelistic action and outreach.

         

Select Bibliography

Bickford-Smith, Vivian; van Heyningen, Elisabeth and Worden, Nigel - Cape Town in the Twentieth

                                                  Century, David Philip, Cape Town, 1999

Botha, D.P. - Die Opkoms van ons Derde Stand, Human and Rousseau, Cape Town, 1960

Bredekamp H.C., Flegg A.B.L. and Plüddeman, H.E.F. - The Genadendal Diaries, Vol. 1,    

                                                                           University the Western Cape, Bellville, 1992, 

Davids, Achmat, The mosques of Bo-Kaap, South African Institute of Arabic and Islamic Research,

                                                                                                                                          Athlone, C.T, 1980

Elphick, Richard  & Davenport, Rodney - Christianity in South Africa, David Philip, Cape Town, 1997

Krüger, Bernhard - The Pear Tree Blossoms, Rhodes University (Ph.D. Thesis) Grahamstown, 1969

Lodge, Tom – Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1990 (1983)

Nürnberger Klaus/ Tooke, John -The Cost of Reconciliation, Methodist Publishing House, Cape Town, 1988

Sparks, Allister - The Mind of South Africa, Heinemann, London, 1990

Shaw, Gerald – Some Beginnings, The Cape Times 1876-1910, Oxford University Press, C.Town, 1975

Van der Ross, R.E. – The Rise and Decline of Apartheid, A study of political movements among the

                                      Coloured People of South Africa, 1880-1985, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1986.

Walshe, Peter ­– Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa,

                                                  Cluster Publications, Pietermaritzburg, 1995

Walker, Eric A. – A History of Southern Africa, Longmans, London, 1964

Worden, Nigel, Van Heyningen, Elisabeth and Bickford-Smith Vivian,

             - The Making of a City, David Philip, Cape Town, 1998 

             - The Making of Modern South Africa, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, (UK), 2000 (1994)

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[1]     In due course the oefenhuis or gesticht would become the place where separate religious exercises for people of colour. There they would receive devotional teaching.

[2]   Translation: a man of strong faith and a prayer warrior.

[3]     Translation: Died in complete rest and peace and in trust in the Lord

[4]     It would however still take decades before preachers of colour would occupy pulpits in predominantly White congregations. In another part of the country, in Natal, Bishop Colenso, an Anglican, experienced a paradigm shift. He discerned the intrinsic worth of Zulus, to be used as equals in the spreading of the Gospel.

[5]  William Carey was deeply influenced by Idea Fidei Fratrum the work of the Moravian Bishop August Spangenberg.

[6] There seems to be no evidence that the two ever met personally, although Gerdener described Rev. Vos as a ‘boesemvriend’, a close friend of Van Lier. This could of course have developed through correspondence, with Vos being born and raised in the Cape and Van Lier known to have been a keen letter writer.

[7] In the manuscript Mysterious ways of God - Excerpts from missionary Work in the Western Cape, more       information can be found on Magdalena Vittuie and her contribution.

[8] The other woman to be baptized received the name Christina.

[9] Haasbroek, 1955:75.  Translation:  in no other way and under no other rules than those regarding the ordination of missionaries.

[10] In 1998 AEF merged into SIM international (Serving in Mission, formerly Sudan Interior Mission).

[11] The YWCA subsequently moved to its present premises at 20 Bellevue St, Gardens.

[12] Samuel Cronwright Schreiner was a Cape parliamentarian for a few years. During this time they lived in the Karoo towns Hanover and De Aar, but it is very interesting that her husband adopted her surname.

[13] This is found in the introduction of his diary, the Daghregister, p xxi. Translation: Buying slaves with counterfeit money and intoxicating them before robbing them.

[14] Kapp (1985:285) plays down the role of Dr Philip in the emancipation of the slaves. It might be true that John Philip did not play that big a role, but his indirect contribution was surely just as important, and should not be under-estimated.

[15]    I differentiate between party politics on the one hand and ethical issues and injustice which the biblical prophets for example clearly attacked and addressed on the other hand.

[16] In 1936 Dr Jabavu was elected first president of the All Africa Convention, which sought to consolidate all non-European opposition to the proposed abolition of the African vote; the AAC's stance was subsequently construed as damaging by some radical elements in the ANC.

[17] The parents of Solomon Plaatje worked for a German missionary couple, Ernst and Wilhelmine Westphal. There he received a missionary education. When he outpaced fellow learners, he was given additional private tuition by Mrs. Westphal.

[18] Within a year after the establishment of Ndabeni (or Uitvlugt as it was first called), 6 churches were established and education for children and adults was offered through a government primary school, an Anglican school and 7 night schools. Employers in Cape Town centre were not keen on these opportunities, saying that their domestic servants were attracted to the location to attend the evening classes, and that if children were going to school it would be 'difficult to recruit servants from the juvenile ranks'. 

[19] Rev. Daniel Joorst, my grandfather, died in Elim in March 1958.

[20] Rev. Daniel Wessels was ultimately banned and put under house arrest, to spend his final years in Genadendal where he died.

[21] Saul Solomon's father Benjamin was reputedly the first Jewish settler to make Cape Town his home.

[22] Sivewright had fraudulently given a railway contract to a friend, Mr J.D. Logan, for bars and refreshment rooms along the railway line from Cape Town to the Free State. Within a few months the first Rhodes Cabinet broke up. He lost the services of James Rose-Innes, the Attorney-General, Jacobus W. Sauer, the Colonial Secretary and John Xavier Merriman, his treasurer.  

[23] The Bubonic Plague arrived from Argentina in naval supplies. The plague prompted the authorities to clean up the slums that had developed in the fast growing city, but also to pursue policies of racial segregation to 'contain' disease and disorder.

[24]    Information supplied by Mr. Salie Fataar in a personal interview on October 30, 2001.

[25]    This Act granted wide powers to the Native Affairs Department ‘to curb sedition and dissent and to control the movement of Africans’ (Musson, 1989:36).

[26]    In the 1890s the Peregrino’s and James Booth had pioneered Pan Africanism and Africa for the Africans.

[27]  Johannes Ulster (1912-2012), better known as John, born and bred in Genadendal, went on to become a bishop in the Moravian Church. In the apartheid era Dan Ulster and Kaiser Matanzima, a ‘homeland leader’, were part of the South African delegation at the United Nations plenary session in New York. This was an effort of the regime to demonstrate that it was moving away from old-fashioned apartheid.

[28]    Mosaval was discovered by Dulcie Howes of the UCT Ballet School during the pantomime ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Ashley Higher Primary School in 1932 (Noor Ebrahim, Noor’s Story, My life in District Six, 1999:74), before he went on to study at UCT and later at the Royal Ballet School in London.

[29]    Rassool’s claim is however probably not quite apt because the same people often moved from one congress to the other. At a women’s congress in 1955 they also had a similar paper. It is possible that someone like Cissy Gool could have had a hand in all three similar documents. The secret in the similarity could possibly also be Ray Alexander, the Cape Trade Unionist. After being banned in 1953, she continued to work behind the scenes, helping to draw up the Women’s Charter which outlined the women’s political and economic demands.

[30]    The information for this section is taken almost solely from the contribution of Naomi Barnett in the series Studies in the History of Cape Town, vol.7, 1994, pp. 162- 183 with the title The Planned destruction of District Six in 1940.

[31]    Later the group was renamed Belydende Kring.

[32]    Jakes told me though that the Broederkring itself, in which Allan Boesak was to play a bigger role after his return from Holland, was actually the brain child of Dr Beyers Naudé. In turn, this was part of the run-up to ABRECSA, an organisation of Black reformed clergymen where every Reformed pastor who was not White was welcome.

[33]    In later years Robert Kriger became active in anti-apartheid affairs from Germany. He completed his doctorate in Tübingen and took up a senior lecturing post at UNISA after returning to South Africa in 1983.

[34] This knowledge would prove valuable five years later when I was determined to leave South Africa finally, never to return. God used Dr Naude to bring about a big turn around in my thinking to take reconciliation between the races in my home country as a top priority.

[35] That was still the cheapest mode of transport between Europe and South Africa

[36] Rev. Morkel ultimately broke away from the Dutch Reformed Church to start the Calvinist Church because of apartheid.

[37]    Botha’s letter to the Burger can be found among his correspondence at the Western Cape Institute for Historical Research.

[38] The Christian Institute (CI) was founded by Dr Beyer Naude after the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) reneged on commitments made at the WCC-organised consultation at the Cottesloe residence of Witwatersrand University in 1960. He had been a DRC delegate to that consultation.

[39]    Nico Bougas later became the pioneer and editor of the periodical Christian Living Today.

[40] Rev. Goba later became a theological professor at UNISA next to high office in his denomination.

[41] In later years Robert Kriger became active in anti-apartheid activities in Germany. He completed his doctorate in Tübingen and took up a senior lecturing post at Unisa after returning to South Africa in 1983.

[42] The global movement is today known as Initiatives for Change.

[43]    Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa. Proceedings and Decisions of General Assembly 1981, p.180ff. The Assembly also rec­ognized ‘the bona fides of those Christians who in good conscience before God took up arms to fight either for “liberation” or for “law and order” in South Africa’—and paid tribute to conscientious objectors, specifically mentioning Charles Yeats (p.186).

[44] The great late Professor Bosch initiated SACLA, the South African Christian Leadership Assembly in 1979, a big inter-denominational event in Pretoria. Many initiatives were birthed there, which impacted the country deeply. Delegates went back to their home congregations with a new vision for a new South Africa, a vision which they shared with others.

[45]    The lime quarry became notorious in the apartheid days when political prisoners got eye defects because of their work there.

[46]    The quotes are taken from Mogoba’s autobiographical article He visited me in prison in the chapter Christ on Robben Island in the anthology Cry Justice by John de Gruchy (1986: 105ff).

[47] Quite aptly, as the first nation people of Southern Africa, the Khoi were the first to be called Afrikaanders.

[48]    An example of the same phenomenon is found in the Bible when the Israelites started idolizing the bronze snake, which once was the source of their salvation (Compare Numbers 4:21ff with 2 Kings 18:4).

[49]    However, all Muslims did not applaud De Roubaix. He harvested opposition by some when he banned Khalifa (ratib) in his capacity of Superintendent of Police (De Lima, J. The Khalifa Question, 1857). 

[50]    The perception got so ingrained that the Bo-Kaap Museum at 71 Wale Street hardly has a trace of the former predominantly Christian presence.

[51]    The building belonged to the premises at which the SAMS started, being thus the cradle of all missionary work from South Africa.

[52] She ministered thereafter in Mozambique, probably one of the first female Xhosa missionaries after Wilhelmina Stompjes, who worked as translator to German Moravian missionaries in the Eastern Cape.

[53] Ntsikana, who had possibly been impacted by the missionary Dr van der Kemp, wrote various Xhosa hymns. Robert Johnson, a missionary who wa hearing his Great Hymn for the first time reported that 'men as well as women were affected to tears' (cited in Hastings, 2004: 369)

[54] The full article can be found at http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-indict-my-religion/

[55] The Mediclinic is now situated there.

[56] Very significant was the political climate in Eastern Europe, including the perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost , of Mikhail Gorbachov, a policy that called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union. The big catalyst for change was the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, 1989.

[57] Modderdam Road has been renamed to Robert Sobukwe Road.

[58]    Kafferboetie was the word pejoratively used by Whites for those from Afrikaner ranks who befriended people of colour.

[59] Allister Sparks (The Mind of South Africa, 1990:76-78) showed very convincingly why it is a myth that South Africa’s system of slavery was ‘more benign than those of other slave states.’

[60]    I have not been able yet to verify this number from other sources than Philip Kgosana’s figure.

[61]    This was not the first time that the government attempted to get the ‘Coloureds’ and ‘Indians’ on their side in opposition to the Blacks. The previous time it was effectively blocked through internal opposition. A significant group around Dr Andries Treurnicht broke away in 1982 to start the Conservative Party.

[62]    My notes of the next section are heavily based on Daphne Wilson’s article ‘Purging of the Night Schools’, South African Outlook, March, 1969, on pp. 532-34 in Outlook on a Century, 1973.

[63]    Acronym for Students Health and Welfare Care Organisation.

[64]    A full report of the cases of the Komanis and Mehlolo Rikhoto, which both went to the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein, as well as the far reaching consequence of the victories, can be read in Davis and le Roux, Precedent and Possibility, Double Storey Books, 2009, pp 62-78.

[65] It relocated to Woodlands, Mitchells Plain.

[66] An English translation came out later in that year as Securing South Africa’s Future.