Mysterious Ways of God April 2020

Mysterious Ways of God

- Excerpts from missionary Work in the Western Cape

Content

1. A Blow to Slavery from the Cape

2. The World’s first Female indigenous Church Planter

3. A City Minister with Vision

4. Opposition to missionary Work

5. Evangelical Zeal confronts Colonial Policy

6. Practical Christianity at Work

7. Pioneering Women

8. A Teacher of the Nations

9. Early Jewish-Christian Interaction

10. Cape Jewish-Christian Interaction

11. Prayer as a Counter to Violent Revolution

12. Attacks on the Islamic Wall

13. Gangsterism: a stumbling or stepping Stone?

14. Special Initiatives at the End of the 20^th Century

15. Some Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

Appendix: Some Autobiographical Notes

Introduction

The British poet and hymnist William Cowper struggled throughout his life with depression, doubts, and fears. He wrote the poem God Moves in Mysterious Ways. In this book I try to highlight some of these mysterious divine moves - afflictions and tribulations that were sovereignly used by God to counter moves that could be described as demonic.

The Cape has a special link to William Cowper via Dr van Lier, whose testimony - in the form of six letters to Rev. John Newton - was originally written in Latin and translated by William Cowper. The title of the booklet in English is The Power of Grace, illustrated in six letters from a Minister of the Reformed church to the Rev. John Newton. Van Lier’s story of the influence of divine grace in his life seems to have made a lasting impression on Newton, who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists. The famous hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ was written by John Newton.

God Moves in Mysterious Ways

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

Abbreviations

AAC - All African Convention

AE - Africa Enterprise

ACVV - Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouevereniging (Afrikaans Women’s Guild)

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)

CSV - Christelike Studentevereniging

DEIC - Dutch East India Company

DRC - Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk)

Ds. – Dominee (equivalent of Reverend)

DTS - Disciple Training School

IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party

LMS - London Missionary Society

NEUF - Non European Unity Front

OM - Operation Mobilization

PAGAD - People against Gangsterism and Drugs

PAC – Pan African Congress

SACC -South African Council of Churches

SAMS - South African Missionary Society

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)

Preface

I returned to Cape Town, the city of my birth in January I992 after living in Germany and Holland for many years. Born in Bo-Kaap in 1945, I was raised in District Six and Tiervlei (later the ‘Coloured’ section of this suburb was called Ravensmead.)

Assignments for a post graduate course in missions at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) caused me to be ‘bitten’ by a bug – historical research. In due course this became my hobby. Many a manuscript ensued over the years. Having been raised in the Moravian tradition, attending their schools as well as being trained and ordained as a minister of that denomination, there developed in me over the years an even stronger interest in Moravian Church history.

Having been involved in missionary work with WEC (Worldwide Evangelization for Christ) International and in the prayer movement here at the Cape for many years, I have also been jotting down some personal experiences. Many of them have been included in the latter chapters of this book. It has been such a blessing to discern how these ‘mysterious ways of God’ were as a rule answers to prayer.

Throughout this book, I speak about 'Coloured' people. In a country as ours where racial classification has caused such damage, I am aware that the designation 'Coloured' has given offence to the group into which I am classified. For this reason, I endeavoured to put ‘Coloured’ consistently between inverted commas and as capitals when I refer to this racial group. To the other races I refer respectively as Black and White written with capital letters, to denote that it is not normal colours to which we refer.

The bulk of the material has been taken from unpublished manuscripts, notably 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.

As many people around the world grown under the effects of the Covid 19 from the Coronavirus family, I take liberty to revisit this manuscript again before dropping it back on my blog.

Trusting that many will not only be blessed to see how God worked in mysterious ways to perform miracles. It is my firm belief that the virus may be man-made and definitely no by divine design, that He is powerful to over-rule and turn it around sovereignly. In fact, I expect this to happen, looking forward to see this happening.

I hope and pray that you may be blessed and challenged by the reading, just as I have been in the course of the research and the collating of the material.

Ashley D.I. Cloete

Cape Town, April 2020

1. A Blow to Slavery from the Cape

It is no co-incidence that a meta-historical battle of unseen things was revolving around slaves at the Cape from the outset. Slavery as such was already in existence in biblical days. It has been a major tragedy within Christianity that an important element of the teaching of Paul was completely ignored, namely that Christian slaves were to be regarded as brothers and sisters (In the Bible book Philemon, Paul the apostle encouraged Philemon not only to take back the run-away slave Onesimus, but also to regard him as a brother and partner).

Providence at Work

One senses that Providence had a hand in the developments at the Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of the settlement. In fact, even before Jan van Riebeeck set his foot on our shores on 6 April 1652, God had intervened. The Dutch had already intended in 1619 to create a half-way station between Europe and the East and the British also had similar ideas in the interim. It was however the

Input of the Shipwreck of the Haarlem

shipwreck of the Haarlem in 1647 which gave the decisive input. Significantly, in their memorandum to the East India Company in Amsterdam, 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 Khoikhoi. These 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 special how the Remonstrantie, which was written by the two, contradicted the common view of the indigenous people of their day and age, referring to ‘a popular error’: ‘Others will say that the natives are savages and cannibals, and that no good is to be expected from them.’ The Khoikhoi at the Cape impressed them as possible candidates for ‘the magnifying of God’s Holy Name and to the propagation of the Gospel.’

Racial Prejudice Entrenched

The input of Janzoon and Proot seems to have either not been passed on, forgotten or simply ignored. European colonists not only came to the Cape with racial arrogance, but this prevailed. 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 discovered. ‘Bushmen’, ‘Hottentotten’ and slaves at the Cape remained sub-human in the eyes of Westerners.¹

Cape Colonists were indoctrinated with a theology in which racism was rationalized and defended.’ It has been suggested that ‘racism as a racial ideology owes its origin - in our Western cultural history - to attempts at a moral justification of slavery as a social institution’ (Esterhuyse, Apartheid must die, 1981:22). From this basis it easily developed in South Africa to a defence mechanism and justification for racial prejudice.

Slavery in the spiritual Battlefield

Slavery seems to have been part of the ideological battleground of the forces in the unseen world.

The vast majority of the slaves, who came to the Cape of Good Hope in the 17^th century, originally seemed to have been open to the Gospel. However, sinful attitudes - including materialism on the part of the Dutch colonists and the authoritarian denominationalism of the Church locally - played into the hands of evil forces.

During the 15^th to 18^th centuries, very few people in Europe and North America had ethical problems with slavery. The inhuman practices linked to slavery were regarded as reconcilable with Christian norms in spite of the views of early critics, such as the Spanish priest Alfonso de Sandoval in 1627. Furthermore, high-ranking people with great influence like Queen Isabella of Spain and Queen Elisabeth I of England had their reservations about the trade in human beings.

Sensitivity to the inhumanity of

slavery broke through slowly

Due to the lack of international communications, sensitivity to the inhumanity of slavery broke through only relatively slowly. The system of slavery at the Cape was similar to that practised in other colonial societies. It was part of the contemporary mercantile system, driven by forces outside the Colony. The slaves played a significant role in the internal economic development of the small Cape refreshment station which became a relatively established economy by 1795, when Britain became the colonial power.

Slaves and Religious Persecution

The early history of Cape Islam runs parallel to the Dutch extension of their commercial interests in the East. The first known Muslims were brought to the Cape as slaves in 1658, i.e. only six years after Jan van Riebeeck had landed here. These Muslims from the Indonesian island of Ambon were called Mardyckers,² indicating that they had been free people, i.e. not slaves. Even before they left their home soil, many of them had turned to Islam in solidarity with their fellow Ambonese - in opposition to the oppressive Dutch colonizers. The Cape Mardyckers were immediately discriminated against. As part of Dutch colonial policy, their religious practices and activities were severely restricted. The threat of a death sentence hung over their head if they tried to convert anybody to Islam. Thus they worshipped with a very low profile.

The Dutch East India (trade) Company - backed by their rulers in Holland - fought Islam in the East with military means. When rebellious Muslim religious leaders offered stiff resistance in the Indonesian Archipelago, the developing refreshment post at the Southern tip of Africa provided a handy place for the banishment of political convicts. The first religious prisoners came with the batch of slaves from the East that arrived on the Polsbroek from Batavia on 13 May 1668. These Muslim leaders were not prepared to take the religious repression passively like the Mardyckers before them. They immediately befriended the slave population at Constantia, teaching them the religion of Islam. Thereafter they held secret meetings in the Constantia forest and on the mountain slopes.

Early Evangelistic Beginnings in the Mother City

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

The first serious effort of swimming against the stream of racial and religious prejudice in the 18th century was said to have been made by the Dutch Reformed Ds. Henricus Beck, a Groote Kerk minister, after his retirement in 1731. A group of evangelical Christians gathered around Ds Beck. His pioneering labour provided the foundation for the ministry of the first missionary to South Africa, the dynamic German Moravian Georg Schmidt, who started lively Christian groups after his arrival in

Schmidt was scoffed at by the colonists

July 1737. The prayerful Schmidt was scoffed at by the colonists for attempting to reach out to the Wilden, the indigenous Khoi, whom they disparagingly called Hottentotten. Georg Schmidt was exemplary in so many ways, networking with the local church and starting a missionary movement in which indigenous believers were to play a big role. Worldwide, the ‘Moravian brotherhood … ever sought and found ways and means of comity and co-operation’.

Schmidt initially experienced nothing but kindness from the government at the Cape. The ridicule of the colonists turned into enmity when word got around that he had actually taught the Khoi to read. However, he was seriously handicapped after Ds. G.Kulenkamp, an Amsterdam minister, issued a pastoral letter of warning in 1738 against the ‘extreme views’ expressed by Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravian movement. Under the guise of pure simplicity, the letter branded the Moravians a mystical society, that was spreading dangerous opinions detrimental to the pure doctrine (Kulenkamp was possibly referring to the ‘Blut und Wunden’ [blood and wounds] theology of Zinzendorf’s son Christian Renatus. Yet, the warning was now understood to be against the Moravians as such).

Georg Schmidt soon had a small congregation of 47 and he also had contact with 39 other colonists. The evangelical group in the Mother City laid the foundation for what was meant to become a sanctuary for the slaves, the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht on the corner of Long and Hout Streets. Contemporary Cape residents were greatly impressed by the impact of Schmidt’s ministry.

The widow Aaltje van den Heyden, one of Ds. Beck’s church members, played an important part in the missionary outreach to the slaves after the death of her husband in 1740. She supplied the bulk of the funds for a Gesticht, an institution for the uplifting and religious teaching of slaves that was also called an oefenschool. This would decisively influence religious life at the Cape for subsequent decades.

Against All Odds

Schmidt did not allow himself to be side-tracked by conversions among the colonists. He soon moved to the Overberg intentionally wanting to go to those people who had not heard the Gospel at all. He toiled hard among the resistant Khoi, initially without success. Schmidt gradually overcame the ‘apathy of his flock’ with ‘labour of love and patience of hope’. It was however no cakewalk in the light of the growing opposition to his work. By the beginning of 1742 Schmidt was very frustrated and despondent after the years of toil with so little to show for it. He wrote to Count Zinzendorf that he intended to return to Europe, partly because of the indolence of his folk, and also because he did not receive helpers.

Spiritual fruit came in the

form of the first converts

But then the fruit came in the form of the first converts. Schmidt came to the Mother City to bid farewell his friend and benefactor, the German Captain Johannes Rhenius, who was about to leave the country after his retirement.

Schmidt’s visit to the Mother City with Willem, a convert, resulted in an unprecedented interest among colonists and officials. During this visit Schmidt picked up a letter of ordination from Count Zinzendorf. The Count encouraged him in the letter to baptize his converts ‘where you shot the rhino’, that is in the river. In March 1742 he thus received encouragement to baptise suitable candidates. On his way back, he baptized his convert in or at the Sergeant’s River, giving him the name Josua. Four more baptisms followed soon thereafter, including two females.

A Huge Problem Arose

When Schmidt mentioned the baptisms in passing to the new commander of the military post of their region in nearby Zoetemelksvlei, a chain reaction followed.³ The baptism of the five Khoi believers caused a huge problem among the Reformed clergymen at the Cape. Schmidt was harassed and asked to leave. The three Dutch Reformed dominees at the Cape, Le Seur (Groote Kerk), Van Gendt (Stellenbosch) and Van Echten (Drakenstein), referred to Schmidt rather scathingly in a letter to their church authorities as ‘deeze zoogenaamde hottentots-bekeerder’ (this so-called Khoi converter), who pretended to convert ‘de blinde Hottentotten’. They complained that the converts were not sufficiently instructed and that Schmidt was not ordained properly. The clergymen stressed that Count Zinzendorf had no authority to ordain by post in the territory of the DEIC and without the laying on of hands. They referred to Zinzendorf’s letter of ordination in very disparaging terms. Their real problem comes through in the sentence ‘ook mogen geen bejaarden worden gedoopt, dan in de kerken voor de gantsche gemeente’. They could not accept that Schmidt had baptized in a river and not in a church. Schmidt was hereafter regarded as a threat to the colonial church. He felt obliged to leave, hoping to get a Dutch Reformed ordination in Holland, which would have enabled him to return to the small flock in the Overberg. Pressure was thus successfully exerted by the three ministers to get Schmidt sent back to Germany.

Schmidt’s position had become extremely unpleasant ‘if not untenable’. But even as he was waiting for a ship to take him to Europe, Schmidt evangelised among the colonists at the Cape. Schmidt died before he could hear of the resumption of the missionary work in Baviaanskloof. He continued to pray for his flock in Africa until old age in the East German village of Niesky where he died in 1785.

That Georg Schmidt baptised Khoi brought a new dimension of resentment towards missionaries. The German pioneer had initially been scorned and mocked for daring to attempt to civilize Khoi. Now he was resented because of his opposition to their drinking habits and immoral life-style. That he actually succeeded not only in baptising the ‘Wilden’, but also in teaching them to read the New Testament, called forth massive hatred. So many of them were still illiterate!!!

2. The World’s first indigenous Female Church Planter⁴

Two of Georg Schmidt’s converts in Baviaanskloof were God’s special instruments to impact Cape Church History. Much to his surprise an intelligent, strong-willed woman wanted to become a follower of Jesus. Schmidt had to overcome his own sexist prejudices.

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,⁵ surely hoping that she would 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.

Germination of Gospel Seed

The seed germinated that Schmidt sowed at the Cape during his stint of not even seven years, both in the Mother City and in Baviaanskloof, the later Genadendal. Among the five baptised in the running water of the Sergeant’s River there was a strong-willed female convert, Vehettge Tikkuie, who got the name Magdalena.

Schmidt was said to have been a man of strong faith and very prayerful. His prayerful example rubbed off on his converts. In fact, colonists told his two German Moravian colleagues Nitschmann and Eller admiringly during their stay in Cape Town en route from Ceylon, how Schmidt succeeded ‘to teach a Hottentot to pray as he has done. They actually retire from time to time to pray in solitude’. Many years later, Khoi Christians shared that Magdalena was often found on her knees in prayer.

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 that she had received from Georg Schmidt.

At the arrival of three new Moravian missionaries, Christian Kühnel, Hendrik Marsveld and Daniel Schwinn on Christmas Eve 1792, Baviaanskloof Khoi showed them the New Testament that ‘de oude Lena’ received from Georg Schmidt. Magdalena herself could no longer read, due to failing eyesight, but a younger woman whom she had taught ‘opened the sacred volume and read the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel with considerable fluency’ (Du Plessis, 1911:73). 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. The mission station, which was established there, was later called Genadendal. If we take the finance minister of Ethiopia mentioned in Acts 8 as the absolute first indigenous evangelist,

De oude Lena was the first indigenous

female church planter of all time

our very own Magdalena was definitely the first one in Sub Saharan Africa. She definitely was the first indigenous female church planter of all time.

The Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam dreaded Schmidt’s possible return, ‘lest another Church than the Reformed should be established at the Cape’. How powerfully Schmidt had evangelized, is further evidenced by the actions of Hendrik Cloete, the owner of Groot Constantia, who had been impacted as a juvenile under Schmidt’s ministry in 1738. When the new Moravian missionaries arrived in 1792, Cloete supported them against the Cape church leaders when they used flimsy reasons to attack the missionary endeavour. Thus Ds. Meent Borcherds and his Church Council was to have asserted - probably initially in jest – that the bell of the church in Genadendal was being heard in Stellenbosch, more than 50 kilometres away.

Dynamic Teaching and Its Results

After the resumption of the work by the three new missionaries in Baviaanskloof, they succeeded in special ways to tap into the giftings of the indigenous Khoi. One of these special gifts was song. A contemporary believer reported: ‘I enjoyed somewhat of heavenly rapture during their songs of thanksgiving … singing together, or responsively, with such melody, that I could not but feel a taste of celestial bliss.’

In old age ‘de oude Lena’ (Magdalena) impacted Machteld Smit(h) when the committed missionary helper accompanied Ds. Michiel C. Vos, a Dutch Reformed minister, to Baviaanskloof in 1797. Machteld Smith reported Magdalena’s special devotion to the Lord as follows: ‘… her heart evidently overflowed with grateful affection towards a crucified Redeemer, whilst confessing his grace with her aged lips’ .

De oude Lena was obviously one of Schmidt’s very special pupils. Although probably only semi-literate, she became the driving force towards a culture of learning in a sea of ignorance, a time when many Cape colonists were still illiterate.

Change of Attitudes

The January 1797 visit to Baviaanskloof by Ds. Vos with Machteld Smith and other mission friends caused a marked changed of public opinion. A few weeks later, farmers told the missionaries of a revival among them, reportedly sparked by this visit. The colonist farmers who a few years prior to this event had been ready to attack and destroy the mission station, now asked for permission to attend the worship at Baviaanskloof. They even requested that one of the missionaries should come and live among them. Twenty-five years later this request was fulfilled, leading to the establishment of the mission station Elim, which became the southern-most village of the continent in due course. Some farmers introduced family prayers for the whole community on their farms. The attitude and stance of Ds. Meent Borcherds, once a fierce opponent of the Moravian brethren, changed after his study of (the Moravian) Bishop Spangenberg’s doctrinal exposition Idea Fidei Fratrum, even to the extent that he apologized to a visiting Moravian brother for his earlier behaviour.

The Governor granted permission to cut 20 wagon loads of timber in the State forests for the building of a church at Baviaanskloof. The feelings between colonists and missionaries became so harmonious that 100 Whites from the neighbourhood were present in the church on Christmas Day 1799 - many of them brought their slaves along. On 8 January 1800 the sanctuary was formally opened. Soon large numbers of colonists were attending services. In due course Genadendal was the second biggest town of the Cape Colony, bigger than Stellenbosch.

Genadendal was the second biggest

town of the Cape Colony

A Breakthrough: Indigenous Teachers

De Oude Lena provided the basis for sound teaching at Genadendal in general. The town

owes its first school building to Sir John Cradock, the Cape Governor. Being an educationist himself, Cradock endeavoured to increase and improve the schools in the colony. He supplied the Moravians with a booklet An Account of the Progress of Joseph Lancaster’s Plan for the Education of poor Children. The system devised by Lancaster to instruct a great number of children inexpensively, remained the basis of the Moravian mission schools for a long time.

The Unity Elders Conference in Germany, which governed the Moravian missionary work internationally, decided to send Christian Ignatius La Trobe, the Secretary of the Moravians in Great Britain, to inspect the work at the Cape. Among his friends were Rowland Hill of the London Missionary Society, and the evangelical parliamentarian William Wilberforce.

Lord Charles Somerset’s unfriendly

attitude turned into emphatic support.

La Trobe was a cheerful Christian and full of enthusiasm for the missionary work. He could ‘negotiate with people like Lord Charles Somerset on the same level, but also converse with an illiterate Hottentot in a simple and brotherly fashion’. When he was visiting Lord Charles Somerset, La Trobe won his favour at once, turning his unfriendly attitude towards the Moravians into emphatic support. The difficulties with Groene Kloof (that later got the name Mamre) were solved and permission was granted to build a church.

La Trobe recommended to the Mission leaders in Herrnhut that an English-speaking brother be sent to the Cape. This had massive positive results. Hans-Peter Hallbeck, a Swede who had been working in England, revolutionised work in South Africa, taking Genadendal Moravian missionary work to another level.

Hans-Peter Hallbeck became the Moravian superintendent at the Cape in 1817. The contribution of Hallbeck in the field of education was completely revolutionary when he made use of intelligent learners to assist him. Thus he used Maria Koopman, the wife of the local Khoi captain and a gifted young girl who unfortunately later drowned in the Sondereind River.

Theological and Teacher Training

Hallbeck initiated the creation of an indigenous mission church by the establishment of a training school at Genadendal. He not only adopted a local orphan, Ezekiel Pfeiffer, but he also decided to train him and another indigenous boy, Wilhelm Pleizier. The two did so well that Hallbeck decided to train them to become teachers to their own people. In September 1831, an infant school started in Genadendal with Hallbeck, Pfeiffer, Pleizier and a German female as teachers.

The gifted Ezekiel Pfeiffer was soon transferred to the primary school which at that stage had been manned only by missionaries. Hallbeck raved about Pfeiffer in 1834, praising his ‘grote getrouwheid as onderwyser… asof hy hom by vernuwing aan die Here toegewy het’.⁶ Hallbeck was so impressed at the quality of the teaching at the school that he suggested that the children of missionaries should be sent there rather than to Germany. Some of the neighbouring farmers applied for the admission of their children to the school.

Hallbeck’s vision received a major push when a German mission friend from the nobility, Prince Victor von Schönburg-Waldenburg, granted 20,000 thaler (guilders) for a training school. Prince Victor maintained a healthy interest in the training institution.⁷ The Kweekschool started in 1838 at Genadendal was the first of its kind in the country, even before there was one for colonists. In fact, it was the first training institution for teachers on the African continent. Ezekiel Pfeiffer was among the first to be appointed to train new teachers.

The other two German-based mission agencies (the Rhenish and Berlin Societies) were soon also sending their converts for training in Genadendal. Theological training was an integral part of the programme. The emphasis was on church planting rather than the building of churches. The protégées from the training institution left for places all over the colony, even to the Eastern Cape. Thus one finds Genadendal-trained Johannes Nakin, starting with Samuel Mazwi at the school in Shiloh in 1854 where once the dynamic Wilhelmina Stompjes and Johann Adolph Bonatz had pioneered. All over the world the Moravians concentrated on discipling committed believers instead of establishing new congregations.⁸

The link of the Kweekskool to the church would influence the Cape for more than a century. Teachers trained at Genadendal led ‘Coloured’ society in all walks of life.⁹

3. A City Minister with Vision

At the end of the nineteenth century the Mother City did not compare badly in relation to what was happening in other parts of the world. This was mainly due to the efforts of a major role player in the evangelization at the Cape, Dr Helperus Ritzema van Lier, who arrived at the Cape in 1786. He was only 22 years old at the time. The conversion of Van Lier was the result of the faithful prayers of his mother. In Holland he had narrowly escaped death after breaking through ice. After the sudden death of his fiancée, Van Lier sensed a call of God on his life, hereafter enrolling for theological training.

Van Lier was one of the first persons of his era to regard indigenous believers and Christian slaves as potential missionaries.

Influences on Van Lier

Officially Dr van Lier was appointed as the third minister of the Groote Kerk. He found fertile ground among a group of Christians at the Cape, including a group of pietist Lutherans, the spiritual descendants of those believers who had been impacted by the short stint of Georg Schmidt, more than 40 years before Van Lier’s arrival. Quite soon after his arrival at the Cape, the legacy of Schmidt worked through into Van Lier’s life powerfully when he was present at the deathbed of one of the missionary pioneer’s converts. Dr van Lier, the young evangelical minister of the Groote Kerk, was deeply moved. He saw how this Khoi believer died ‘in volkome rus en vrede van sy siel en in vertroue op die Here.’¹⁰ This experience made such a deep impression on Van Lier that he mentioned it in one of his letters to his uncle, Professor Petrus Hofstede, an influential academic in Rotterdam, who at that stage was still an opponent of the Moravian brethren. (Initially Van Lier had been unsuccessful in convincing his learned uncle to use his influence to have the Moravians resume their missionary work in Baviaanskloof.)

In 1787 the boat carrying the Moravian Bishop J.F. Reichel en route to Germany from India, made a stop at the Cape. It would have been natural for Reichel to share something of the Moravians’ passion for the lost. Van Lier was

Colonists actively encouraged

slaves to become Muslims

already deeply moved that so many ‘heathens fell victim to the Muslims’, the consequence of a 1770 decree which prohibited the sale of baptized slaves (Colonists actively encouraged slaves to become Muslims as a direct result of this ‘placaat’ to retain their re-sale value.) Reichel’s visit spurred Van Lier and all his followers on to do something about the spiritual welfare of the Khoi and the slaves.) Conversely, Reichel took the challenge of a possible resumption of the missionary work in the Cape Colony back to Herrnhut.

Local Impact of the prayerful Van Lier

That he was only the third pastor (in rank) at the Groote Kerk gave Van Lier opportunity to do the spadework for what later became known as the South African Mission Society (SAMS), the first missions’ agency outside of Europe. The Lord used Van Lier to bring about a revolution in the attitude of many White believers towards slaves and other people of colour. Slaves were initially not

Prejudice against missionaries was rife

allowed near the entrance of the church building 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 rife when Van Lier arrived, but the youthful minister boldly challenged the congeregants through his fiery sermons and personal example. The young dominee literally rocked the lethargic church at the Cape, shortening the duration of sermons and prayers during services. He also increased house visitation, and believers were encouraged to become involved with the spreading of the Gospel. The historian Theal reports that when Van Lier was preaching, people hardly dared to sleep in church because ‘at times it seemed as if he would jump from the pulpit’. His preaching was furthermore ‘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 charity.

As early as 1788 various people in Cape Town and its surroundings set aside one day in the week for the religious teaching of ‘the heathen’. Cape Town evangelicals were among the worldwide leaders of missional awareness - not far behind the Moravians of Herrnhut in Germany and Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, USA). A local newspaper, the Zuid-Afrikaansche Tijdschrift, (Vol.1, 1824, p.25) wrote that ‘while people in many parts of Europe were still discussing whether slaves and heathen should believe and whether they could be taught, they had already started with that work in this Colony.’ Church members met on certain days of the week for prayer and mutual edification, also giving religious teaching to the slaves and Khoi in their service.

Dr Van Lier had confidence in the sacrificial

giving potential of Cape believers

Dr van Lier was a world Christian. When he heard in 1790 that the Dutch East India Company contemplated to ‘christianize the various races in their vast possessions’, he immediately wrote once more to his uncle, Petrus Hofstede, offering to collect 50,000 guilders in South Africa towards the capital required. That says a lot for Van Lier’s confidence in the sacrificial giving potential of the Cape believers of his era.

Quite a few followers of Jesus who later became prominent in evangelistic outreach, received their training under Van Lier. There was, for instance, Jan Jakob van Zulch, who later laboured among slaves and other ‘heathen’ in Wagenmakersvallei (later called Wellington). Then there was Machteld Smit(h), the pioneer of the first Sunday School for slave children and later co-worker of Ds. Michiel C. Vos in Roodezand (later renamed to Tulbagh).

The education of the youth was dear to Van Lier’s heart. He started classes in Latin and French in 1791 to prepare young men for theological studies in Holland. Jan Christoffel Berrange had already left in 1788 for the University of Leiden to be trained as minister. Others followed him, including Jacobus Henricus Beck, who became the first pastor of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht.

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

The International Influence of Van Lier

The young preacher Van Lier almost single-handedly set the evangelical world ablaze. His letters from the Cape to Europe were very influential indeed. 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 in English is The Power of Grace, illustrated in six letters from a Minister of the Reformed church to the Rev. John Newton. Van Lier’s story of the influence of divine grace in his life seems to have made a lasting impression on Newton, who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists.¹¹ Van Lier’s humility led him to insist that a pseudonym Christodoulus (meaning slave of Christ), and not his own name, should be used at the publication of his letters to Rev. Newton.

It is only natural that the prayer chain – twenty four hours a day, seven days a week - at Herrnhut, would have included intercession for their Bishop Reichel on his trip to the East. But no one could probably have envisaged that this would lead so soon to the resumption of their missionary endeavour at Baviaanskloof. This was possibly due to the mission-minded new dominee whom Reichel had met at the Cape.

Various Van Lier letters had the goal of getting Moravian missionaries back to the Cape. His correspondence had a significant impact in Europe. Through his evangelical zeal he laid the foundations for the founding of a Cape missionary society.

Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the South African Mission Society (SAMS) in April 1799. 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 over where the missions-minded Dr van Lier had left off. ¹²

Further Results of Van Lier’s Ministry

A major result of Van Lier’s ministry was that local Christians became involved in missionary outreach. At different homes and further afield, the Gospel was spread by people who were impacted by Van Lier, long after he had passed on.

At three houses slaves were

taught in the Scriptures

In an annual report on missionary work in 1799 we read of three houses in the city where slaves were taught in the Scriptures. It also mentions work in Stellenbosch, Wagenmakersvallei (later renamed Wellington) and Land van Waveren, i.e. the region which had the present-day Tulbagh as its centre.

James Read, a missionary of the London Missionary Society (LMS), wrote soon after his arrival at the Cape in a letter from ‘Wagonmaker’s Valley’ on 3 November 1800 about the beginnings of the work there by J.J. van Zulch, one of those led to the Lord by Van Lier. (Van Zulch was a colonist who had been advised by a doctor in 1796 that the countryside would be beneficial to his health.) Read narrated how the area was spiritually dead when Van Zulch arrived there. ‘It resembled the valley of Ezechiel, full of dead bones: both white and black, both Christians and heathens …’ But being a man ‘full of the Holy Ghost and faith’, Van Zulch surely did not labour in vain. In 1800 Read reported that of the three hundred people meeting there - predominantly slaves and Khoi - some were ‘even well-established in their faith.’

Machteld Smith, a widow, was to have a big influence in the lives of many. She bought a plot in Roodezand (Tulbagh) on which she had a meeting house erected for outreach to the less privileged. On Sunday afternoons she soon had 150 to 180 people gathered there. Ds. Vos would preach, while she undertook the further instruction of those who had been touched by the Gospel.

New Cape Missionary Societies

The German Martin Melck and Dr Jan Morel were two evangelicals at Stellenbosch with a direct link to Dr van Lier. Melck had already been instrumental in the beginnings of the Lutheran Church in Strand Street in the Mother City, when he started with secret services in a ‘warehouse’ in 1774. (Although there were many Germans at the Cape by 1700, they were not permitted to have their own church.)

Meuwes Janse Bakker settled in Stellenbosch after he miraculously survived a shipwreck off the coast of South America. He decided to devote his life to missionary work among the ‘heathen’ at the Cape, buying a house in Dorp Street in 1798. Bakker immediately taught a few slave children there. When the South African Mission Society (SAMS) started at the ZA Gesticht in the Mother City, he and the deacon, J.N. Desch, became the correspondents in Stellenbosch. Desch conducted, at his own cost, a school for slave children - after the Church Council adopted the resolution that ‘slave children also shall be instructed in reading and in the elements of the Christian religion.’ In spite of the reluctance of Meent Borcherds, their dominee, Meuwes Bakker was supported by the Church Council, becoming in no time the SAMS missionary in Stellenbosch.

Slaves attended the afternoon services

in the home of Meuwes Bakker

Slaves attended the afternoon services in his home, which soon became too small. Bakker left for further training in missionary work in Holland the next year, returning in 1801 with one special goal: that his property would be used for the extension of the Kingdom. That became the beginning of the Rhenish Mission, where P.D. Lückhoff was a prominent missionary. (The school he opened at Stellenbosch in 1832 for slave children was attended by 20 Whites by 1842 – Coetzee, Onderwys in Suid-Afrika, 1552-1960, 1975:423.) In the same year the Stellenbosch Mission Society was started, only two years after the SAMS and the Tulbagh Mission Society.

The Crown of Van Lier’s Ministry

The crown of Van Lier’s ministry was surely that many South Africans started to go into the mission fields themselves. (Ds. Vos, who went to Ceylon, cannot be reckoned to Van Lier’s ‘scalps’. He had been called by God independently as a juvenile. His ‘heart was grieved at the neglect of the immortal souls’ of the Cape slaves.) 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 intentions, joining the British missionary William Anderson. Kramer helped to start the mission station Klaarwater, which became the focus of the missionary work amongst the Griquas.

Jan M. Kok was the next Cape missionary of the Van Lier era and the first ‘Coloured’. He had to fight against racial prejudice because he was the son of a German colonist and a slave woman.¹³ He had to overcome many obstacles before he could be sent to the Briquas (or Bechuanas as they were subsequently called). Kok’s heart was ‘aglow for Jesus’ in the Ceder Mountains and he took up missionary work on his own initiative.

A mixed-bred missionary displayed

tenacity and perseverance

The mixed-bred missionary displayed tenacity and perseverance. It would seem that Jan Kok had decided to embark on his mission without waiting any longer for authorisation from the South African Mission Society (SAMS) or for official permission to cross the colonial boundary. After several attempts, Kok did finally obtain permission to accompany the British missionary Edward Edwards. Mr Truter, a DRC church elder for many years, admired the ‘extempore expounding of the Gospel in the desert from an illiterate man.’ Kok became the first known ‘martyr’ of Southern Africa, murdered by two of the workers, apparently because of a dispute over remuneration.

In 1794 Dominee Vos returned from Holland. There he had been touched by the Holy Spirit, to return to his home country and minister to the slaves and the Khoi. Although he soon moved to Roodezand (Tulbagh), his influence was felt all over the Western Cape. In the Mother City itself, Machteld Smith, a widow that 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 role players - to advance the evangelical cause until the SAMS was formally constituted in 1799. The first missionaries of the SAMS at the Cape were significantly not inducted in the Groote Kerk, nor even Stellenbosch, but in Roodezand (Tulbagh), where Vos was the minister.

There is clear evidence that some Christians at the Cape comprehended the biblical implications clearly that the Gospel had to be brought to the uttermost parts of the earth. From 1804 to 1809 Rev. M.C. Vos - born and raised in the Western Cape - operated as a missionary both in India and Ceylon. This happened despite opposition from the colonial government and other colonists. The mission-minded Ds. Michiel Christiaan Vos, who became the minister for Swartberg (Caledon) after a stint in Holland, India and Ceylon, brought about some change in the views and attitudes of the colonists of the vicinity.

Slavery Intertwined with Secular History

The issue of slavery was very much intertwined with the secular history of the time. Maart, a slave from Mozambique, was blessed ‘with strong intellectual endowments’. He responded so well to the five years of discipling under Ds. M. C. Vos that the London Missionary Society (LMS) considered educating him ‘... to qualify him to accompany some other missionaries to ... introduce into his native country ... that gospel…’

Sadly, there was no attempt to baptize Maart or to set the gifted slave free, neither by Ds. Vos nor by the LMS in whose service Maart worked as an associate evangelist for a further seven years. He was only baptized after the intervention of the missionary Dr Johannes van der Kemp. Or were Vos and the LMS dictated to by the force of the general custom, an earlier version of the South African way of life? Hendrik Marsveld, a Moravian missionary who arrived in 1792, referred to an ‘atmosphere of mutual distrust’ between missionaries and colonists.

The SAMS directors were eager

to get the Gospel to the slaves

The SAMS directors, however, were nevertheless eager to get the Gospel to the slaves. They appointed Aart Antonij van der Lingen on 6 April 1803 for that purpose in the town. He was however promptly forbidden by De Mist to preach to or to teach slaves. Van der Lingen was only allowed to give support to missionaries who operated three dagreizen (days of travelling) from existing churches and congregations. At this time Stellenbosch, Drakenstein (Paarl), Zwartland (Malmesbury), Wagenmagersvallei (Wellington) and Roodezand (Tulbagh) were already flourishing congregations. Three days of travelling from all these places would have taken Van der Lingen quite deep into the interior.

While De Mist was absent on an official journey, the SAMS directors approached his colleague Jan Willem Janssens about the consecration of the new sanctuary that had been built for the slaves. The Z.A. Gesticht, the inter-denominational church in Long Street, was formally taken into use on 15 March 1804. It is said that when De Mist heard of the ZA Gesticht building erected in his absence, he cried in fury: ‘May fire from heaven consume it!’ A colonist responded in 1824 in the Nederlandsch-Zuid Afrikaansche Tijdschrift: ‘But what he wished as an evil has come upon us for good. The fire of God has indeed descended and (as we trust) has melted many sinners’ hearts.’

The Compassionate Ministry of the LMS

The compassionate work of London Missionary Society (LMS) missionaries like Rev. James Read and Dr Johannes van der Kemp on behalf of the underdog slaves had the moral power of biblical truth on their side. They were however often opposed by their missionary colleagues. That the two had married slave women, was very offensive not only to colonists. In the case of Van der Kemp it can be easily comprehended why it was regarded as repugnant - the 60-year old missionary married a 15 year old teenager.

Lord Charles Somerset, the Cape Governor from 1814, became known to be an adversary of Dr Philip, who arrived in 1819 to be the superintendent of the work of the LMS. However, the strong-willed Dr Philip would probably have clashed with any other ruler. Somerset attempted to counter the Dutch influence in the church by bringing British Presbyterian clergymen to the Cape.

Lord Charles Somerset’s

bigoted nationalism was curtailed

The likes of the prayerful Andrew Murray, father of the famous namesake, effectively curtailed Somerset’s well-meant but bigoted nationalism. Due to this influence, the Cape became possibly the first truly bilingual society outside of Europe.

The battle that raged at the Cape around the Khoi and the slaves – in which Dr van der Kemp and Dr Philip had a big hand - had worldwide ramifications. It aided the worthy cause of the abolition of slavery.

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, Dr Philip already linked the slave issue to the living conditions and enserfment of the Khoisan in the Cape Colony in his first comprehensive report on the LMS stations. He did make a distinction between the problems experienced with the Khoisan and those pertaining to slaves. The publication of Philip’s biased two-volume Researches in South Africa was an important factor 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 Without Dr Philip’s support from the Cape, William Wilberforce would possibly not have achieved the measure of success he was ultimately able to harvest after his half a century of pioneering battle against slavery.

4. Official Opposition to Missionary Work

An anomaly is that through the ages opposition to the Gospel has stimulated the spread of it. The respective colonial governments at the Cape had one thing in common – their opposition to missionary work. In the opinion of the authorities missionaries were meant to serve the state, full stop. Christian outreach was to be done as far away as possible from any colonial settlement. Initially the colonists likewise opposed all missionary work, feeling themselves morally condemned. They were also envious because of the education given to people they had regarded as inferior.

With labour at a premium, the farmers were quite concerned when they detected a steady drift of Khoi towards Baviaanskloof after the resumption of ministry there by the three Moravian missionaries in 1792. The prejudice was easily fed that the mission station ‘was fast becoming a refuge for the idle, the discontented and the thieving’. At the same time it appears that the missionaries there did very little to remove the distrust they encountered. It should be mentioned however that the missionaries had ‘a host of well-wishers’ in Cape Town. There was for instance Hendrik Cloete from the farm Constantia, who travelled all the way to Baviaanskloof ‘and by his kind mediation procured some relief for the Brethren from obnoxious Government regulations.’

Dutch Opposition to Missionary Work

An interesting feature was the involvement of a few Stellenbosch believers, in spite of resistance to the missionary work of Ds. Meent Borcherds. After the arrival of the three Moravian missionaries, the Kerkeraad petitioned the government ‘that the further extension of this sect (Moravians) might be opposed…and the (three) missionaries directed to withdraw to a district in which no Christian congregation was yet established.’ Two members of the Church Council, the elder Groenewald and the deacon Desch, took exception to the petition. They put their protest to paper, noting that Baviaanskloof is ‘sufficiently distant from the church of Stellenbosch.’

Abraham Sluysken, who tried to keep together a very fragile government at the Cape, continued in the same vein of opposing the Moravians, by refusing them permission to build a church. This was followed by a petition of racist colonists of the Overberg region who called themselves Nationalists, to prohibit the Moravian missionaries from further instruction to the Khoi. Because many colonists were ‘van onderwijs... verstoken’ (had been debarred from education, thus more or less illiterate), it was regarded as ‘...niet billijk dat de Hottentotten wijzer werden gemaakt dan zij’.¹⁵

The conscription of the indigenous pandoere, who fought in the battle of Muizenberg against the British in 1795, cannot be described as a deliberate attempt to hinder the missionary work. While the Baviaanskloof pandoere were absent - and engaged in the military defence of the colony - envious colonists of the Overberg were conspiring to invade and destroy the mission station. The threat of expropriation of Baviaanskloof sent Moravian missionary Hendrik Marsveld scurrying to the Mother City. The reply to him surely led to much prayer in Baviaanskloof : ‘The Company in the Fatherland (wanted the missionaries) to go to the Bosjesmans to make peace’.¹⁶ On 18 July 1795, by which time Baviaanskloof started to resemble a European village, the situation had become very tense. Marsveld returned to Baviaanskloof far from reassured. The authorities would not even enter into negotiations so that the mission could buy the land. Because of rumours of an imminent raid, the missionaries were ‘seriously contemplating to abandon the station’. A. Pisani, one of the colonists, put force to their petition, giving the missionaries three days to vacate Baviaanskloof. On 3 August 1795 they fled to Cape Town. The missionaries returned when it seemed as if the danger had abated.

God sovereignly over-ruled, when the Moravians were allowed to keep their property - and even more important - they could continue their missionary work there.

Opposition to Missionary Work under British Rule

The mission station was threatened from another side after the take-over by the British in 1795.

In February 1796 there was another threat of an attack and a rumour that the Khoi would be driven from Baviaanskloof. Firm reassurances from Major-General James Craig, the British military Commander, who appeared unafraid to use force, kept the racist colonists at bay.

Yet, it is sad to read that under the first British occupation (1795 to 1803), the Fiscal refused permission to the SAM Directors to take a collection in aid of their work at the weekly prayer meeting. Mr Willem van Ryneveld, the Fiscal, had previously promised the first four missionaries of the LMS ‘all possible aid and protection.’ Furthermore, when leave was asked to send Jan M. Kok as a missionary to the ‘Bushmen’, as the San were called, the reply of the Fiscal was not reassuring, highlighting the formal reason that it was against the law to proceed beyond the boundaries of the Colony.

De Mist saw a threat in the

expanding missionary activities

The subtle Opposition of the ‘Batavians’

One suspects sour grapes on the part of the new Dutch authorities because of the success of the missionary Henricus Maanenberg. Jacob Abraham De Mist arrived in February 1803 as Governor of the ‘Batavian Republic’. He clearly saw a threat in the expanding missionary activities. De Mist’s reaction to a memorandum handed to him by the directors of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) may even have influenced Maanenberg to resign. He went to live outside the city. De Mist’s opposition to missionary work turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because directors of the SAMS started opening their homes for the teaching of slaves. Some of them, like P. Le Roux, became involved personally and finally they started training slaves for missionary work. Maart, the slave of Ds.Vos, was one of the most capable ones to be used.

Yet, De Mist and Janssens, the Batavian Governors, appeared quite ‘tolerant’ in religious matters. In fact, De Mist jotted down some progressive notions in his Memorie over de Caab, 1802 before he took office. Thus he suggested that the ‘aborigines’ of the Cape should be employed on a voluntary basis and paid a good wage. But being a Grand Master of the Freemasons (Spilhaus, South Africa in the Making, 1652-1806, 1966:350), it is not surprising that he simultaneously opposed evangelistic activity in the city. In a special paragraph on the Herrnhutters (the Moravians) his ‘vision’ comes through of how religion had to be (ab)used. First of all the Khoi must be kept happy. Then they must be taught to be dutiful. Yet, De Mist was still a child of his time. The Khoi were expected to become ‘gehoorzaam aan het Gouverment’ (loyal to the government). De Mist wanted the Moravian missionaries to subdue the Khoi, to make them docile, subservient citizens.

Resumed British Opposition to Missionary Work

The Earl of Caledon, the first Governor of the Cape in 1806, appeared quite concerned that the ignorance of the slaves could leave them a ‘prey... to the missionary zeal of the Mohammedan priests’. But hardly anything was done to counter this in a loving way.

Allowing for the luxury of criticizing people who lived in a completely different era, the real concern of Caledon, however, has to be questioned. When the (SAMS) requested permission to instruct the slaves at the Cape, Caledon replied that the SAMS would be better advised to put its strength into mission undertakings at a distance from Cape Town. What was his logic?

Caledon did seem to redeem himself quite substantially on this score though, because already in 1807 he offered to the Moravians the government farm Groene Kloof, a mere 50 kilometres away. The missionaries however doubted his motives, suspecting that the government intended to harness them before its own carriage. The conference at Genadendal submitted a number of conditions before accepting the offer. Amongst other things, it asked for freedom of worship and the right to eject people who were unwilling to submit to their discipline.

Lord Charles Somerset prohibited a missionary - the Methodist Barnabas Shaw - from preaching to slaves at the Cape. He had similarly refused the Methodist missionary John McKenny permission to exercise the duties of a Christian minister to the slaves.¹⁷ After waiting in vain for such permission for 18 months, McKenny finally left for Ceylon - the present-day Sri Lanka. Barnabas Shaw courageously defied the order - ‘determined to commence preaching’ even without Somerset’s permission (Mears, 1973:15). It is not clear whether Shaw actually preached to slaves. He did preach to soldiers ‘with the knowledge of the Governor’, but Somerset probably decided not to make an issue out of that. In his zeal for preaching, Shaw had no match. On a typical Sunday he preached six times in English or Dutch. Through his endeavours three Methodist Church circuits evolved, namely Cape Town, Wynberg and Simonstown.

Colonist Opposition

As we have seen, the slaves were perceived as property at the Cape. Even otherwise exemplary missionaries/clergymen like Ds. Michiel C. Vos not only owned slaves, but these Christians were also subtly influenced by their prejudicial upbringing.

The Moravian missionaries stayed clear of public debate over slavery and oppressive laws, cleverly theologising around it. Thus Hans Peter Hallbeck, called slavery the blackest of evils, which must certainly lead to the destruction of any country. But the brethren did not feel themselves called to fight it. ‘To become slaves to the slaves and free men to the free, in order to win some for Christ’, was their attitude. This was an ingenious application of 1 Corinthians 3:19ff). Furthermore, Hallbeck regarded oppressive laws as great evils. He did not remain quiet about the pass laws, but he refrained from publicly opposing them in the newspapers. In press polemics - during which Marthinus Theunissen, a neighbouring farmer, attacked the Moravians under a pseudonym - Hallbeck restrained himself, refraining from taking legal steps. In official correspondence he preserved Theunissen’s anonymity.

Slaves were conveniently pointed to their

duties in subordination and obedience

The pastors at the Cape lacked the courage to challenge the colonists with the Pauline teaching that they had to see the believers among the slaves as family in Christ. Instead, the slaves were conveniently pointed to their duties in subordination and obedience. This sad fact represents a major factor of guilt and indebtedness towards the Cape Muslims: vital tenets of the Gospel have thus been withheld from them.

Negative Legacies of LMS work

Dr Philip caused much of the strain that later missionaries had to experience. He had barely been in Cape Town when he made rash assertions, which rubbed colonists and the authorities up the wrong way. Complaints mentioned by him in a letter to the Acting Governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, proved to be unfounded.

Dr Philip furthermore undermined his own efforts by the unloving manner 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 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 absolute distancing of themselves from politics was a tradition of the Moravians. This 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 Moravian missionary work set the precedent for the unbiblical notion ‘not to mix politics with religion.’

The manner in which Dr Johannes van der Kemp and Dr John Philip presented their case exacerbated negative feelings towards missionaries. They somehow failed to translate the biblical message of the brotherhood of all believers. That Paul encouraged Philemon not only to take back the run-away slave Onesimus, but also to regard him as a brother, was probably hardly noticed, let alone highlighted. Had they done this, it might have made Ordinance 50, which made Khoi and slaves equal to the colonists before the law - more palatable. In the view of the colonists the financial losses incurred due to the emancipation of slaves was the result of the lies and distortions of Dr Philip and his LMS cronies.

The other side of the coin was that the LMS missionaries regarded the civilization of the ‘primitive’ indigenous peoples as a significant motive in the spreading of the Gospel. 'White' domination seemed to be primary, with colonial expansion an important part of their ministry.

5. Evangelical Zeal onfronts Colonial Policy

The work of the Moravians at Baviaanskloof continued to impact the Cape. The critical Governor De Mist appears to have gradually become a quiet supporter of that missionary work after his visit to the Overberg. After seeing the orderly village with over 200 houses, he spontaneously renamed it Genadendal.¹⁸ It was much more acceptable to be known as a valley of grace than as a glen for baboons.¹⁹

The spiritual 'Death' of the Cape Church

It is reported that John Kendrick, a lay preacher who was evangelising at the Cape at the beginning of the 19^th century, could not find a real believer after hunting around among 1,000 English-speaking soldiers in the space of four years. Operating with George Middlemiss, he could not find a single prayer meeting. One wonders how this was possible when only half a generation earlier the result of the work of Dr van Lier was referred to as little short of a revival. It is hard to believe that the two were merely searching at the wrong places.

Other spiritual forces probably influenced this situation. The pastors probably neglected to challenge the colonists with the Pauline teaching that they should see believers among the slaves as family in Christ. Conversion to Islam was greatly encouraged by their almost entire exclusion from Christianity. By 1800, the benches in the back corners of the Groote Kerk (the major Capetonian church at that time), which had been reserved traditionally for the use of slaves, were empty Sunday after Sunday. The saying soon went around that ‘De zwarte kerk is de slamse kerk.’²⁰

Supernatural Intervention

The Church and the colonists at the Cape started becoming disinterested in reaching out to the slaves yet again. Divine intervention followed. Disasters sometimes shake people out of their indifference and lethargy. An earthquake at the Cape on 4 December 1809 caused a significant increase of evangelicals and it also imparted a new urge towards missionary work among the slaves.

The 1809 earthquake impacted the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) in different ways. Jacobus Henricus Beck, a Cape colonist who had joined the SAMS, was deeply touched. Before long he was on his way to the Netherlands, Scotland and England for theological training. (Later he became the first pastor of the mission congregation formed at the ZA Gesticht.)

Moravians conniving unwittingly with Injustice

In the same year of the earthquake, the Earl of Caledon’s 1809 proclamation on behalf of the Khoisan made a deep impact on society. William Wilberforce Bird, a colonial official, called the decree the ‘Magna Carta of the Hottentots’. This document had some problematic clauses from a modern point of view, but it was nevertheless in a sense a precursor to Ordinance 50 of 1828. The latter ordinance equated all races, also repealing the restricting pass laws that the ‘Magna Carta’ had introduced. ‘Gelykstelling’ of all races was very difficult to swallow, especially for Dutch colonists, running parallel with the anglicizing policy of Lord Charles Somerset. The bulk of the farmers were themselves ‘in a state of mental and spiritual neglect’. Understandably, they resented the establishment of a school at which the children of those whom they despised, now received an education which was denied to their own children.

The Moravians became an unwitting partner to the enserfment of the Khoi, because the farm labour around Baviaanskloof was mostly done by Khoi who could be hired for limited periods. At the same time the land passed more and more into the possession of the colonists. Existing land rights of the Khoi were generally disregarded. The Baviaanskloof neighbours came to hire labourers for the season every summer. The Khoi labourers received food and - four times a day - wine!

A missionary Diamond formed

Dr Helperus van Lier, the mission-minded minister of the Groote Kerk, had suggested three forays of missionary endeavour. One of these was outreach to the Eastern Cape. Dr van der Kemp, leader of the first four LMS pioneers, led this attempt. In no time he mastered the difficult Xhosa language, ministering to the Ngika (Gaika) tribe. From this tribe a missionary diamond was to be formed out of the soil of oppressive colonial history.

In 1809 Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Collins, was given authority to stamp British authority on the region. In order to achieve this, he thought that Blacks should be pushed back across the Fish River. Those Blacks who wanted to remain in the Cape Colony, should be directed to a Moravian settlement. A new group of people became inhabitants of Genadendal during this period – Xhosa speakers from the Eastern Cape.

A Gaika woman, whose husband had deserted her,²¹ was among the first Blacks to be settled in Genadendal in this way. There this woman, who later received the name Wilhelmina, became a follower of Jesus. In Genadendal the missionary spirit took hold of Wilhelmina. Soon she urged the Genadendal Moravians to start independent work among her own people. She was appointed as nursemaid to the children of the missionaries. She also assisted with the teaching of the little ones at the ‘Kindergarten’ of Genadendal, setting out to teach the missionaries’ children the fundamentals of her language, so that they could later bring the gospel to her people.

The German learner of a Black

Woman became a missionary

pioneer among the Xhosa

Johann Adolph, the son of Johann Gottlieb Bonatz, one of her pupils, later became one of the pioneers among the red-blanketed pagan Xhosa in the Ciskei.

Examples of Compassion

An ambivalent tradition of compassion developed at the Cape. The indiscriminate emancipation of slaves and the lack of guidance thereafter must unfortunately be labelled as misguided compassion.

The relaxed natural life-style of the indigenous Khoi clashed diametrically with the industrious European colonists, who had sayings like arbeid adelt (work makes one an aristocrat). What was natural to the Khoi, was regarded as ‘a careless and idle existence’ in the view of the North-West Europeans.

The killings during war and the stealing of cattle hardened the Dutch colonists at the Cape. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Khoi tribes were clearly in decline. In 1713 the settlement was rocked by a terrible epidemic of small-pox, causing the deaths of many Khoi. This epidemic decimated the Khoi tribes of the Western Cape – already diminished by the wars against the early Dutch settlers.

In this situation many moving stories have been recorded. All communities at the Cape were affected. There was ‘not a single European at Drakenstein who had not been attacked by the awful disease’. After change for the better set in, the wife of the colonist Francois du Toit - while convalescing - resolved to visit the local Khoi in order to help. On arrival at their kraal (Khoi settlement) she found many unfortunate inhabitants dead, and lying unburied in and around the huts – ‘all but one child, who crawled moaning from hut to hut, crying for food and water. She took the child and trained it as her own’. There were more cases of pious colonists who adopted neglected children, educating them in the Christian tradition.

A sad Saga with a happy Ending

The Stellenbosch church historian Johannes Du Plessis recorded the sad saga of a Khoi tribe, the Afrikaners²², that was driven from their indigenous grazing fields between Table Bay and the Berg River to the Northern Cape by the advancing Dutch colonists. When tension increased between Whites and Khoi, the Afrikaner-Oorlams tribe also started resisting the master-servant attitude towards them.

The Government declared Jager Afrikaner - their chief - an outlaw, setting a price on his head. The intelligent chief attempted from time to time to secure a truce with the authorities, but with a lot of blood on his hands, the Government could not even contemplate negotiation with him. The Khoi chief became notorious as an outlaw in secular history. There were however quite a few extenuating circumstances. (In recent years the New Dictionary of S.A. Biography contributed much to the restoration of the negative image of indigenous leaders like Jager Afrikaner.)

Probably because of a combination of factors like Jager Afrikaner’s military expertise, the unwillingness of the cattle farmers to take part in punitive expeditions, next to his elusiveness, he was left unpunished. Hereafter Jager Afrikaner tried to secure a truce with the government of the Cape Colony from his hide-out.

A biblical act of compassion transpired when the early missionaries and the new addition to the team, Robert Moffat, ministered lovingly to the notorious Khoi chief. Under the labours of LMS missionaries, Jager Afrikaner became an exemplary follower of Jesus. The old chief soon became an ‘unswerving friend’ to Moffat. The latter was radical enough to take his notorious friend along to Cape Town in 1819 for his wedding. One needs little imagination to appreciate the sensation caused when the missionary arrived in the city with the man who had once been the terror of farmers and natives

Robert Moffat introduced a notorious

Khoi chief to Lord Charles Somerset

alike. Moffat introduced him to Lord Charles Somerset, who was duly impressed, presenting Jager Afrikaner with a wagon valued at £80.

More Indigenous Helpers Used

Bishop Hans-Peter Hallbeck, who came to Genadendal in 1817, took Genadendal and Moravian missionary work to another level in other areas. He was quick to act on another suggestion of missionary inspector La Trobe to send a party of missionaries to the Eastern Cape. 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

The missionary spirit of Herrnhut

prevailed at Genadendal

there were now some outstanding Khoi and Xhosa believers. At the end of that year (1818) sixty-eight people had moved to the Witte River. The Moravian mission station started there was called Enon. Wilhelmina married Carl Stompjes, a Khoi believer, in Enon.

A decade later Richard Bourke, the acting Governor, was visiting Hemel en Aarde, an asylum for lepers in the Overberg between present-day Caledon and 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. In Somerset East they were encouraged by the intercession of Rev. George Morgan²³ for the success of their venture.

At the visit to Bawana, the Amahlala chief (Bawana reigned over about one thousand families) Hallbeck was aware that Bawana had no interest in the Gospel at all and that the Government supported the project mainly for political reasons. He argued that the persecutions which the Amahlala had experienced, might give the missionaries access to other Tembu tribes. It was decided that missionaries from Enon could take a few artisans with them to assist in establishing 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. Also in the group there was as second interpreter Daniel Kaffer, the first Black to have been 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, and from there to Enon.)

More inhabitants of the Moravian stations later followed the first party, responding to the call to spread the Gospel. At the end of the first year, thirty people from the western settlements formed the nucleus of the new station, which was named Shiloh.

A Blessing in Disguise

Another Cape colonist who was impacted deeply by the earthquake of 1 December 1809 was Martinus Casparus Petrus Vogelgezang. He was a teacher who also went for missionary training. Impacted deeply by an Earthquake

In 1837 he applied to be ordained, but he did not find favour with the Dutch Reformed Church authorities. He was turned down because he had not obtained the required university theological training (in Holland). He was referred to the ‘ruling for missionaries’. This condescending attitude was indicative of the general view by the Cape church with regard to missionary work.

In the spiritual realm the dubious church practice turned out to be a blessing in disguise. On 17 October 1838 Vogelgezang resigned from the Dutch Reformed Church to start the first denominationally independent fellowship. The indifference to missionary work is still rife in the great majority of churches.

After the formal abolition of slavery in 1838, there was a rush of freed slaves to the city. Many deserted their former owners in the agricultural areas. The bulk of these newly urbanised freed slaves turned to Islam. Support from the colonists for missionary work was not forthcoming at all. It does not credit the churches at the Cape that very little effort was made to reach Cape slaves with the Gospel up to 1838, apart from what was done at the Z.A. Gesticht. A lack of perseverance was prevalent, combined with a tendency to go for softer targets than the resistant Muslims. And not much changed thereafter. All the more the stalwart work of individuals like Vogelgezang has to be admired, even though his initial approach to the Muslims was quite offensive.

Evangelistic Zeal

Undeterred by the rebuff from the church of his day, Vogelgezang preached the Gospel among the slaves in Bo-Kaap and Onderkaap (the later Kanaaldorp²⁴and District Six) with unprecedented zeal. Vogelgezang used a version of ‘tent-making’, working in some vocation while doing missionary work. He initially operated from his shoemaker’s shop in Rose Street, which is part of present-day Bo-Kaap. In due course the zealous Vogelgezang planted a few churches, bringing the Gospel to the Muslims with much authority and conviction.

6. Practical Christianity at Work

All sorts of ministries of compassion emanated from the churches at the Cape, some of which were linked to mission agencies. The Genadendal Moravian missionaries succeeded in making the Gospel very practical assisting the indigenous inhabitants to make the difficult transition from a nomadic to a more settled life.

The Gospel Made Practical

A field of usefulness was opened in 1823 from an unexpected area. The lepers in South Africa were a community for whom no one cared initially, until Lord Charles Somerset initiated a leper asylum at a place called Hemel-en-Aarde, between present-day Caledon and Hermanus. Initially their religious needs were seen to by the DRC clergyman at Caledon, who asked for relief. J.M. Peter Leitner left Genadendal to take care of this outreach. The ministry was subsequently taken to Robben Island under the missionary Johan Lehmann in 1844. A country known for wickedness thus also has deep roots of biblical compassion.

Every inhabitant of the nineteenth century Genadendal had a vegetable garden adjoining his dwelling. The brethren encouraged simplicity, urging the Khoi to spend their meagre earnings on proper clothing instead of on wine and tobacco. Furthermore, a forest was planted west of the grave-yard, and when new missionaries arrived with other skills, new branches of industry were started like a joinery and a forge. Some inhabitants practised their own trade. There was a cartwright and blacksmith, a cooper, a transport-rider and the owner of a hand-mill. Others were competent masons. Midwives from Genadendal (and Groene Kloof, later called Mamre) had a good reputation, and were called by the wives of the farmers. When the postal service was improved in 1806, two men from Genadendal were appointed to carry the mail across the country. At Genadendal the economy flourished during this period. The mill, the smithy, the cutlery, the garden, the vineyard and the shop contributed to income.

At Genadendal the economy flourished

The work expanded significantly under the brilliant Swedish superintendent Hans Peter Hallbeck. He tried new branches of economic activity to create opportunities of employment for the inhabitants. Whenever possible, he passed responsibilities to the indigenous congregants, in order to release the missionaries for their spiritual duties. Thus an inhabitant of Groene Kloof succeeded J.M Peter Leitner in the joinery when he was required to start up the work among the lepers at Hemel en Aarde. The management of the guest house at Genadendal was entrusted to a married couple from the settlement.

Under the supervision of Hans Peter Hallbeck and a Khoi captain, trees were planted. It was laid down that the timber would be sold at half-price to the residents. The profit would go to poverty relief.

A spiritual revival in the Overberg started in Genadendal among married church members in 1828. They asked each other for forgiveness, committing themselves to live in submission to the Lord.

An Extraordinary Country Library

The teaching at Genadendal was dynamic. Already in 1832, six years before the start of a teachers’ training school there, the Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette reported that the village had ‘the best country library, perhaps, that may be in the colony’, with a section apiece for German, English and Dutch. The library did not only possess a reading room, but it also had loan facilities. As a result of the dynamic teaching in Genadendal, almost the whole town population was literate and ‘leesgierig’ (eager to read). In 1838 the missionaries recorded: ‘Our lending library is in a brisk circulation … for as soon as one book is brought in, it is immediately issued to fresh applicants’. The thorough prayerful pioneering of Georg Schmidt was thus still bearing fruit a century later.

The Demise of the Moravians more than checked

Two very talented missionaries operated at Genadendal at that time. Both of them came from the educational field. Carl Kölbing had been teaching at the Moravian Secondary School in Niesky (Germany) before he started in Genadendal. Disturbances and rebellion at the mission stations could have developed into ugly situations. Kölbing took a broad view, not regarding this as ‘retrogression of the spiritual life’. He discerned that many people who had formerly obeyed the European missionaries

Many people were now more outspoken

without contradiction, were now more outspoken. Kölbing realized that the political changes had released forces which possessed not only negative, but also positive potential. He probably underestimated the negative forces, which were not counterbalanced by spiritual vigour and prayers from around the Moravian world as that enjoyed by his predecessors. In Herrnhut the twenty four-hour prayer chain was petering out. A new revival in 1841 in the ‘Knabenanstalt’, the boys’ hostel for the children of missionaries at Niesky, was much too localised to make a significant impact.

The second dynamic personality at Genadendal was Benno Marx, who became the principal of the training school and the organist in 1855. Indigenous teachers operated in all Moravian schools by 1859, with the exception of the girls’ departments at Genadendal and Mamre. Subsidies were gradually granted for the existing schools. Both Marx and his assistant Andreas G. Hettasch studied at the institutions of Lancaster in England – the world leaders in education at the time - before coming to South Africa.

The Bohemian-Moravian Tradition of Music and Printing added

Benno Marx brought with him the Bohemian-Moravian tradition which combined music and printing, to add a few more firsts to Genadendal.²⁵ Apart from the first training school in the country, of which he was an integral part, Marx discovered an old unused printing press. With further upgrading, the Genadendal press became the first in the country where music was printed. Music played a big role at the training school. Teachers taught at Genadendal left the institution also as organists and choir masters. They not only enabled the Moravian Church in due course to be among the leaders of church music in the country, but they blessed many other denominations and missions. Even the White Dutch Reformed Church was impacted when in 1887 Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Jannasch became the organist in Stellenbosch. Jannasch was born at the mission station Mamre from a German-Danish Moravian couple. He went to study in Stockholm under the great Norwegian composer, Eduard Grieg. Professor N.J. Hofmeyr brought him to Stellenbosch where Jannasch taught music at the Rhenish School, and at Bloemhof Seminary. He was also the co-founder of the ‘conservatorium’, through which he brought a new dimension not only to organ music in the congregation at Stellenbosch. From there Jannasch exerted a decisive and lasting influence on church singing in the DRC country-wide.

A Slave inherits a Farm

The Moravians were involved in another remarkable piece of Cape history when six ex-slaves inherited a farm. Christian Ludwig Teutsch, a Moravian missionary from Genadendal, was told by Pastor Georg Wilhelm Stegmann of the Lutheran Church in Strand Street about a settlement near Piquetberg where a considerable number of ex-slaves dwelled together, and that they longed to get a missionary. Hendrik Schalk Burger, who bought Goedverwacht as a cattle farm in 1809 or 1810, had also bought a slave woman, Maniesa, with her two children. Burger did not permit his slaves to go to school, but a slave of a neighbouring farm read the New Testament behind Burger’s back to some of those who were receptive, while they were doing their washing in the Berg River. Another slave even held prayer meetings on the farm until Burger detected it and gave him a thorough hiding.

After his wife’s death, Burger lived amongst the slaves. After the liberation of slaves in 1838, he very surprisingly bequeathed Goedverwacht to the children and the son-in-law of Maniesa, on condition that they would not desert him as long as he lived.

A Slave held prayer meetings

Teutsch was sent from Genadendal to investigate the possibility of starting a mission station there. He preached in one of the dwellings of the former slaves, but found Goedverwacht unsuitable. Teutsch thought that the property rights were too complicated. He promised the former slaves however, that the missionaries of Groene Kloof would visit them from time to time. When Teutsch got back to Genadendal, it happened that one of the students of the training school, Jozef Hardenberg, became available for appointment. The inhabitants of Goedverwacht bade their teacher a hearty welcome. That became the beginnings of the Moravian mission station there, the first to start without the direct involvement of a German missionary.

Xhosa Chiefs Get VIP Treatment

Sandile, the paramount chief of the amaNgika, had fought the British in 1848 and 1850. Sir George Grey, the Governor, pardoned him on the promise of obedience.

During a visit to England in 1850, Sir Grey persuaded Queen Victoria that a visit by a member of the royal family to South Africa might be a good diplomatic move to subdue the Xhosas in this context. She agreed to send her second son, Prince Alfred. After his arrival on 24 July 1860 in Simon’s Town on board the Euryalus, Sir George Grey escorted him around the country inspiring fervent displays of loyalty everywhere they went. In the Eastern Cape the Governor spontaneously invited Sandile to join them on the voyage back to the Cape. The amaNgika chief was hesitant at first, because other Xhosa chiefs including his relative Maqoma, were in confinement on Robben Island at this time. Eventually he consented on condition that Rev. Tiyo Soga, the country’s first ordained Xhosa, and Mr Charles Brownlee, the Ngika commissioner, would accompany them. Soga summed up Grey’s motives: ‘It was to give Sandile confidence in himself and in the kindness of the English people. It was also designed to give Sandili an opportunity of seeing to some extent the greatness and power of Great Britain; so that from what he would see in Cape Town …, he might learn something for the future good and peace of his people…’

City Whites clamouring to listen to a Black Preacher

Soon hereafter Cape Town had the rare experience of Whites clamouring to get a seat in church to listen to a Black preacher. The occasion was the visit of Rev. Tiyo Soga, who accompanied Prince Alfred. Arriving on Saturday, 15 September 1860, Rev. Soga preached at Caledon Square in the morning the very next day, and in the evening at St Andrew’s to overflowing congregations. Soga made a deep impression everywhere he came. Rev. W. Thomas, his host during his stay, was the minister of the denominationally independent congregation at Caledon Square that was however closely linked to the Congregational Church. Twice Rev. Soga occupied the pulpit there. ‘The chapel was crowded to excess, and great numbers were not able to gain admission’. Soga preached at different other venues, for example at the Dutch Reformed Church in Wynberg. Rev. Thomas gave the following glowing testimonial: ‘I know not how it was, but the presence of our friend ever suggested to me the names of Cyprian, Tertullian and Augustine and others of North Africa, embalmed in the memory as among the noblest men of the primitive Church, and as the first-fruits unto God of the rich harvest which this continent has yet to produce’.

Sandile and his party were made much of in Cape Town. The idea of African royalty making a state visit to the city appealed to the local White population, temporarily forgetting the hostile Xhosa on the Eastern Frontier. Sandile was treated as an ally and not as a threat like his countrymen, who were still imprisoned on Robben Island. The Breakwater ceremony on September 17 was the most impressive of all the functions. Sir George Grey had the courage at this occasion to suggest to Prince Alfred in his speech ‘if only he would marry Emma Sandile, he would have the merit of ending Kafir wars for ever’. Grey feared that ‘if this eligible daughter of a chief was allowed to return to her people she would probably be married off to some heathen husband without her having any say in the matter.’ The suggestion was however not followed up.

7. Pioneering Women

The Elders’ Conference of the Moravian Unitas Fratrum suggested that missionaries should make greater use of indigenous helpers. Rather surprisingly, after the head-start given by the indigenous female evangelists, the Khoi Magdalena Tikkuie and the Dutch-speaking Afrikaner Machteld Smith, along with the Xhosa Wilhelmina, who married a Khoi believer, Carl Stompjes, the use of female missionaries took a long time to take off.²⁶ In this chapter we narrate a little more about Wilhelmina Stompjes and other female missionary pioneers.

A rare feature of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century is that women spearheaded missionary work in South Africa for which men had no vision. The use of Dr Pellat as a missionary doctor (1897-1902) was the first use of a woman in her own right as a missionary to Muslims in Cape Town.

A Xhosa Female Missionary Pioneer

An Eastern Cape settlement which was started in 1828 received the name Shiloh (derived from Shalom, implying peace), but the Blacks called it Ebede, meaning place of prayer. Carl and Wilhelmina Stompjes were among the group who started this venture, operating as translators. Wilhelmina Stompjes can be regarded as the equivalent of Magdalena Tikkuie of Genadendal. Many newcomers came to Shiloh from different backgrounds. This included a Sotho, Nakin, who had fled the Mfecane²⁷ and a number of San (called ‘bosjesmannetjes - ‘Bushmen’ - in those days). ²⁸ Nakin and his wife were the first candidates for baptism in Shiloh.

Wilhelmina Stompjes was an enterprising lady, who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the newcomers, more so than the missionaries. She soon more or less ran the school for their children at the new mission station. Daniel Kaffer became backslidden, leaving Wilhelmina Stompjes as the sole translator.

Johann Adolph Bonatz, the protégée of Wilhelmina Stompjes from the days of her teaching in the Kindergarten in Genadendal, had exceptional educative talent. When he took over the leadership of the school at Shiloh, the institution prospered. He himself proceeded 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).

The security 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 of how the missionaries would have been killed if Wilhelmina Stompjes did not resolutely intervene: ‘She then violently berated Maphasa, who was so dumbfounded that he quietly retreated with his men’(ibid p. 22)

Wilhelmina Stompjes ploughed the ground for the equality of women, by doing work for which females would normally not have qualified. As female translator of missionaries she was perhaps one of the first worldwide.

Forerunners of Charity

The wives and daughters of evangelical reformers were the forerunners of charity in nineteenth century Cape society. They were allowed to play a more prominent role in public life than other women, where prejudice against the ‘weaker sex’ abounded. It is quite surprising to find that even in the family of the missionary Dr John Philip, the liberal fighter for the rights of Khoi and slaves, the same prejudice prevailed. His daughter Eliza (who later married the well-known pioneer of press freedom) was forced by her father to give up her ambition to become a teacher ‘since she would fail to gain the social virtues desirable in a young woman’. Nevertheless, many missionary wives and daughters worked as teachers or ran the business of the mission, albeit generally unacknowledged and usually unpaid.

In yet another way, Jane Philip broke ground for the liberation of women. The wife of the superintendent was paid for the bookkeeping that she did for the London Missionary Society. This work was customarily done by men.

In 1843 members of St Stephen’s 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. 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.

Pioneers of Cape-Based Mission Agencies

Two Cape-based missionary agencies and a few other organisations owe their existence to pioneering women. 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, the well-known American evangelist. Osborne’s 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’ gripped her. This became Martha Osborne’s call to missions.

Martha Osborne devoted herself

to work among Cape soldiers

She sailed in 1879, devoting herself to work among the Cape soldiers.

In South Africa the go-getter Martha Osborne 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. 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. The Osborne Mission went through a number of changes and mergers.

During a visit to England Martha Osborne challenged Spencer Walton, an evangelical member of the Church of England, to come and join the outreach at the Cape. Walton was the first director of the Cape General Mission that later - after a merger - became known as the South Africa General Mission, finally becoming the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF).

May, Emma and Helena Garratt, three sisters from Ireland, accepted an invitation to visit the 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 became involved in various evangelistic 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. 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’ gatherings 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 Street²⁹ 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.

Dependency upon God

epitomised a week of prayer

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.

A Slave descendant Pioneer

Through her novels Olive Schreiner put South Africa on the international literary map. She also distinguished herself through her love for Dutch-speaking Afrikaners. Olive Schreiner did much for reconciliation between the two main White people groups of South Africa, a fact which became widely known. However, her change towards intervention on behalf of the other underdogs after the South African War, Indians, Blacks and the Chinese who had been imported by Lord Milner, is hardly known. Her contact with Anna Tempo, a daughter of Mozambican slaves, is by and large unknown.

Tempo went on to start the Nanniehuis in Bo-Kaap, a ministry of compassion to ‘fallen’ young women and prostitutes. She later became the matron of the Stakesby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street, District Six. The Nanniehuis in Bo-Kaap’s Jordaan Street became the model for similar projects in other parts of the country after Ms Tempo had been awarded the King George Coronation Medal for her work in 1937.

By the early 1960s there were 288 welfare agencies in the city, of which less than half were run by religious organizations. The City Mission was by far the best-known of them all. The combination of evangelism and compassionate outreach continued unabatedly.

8. A Teacher of the Nations

Much has been written about Dr Andrew Murray as an author and Bible teacher of the nations. God definitely used his teaching to the Church globally, especially when there was insufficient understanding regarding sensitivity to God’s Spirit. Dr Andrew Murray gave a lead to the church worldwide in the teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit.

We would like to highlight two of his world-impacting contributions in this chapter, namely the importance of prayer in missions and having a Kingdom mind-set, which implies the crossing of denominational boundaries.

Racial Prejudice insufficiently discerned

It seemed that the danger of racial prejudice was not sufficiently discerned at this time. At the very same DRC synod of 1857 where Dr Andrew Murray and three other young dominees recommended that the church should move forward to reach the lost of the continent with missionary outreach, the synod agreed to racial separation because of the ‘weakness of some.’, thus diluting a very positive statement. A rather problematic perception was prevalent, viz: ‘Teen 1857 was die aantal Kleurlinge wat lede was van die N.G. Kerk so groot dat die sinode genoodsaak was om aan te beveel dat dit raadsaam sou wees om voortaan die Blanke- en Kleurlingkekgangers in aparte geboue te laat vergader.’³⁰ An anomaly was that the (‘Coloured’) St Stephen’s congregation of Bo-Kaap was accepted as a member church at this same synod.

This synod had as its main

component a positive statement

However, the motion tabled in 1857 at this synod had as its main component a positive statement: ‘The Synod regards it as desirable and Scriptural that our members (coming) from the heathens, be taken into existing congregations wherever this can happen.’³¹ This implied a complete reversal of the 1829 decision not to divide the church along racial lines. (At the 1829 Cape DRC synod it had been decided that all members would be admitted to communion ‘without considering colour or background’, ³² that this issue was not even to be a subject for deliberation at a synod.)

The participants had no idea what a disaster the 1857 decision would lead to in the long run, even though separation would be voluntarily. The wrong message was sent out, although Andrew Murray (jr.) was reported to have stated his objection.

It seems as if there were very few – if any - persons of colour among the 145 missionaries that left the Mission Institute in Wellington over the years. Sadly, the Church also played a role in compromises with racial prejudice. The perception developed that a missioanry had to be White. This would prevent the Cape from having an even bigger impact on world missions, because this eventually brought his Dutch Reformed Church into isolation and other denominations in opposition to them.

Prayer as the Key to the Missionary Problem

Dr Andrew Murray put into practice what he had taught about ‘waiting on the Lord’ when he was invited to be a speaker at the World Missions’ conference in New York in 1900. This conference was billed as the biggest ever to be held. (At this time the influence of the Enlightenment and Rationalism had significantly diminished belief in unseen forces like the Holy Spirit.) Murray had no inner peace about going to New York, not even after the organizers tried to use his famous friend Dwight Moody to entice him. (Moody invited Andrew Murray to join him in outreaches in the USA after the World Missions conference, but Murray was not to be swayed. He felt morally bound to stay with his people because of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). We may safely surmise that Murray was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, only wanting to take instructions from the Lord.)

Murray’s subsequent absence at the conference ironically became the biggest indirect cause of church growth and revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. After requesting and receiving the papers and reports of discussions from the conference, Murray wrote down what he thought was lacking at the event in a booklet with the title: The Key to the Missionary Problem. This booklet had an explosive influence on the churches in Europe, America and South Africa. Murray referred prominently to the twenty four hour prayer watch of the Moravians, calling earnestly for new devotion and intensive prayer for missions. He powerfully stated that missionary work is the primary task of the church, and that the pastor should have that as the main goal of his preaching. These sentiments were repeated in a small booklet he called Foreign Missions and the week of Prayer, January 5-12, 1902. He furthermore suggested ‘to join in united prayer for God’s Spirit to work in home churches a true interest in, and devotion to missions (is) our first and our most pressing need.’

One of Andrew Murray’s classic statements of the early twentieth century is that ‘God is a God of missions.’ He wrote powerfully in his booklet The Kingdom of God in South Africa (1906): ‘Prayer is the life of missions. Continual, believing prayer is the secret of vitality and fruitfulness in missionary work. The God of missions is the God of prayer.’

Andrew Murray summarized the link between the Holy Spirit and missions in the same booklet as follows: ‘No one can expect to have the Holy Ghost unless he is prepared to be used for missions. Missions are the mission of the Holy Ghost.’

The first of the triennial General Missionary conferences was convened in 1904. It was very much prepared through prayer. These conferences contributed greatly in the run-up to the world

General Missionary conferences

contributed greatly to the 1910

world event in Edinburgh

event in Edinburgh in 1910. (An interesting fact is that William Carey had proposed holding a missions conference at the Cape of Good Hope a hundred years earlier. This was also the reason for the global Lausanne event to be held in Cape Town in 2010.)

It is surely no mere co-incidence that revivals broke out in different parts of the world in the years hereafter - in such divergent countries as Wales, Norway, India and Chile. The Cape was used in this way by God to make missionary endeavour a worldwide priority. ³³

More Blows to the Legacy of Murray

The Anglo-Boer War brought estrangement between denominations which had previously worked together closely, although many Afrikaners who had been interned during the war, offered themselves for missions thereafter. This was counteracted by a positive spirit that was fostered by triennial General Missionary conferences. This spawned the creation of a feeling of unity among churches and mission agencies. This had been non-existent on a national level. The promotion of missionary comity was thus founded upon a better understanding and appreciation of one another.

The estrangement between denominations after the Anglo-Boer War gave another blow to the legacy of Andrew Murray. At a meeting of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) directors on 17 February 1920, a certain Rev. Pepler asked whether the S.A. Gestig should not be linked to the Mission Commission of the DRC. This finally led to the blessed formerly interdenominational outreach from the Long Street fellowship joining the DRC Sendingkerk in 1937.

In due course the very special mission centre of Andrew Murray at Wellington was diluted into racially segregated institutions. The theological training of the Sendingkerk started there in 1954. Incidentally, South African nationals of colour were hereafter used more often by God outside of their home country, because many left the Cape shores, for example due to apartheid repression or after having received bursaries for overseas studies.

The Crowning of the Andrew Murray Legacy

Dr Andrew Murray was divinely used once more by God in the run-up to Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World, a book which influenced prayer for missions worldwide in the twentieth century probably more than any other book. Johnstone acknowledged this in the preface to his magnum opus. In The Key to the Missionary Problem Andrew Murray advocated weeks of prayer for the world. Patrick Johnstone wrote in an email to me: ‘As far as I know this was not taken up earnestly until 1962 when Hans von Staden, the Founder and Director of the Dorothea Mission, inspired the launching of a whole series of Weeks of Prayer for the World in both Southern Africa and also

Operation World was South African-born,

but then went global.

Europe.’ It was these Weeks of Prayer that made the provision of prayer information so important, and led to Von Staden’s challenge to Patrick Johnstone to write a booklet of information to help in these prayer weeks. Von Staden also proposed the name ‘Operation World’. Johnstone concludes: ‘So the book was South African-born, but then went global.’ Johnstone’s book brought united prayer into focus like no other before it.

9. Early Jewish-Christian Interaction

It is quite a mystery to me why the Church universal has still not taken on board the loving outreach to Jews. With regard to missionary strategy we note that Jesus concentrated on the Jews. In the Scriptural context of John 3:16 the Master used the account of Moses’ elevation of the serpent in the desert in Numbers 21, to show that His eventual death on the Cross has a scriptural precedent. Moses is a great prophet to the Jews (and to the Muslims.) In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus constantly refers to His ministry as fulfillment of prophecy. This should be a pointer to our careful and sensitive use of the Hebrew Scriptures in interaction with Jews. In fact, the use of the Word of God as such is a powerful tool. Jesus demonstrated it in His life, by quoting from the Scriptures time and again. The implication of our Lord’s last commission was that the spreading of the Gospel should start in Jerusalem, in the case of the Jews among the Jewry (Acts 1:8, also Luke 24:47).

In mission work, our Lord’s concentration on the Jews has however hardly been taken seriously.³⁴

Jesus showed the way to the

acceptance of other nations

Right from his very first public appearance in Nazareth, Jesus showed the way to the acceptance of the other nations and the mission to them. In fact, this may have been one of the main reasons why the Nazareth congregation rejected him. According to the Gospel of Luke, the examples of Jesus with the Samaritans seem to have been intended to soften the nationalistic Jews up because of their nationalistic pride and prejudice.

A Special Anointing on Jews

There is a special anointing on the Jews as a people group. It just cannot be ignored that there is a blessing on the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob up to this day. Therefore it should be high on the list of our priorities to pray and work that the Jews’ eyes may be opened to the one who was pierced on the Cross of Calvary, that they may discover that He is really the promised Messiah (cf. Zechariah 12:10).

Paul practised what he preached, including the notion that the Gospel should be brought to the Jews as a prime priority. In every city he came on his missionary journeys, he first went to the synagogue. That Paul fought for the right to bring the Good News also to the Gentiles, sometimes clouds this sense of priority. Paul advised in Romans 11:25 that the Gentiles should not be conceited, reminding the Roman believers from Gentile stock that they are merely branches that had been grafted into the true olive, Israel.

Estrangement of Jews from Christianity

Because Jesus Christ was a Jew, it should theoretically be natural for Jews to come to faith in him as their Lord and Saviour. However, many of them still have great difficulty in recognizing Jesus as their promised Messiah. Paul, the great missionary and apostle, had a view about the Mosaic Law which estranged many Jews from Christianity. One compares e.g. the radical words of Jesus in Matthew 5:17-19 I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil them, which do not belittle the Mosaic law. The Pauline Galatians 3:13 on the other hand speaks about 'the curse of the law.’

From Paul’s letter to the Roman Gentile believers one can deduce that some of them looked condescendingly at the perceived divine rejection of the Jews. A fallacy developed furthermore already in the second century AD that the Church replaced Israel, as is evidenced by the tone of the Dialogue of the apologete Justin Martyr with Trypho, a Jew. Bishop Ignatius of Antiochea was another early Church Father who contributed to this elevating of the Church at the expense of Judaism.

The side-lining of Jews in the 4^th Century by Emperor Constantine caused a deep rift between Judaism and Christianity. The anti-Semitism and persecution over the centuries - predominantly by people who professed to be Christians - were other obstacles for Jews worldwide to become followers of Jesus Christ.

Precedents in Church History

Jan Amos Comenius, the famous Czech educator and theologian, was a faithful scholar of Disiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam who taught: ‘teach first the Jews and the neighbours nearby, thereafter all the nations of the earth' (Van der Linde, God’s Wereldhuis, 1979:197). Contrary to the practice of his time, Comenius refrained from polemical writing. He suggested nevertheless that the Church had to be reformed totally before the conversion of the Jews. The holy books of the Jews, the Law, Psalms and the Prophets need to be valued highly. He furthermore reminded Christians that the Jews are collectively to be a light to the nations. Even though they have rejected the Messiah and the apostles, they must be allowed to keep their law and rituals until God will reveal the truth to them in his good time. The light of Moses (the Hebrew Scriptures and the light of Christ (the ‘New Testament’) form together the indelible light for all nations. As Christians, we have to respect them as our librarians, to expound the prophetic Word that had been entrusted to them. The resistance of Israel is merely temporary.

Count Zinzendorf, the pioneer and founder of of the renewed Unitas Fratrum (Moravian Unity of the Brethren) had a similar view, albeit that he propagated that the Gospel must be preached to the Jews. Already as a teenager he was impressed by August Hermann Francke’s sermons that stressed our responsibility towards the people of the Old Covenant. In his teenage years ‘the conversion of the Jews’ can be found before ‘the conversion of the heathen’ in the hopes and expectations of the order of the Mustard Seed (Steinberg et al, Zinzendorf, 1960:25).

An Exception to Missionary Neglect

In general, the Jews and the Muslims have been neglected where mission work is concerned. The great exception was Count Zinzendorf (and his Moravians). In fact, the Count had a special affinity for the Jews, because Jesus was also a Jew (Spangenberg, Das Leben des Herrn Nicolaus Ludwig Grafen und Herrn Zinzendorf und Pottendorf,

1773-1775[1971]:1105). When he was still a student, Jews were included in Zinzendorf’s prayer lists and he included a prayer for the Jews in a church litany, which had to be used on Sundays. At the castle Ronneburg, the Jews who were living there, trusted the Count because he not only respected their religion, but he also vocalized it fearlessly. Many Jews of the vast area between Darmstadt and Giessen called Zinzendorf their great friend (Beyreuther, 1965:95). Yet, it was never his intention to wipe away differences in inter-faith fashion. He strived for a good and harmonious living together between Christians and Jews, but simultaneously he challenged the Jewish people to fulfill their divine calling to be a blessing to the nations. In order to do this, they had to bow before the Man of Nazareth who came from their ranks as the King of Kings. The Christians on the other hand were admonished not to forget Israel as their first-born brother (Beyreuther, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, 1965:94).

Zinzendorf took the evangelization of the Jews seriously. He gave a rule that once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the Moravia*n Church should pray for the conversion of Israel (Spangenberg, 1773-1775 [1971]:1105). Zinzendorf believed that the time for the conversion of nations had to await the conversion of the Jews (Weinlick, 1956:100).

Count Zinzendorf’s open interest and love for the Jews were not generally welcomed. At a conference in Berlin in 1738, the work among the Jews was seriously discussed (Spangenberg, ibid, 1773-1775[1971]:1100).

Using Their Best for the Jews

The Moravians demonstrated the priority of the outreach to the Jews by calling one of their best men, Leonhard Dober, to pioneer this ministry. He had been recalled from St Thomas to be the chief Elder after the sudden death of Martin Linner. Dober promptly moved into the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam with his wife. When Dober was needed elsewhere, the very able Samuel Lieberkühn who had studied Hebrew thoroughly in Halle and Jena, was asked to lead this ministry. Like very few others before or after him, Samuel Lieberkühn practiced the Pauline instruction to become a Jew to the Jews, refraining from all food which Jewish custom prohibited. He respected the views of Messianic Jews when they still preferred to follow Jewish law, as well as their expectation of a significant return of Jews to Palestine in the last days. Lieberkühn used the life and testimony of Jesus rather than Hebrew Scriptural quotations to prove the Messiah-ship of our Lord in his altercations with Jews.

A Reminder to the Global Church

In recent decades Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus, reminded the global Church in Manila in 1989 very impressively that Paul taught 'Jews first'. Rosen saw 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization as the bringing of the Gospel to the Jew first. Highlighting the teaching of Paul: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Romans 1:16), Rosen proposed in his paper that ‘by not following God’s programme for worldwide evangelisation – that is, beginning with Jerusalem (Israel and the Jews) – we not only develop a bad theology because of weak foundations, but we also develop poor missiological practices.’ It does not seem that Rosen’s challenge was seriously taken note of by the global Church, let alone heeded.

10. Cape Jewish-Christian Interaction

Outreach to these religions can be described as ‘Cinderella’s’ of Christian missionary work in South Africa. Elsewhere in the western world it is basically the same. In the study A Goldmine of another Sort: Southern Africa as a base for Missionary Recruitment³⁵ one chapter shows how an emphasis in outreach to Jews is an integral part of the teaching of Jesus as good missionary strategy. In this chapter we look at some Jewish-Christian interaction at the Cape and in the next one we will show how the limited loving effort to reach Cape Muslims with the Gospel nevertheless had a global impact.

The Cape Impact of a Jewish evangelical Pastor

Two Jewish brothers profoundly enriched evangelical Christianity at the Cape - Jan and Frans Lion Cachet. Both had been influenced deeply by the great Dutch poet and theologian Isaac da Costa, who was himself a Jew by birth.³⁶

Ds. Frans Lion Cachet had a short stint at St Stephen’s Church on Riebeeck Square after Pastor Georg Wilhelm Stegmann had left the post vacant. He took over at the Ebenhaezer Church in Rose Street in Bo-Kaap after the sudden death of the missionary church planter Rev. Vogelgezang. At that time this parish was linked to the Congregational Church. Ds. Cachet initiated a remarkable innovation - teaching Muslim pupils Arabic. This was a display of keen insight since the Arabic script was common among the Muslim slaves at the time. (Before coming to the Cape, Cachet served in Syria among Muslims.) He also conducted evening classes with the intention of enabling the children and adult pupils to read and understand the Qur’an and to form their own opinion.

A Jewish Debate

In 1873 Ds. Frans Lion Cachet pleaded in the Cape DRC Synod for a mission to Jewish people to be started. He found a ‘deep sea of love’ for the Jews among ministers, elders and deacons, even among the most distant congregations. Cachet’s passionate plea was however also a provocation to the Jews. As a result, opposition came from their Rabbi, Joel Rabinowitz, in a letter to the Cape Argus on 30 October 1876. That was definitely not cordial. Rabinowitz accused Cachet of condescension and ‘casting doubts on … his motives.’ But Ds. Cachet’s response was not in the spirit of Christ either. The ‘lively correspondence’ between Christians and Jews – perhaps one should rather say polemics - continued in the Cape Argus for over a month.

Ministry to Jews was left to Gentiles

The result of the controversy was that favourable conditions for Messianic Jews to win their cultural compatriots over to faith in Yeshua had passed somewhat, and it was left to Gentiles to lead such people to faith in Jesus as their Lord and Messiah. In 1894 a resolution was passed at the DRC synod, viz: ‘… the time has come for the Dutch Reformed Church to pay its debt to Israel by commencing its own mission to the Jews’ – 21 years after the plea of Ds. Frans Lion Cachet. Decades later the Anglican church followed with outreach to Jews, but other followers of Jesus have yet to wake up to the biblical injunction of ‘Jews first’ as a priority.

Other Accomplishments of Cape Jews The literary activity of the Cachet brothers was only one of many feats by Jews. Some influential Jews turned to Christianity – without however severing their Jewish roots.

One of the greatest Capetonians of the nineteenth century was Saul Solomon (of Jewish heritage), who came to the Mother City from St. Helena. For decades the Solomon clan was one of the most distinguished families at the Cape. Many of them were involved with the philanthropic movement, in which Christians and Jews worked cordially side by side. The physically diminutive Saul Solomon, a product of the Lovedale educational heritage of the Glasgow Mission, became a prominent politician. He had to stand on a box when addressing Parliament. Having been trained alongside people of colour, ‘his leading characteristic 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, Hermann, The Cape Town Hebrew Congregation, A Centenary History, 1841-1941, 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).

Saul Solomon was offered the

Premiership of the Cape Colony

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). Saul Solomon was offered the Premiership of the Cape Colony in 1871 when it was about to receive responsible Government, but he refused. This Jewish background Christian, who was linked to St George’s Cathedral, was a rare breed indeed.

In 1857 Henry and Saul Solomon became the printers of the first Cape daily newspaper, The Cape Argus, which they took over in 1863 as sole owner. Saul influenced public opinion for many years as editor. At this time there was also benevolent compassionate co-operation of Jews with adherents from the two other Cape religions under the leadership of Rabbi Joel Rabinowitz.

Harmonious Relations between the Adherents of the Abrahamic Faiths

According to a prominent Jew who grew up in District Six in the early 20^th century, Dr Issy Berelowitz, there were no less than nine synagogues there. That part of Cape Town was seen as the heart of Jewry in the Mother City in the first half of the 20^th century. Poor East European immigrants are known to have lived in the area between Chapel Street and Sir Lowry Road. The religious-wise tolerant and multi-racial character of that part of the growing metropolis is demonstrated by the fact that Buitenkant Street had a synagogue, the Tafelberg DRC and the (Coloured) Methodist Church in close proximity to each other, with other churches and mosques nearby.

The Liberman Institute in

Muir Street was a beacon of light

The first Jew to become a mayor of Cape Town was Hyman Liberman, who was in office from 1904-1907. He had a compassionate heart. When he died in 1923, a big sum was donated from his bequest for a reading room and other facilities in District Six. The Liberman Institute in Muir Street became a beacon of light. From there not only a library operated, but UCT students in the Social Sciences also did their practical work there. The building provided a neutral venue for many a meeting in the struggle against apartheid.

A legacy at the Cape was that there was a cordial harmonious atmosphere between Cape Muslims and Jews until the end of the 20^th century, very much so in District Six. Christianity, Judaism and Islam co-existed side by side amicably until the advent of Group Areas legislation. Even today many Muslims are still working with and for Jews without any feelings of rancour, although isolated radical elements within the Muslim community have been trying to stir up anti-Jewish sentiments from time to time.

Late 20^th Century Cape Outreach to Jews

Leo Poborze, a Jewish believer, came to know Jesus as the promised Messiah after he was healed of skin cancer. He was already quite old in the mid-1970s, when he was still ministering together with his friend, Mr A Herbert. Leo Poborze preached at many open-air outreaches in spite of harassment and being pelted with eggs and tomatoes, especially on the Muizenberg promenade! Poborze was something of a legend in his time amongst local believers.

The Anglican Church became indirectly involved when Rev. Rodney Mechanic worked under the auspices of Messiah’s People. According to reports, Mechanic led quite a few Jews to see Jesus as their Messiah. The follow-up of the new believers could have been better. Edith Sher, who is a Messianic Jewish believer herself, later joined this group. Doogie St Clair-Laing was her predecessor. Services with Messianic Jewish believers were held in homes until they started with regular services in a restaurant in Sea Point and later in the church hall of the Three Anchor Bay Dutch Reformed Church. The group changed its name to Beit Ariel. Unfortunately the numbers of people from Gentile background dwarfed the Messianic congregation component in due course. Dr Francois Wessels and Cecilia Burger had a dual link to Beit Ariel.and the Cape Peninsula Reformed Church which has a connection outreach to Jews stretching over many decades.

When Bruce Rudnick, a Messianic Jew, became the pastor of the Beit Ariel fellowship, it seemed at some point as if other churches would give him due recognition, but this was very short-lived. Herschel Raysman, who came from a Jewish background, came to believe in Jesus as his Messiah when he linked up with the Jesus People in the 1970s. Now he leads the Beit Ariel Messianic congregation.

A special Impact on (Cape) Jewry

Monthly prayer meetings for the Middle East started in the early 1990s in Tamboerskloof. Prayers were offered every time for both Muslims and Jews. The catalyst of the Jewish part of the prayer meeting was Elizabeth Robertson, whom God used in a very special way to stir the Jews of Sea Point in 1990. She had been confronted at that time with a very difficult choice when she was about to convert to Judaism, in preparation for her marriage to an Israeli national. Her autobiography, The Choice,

The Choice shook Cape Jewry

impacted Cape Jewry when it was published in 2003. In the same year it was read on the programme Story Teller via CCFM radio. The unexpected choice of Elizabeth Robertson, forsaking the marriage rather than her Lord, shook Cape Jewry. Surprisingly, she was encouraged by Jews to publish her special story, which is due to be released as a movie.

Elizabeth Campbell-Robertson writes in The Choice about the predicament into which the rabbi put her in the final interview of the procedure, before she was to convert to Judaism. She also describes her inner tussle, the choice between the Jewish future husband ‘Aaron’ and her Lord. She described the turmoil with the following words:

I cleared my throat to speak, when unexpectedly an anointing fell upon me, and I found myself asking if I might go on my knees. A holy boldness overtook me and in a loud, firm voice, with an authority that shocked even me, I heard myself saying: “To me Jesus Christ is the Son of God! He is the one who died for me.,” Then, pointing at the rabbis one by one, I said “and for you and for you and for you. He is the Messiah. He was born of a virgin, and His blood cleanses all of our sins. This is who I believe Jesus Christ is!” I then collapsed onto the floor in a sobbing heap.

Doogie St Clair-Laing pioneered a weekly radio programme on CCFM, doing it for ten years. John Atkinson and Edith Sher took over around 2007, taking the programme in a new direction, focusing on teaching and broadening the listenership. The Radio Tygerberg programme ‘Israel Kaleidoscope’ is the effort of Esther Kruger.

The vision grew to see Jews

and Muslims reconciled

Attempts at Reconciliation of Jews and Muslims

The vision grew to see Jews and Muslims reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ. This vision received fresh inspiration from September 1998 when we started to pray regularly on Signal Hill, which is situated just above Tamboerskloof, a ‘Christian’ suburb, and Bo-Kaap, which still is very much a Muslim stronghold. Sea Point, situated just below Signal Hill on the other side, is home to the majority of Cape Jews.

During 2004 our missionary colleague Edith Sher organised a prayer breakfast in Sea Point during which a Cape Muslim background believer also shared his testimony. God sent other people to help us in this effort. Lillian James is a long-standing contact and one of our prayer partners until she relocated to Johannesburg. She had been one of the believers who attended our prayer meetings for the Middle East where we prayed for both religions and their adherents. Lillian introduced us to Leigh Telli and her husband. Leigh loves the Jews and her husband comes from a Muslim background, hailing from North Africa. All this served to confirm our calling of ministering to foreigners and linking our work to Messianic Jews.

The next step was a seminar on reconciliation on February 19, 2005. It was our vision to work towards reconciliation under the banner of Jesus, having Messianic Jews and followers of Jesus – also those from Muslim background – networking and displaying their unity in Christ. In our preparation for the seminar we worked closely with Leigh Telli, missionary of Messianic Testimony. She shared on the role of Isaac in the last days, and I did the same for Ishmael. Our co-worker Rochelle Malachowski, who had been working in Palestine, reported on the ministry of Musalaha in the Middle East. Subsequently we printed a manual of our papers, in which some of Leigh's paintings also featured. All this became the start of a close friendship between my wife Rosemarie and Leigh Telli.

Hope after the Holocaust During a public meeting in Durbanville on 31 May 2008 Rosemarie shared the story of her upbringing as a post-World War 2 child in Germany. A Polish holocaust survivor was the other speaker at this occasion. Quite a few Jews indicated afterwards that they were touched by Rosemarie’s story. She had stressed that she learned to appreciate Jesus as the scapegoat for our sins. (In a similar way the Jews were given the blame for the calamities in Germany’s Third Reich. This was highlighted during the xenophobic violence in South Africa at that time during which the foreign Africans were strangely given the blame for anything, even for the escalating food and petrol prices.)

A Jewish lady invited Rosemarie to come and speak to her group in Sea Point. This took place at a follow up meeting in August 2008. There she, Leigh Telli and Cecilia Burger, a veteran Dutch Reformed church worker among the Jews, were warmly welcomed. Leigh wrote in her October 2008 newsletter: ‘I believe that R’s message touched many hearts that day.’ This was followed by more contacts to Jews, notably at a Jewish old age home to which Leigh was invited from time to time.

Another push towards Muslim/Jewish Reconciliation

Rosemarie and I were subsequently very much challenged to get Muslim/Jewish dialogue and reconciliation going here at the Cape, but it did not get off the ground immediately. At the beginning of 2010 I was deeply moved when I read a sermon that stressed quite strongly that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, had buried their father together (Genesis 25:9). The evident reconciliation must have been preceded by confession and remorse. We felt ourselves addressed and challenged to give this greater priority.

I started to pray that a representative body of Christians might express regret and offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians in the pst. We had discerned how the apology at the Church consultation of November 1990 in Rustenburg on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church ushered in a new dispensation in our country at a time when by far not everybody in the denomination agreed with the confession.  A general expression of regret for the omissions and serious mistakes by our spiritual ancestors regarding Judaism and Islam  - nationally and globally - has not yet happened.

Sovereign Moves of God

On 11 October 2010 the Lord ministered to me from Romans 1:16 when we received the LCJE (Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism) Bulletin. In that edition Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus, highlighted 'Jews first' in his paper delivered as part of the Jewish Evangelism track at Lausanne II in Manila, 1989. In the summary of his paper of 1989 he suggested that 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization is to bring the gospel to the Jew first. Highlighting the example of Paul: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Romans 1:16), Moishe Rosen suggested in the same paper that ‘by not following God’s programme for worldwide evangelisation – that is, beginning with Jerusalem (Israel, and the Jews) – we not only develop a bad theology because of weak foundations, but we also develop poor missiological practices.’ I am still personally challenged to get more involved with outreach to Jews as well. An email I received at that time however highlighted to me how deep-seated and rife Replacement Theology – i.e. that Israel was replaced by the Church - still was among Christians. It also had the effect of a cold shower on me. But I was not yet ready to rock the boat.

A Paradigm Shift in Jewish Thinking

In the last 30 years Jewish scholars re-claimed Jesus as an important Jewish person in their history. Before that, Jesus was ignored for many years. In the perception of Jews Jesus belonged to Christianity. Jewish theologians had nothing to say about him. That attitude has changed. A significant number of Jewish historians ly wrote studies on Jesus in recent years, in which they rediscovered the Jewish origins of Jesus.

However, even those Jewish scholars who might consider the question whether Jesus was perhaps a messianic figure, did so on the assumption that the Jewish Messiah Jewish was not expected to be a divine figure. The Messiah would perhaps be a saviour like King David – or perhaps someone like a great prophet, like Elijah or Isaiah.

This has changed also. Daniel Boyarin, a Talmudic scholar and professor of Jewish studies at the University of California, Berkeley, describes himself as an Orthodox Jew. In his The Jewish Gospels : The Story of the Jewish Christ, Boyarin argues that belief in Jesus as a divine Messiah is a thoroughly Jewish concept, and that at least some Jews expected a divine “Son of Man” saviour to emerge out of Israel, based on their understanding of the Messiah. Very original in the realm of Jewish scholarship is his approach to Jesus as an authentic candidate for Messiah based on criteria derived from the already-existing Jewish world. In a book review of Alan M. Shore that I took from the internet, he quotes Boyarin: ‘While by now almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian, is happy enough to refer to Jesus, the human, as a Jew, I want to go a step beyond that. I wish us to see that Christ too — the divine Messiah — is a Jew. Christology, or the early ideas about Christ, is also a Jewish discourse and not — until much later — an anti-Jewish discourse at all... Thus the basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born and in which he was first written about in the Gospels of Mark and John ‘

Boyarin not only argues convincingly that belief in Jesus as divine Messiah is Jewish, but he also outlines that a Suffering Messiah is part and parcel of Jewish tradition, both before and after Jesus. 

All this boils down to a paradigm shift in Jewish thinking. Simon Rocker of the Jewish Chronicle concluded his review of The Jewish Gospels... by asserting: ‘The effect of works like Boya-rin’s is to make the solid ground on which we think we stand seem more like ice that can melt into something more fluid. The implications of such radicalism could extend beyond the halls of academia and theological exchange between Christians and Jews’.

11. Prayer as a Counter to Violent Revolution

In chapter 12 we show how a spiritual power encounter on the Green Point Track had a link to global spiritual warfare on 13 August 1961, the day that the Berlin Wall was built. That event can be regarded as the start of the ‘Cold War’ between the Soviet Union and the allied forces in the West. The fear of nuclear warfare averted another world war. On the other hand, God used Cape believers a few times to stifle widespread bloodshed in Southern Africa in subsequent decades.

Dr Francis Grim, a committed Christian and prayer warrior, was the worldwide leader of the Hospital Christian Fellowship (HCF, later called Healthcare Christian Fellowship) for many years from the Cape suburb of Pinelands. Dr Francis Grim initiated a National Day of Prayer, called for 7 January 1976. Although this was not perceived by people in the disadvantaged communities as something to join, this move may have stemmed the tide of Communist-inspired violent revolution, to which the upheaval in Soweto on 16 June 1976 could easily have led. On that very day Johan Botha, a young policeman, was posted in Soweto. Supernaturally God would use him 18 years later to bring many in the nation to pray.³⁷

Grim gave a challenging title to a booklet that he got published and for which he wrote the forward: Pray or Perish.³⁸ This had the purpose of warning South African Christians against the dangers of Communism.

An advance Guard for seven Years of Prayer

We have noted already how the Western Cape’s Dr Andrew Murray was used by God in the run-up to Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World, a book which had probably influenced prayer for missions worldwide more than any other in the 20^th century. In fact, Johnstone acknowledged this in the preface to his magnum opus. That book - Operation World - brought united prayer into focus like no other one before it.

Furthermore, World Literature Crusade launched their Change the World School of Prayer in the early 1980s. The South African prayer manual was published in Cape Town in 1981. World Literature Crusade’s publication can be regarded as the advance guard for the seven years of prayer for the Soviet Union, and the prayer victories at the end of the 1980s.³⁹ The group in California (USA) documented some of their experiences, praying systematically over 40,000 continuous hours.

Charles Robertson, a Bellville businessman and lecturer, who was very much involved in the launching of the initiative at the Cape, wrote that the vision of the School of Prayer was ‘to see a million Christians in South Africa pray for revival and world evangelism by the end of 1986.’ The first school was held in Cape Town, attended by 1,130 people over two weekends.

It is appropriate that the revived prayer movement started at the Cape where Andrew Murray had written his School des Gebeds in 1885, and it is also very fitting that Charles Robertson and his wife Rita would donate the property where the first NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa) School of Prayer was to be erected in 2000.

An Increase in spiritual Warfare

In 1980 Jim Wilson gave his booklet a new title Against the Powers. This was possibly the starting gun globally for an increase in spiritual warfare, although at that stage it was still happening against the backdrop of the ‘Cold War‘ between the Soviet Block and the West. Communism was seen as the threat to the Church par excellence. Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who had been imprisoned because of his faith in Rumania, had alarmed the Church already in the late sixties in a booklet with the title Tortured for Christ. Persecuted Christians, who succeeded in coming out of Communist countries, aroused the sympathies and interest of believers in the West.. The Dutchman Brother Andrew (Anne van der Bijl) wrote Battle for Africa in 1977 in the same mould. ‘Brother Andrew’ van der Bijl was a Western evangelical believer who discerned matters quite clearly. When Brother Andrew visited Prague at the time of the Soviet invasion in 1968, his eyes were opened. A programme of Bible smuggling was developed in obedience to the Lord, leading to the founding of Open Doors in support of Christians who were persecuted because of their faith.

Christians worldwide prayed for seven years for the collapse of the Soviet

Union and Communism

Seven Years of Prayer Dick Eastman and his Change the World School of Prayer warriors appears to have inspired the initiators of a booklet, published by Hospital Christian Fellowship. The Change the World School of Prayer suggested that believers pray strategically, praying for 100 unevangelized Chinese and Arab-Moslem nations.

In 1983 Open Doors called Christians worldwide to pray for a period of seven years for the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism. In due course changes occurred in Hungary and East Germany. From 1987 there were prayer rallies at different churches, for instance in the East German cities of Leipzig and Dresden. In 1989 the Argentinian pastor Edgardo Silvoso and the westerner Tom White presented papers at the Spiritual Warfare Track workshop of the Lausanne II Congress in Manila. White’s paper on spiritual warfare there set the evangelical world on course for the biggest missionary decade of the 20th century. The immediate outcome was the founding of a Spiritual Warfare Communication and Referral Network. In the 1990s Ed Silvoso would influence many countries with his teaching and example of bringing churches together in unity and practising restitution as an integral component of genuine repentance.

With the increased awareness of spiritual warfare in Christian circles, the power of occult strongholds was also recognized more and more. The effect of seven years of persevering prayer for the Soviet Union were already quite apparent towards the end of 1989. The spadework had been done through Patrick Johnstone’s book Operation World. For the first time in the modern era thousands of prayer warriors were mobilized globally.

The Equivalent of a spiritual Earthquake The demise of Communism received its major impetus from the crashing of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Christians were generally not interested as yet in outreach to Muslims, let alone concerned enough to pray for them.

The fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the collapse of the Soviet Empire. New opportunities arose for the spreading of the Gospel. This was the equivalent of a spiritual earthquake. Things changed dramatically as the results of the seven years of prayer became known.

Prayer for the Muslim World

At conferences in Germany and Holland, missionaries started praying more intensely for the truth to be revealed to Muslims from 1987. Until the early 1990s only very few missionaries volunteered for work in Muslim countries. Drama followed when Iraq’s troops invaded Kuwait in 1990. The run-up to the Gulf War sparked off the call by Open Doors for ten years of prayer for the Muslim World.

A little booklet spawned a month of

prayer for selected Muslim countries

With the publication of a little booklet in the early 1990s, the Dutch section of the Hospital Christian Fellowship in Voorthuizen, which had South Africa’s Dr Francis Grim as its worldwide leader, was a special divine instrument, motivating Christians towards a month of prayer for selected Muslim countries. The 31-day prayer guide⁴⁰ appears to have been the model for the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus that went around the globe during Ramadan in the years after 1993.

1992 was the year during which mission leaders decided to call Christians worldwide to pray for Muslims during Ramadan. Floyd McClung and other YWAM leaders retreated to a secluded place in Egypt. There the Lord gave them the vision for prayer mobilization during Ramadan, printed as booklets that caused an unprecedented change in the Muslim world.

This was a natural follow-up to the call by Open Doors for ten years of prayer for the Muslim world in 1990. Everybody still vividly remembered the spectacular result of the seven years of prayer for the Soviet Union. The little 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed and distributed around the Globe with information on different issues relating to Islam. This was repeated for many years until the proliferation of prayer calls on the internet seems to have made its actual printing less impactful.⁴¹

Communism a spent Force? The brutal apartheid repression of 1985 and 1986 prepared the soil for communist penetration. Especially due to the faithful prayers of many over the years, South Africa did not fall into the communist camp. By the time Nelson Mandela was freed in February 1990, Communism had been exposed as a spent force. Worldwide prayer brought it down. The demise of the atheist ideology was ushered in by mass prayer rallies at different East German churches, but especially also prepared by the faithful prayers of believers around the world.

An outspoken Communist

leader assassinated

The news on 10 April 1993 reverberated throughout the country that the outspoken communist Chris Hani, who had been touted for a top position in a possible ANC-led government, had been assassinated. The fact that a White woman provided information leading to the prompt arrest of the alleged perpetrators - two right-wing activists - served to lower the political temperature momentarily, but things remained extremely tense. The assassination of Chris Hani could just as easily have led to a revival of Communism.

The death of Chris Hani however helped not only to get a date set for elections, but also to bring about a climate for reconciliation. Yet, by July 1993 the country was still clearly moving towards the precipice of civil war. Christians from different denominational backgrounds came together for prayer also in different parts of the Cape Peninsula, although this was still mainly occurring within the racial confines. In fact, God had to use the brutal attack of believers in a Capetonian sanctuary to get the Church in South Africa praying fervently.

Supernatural Intervention

The massacre in July 1993 at the St James Church of Kenilworth during the Sunday evening sevice caused a temporary brake on the escalation of violence that was threatening to send the country over the precipice - a civil war of enormous dimensions. The event inspired unprecedented prayer all around the country and throughout the world, bringing home the seriousness of terrorism that would not even stop at sacred places. The attack on the St James Church brought about a new sense of urgency for Christians to leave their comfort zones.

Satan probably overplayed his hand

But Satan had probably overplayed his hand. The St James Church killings turned out to be the instrument par excellence to impact the movement towards racial reconciliation in the country. Those family members who lost dear ones received divine grace to forgive the brutal killers.

The killing of innocent people during a church service sparked off an unprecedented urgency for prayer all around the country. The adage of Albert Luthuli after he had been dismissed as chief by the South African government in November 1952 received a new actuality: ‘It is inevitable that in working for freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer: the Road to Freedom is via the Cross.’

Sovereign divine Moves

A third consecutive 40-day fast – the first of the three started on 2 January 1994 - co-incided with preparations for the first democratic general elections. Before this, the concrete fear of civil war inspired prayer meetings across the racial divide. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Methodist Bishop Stanley Mogoba convened a meeting between Dr Nelson Mandela and Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi to try to resolve the deadlock posed by the threat of Inkatha Freedom Party to boycott the elections.

Africa Enterprise enlisted prayer assistance from all over the world already in 1993. Few other countries responded like Kenya and Nigeria. Foreign missionaries were seriously considering leaving South Africa because of the increase in violence. In a special move of God’s Spirit, Pastor Willy Oyegun from Nigeria and a group of prayer warriors from that country were led to come and pray in South Africa in February 1994. It was touch and go, or they would have been sent back from Johannesburg International Airport without accomplishing anything. God intervened sovereignly. Willy Oyegun became God’s choice instrument for healing and reconciliation at the Cape in the post-apartheid era. Also in East Africa God laid on the heart of many a Kenyan to pray for our country as it was heading for the elections.

In the months leading to 27 April 1994, Nelson Mandela engaged in frantic attempts to placate extremist groups. His efforts seemed futile. On the one hand the ANC entered into negotiations with General Constand Viljoen, the former head of the South African Defence Force for the establishment of a Volkstaat, in which Afrikaans religion, culture and language would be preserved. On the other hand, the ANC took quite a hard line and Dr Mangusuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, appeared definitely no less stubborn. South Africa needed a miracle.

A sovereign Answer to Prayer

God used Rev Michael Cassidy and his Africa Enterprise team to get a massive prayer effort underway involving Christians all over the world. God furthermore clearly called a police officer, Colonel Johan Botha, to recruit prayer warriors. The press took up his story, reporting on how God supernaturally came to him in a vision. An angel stood before him on 23 March 1994 with the message: “I want South Africa on its knees in prayer”. A national prayer day was announced for 6 April 1994 - at that time a national holiday called Founder’s Day. ⁴² The country was teetering on the edge of a civil war, which surely could have sent many missionaries and other foreigners fleeing to their home countries in all haste just before or after the elections on 27 April 1994.

The scene was set for civil war

of unprecedented proportions

Two reputable negotiators were brought in along with the more or less internationally unknown Kenyan Professor Washington Okumu, a committed Christian. Lord Carrington was a former British Foreign Minister, who had brokered an accord for Zimbabwe in Lancaster House in London in 1980. Dr Henry Kissinger, a former US Secretary of State, headed off a major crisis in the Middle East through his shuttle diplomacy in the 1970s. The negotiating group however had great difficulty to induce Inkatha, the predominantly Zulu party led by Dr Mangusuthu Buthelezi, to participate in the elections. On 13 April 1994 - only two weeks before the scheduled elections - the two prominent gentlemen from the UK and the USA left the country, having acknowledged their failure to achieve a settlement. The scene was set for the outbreak of civil war of unprecedented proportions. Journalists flew in from all over the world to witness and record the carnage that was expected to follow the elections.

Professor Okumu heeded Michael Cassidy's request to stay behind when his prominent Western colleagues left. After Okumu had rushed by taxi to meet Dr Buthulezi on 15 April at the Lanseria Airport to explain a new proposal - to be presented to the Zulu King - he arrived just in time to see the machine taking off.

Divine intervention occurred when the announcement was made that the aircraft was returning. Some strange navigational reading had caused the pilot to return to the airport. He decided to return to the Lanseria Airport and not to fly further (Afterwards no fault was discovered with the machine). God indeed had to intervene supernaturally to get the machine, in which Dr Mangusuthu Buthelezi was sitting, to return to the airport where Okumu had already thought to have missed him. Dr Buthelezi took along the change Okumu had worked on. The Zulu King accepted the new deal, which enabled the Zulus to participate in the elections.

Millions of ballot papers had already been printed. Hurriedly a similar number of stickers was prepared to be attached to the millions of printed ballot papers to give the new South African electorate the added option of voting for the Inkatha Freedom Party.

The Country steered away from the Precipice It was very fitting that God used Okumu, a Kenyan believer, to broker the accord with the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party) and the Zulu King, a move that literally steered the country from the precipice at the 11^th hour. Many Kenyans had been praying for South Africa in its period of crisis. They - as did Dr Mangusuthu Buthulezi and thousands of South Africans - gave God all the honour for divinely steering the country to an unprecedented four days of peaceful revolution, as the election process was dubbed.

In answer to the prayers of millions, God brought about the miracle elections that so easily could have gone awry. It was clear that it was neither the military actions nor the boycotts which toppled apartheid predominently. It was divine sovereign work. Satan must have worked overtime almost to the last minute to counter God’s redemptive plans for the country. In the wake of so much positive publicity to the honour of God, the arch enemy was ‘honour-bound’ to hit back with a vengeance. Islamic extremists had already started to create havoc, using the addiction of youngsters to drugs to sow disquiet at the Cape.

12. Attacks on the Islamic Wall

At the time that Nelson Mandela was released in February 1990, I was in West Africa on an orientation visit, with a view to go and teach Mathematics at a school for missionary kids. The three weeks there were sufficient to excite me about the possibilities of sharing the Gospel in West Africa. The discussions at the school in Vavoua (Ivory Coast) were promising, although I saw a teaching stint in Vavoua merely as a prelude to getting into other missionary work after a few years.

The daunting Wall of Islam

With the 'iron curtain' of Communism and the edifice of apartheid all but shattered by 16 February 1990, supernatural intervention occurred in Abidjan, nudging me to tackle the daunting wall of Islam. With my Dutch missionary friend Bart Berkheij, I landed in a 'mosque’ by accident. When all the shops closed down at lunch time that Friday, we had no opportunity to continue our souvenir shopping spree. We simply took a seat next to the road. Suddenly prayer mats were rolled out all around us. Bart was sitting obliquely behind me. Somehow I had the impression that he was also doing the obligatory raka’ts, the Islamic cycles of bodily movements accompanying the prayers. Thus I simply joined in, imitating the people in front of me. Suddenly I heard an angry stifled shout-whisper: ‘Ashley, wat doe je daar!’ (Ashley, what are you doing!) What a bashing he gave me hereafter for going through the Islamic motions. Strangely enough, I felt embarrassed, but I did not feel very deeply sorry from within...

As I looked at the people in front of me, I experienced a thrill. It was as if the Lord was reassuring me that these bodily movements were no more than meaningless tradition; that someday the Islamic wall would also crash like the communist ‘iron curtain’ had started to do. The experience of that day helped me to persevere more than two decades with low-key missionary work among Muslims and seeing very little in terms of results.

A Door closes and a Window opens⁴³

A few weeks later the directress of the WEC mission school in Vavoua, pointed out in a letter that the age and number of our children militated against us coming there as a family. I was shattered to some extent when this reply came. I had been looking so much forward to serve in Vavoua. But that door had now closed

In His divine faithfulness, God opened a window to no less than my beloved South Africa. At the end of the same year He provided miraculously for me and Rosemarie not only to visit my ‘heimat’, but also to see Him confirming a call to return to the Mother City. In January 1992 we were back in Cape Town.

Called to minister to Cape Muslims?

The Master clearly used our first days in Cape Town to make it unambiguously clear to all and sundry that we were called to minister to the Cape Muslims.

When we came from Holland we didn’t have any accommodation lined up. We were seriously considering approaching my dear friend and teacher colleague Richard Arendse for the use of his caravan again as we did in 1981. Then we heard just before our departure to South Africa that we could stay in a Bible School in Surrey Estate, a part of the suburb Athlone during the month of January.

The first day after our arrival at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute⁴⁴ we were awakened by a shock, a deafening roar at half past four in the morning. The cause was the seven mosques within a radius of two kilometres of the institution in Surrey Estate. This was the first indication that the Lord was perhaps calling us to get involved with the Cape Muslims. But we were not starkly aware of it as yet.

This was only one of a series of nudges in this direction. Thus our lack of transportation brought us in touch with Manfred Jung, the leader of SIM Life Challenge and Alroy Davids, both of whom were involved with outreach to Muslims. The 13-year old horrible-looking minibus previously belonged to the missionary Gschwandtner family before they sold it to Manfred Jung. It badly needed some colour. Alroy Davids spray-painted the vehicle in his spare time.

One miracle followed the other⁴⁵ until we secured accommodation in Tamboerskloof, a suburb adjacent to Bo-Kaap, the cradle of Islam in South Africa and the prime stronghold of the religion.

Formal Studies once again?

At the beginning of our stay in Tamboerskloof I joined the SIM (Society of International Ministries) Life Challenge team of Manfred Jung in BoKaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. My knowledge of Islam

was completely inadequate

A positive result of that ministry was that I discovered that my knowledge of Islam was completely inadequate. I got permission from our mission leaders to do a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay with a special focus on Islam.

Our friend Jattie Bredenkamp, who had visited us in Zeist a few times and whom I had assisted to get some archive sources in Utrecht, had become professor of History at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He assisted me in my research on the establishment and spread of Islam at the Cape for a study assignment. The research became the basis of a treatise which I called The Cinderella of Missions, highlighting the neglect of missionary work to Muslims and Jews.

Slaughtering of Sheep in BoKaap

In our loving outreach to Cape Muslims at this time it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. We had been reading how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea until he found the peace child as a key to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines, to get a key to the hearts of Cape Muslims.

Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at their Eid-ul Adha celebration. This made me realise how near the three world religions Christianity, Judaism and Islam actually are to each other. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is common to all three faiths.

One day our Bo-Kaap Muslim friends invited us to the festivities around the Korban, the slaughtering of sheep. Attending initially with some trepidation and prejudice, the occasion became such a special blessing to my wife and me.

The Lord gave us a key to the

hearts of Muslims

Five sheep were slaughtered that Sunday afternoon. Vividly we saw how one sheep after the other went almost voluntarily to be killed. To see how the sheep went to be slaughtered brought back the childhood memories of Isaiah 53. Rosemarie and I looked at each other, immediately knowing that the Lord answered our prayer. He had given us the key to the hearts of Muslims. The ceremony brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learned by heart as a child. (In the Moravian liturgical church practice there is also a reference to the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world with which I was very familiar.)

A few minutes later the message was amplified when a little girl came into the kitchen where Rosemarie was talking to the ladies. (I was in the living room according to prevailing custom). The animal-loving child sought solace from her mother. ‘Why do the innocent sheep have to be slaughtered every year?’ The answer of the mother was special: “You know, my dear, it is either you or the sheep.” We were amazed how the atonement concept was thus actually passed on into the minds of Islamic adherents.

It was wonderful to me to discover somewhat later that according to Jewish oral teaching traditions Isaac was purported to have carried the firewood for the altar on his shoulder, after Abraham saw Moriah on the third day - just like someone would carry a cross. In many a church I not only hereafter preached how resurrection faith was birthed in Abraham’s heart, but we also shared the message of the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus to many eager-listening Muslims, usually without any objection (Officially Muslims were not supposed to believe that Jesus died on the cross, let alone that He died for our sins!)

Africa to be Islamized?

A National Day of Prayer and its local Backlash

In October 1995 the Sunday Times published a report about the Islamic conference held in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. There it was vocalized that Africa was to be Islamized by the end of the 20th century, making use of the South African infrastructure. The precedent of making the country ungovernable, was to be repeated. The Western Cape, with its favourable infrastructure plus the presence of well over a quarter of a million Muslims, was taken to have the potential to be the springboard from the south of the continent. This attempt was frustrated by the 30 Days of prayer during the first term of 1996 and a National Day of Prayer.

In the Western Cape, the initial resultant satanic backlash was traumatic, with the eruption of a near Lebanon-type scenario after People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Muslim extremist group, started terrorizing the Mother City on 4 August 1996. On that day, Rashaad Staggie, a drug lord, was publicly executed by burning. This was relayed to the nation in a TV newscast. Islam was still on the march with mosques buitl in different places. Churches became mosques and even a Cape evangelical Bible School went into Muslim. The process of Islamization was not as fast in the new millennium as in the early 1990s but still steady. With Somalians going to the most remote country towns, an Islamic presence was duely visible almost everywhere. Not only funds fromoil revenue but even more so every consumer in South Africa contributed to the spread of Islam via the Halaal Fund. Muslims succeeded in getting a Halaal emblem on the most diverse products. The produceers had to pay for this ‘privilege‘.

Rays of light

A ray of light broke through in 1998 as more city pastors joined our weekly prayer that we were now having in the German Lutheran Church. Louis Pasques had caught the vision for united prayer to get a breakthrough in the City Bowl after attending a conference in Pretoria with the Argentinian Ed Silvoso in 1996. Over a period of 40 days after Easter 1998 Christians from different backgrounds throughout the country were joining in a fast. A week of prayer meetings with speakers from different churches was organised. But also here the initial promise was not realised. Yet, a core of pastors kept coming every Thursday for many years.

Through my reading I initially perceived the role of the missionary Dr Philip in the emancipation of slaves as extremely significant. I meant to discover that an important stimulus for the formal abolition of slavery worldwide had been given at the Cape. Dr Philip, who had been a missionary at the Cape, through his book Researches in South Africa and his personal friendship to William Wilberforce, influenced matters worldwide. It is of course common knowledge that the British evangelical parliamentarian became the main driving force towards the outlawing of slavery. The appointment of Thomas Pringle, who became secretary of Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society in 1826 after a stint at the Cape, where he had been a staunch fighter for press freedom, has hardly been recognised in the emancipation of slaves. (Later I discovered in my research that Dr Philip was not much more than an important catalyst. Nevertheless, my crooked understanding of his role inspired me to see history repeat itself. I felt challenged to spread the information to my fellow Capetonians. Could we be the advance guard yet again, this time to emancipate the world of demonic religious enslavement, to usher in the return of the King of Kings? I became more and more convinced that a breakthrough in Bo-Kaap could have that effect.

Demonic Conspiracies

For years I had been aware that the various forms of apartheid were demonic. In my studies I became aware of Satan’s success at keeping the spiritual descendants of Abraham apart. It is a tragedy of history that the really great men were loners who had insufficient vision for the spiritual dynamics of separation as a tool of the enemy. Paul, the unique apostle, and Martin Luther, the special reformer, both belong to that category. It is sad that all these men were obviously headstrong, but basically misunderstood. I asked myself how Paul, who really was prepared to give his life for his people (see Romans 9 - 11) could be perceived by the Jews as someone who had cut himself off from them? To me, there was only one explanation: it was a demonic conspiracy! How different things could have been if Muhammad, the great statesman had been explained the Gospel clearly and committed himself in faith to Jesus and not to see the Master merely as a prophet.

It was so sad to discover that Muhammad and Islam actually had precedents for their doctrines in heretical Christianity. Yet, there was no evidence that the time was ripe for Christians to heed any challenge.

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, the occasion of Rashaad Staggie’s public burning. That event catapulted his twin brother and co-gangleader Rashied into prominence.

Sandwiched between the above-mentioned two processions that left the Gatesville mosque, a church service in the township-like suburb Elsies River wouldhave 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 in the Moravian Church of Elsies River at a combined youth service on the last July Sunday evening of 1996. (Mark Gabriel previously had to flee his home country where he narrowly escaped assassination.) Within days, the booklet with his story was in the hands of Muslims leaders. Maulana Sulaiman Petersen, who suspected that Mark Gabriel had contact with local missionaries, threateningly enquired after him on Wednesday 31 July - i.e. at the time when Mark was doing the practical part of his Crossroads Discipleship Training School at YWAM in Muizenberg with us. Mark was now forced to go undercover.

The public ‘execution’ of Rashaad Staggie by PAGAD (People Against Drugs And Gangsterism) was the next major stimulus for prayer. It brought personal relief to us, because in the resulting turmoil the fundamentalist Muslims seemingly forgot to hunt for Mark Gabriel.

The PAGAD issue highlighted the fear of and resentment - sometimes even hatred – experienced by some Christians towards Muslims.

An arson Attempt The veiled threat of a Muslim State was now mentioned more often than was healthy for good relations between the adherents of the two major religions at the Cape. A proposed 10-week teaching course ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim Neighbour’ emphasized prayer as part and parcel of ‘spiritual warfare’. Just before the course was due to start at the Uniting Reformed Church in the ‘Coloured’ suburb Lansdowne, there was an arson attempt on the church building.

Were Satanists behind the

arson attack on the church?

When Muslims offered ‘spontaneously’ 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 - appeared to be a very real possibility. We did not know at that time that Lansdowne was one of the big PAGAD strongholds. In fact, PAGAD was virtually unknown before August 1996. Since then, conflicting reports were published about the intention of Muslims - for instance by the radical Qibla faction of PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs). Among other things it was said that PAGAD would attempt to start the Islamization of South Africa in the Western Cape.

Mark Gabriel was forced into hiding

Reminiscent of the situation when Martin Luther was taken to the Wartburg castle for safety,⁴⁶ Mark Gabriel was forced into hiding. The televised Staggie 'execution' by PAGAD as a part of the national news on 4 August reminded Mark of Muslim radicals of the Middle East. He now started with significant research of jihad (holy war) in Arabic Islamic literature, finishing his manuscript in 2001 in Orlando (Florida, USA), where he had moved to in the meantime. The September 11 event of that year made Mark Gabriel's book on the topic a best-seller when it was published at the beginning of 2002. It came out under the title Terrorism and Islam. That book became a major factor in the exposure of the violent side of Islam. (Subsequently the book was translated into more than 50 languages).

The Struggle against the giant Islam

I wrote a few more manuscripts thereafter that were predominantly connected to the struggle against the ideological giant Islam. As I studied different biblical figures in the Bible that are also found in the Qur’an for use with our meetings with our Muslim background believers, a pattern became clear, namely that the pointers in the ‘Old Testament’ that could be seen as pointing to the crucifixion of Jesus is consistently omitted in the Qur’an.

in search of the roots of Islam

To cross-check my discovery, I also studied the same personalities in the Jewish Talmud. Here I was struck – which of course should have been quite natural - how close early Christianity actually was to Judaism. I was very much aware that my critical writing about the Sabbath doctrine, i.e. the changing of the day of rest by the Emperor Constantine in 321 AD, could bring me into disrepute not only with folk in the mainline churches, but also with the evangelicals. I nevertheless used the results of my studies – I called them Pointers to Jesus - carefully in a radio series of the local CCFM in 1997, where we used another person as the reader. I also used the material in our teaching courses in Muslim Evangelism. I read a more daring version of the series myself on radio in 1999 as midday devotionals. Fortunately there were no repercussions. This series was running concurrently with the Friday evening programme God Changes Lives where I was interviewing people from different religious backgrounds who came to faith in Jesus. Once every month I used someone from Muslim background.

The studies also sent me in search of the roots of Islam, when I discovered that virtually every single Islamic doctrine had a Judaic-Christian background. More work on manuscripts followed to which I gave the titles ‘The unpaid debt of the church” and “Is Islam a Christian sect?”⁴⁷

13. Gangsterism: a stumbling Block or stepping Stone?

Over the decades gangsterism proved a hard nut to crack, notably in the Cape townships. Cape Town has its own special version of gangsters who were changed by the power of the Gospel.

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. He became known even internationally.

Pastor Andy Lamb is another personality 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, Pastor Andy Lamb was very much involved in the prayer drives and meetings of intercessors, which met at his church once a month in 1996, and in the planting of churches. One of the most well-known from this category is Pastor Eddie Edson, a previous pastor of the Shekinah Tabernacle Full Gospel congregation in Mitchells Plain. He had been involved in Woodstock gangster activities in the 1970s before he got converted under Pastor Lamb’s ministry. Pastor Eddie Edson became a leader of the prayer movement at the Cape in the 1990s.

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 me 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.

Rival gangs competed

in football matches

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 tackle the problem of gangsterism at the root, an attempt to break the cycle of youngsters growing up into a life of vice. A children’s club at the Alpha Centre ran for a few years in the early 1990s. Some seed did germinate there that would bring fruit many years later.

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 ‘exported’ quite a few of missionaries subsequently.

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. 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.

The Response of the Church to Gang-related Activities

The question was: How long would the churches sit idly by and endure the senseless killings and crime? The occasional pious talk, calling for an end to the violence, was not good enough.

Fortunately there were some exceptions to the rule. The prayerful Pastor Alfred West was a brave 'White' evangelist. He was mightily used by God to stem the tide of gangsterism, notably in Bonteheuwel in the 1980s. In his open-air campaigns he confronted the shebeen owners (illegal alcohol peddlers, operating from their homes) and dagga (cannabis) smokers. A special spin-off of his work was a missionary prayer fellowship, to which various missionaries came from time to time. This resulted in quite a few of Pastor West’s group getting trained in Muslim Evangelism and becoming involved in regular weekly outreach. One of his protégées was Percy Jeptha, a former gangster, who later became a pastor. Peter Barnes, a young man from the fellowship, went on to plant mission-minded churches in the Transkei that have it as their vision to send missionaries to other African countries.

Gangsters from Islamic background

became followers of Jesus

In recent years a few more gangsters from Islamic background became followers of Jesus. Until the early 1990s there was no targeted endeavour to reach the gangsters with the Gospel. Some of them came under the sound of the Gospel at the occasional open-air service.

Dicky Lewis, who became a missionary with AEF (Africa Evangelical Fellowship) in 1995, grew up among many of the gang leaders. Through his involvement in community structures, Lewis won the trust of many a gangster and drug lord.

City Mission made an attempt to make inroads into gangsterism and drug abuse with the appointment of Pastor Eric Hofmeyer, a former gang leader at their Burns Road premises. From that base he was involved with SCAZ, a sports ministry, addressing many youngsters in schools.

Counterproductive Islamic Moves

The relative success of evangelistic efforts in the second half of the 1990s has to be attributed in part to ‘own goals’ by the Muslims. The general Christian indifference to the spread of Islam was temporarily checked through the report of an Islamic World Conference in Tripoli in October 1995. That conference resolved that Muslims would try to utilize South Africa’s excellent infrastructure to islamize the continent from the South.

The assistance of Libya’s President Muhammad Khaddafi and other oil states was made practical through the provision of Islamic literature in African languages and mosques were built in the Black townships. Strategic property was bought up with the aid of oil revenue and funds from Muslim countries, for instance from Libya. New areas in different parts of the country were quietly islamized. (In other Southern African countries like Malawi it was happening even more pronounced).

Initially the Tripoli announcement was not regarded as a real threat to the Gospel in Southern Africa. The prospect only hit home a few months later when Louis Farrakhan, a prominent Afro-American Muslim, visited the country. Fairly soon after his successful mass march to Washington D.C. with his Nation of Islam in October 1995, Farrakhan came to the country amid much fanfare and prominent media coverage. The appeal to the Black masses was evident as he appeared on television together with President Nelson Mandela. The confident prediction from Tripoli in October 1995 did not sound so preposterous any more by February 1996.

That all this happened during Ramadan was just the spur for Cape Christians to pray as rarely before. Although Ramadan was almost over by this time, there was suddenly a big demand for the 30-Day Ramadan Prayer Focus booklets. Whereas the church had been fairly indifferent about its outreach to Muslims until that time, things changed almost overnight. Unfortunately the initial interest was not sustained.

A Crisis following the first PAGAD Moves

In 1995/6 conditions in the township of Manenberg were almost unbearable for the local people - completely out of control. Father Chris Clohessy, the local Roman Catholic priest, had earned the trust of many people of the township, moving fearlessly in gangster territory. PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was initiated by a group of Muslims in 1996 and joined by Father Chris Clohessy. However, in the ensuing inter-faith venture, Muslims were soon dominating proceedings. Prominent figures like Farouk Jaffer and Achmat Cassiem were reported to have performed a palace coup. Cassiem was the leader of Qibla, subtly changing the anti-drug, anti-crime movement into an organization that sought to usher in Islamic rule in the Western Cape by any means. PAGAD radicals saw this move merely as part of the plan to implement the October 1995 decision in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

PAGAD became known publicly on 4 August 1996. That was the occasion when an influential drug lord, Rashaad Staggie, was burnt alive in full view of television cameras. The crisis that followed the PAGAD eruption of August 1996 presented the churches with a challenge, an opportunity to impact the problem areas of the Cape townships. The danger of a Lebanon-type scenario was very real – virtually everybody at the Cape feared that the gangsters might hit back with a vengeance. A meeting for church leaders and missionaries was organized at the Scripture Union buildings in Rondebosch, followed by a wave of prayer by evangelical Christians. However, when the crisis subsided, pastors simply resumed building their own ‘kingdoms’.

A potentially dangerous development was the resuscitation of Afrikaner right-wing resistance. On Sunday 5 January 1997, in a series of bombings, a mosque was savagely damaged. These atrocities were linked to a group who called themselves the Boere Aanvalstroepe. Luckily other right-wing Afrikaner groups distanced themselves from this group, so that the dangerous situation was soon defused. Christians have a duty to minister to deluded racist madmen and violent religious fanatics from all persuasions through love.

A famous Cape Drug Lord hospitalised

Our radio ministry brought us anew in touch with gangsterism. Ayesha Hunter, one of our radio presenters and a Muslim background believer from Mitchells Plain, was leading a compassionate outreach to the children of the Hard Livings Gang, in close liaison with the wife of Glen Khan, a secret believer at that time and a gang leader.

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 cruelty. Ordinary citizens became fearful, numerous lives were lost. As chaos ruled the streets, Christians started to pray more earnestly once again.

A drug lord made a public confession of faith

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 was living in the heart of the troubled areas. He gathered pastors to pray every month. 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 (People against Gangsterism and Drugs), 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.

The headquarters of the Hard Livings

gang became a church

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 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 how the former crime-ridden township had 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 female 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.

A former Inmate became a Prison Chaplain

A former prisoner at Pollsmoor Prison, Jonathan Clayton, developed a special concern for prisoners. His conversion was the fruit of the prayers of his family and friends, including his future wife Jenny Adams, an Africa Evangelical Fellowship missionary. Clayton attended the Cape Town Baptist Seminary after his release, and, while he was still a theological student, started to minister in Pollsmoor Prison on Saturday mornings. Members of the Strandfontein Baptist Church, the home congregation of his wife, assisted him. In 1999 Clayton became a prison chaplain.

A special ministry started with Pastor Emmanuel Danchimah, a Nigerian national when he networked with Marius Boden to beam Gospel messages with a car radio at Pollsmoor. This developed

into fully fledged in-house radio and television transmissions, which impact many inmates as some of them discovered their giftings in the process.

Recent Developments

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 that the violent nature of the Medinan Surah’s of the Qur’an may be finally properly discerned. During Ramadan 2013 intensive gang-related violence flared up once again. Peace was restored in Manenberg, but a gang war threatened to flare up in Belhar in October 2013.

Ivan Walldeck, a former gang leader, came to the Lord in 1992 in the course of the Operation Hanover Park ministry He went on to become a pastor later. In mid-2013 he was shot in the course of his attempts at mediation in gang-related violence. He got into positive prominence when he employed Rashied Staggie after the former gang leader needed a job which was a parole condition in September 2013. Eric Hofmeyer, once one of the top officers in the Hard Living gang, is now the regional co-ordinating youth pastor of the Baptist Church. He discipled many a gangster in the prisons and elsewhere. A problem that kept haunting the townships that pastors were accepting favours and money from gangsters and drug lord.

14. Special Initiatives at the end of the 20^th Century

In this chapter we highlight the special contribution of a few individuals towards the end of the 20^th Century that changed lives significantly. In many a case these individuals had to overcome the opposition of well-meaning Christians who however had little vision.

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.

Ds. Pypers appears to have been one of the very few ministers at the Cape of his era who had any notion of spiritual warfare. It was definitely not common practice yet. And Satan was not going to release his gains so easily. So many people were firmly gripped in Islamic bondage.

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.⁴⁸ 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 venue quivered with excitement

Because of publicity in the media, 30 000 people of all races jammed into the Green Point sports stadium. The venue quivered with excitement like at a rugby match. In the keenly contested debate, Ahmed Deedat started with the assertion that Jesus went to Egypt after the disciples had taken him from the cross. He thoroughly ridiculed the Christian faith, challenging Pypers to give proof that Jesus died on the cross. The young dominee rose to the challenge by immediately stating that Jesus is alive and that He could there and then do the very things He had done when He walked the earth.

Dr David du Plessis reported on the event: ‘Taking a deep breath, he (Pypers) spoke loud and clear, ‘Is there anybody in this audience that, according to medical judgement, is completely incurable? Remember, it must be incurable...’ Of course, the stadium was abuzz by now. And then several men came along, carrying Mrs Withuhn, a White Christian lady, with braces all over her body. She was completely paralyzed. Then Pypers went ahead, asking whether there were any doctors present who could examine her and vouch for her condition. ‘Several doctors came forward, including her own physician, and they concurred in pronouncing her affliction incurable.’

Pypers simply walked to her and without any ado prayed for her briefly and proclaimed: ‘In the name of Jesus, be healed!’ Immediately she dropped her crutches and began to move.

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.

Many Muslims were deeply moved. The re-issue of the booklet The Hadji Abdullah ben Yussuf; or the story of a Malay as told by himself in an Afrikaans translation and its distribution at the gates of the Green Point Track, was not helpful. Actually it was quite unfortunate and insensitive, referring negatively to the Qur’an and Muhammad, the founder of Islam.⁴⁹ The Muslim community was enraged by this re-publication of the insensitive nineteenth century pamphlet.

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 hand 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!

But it was nearly just as bad that Pypers was heavily criticized by his denomination because he undertook the confrontation without getting prior synod approval. Furthermore, his denominational leadership was still clinging to a fallacious interpretation of divine healing - stating that it had ceased in biblical times.

Islam linked to Communism

With the ensuing cold war becoming the talk of the day, the enemy of souls abused Communism with its atheistic basis, to hinder the spreading of the victorious message of the Cross, which had been proclaimed at the Green Point Track. The event of 13 August 1961 had great importance in the spiritual realm. 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. Islam then took over the mantle from the atheist ideology 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.)

Ds. Pypers was out on a limb

Yet, in his own denomination, Pypers was still a lone ranger. In some quarters he was vilified by some after the Green Point event, although he had actually been challenged by the literature on faith healing, written by Andrew Murray, a revered hero of his church. Pypers was out on a limb in the Dutch Reformed Church. At the Kweekskool in Stellenbosch, the theological seminary of the church, it was officially taught that faith healing was something which belonged to a past age - to the times of the apostles.

Straatwerk started

A special ministry of compassion to the city nightclubs started in the early 1970s was based in the Tafelberg Hotel in District Six. It was started amongst the youth of the White Dutch Reformed Church congregation of Wynberg, and was birthed in prayer. Pietie Victor, who started his theological training at the Dutch Reformed Church Kweekskool in Stellenbosch in 1964, founded a ministry of compassion with his wife Annette which they called Straatwerk (Street Work). She was a social worker by profession.

In their denomination there was initially a lot of opposition to the work. However, after an invitation by Ds. Solly Ozrovich to come and share about their work in his congregation in Gordon’s Bay, they received invitations from all over. The favour of the devout young people seemed to have angered the arch enemy tremendously. Pietie Victor was soon asked to appear before his church council. He had to account for the ‘late night activities’. Via the grapevine he heard that he was said to be busy with sectarian ‘things’ like speaking in tongues, laying on of hands and other ‘geestelike vergrype’ (spiritual offences). The group was driven to prayer as never before. God vindicated them. At the actual meeting with the church council, not a single one of the accusations was mentioned. Instead, the youth group only harvested praise.

people from all races

were welcome

One of the criticisms which was thrown at Pietie Victor, who finished his theological studies at the end of 1971, was that he was a liberal. The reason for this was that Straatwerk welcomed people from all races into their mobile coffee bar - a Microbus, which they parked in front of St Stephen’s Church in Bree Street under a street lamp. There they served all those whom they had brought from the streets with sandwiches and coffee. That was the reason for the St Stephen’s congregation offering two of their cellar rooms for the use of the coffee bar. What an irony of history followed. The ‘Coloured’ congregation that was still linked to the Groote Kerk - the same congregation that refused teaching to Muslims in one of their rooms at the beginning of the 20^th century - now hosted White young people. Even a greater irony followed. The venue that functioned as coffee bar had once been the source of conflict in 1842. It was the place where manumitted slaves learned to read and write from the mid-19^th century. That had been the main bone of contention - the reason why the church received its name, after it had been pelted with stones by angry White colonists. For many decades, the Straatwerk Koffiekamer (Coffee Room) at 108 Bree Street was a blessing to many destitute people who got something to drink and to eat there.

A special Move of God’s Spirit

A special move of God’s Spirit took place through Pastor Alfred West. After he had accepted Jesus as his Saviour around 1952, the young White English-speaker became involved with various forms of evangelistic outreach like Wayside Sunday Schools in ‘Coloured’ residential areas. He also considered missionary service, but sensed the Lord calling him to get more involved locally. He was redirected to start working as a missionary in the township-like suburbs of Kensington and Windermere. Around 1963 he started a missionary prayer meeting in the home of a committed believer from Kensington. The group of people gradually formed a congregation, which had as one of its major goals to support missionary work financially. When members of Pastor West’s flock moved to Bishop Lavis and Bonteheuwel, the mission-minded pastor started a prayer-centred ministry that sent out missionaries to different parts of the world, Emmanuel Mission Church in Bishop Lavis.. All this started to take place at a time when the concept was still rife that South African missionaries were not expected to come from the ‘non-White’ communities. Caroline Duckitt from Bishop Lavis Township would become the very first South African missionary of colour serving abroad formally, going to Brazil in 1979 with WEC International – thus causing a little crack in the apartheid wall.⁵⁰

When retired from actual church involvement in Bishop Lavis, a special trophy of the ministry Pastor West was a local church plant. Percy Jeptha, a gangster who got converted became a pastor of that home church. Special about Pastor West’s outreach was that he regarded the new home church not as competition, but as an extension of his ministry, keeping close contact with the new fellowship.

In the late 1980s Pastor West was in the forefront of a prayer move when gangster violence threatened to turn the township of Bonteheuwel into anarchy. All law-loving citizens of the township appreciated West’s brave challenge to shebeens (illegal liquor outlets).

The couple had to wait for twenty-five

years before they could marry

A romantic aftermath occurred when Pastor West fell in love with one of the congregants. Because of The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, he had to wait for 20 years before he could marry his ‘Coloured’ sweetheart Gladys.

Start of Life Challenge

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 mission effort to 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 his work Life Challenge.

Support from the Cape churches was almost non-existent at the time. In fact, the churches were rather indifferent to Muslim outreach in general. Suburbs like Woodstock and Salt River became increasingly Islamic, among other factors also because of this indifference. Prostitution, drug abuse and the sale of houses to Muslims that had been the tenants were however the major factors, which pushed many Christians out of these residential areas during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Gerhard Nehls became God’s instrument for the recruitment of a string of German and Swiss missionaries. These missionaries hardly made an impact on Islam. However, they kept the consciences of those churches alive, which did not get on the inter-faith bandwagon with regard to their missionary duty to the Cape Muslims.

Bliss and Blessings

David Bliss came to South Africa from the USA as a student in 1967 under the auspices of Africa Enterprise (AE). The relatively young mission and evangelistic agency AE, which was started by Michael Cassidy in 1962, rubbed off on David Bliss in the best sense of the word. He decided to postpone his return to Princeton University for a year. After his marriage to Deborah in 1972, the couple returned to South Africa in 1979 as AE workers on the Wits University campus in Johannesburg. In that year the South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA) took place in Pretoria, an event that impacted Dave and Debby Bliss significantly. There the issue of unreached people groups and the possibility of recruiting South Africans as missionaries came to their attention very powerfully. Soon thereafter they started to put together a group of 35 people to attend the Urbana missions’ event in the USA at the end of the same year.

The next year they participated in the students’ conference in Edinburgh, which was running parallel to the 70^th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the World Council of Churches. In the same city the American John Mott had been one of the main movers in 1910, the man who had catapulted missions into the attention of Christian students all over the Western world. The 1980 event brought the use of non-Westerners as missionaries into focus. For Dave and Debbie Bliss this was a natural follow-up to SACLA in Pretoria the previous year.

The Bliss family had relocated to Pietermaritzburg when Dave Bryant, who got known around the world for Concerts of Prayer, came to the country in 1983. This initiative spread and helped to bring people together on a city-wide level. People were congregating in big numbers to pray for their cities and nations. Millions of intercessors were mobilized in this way. Bliss organized a busload of people from Natal to attend a prayer and revival conference at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) that would have a deep impact on many young people.

Waves of Prayer start from UWC

The Mother City and the wider surroundings of the Peninsula were blessed when a Frontiers Missions Conference was organized in 1983 at the UWC with Dave Bryant as speaker. This conference radiated 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.⁵¹

Charles Robertson, an Afrikaner academic, was challenged to chair the meeting at the Concert of Prayer with Dave Bryant. That would not be the last time either. He subsequently 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 later moved to. (These Concerts of Prayer were subsequently held there for many years.) Charles Robertson also wrote a booklet at that time that speaks of spiritual waves emanating from South Africa as a result of prayer.

The visit to the Sendinggestig Mission Museum in Long Street with Dave Bryant - along with a visit to Wellington - paved the way for the Bliss family to move to the Boland town, which had so much of the stamp of the renowned Dr Andrew Murray. At the Mission Museum in the city, Dave and Debby Bliss were intensely challenged by the vision of Dr Helperus van Lier to see slaves trained to become missionaries. The Concert of Prayer in Wellington moved Dave and Debby Bliss deeply, especially when Dave Bryant proposed a Consultation on Prayer and World Missions in the town. One of Dave Bliss’s lecturers at Seminary suggested that they buy a building, which in due course became the Andrew Murray Centre for Prayer, Revival and Missions. That also became the venue for the first Bless the Nations conference. Thereafter this became an annual event that would significantly impact the country for missions in the late 1980s.

A Training Ground for South African Missionaries

The student missions’ week at Stellenbosch that was started in 1955 served as a model for other campuses around the country. Furthermore, the Cape townships served as a training ground for South African missionaries. Especially through the activity of David Bliss of the Andrew Murray Centre in Wellington, the Western Cape started leading the missions’ scene of the country in the 1980s. The Bless the Nations conferences were soon operating in tandem with student weeks on many Afrikaans tertiary campuses. In the latter half of the 1990s this was done in conjunction with Love Southern Africa. The annual mission conference - which was followed by different short term outreaches - was started in Wellington and later decentralized. Over the years the component of South Africans working in Muslim countries grew significantly.

A Vagrant 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.

Valuable Mission Contacts

The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which our WEC colleague Shirley Charlton took me soon after my return to the Cape in January 1992, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. Here I met Jan Hanekom and Bruce van Eeden among other strategic people,. One of the events organised in 1993 with some link to the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop with John Robb of World Vision. I used the list of participants at this event to organize Jesus Marches the following year.

The pastors Martin Heuvel and Bruce van Eeden were instrumental in bringing the missions vision to the ‘Coloured’ churches. Pastor Heuvel was God’s instrument to nudge me into getting more involved with Muslim background believers. (The 1992 occasion was the distribution of invitations to a pending visit of the internationally well-known Patrick Johnstone, the author of Operation World. Together with Alain and Nicole Ravelo-Hoërson, a few Muslim background believers were soon congregating once a month at the Ravelo-Hoërson home in Southfield). Pastor Bruce van Eeden set up the Great Commission Conferences to great effect.

Intensified Prayer in a Muslim Stronghold

After our move to Tamboerskloof at the end of January 1992, we started reaching out to street children and vagrants. Soon Rosemarie and I decided to do prayer walking in the adjacent Bo-Kaap, asking the Lord to lead us to those people where the Holy Spirit had already done preparatory work. But we sensed very soon that we should not be alone in this venture. We discovered that we needed the prayer backing of other Christians. As a family we were attending the city branch of the Vineyard Church, as the Jubilee Church was called.⁵² Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders of the fellowship at the Cape Town High School, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims, although the new denomination in general had no special affinity as yet for such outreach.

As a direct result of our prayer walking in Bo-Kaap, regular prayer meetings in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street were resumed. Two members of the city Vineyard Church fellowship, Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background believer and Elizabeth Robertson, who had a special love for the Jews, joined us for prayer meetings in Wale Street, Bo-Kaap. We had as an ultimate goal the planting of a simple church⁵³ in the most extreme Islamic stronghold of the Cape Peninsula. In 1992 it was regarded as quite a daunting challenge and itstill is.

Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings

At one of the Wale Street prayer meetings, our new friend Achmed Kariem suggested a lunchtime prayer meeting on Fridays, at the same time that Muslims attend their mosque services. Such 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 over the week-ends 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.

Gangsters and Drug Addicts

When we came to the Mother City we started off with street children. Very soon our thoughts and interests were diverted to drug addicts and the township Hanover Park where I had been teaching in 1981. We wrote in chapter 13 about our prayer involvement in this regard. Almost from the outset we got in touch with a big problem of the Cape communities - drug addiction. On the first Sunday after moving to Kenilworth, we attended the Living Hope Baptist Church. A couple there told us about their daughter who was addicted to drugs and who subsequently became a Muslim. We were immediately reminded of the successful Betel ministry of our mission agency to drug addicts in Spain, seeing this as possible loving avenue of service to the Muslim community. This was yet another nudge that we should get involved in compassionate outreach to that part of the Cape population.

The problem of drug addiction in the Cape Muslim society was highlighted again and again. We were thus confronted with the need of a centre for rehabilitation where people could be set free through a personal faith in Jesus. Our mission agency WEC had significant success in Spain. Many former addicts started out as missionaries to other countries. This now became our model for the drug addicts of Cape Town. Wherever we had an appropriate opportunity we shared the vision with Capetonian Christians, to get similar ministry in Cape Town started. However, the general response was indifference.

House Owners

In 1993 the arch enemy seemed to give us one hammering after the other, but the Lord encouraged us. In the second quarter of the year we felt that Rosemarie should visit her ailing mother again to relieve her sister Waltraud. When we lived in Holland, we would go to Germany in the school holidays to give Waltraud a break. But how could we finance such a trip to South Africa? Just as Rosemarie and I started praying together about the matter one morning, the telephone rang. It was Waltraud from Germany. She and her husband had been thinking about funding a trip for Rosemarie to come over. That would be much cheaper than trying to get the bed-ridden mother into a home for two weeks so that they could get a break.

While Rosemarie was in Germany, money became available that her late father had earmarked as an inheritance for his grandchildren for their education. About this time we received a letter from the German land lady of the home in Tamboerskloof that we were renting. She wanted to sell the house, but she giving us the first option. That was just another nudge to consider seriously buying a house of our own.

I was rather sceptical when Rosemarie shared that the Lord had given her a vision of a house with a beautiful view in the City Bowl. I was absolutely sure that there would be no suitable house in the price range that we could afford. On Rosemarie’s insistence we went to an estate agent to indicate our interest in buying something in the area. With money that would be coming from Germany soon, we were now in the fortunate position to consider buying a suitable house. Up to that point in time we did consider this, but a bond on a house with four bedrooms was well beyond our means. It was still the question whether the bank would grant us a bond because we had no fixed income.

With Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park as the main areas of our activity, we were looking at possibilities to purchase a house geographically somewhere between these localities, such as in the centrally situated suburb Pinelands.

Broken Windows and a filthy Carpet

The first few houses that we viewed vindicated my scepticism. But then one day the estate agency phoned to inform us that a run-down house in Vredehoek, a suburb on the slopes of Table Mountain, was for sale. The repossessed building was offered to the estate agent by the bank on condition that the potential buyer had to make an offer within two weeks. The mansion we entered at 25 Bradwell Road in the City Bowl suburb Vredehoek had broken windows plus a filthy stinking carpet in the living room that dogs had infested with fleas. But then Rosemarie saw the beautiful view the Lord had given her. I was however not yet convinced.

We decided to ask Rainer Gülsow, a German friend who had been in the building trade, to give us his view. “A bargain, take it. You will never get this again.” This was as clear a cue as we needed. But the decision to make an offer within two weeks created some strain.

While these thoughts milled through our head, a traumatic sequence of events shook us to the core of our existence. Whereas the violence and turmoil on the East Rand, in Natal or even Khayelitsha was still on the periphery of our lives, the weekend starting with the second Friday of September 1993 had us reeling.

On the same Friday on which we discovered that our vehicle was stolen, a new ‘convert’ came to our one o’clock prayer meeting. Purportedly he was a drug addict who had just been ‘saved’. Thirty hours later we found out that he was a conman. In between, this fake convert had fooled us terribly. His demonic demeanour squashed our vision to work or challenge others towards the establishment of a drug rehabilitation centre in Cape Town almost completely.

The events of the weekend highlighted the temptation to return to Europe. The Jonah in me surfaced very strongly. The Lord however did not give us peace to leave the Mother City as yet. In fact, twenty years later we are still living in the Vredehoek home that we actually bought.

A sequence of special circumstances made the purchase possible.

Jesus Marches at the Cape

All around the world Jesus Marches were planned for 24 June 1994. In a letter from our late friend and missionary colleague Chris Scott from Sheffield (England), he wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. Inquiries on this side of the ocean dropped the co-ordination of the whole effort in the Western Cape into my lap.

I became involved in the co-ordination of about 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula, liaising closely with Danie Heyns, a Christian businessman and Chris Agenbach of the Andrew Murray Centre in Wellington. Danie Heyns organized the marches in the northern suburbs of the city and Chris Agenbach did the same for the immediate ‘platteland’ (country side).

I had high expectations that this venture would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest that our second attempt, which an updated audio-visual had stimulated in various areas, petered out. As part of my own research, I thought to discern that the Islamic shrines around the city were keeping the city in spiritual bondage. I shared this in meetings prior to the Jesus Marches. Probably for the first time Cape Christians started to pray concertedly against the effect of the occult power of the Kramats, the Islamic shrines on the heights of the Peninsula.

Spin-offs of the Jesus Marches

In the run-up to the Jesus Marches the vision came up in my heart to get a prayer network going throughout the Cape Peninsula to achieve a breakthrough among the Cape Muslims. I was so terribly aware that concerted prayer was needed. A few prayer groups got going. Two of them had interesting consequences for the role players. Sally Kirkwood, who led a prayer group for the Cape Muslims at her home in Plumstead in the mid-1990s, played a pivotal role in this prayer event. Later she came to the fore with a more prominent role among the Cape intercessors.

The 1994 Jesus Marches led to contact with Trefor Morris, who was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek. Occasionally he joined in the Friday lunchtime prayer at the Shepherd’s Watch at 98 Shortmarket Street in the Mother City, that received its nudge from Achmed Kariem, a local Muslim background believer. This was the beginning of a close link to the radio station, which became well-known peninsula-wide when it was renamed Cape Community FM (CCFM). The link to the countrywide prayer movement was forged in October 1994 via Jan Hanekom of the Hofmeyr Centre in Stellenbosch. Local Christians joined Bennie Mostert for prayer at the Kramat (shrine) of Shaykh Yusuf in Macassar. Bennie Mostert, a Namibian Dutch Reformed minister, had been challenged to become a missionary to South Africa. God used him to spearhead the prayer movement, the Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA). The connection to the countrywide movement was strengthened when Gerda Leithgöb, the leader of Herald Ministries, was invited as the guest speaker for a prayer seminar in Rylands Estate in January 1995, which focused on Islam.

Centre for Missions at BI

Remembering my personal experience in 1972 in District Six, when I noted the gap in our seminary curriculum, I approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about Islam at these institutions. I subsequently discussed with Manfred Jung, the leader of SIM Life Challenge, the possibility of teaching Muslim Evangelism at different Bible Schools.

When Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa once again, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started on Sunday evenings. At that occasion Dr Roger Palmer of the YMCA and a board member of the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay aired his vision to have a centre for missions at BI. After Colin Tomlinson, a missionary from MECO (Middle East Christian Outreach), returned from the field on home assignment, the BI venue was secured for the start of a two-week course there.⁵⁴ An interesting partnership developed at the course of January 1999 when local churches started sponsoring believers from other African countries to attend our course.

Prayer Sequels

The Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 was part of a devotional in a Friday lunch hour prayer meeting at the Shepherd’s Watch in the early 1990s. This nudged Gill Knaggs, a one-off visitor, towards evangelistic outreach to the Muslim World. She was attending our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting. Later she started a prayer meeting in her home. This set her in motion to pray about getting involved in full-time missionary work. She had been involved in a close relationship with a Muslim person before she became a believer in Jesus as her Lord. Soon God used Gill to get the YWAM base in Muizenberg more interested in the Muslims. Concretely, an interest developed in Egypt where they started to network with the Coptic Church in that country via the links through Mike Burnard of Open Doors.

In Mid-1996 Rosemarie and I were asked to come and teach at the YWAM base in Muizenberg. This led to a close friendship with Mark Gabriel, a former Sheikh from Egypt who had to flee his country.

Gill Knaggs went on to become one of the first students of Media Village that had been started by Graham and Diane Vermooten in Muizenberg, a ministry linked to Youth with a Mission. The founders, Graham and Diane Vermooten, trained believers for media work and also to tell the stories of God around the Globe. Gill also hereafter helped to edit my first booklet with testimonies of Cape Muslims who had come to faith in our Lord called Search for Truth. She also hosted a prayer group for Muslims at her home for quite a number of years. When CCFM started with a radio programme targeting Muslims in 1998, she was on hand for the writing of scripts, something she continued to do for many years, also after her marriage to John Wrench.

As a result of the 1994 Jesus Marches, some Cape churches came to know our missionary work better. One of these churches was the Logos fellowship in Brackenfell. Not only did this church become a major recipient of the annual Ramadan prayer booklet, but Freddy van Dyk, a church leader who worked at the City Council, joined the Friday lunchtime prayer meeting at the Shepherd’s Watch.

In November 1996 the launch of the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus booklets took place in the historic St Stephen’s Church of Bo-Kaap. Bennie Mostert arranged the annual countrywide distribution, ensuring that the vision of countrywide prayer for Muslims once a year was guaranteed.

Intercessors from different Areas

June Lehmensich, a regular at the Friday prayer meetings and an office worker for the City Council, had taken the pastoral clinical training course with Dr Dwyer in Lansdowne, in addition to attending the ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’ course at St James Church (Kenilworth) in 1996. She became a pivotal figure as she spread the vision for prayer, taking it right into the Provincial Chambers and the national Parliament. She was simultaneously the personification of faithfulness and perseverance, as well as a link to a prayer group with a long tradition at the Cape Town City Council.

Intercessors were coming together from different places once a month at the Sowers of the Word Church in Lansdowne, where the veteran Pastor Andy Lamb was the leader. Eben Swart became the Western Cape coordinator for Herald Ministries, working closely with NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa), which had appointed Pastor Willy Oyegun as their coordinator in the Western Cape. Important work was done in research and spiritual mapping, along with Amanda Buys, who went on to start Kanaan Ministries. Some of her clients had been involved with Satanism.

International Intercession for the 10/40 Window takes off

International intercession began in earnest with the identification of the 10/40 Window. This was the name given to Asian and African countries situated between the 10^th and 40^th degree lines of latitude of the northern hemisphere. The10/40 Window gave a geographical focus to prayer. The divinely-inspired window passed on by Luis Bush, an American prayer leader. It was used by Peter Wagner, a compatriot, to rally the evangelical world in united prayer for the peoples who were still unreached with the Gospel.

The visit by Cindy Jacobs, a well-known intercessor from the USA, brought a significant number of ‘Coloured’ and White intercessors together at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchells Plain. She confirmed the need for confession with regard to the blot of District Six. When Sally Kirkwood approached me in October 1997 to do something about it, I had already started to prepare a visit of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng).

PAGAD was still terrorising

the Cape Peninsula

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 Bo-Kaap. 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 covert stuff. It was the era when PAGAD was still terrorising the Cape Peninsula.

A strategic Meeting in District Six

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 event of November 1, 1997 nevertheless 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 played a prominent role in the attempts towards the transformation of the Mother City via the prayer events at the Newlands Rugby Stadium from March 2001.) The confession ceremony in District Six closed with the stoning of an altar that Satanists or other occultists had probably erected there.

Citywide Prayer Events

1998 brought significant steps in the right direction through the initiatives of NUPSA (Network of Prayer in Southern Africa) and Herald Ministries. Regular prayer meetings at the Mowbray Baptist Church, with warriors coming from different parts of the Peninsula, and from different racial and church backgrounds, carried a strong message of the unity of the body of Christ. It was strategic that the Mowbray exercise brought together believers from two racial groupings for prayer.

A citywide prayer event almost

floundered after a bomb threat

A citywide prayer event on the Grand Parade in 1998 almost floundered after a bomb threat. Churches across the Peninsula had initially been requested to cancel their evening services on Sunday, 19 April 1998. In sheer zeal, a Christian businessman had thousands of pamphlets printed and distributed without proper consultation with the organizing committee in respect of the content of the pamphlet. The flyer and poster that invited believers to a mass prayer meeting against drug abuse, homosexuality and other vice, unfortunately also referred to Islam in a context that was not respectful enough for some radical Muslims.

A PAGAD member apparently regarded this as an invitation to disrupt the meeting. The event was subsequently announced as cancelled, but a few courageous believers including the late Pastor Danny Pearson, who had been deeply involved with the organization of the prayer occasion, felt that they should not give in to the intimidation. If need be, Christians should be willing to die for the cause of the Gospel. The meeting proceeded on a much smaller scale than originally planned. The prayer event included confession for the sins of omission to the Cape Muslims and to the Jews.

The unofficial renaming of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ - led by Pastor Johan Klopper of the Vredehoek Apostolic Faith Mission Church - and regular prayers at Rhodes Memorial, fitted into the pattern of spiritual warfare. These venues had been strongholds of Satanists. A mass march to Parliament on 2 September 1998 was followed by a big prayer event on Table Mountain a few weeks later. The prayer day, this time as an effort to rename Devil’s Peak ‘God’s Mountain’, was called for was called for 26 September 1998. A few thousand Christians prayed over the city from Table Mountain. The effort did not bring a tangible result, but valuable seed was sown to rename the mountain peak. The event furthermore inspired a new initiative whereby a few believers from diverse backgrounds started to come together for prayer on Signal Hill on Saturdays every fortnight at 6 a.m. The Signal Hill meetings became a monthly event, which would always include intercession for Jews (Sea Point) and Muslims (Bo-Kaap).

Threats and Attacks on Christian Radio

At the Global Consultation for World Evangelisation (GCOWE) conference in Pretoria in July 1997, Avril Thomas, the Directress of Radio CCFM (Cape Community FM), was challenged to use the station to reach out to Cape Muslims. She phoned me, offering airtime for a regular programme to effect this. (At that stage I had only assisted with occasional advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends’ of the station, who had to counsel those Muslims who phoned in at CCFM.)

I wrote a series on biblical figures in the Qur’an and the Talmud that was broadcast towards the end of 1997. A gradual increase of occasional programmes geared to address the Cape Muslim population followed. I thereafter accepted the challenge to start utilising the CCFM offer to use the medium on a regular basis. I did warn Avril Thomas of the unsuccessful arson attempt on a

Lansdowne church, where a Muslim Evangelism seminar in 1996 was scheduled to take place. Nevertheless, she and the CCFM board were prepared to take the risk for the sake of the Gospel.

A white paper was rushed through Parliament on 20 August 1998, which contained a veiled threat: the closing down of community radio stations. (There had previously already been an attempt to close down Radio Pulpit, a Christian radio station that broadcast nationwide.)

The ill-fated government white paper on public broadcasting - whatever its original intention - resulted in a mass march to the houses of Parliament on Wednesday, 2 September 1998. The perception could not be removed sufficiently that the government wanted to regulate the airwaves in such a way that the freedom of religious broadcasting would be severely curtailed. Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unprecedented unity. Wisely, the government dropped their plans.

The Battle of the Airwaves

In the meantime, Gill Knaggs had offered her services to CCFM. Gill had previous experience in commercial script writing. Soon she was ready to write the scripts for Ayesha Hunter and Salama Temmers, two followers of Jesus with an Islamic upbringing. At a meeting on 7 January 1998 it was decided to start with a regular programme via CCFM, making use of the two converts as presenters. On the same day the radio station Voice of the Cape published their intention in the Cape Argus to use a convert from Christianity as one of their presenters.

The precedent created space for CCFM radio to follow suit - with less fear of PAGAD reprisals for putting Muslim converts on air. Soon hereafter Ayesha and Salama started with a weekly programme with the theme ‘the woman of two faces’. Gradually many women, some of them Muslims, started responding with phone calls, hereby giving evidence that the radio programmes were making an impact. Life Issues, the women’s programme on CCFM on a Thursday morning, went from strength to strength until it ceased to operate in the second half of 2004 when CCFM restructured their programmes.

Muslims continued to phone CCFM, some of them anonymously. This possibly even increased when Cassiem Majiet started to minister at the prayer friends of the radio station. Some Muslims were offended when they discovered that he was actually a Christian, but it helped many others to share their fears and beliefs openly. Booklets by Gerhard Nehls and the testimony booklet Search for Truth 2 was literature which subsequently found their way into many a Muslim home.

From time to time, local Muslim background followers of Jesus shared their testimonies on the CCFM programme that started in January 1999 called God Changes Lives. Two consecutive issues of this programme by Achmed Adjei - a convert from Ghana - had reverberations as he shared how he and his 28 siblings came to the Lord one after the other. The same programme also made inroads into other religious groups. Thus the testimony of Richard John Smith, a famous Cape singer of the 1980s, who had been a New Apostolic Christian, surely had a profound effect as did the conversion story of Herschel Raysman, who came from a Jewish background. (Raysman came to believe in Jesus as his Messiah when he linked up with the Jesus People in the 1970s.)

Outreach to Foreigners

When we started to pray about the possible outreach to foreigners at our Friday lunch-hour meeting, God surely used these occasions to prepare the heart of Louis Pasques, the pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church. When the destitute Congolese refugee teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka pitched up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of the youngster. One weekend Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a visit. They asked Alan Kay, an elder and the administrator, to provide accommodation to the destitute teenager. Gildas captivated Alan’s heart. This was the beginning of an extended and unusual adoption process. One thing led to the other until Alan Kay not only finally adopted Gildas, but he also got more and more involved in compassionate care of other refugees. Soon the Cape Town Baptist Church became a home to refugees from many African countries. Gildas and our son Rafael, became quite close friends.

Allain Ravelo-Hoërson (T.E.A.M.) played a big part in establishing the ministry among Francophone Africans at the church, along with other missionaries who had been working in countries where French is the lingua franca. Allain ministered there faithfully from 1998 to August 2001, when he and his wife left to study in London. Moreover, the weekly Bible studies held in the Ravelo-Hoërson home for several years helped to strengthen that ministry.

Many a homeless person was transformed by the

power of the Gospel

The Koffiekamer, once rejected as the venue for a 24-hour prayer watch, suddenly became a major channel of blessing when an Alpha Course was started there. A special role in the transformation of the city was accorded to it when many a homeless person was transformed by the power of the Gospel.

A positive Change towards Refugees

The attitude of Whites in the Cape Town Baptist Church hereafter gradually changed positively towards refugees. Before long, quite a few refugee-background Africans started attending our churches services, especially when special ones in French were arranged monthly and later twice a month. The word spread quite well, so that in due course also other churches started opening their doors to refugees.

The need for refugees to get employment was the spawn for the English language classes at the church to be revitalised. This inspired the offer of free English lessons to many of these refugees, ultimately leading to the resumption of English language classes at the church as an aid to help refugees find their way in the city. The simultaneous need for a discipling house for Muslim converts and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. I hoped that the city churches could take ownership of these ventures. (That turned out to be easier said than done. Only three congregations joined, of which the two other ones stopped after only a few years.)

Churches in Networking

In early 1999 Ernst van der Walt (jr) started working closely with Reverend Trevor Pearce, an Anglican cleric, in the sphere of the transformation of communities. They started distributing the video produced by George Otis. The video’s first screening to a big audience in Cape Town was at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow in October 1999.

The video broke the ground

for citywide prayer

Already in the short term this showing brought about substantial change in some churches. The video broke the ground for a citywide prayer event at the Newlands Rugby Stadium on 21 March 2001.

Richard Mitchell and his wife were pivotal in the resumption of early morning prayer meetings on Signal Hill. When the opening came for a regular testimony programme on Friday evening on Radio CCFM, Richard Mitchell was a natural choice. The programme God Changes Lives with Richard as presenter was also used to advertise the citywide prayer events. Richard Mitchell and his wife left for England at the end of 1999. (Through him the vision of citywide prayer was exported from the Cape). In London they became not only catalysts for citywide prayer, but Richard Mitchell also played quite a key role as a member of the (South) African delegation of the Europe and Africa Reconciliation Movement that investigated the effects of colonisation on the ‘dark continent’ in the new millennium.

A successful Businessman impacted

Just over a year prior to all this, on 20 February 1998, Graham Power, a successful businessman, committed his life to the Lord. Hereafter he was faithfully discipled first by his pastor, Dr Dion Forster and later by Adolf Schulz, who was linked to the prayer breakfast for business people.

After attending an Alpha Course at their church and the formation of a cell group, Rev. Dion Forster, a Methodist pastor, showed the Transformation video to the group in March 2000, which included the story of Cali in Columbia. There and then Graham Power felt a stirring deep after seeing this documentary video, 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, was impregnated 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. Ultimately Graham Power would be God’s special instrument to bring a prayer event into being on 21 March 2001 on the Newlands Rugby Stadium. That would have transforming ramifications in the new millennium.

15. Some Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

A period of increased spiritual conflict seemed to occur at the end of 2001 once again. I suffered a personal setback after I had reacted inappropriately to a manipulative phone call from our discipling house. This set off a negative chain reaction. During the next two and a half months the tension levels in our team remained extremely high. For my part, I was careless. After travelling by bus all night from Durban and having very little sleep, I resumed with my work rather carelessly on Friday, March 15, 2002. This ignited a stress-related loss of memory the next day.⁵⁵ After a day in hospital and further medical treatment, I was cleared - with the instruction to return after a year. We realised that there were major spiritual forces involved.

Africa as a Body with its Feet in Cape Town

In 1997 Bruce Rudnick attended the ‘All Africa Prayer Convocation’ in Ethiopia. The prophetic word that came strongly at this time was 'A Highway up Africa from Cape Town to Jerusalem.' This theme was not new. It had arisen both in spiritual and in secular contexts. 'We also saw as it were a spiritual body that needed to be awakened on the Continent of Africa with the feet in South Africa, knees in Kenya, Uganda for birthing, with the heart in Ethiowepia. The head is Egypt. One hand reaches over to Morocco and the other hand to Jerusalem. This was, as it were, the Body of Christ in Africa. This body needed to be awakened to come into its calling and function.' Back in South Africa, through the Messianic congregation Beit Ariel, as well as in other meetings Bruce shared the Highway vision. Bruce and Karen Rudnick felt challenged to make aliya, finally emigrating to Israel in 1999.

A prophetic Move in District Six

Murray Bridgman, a Cape Christian advocate, felt God’s leading to perform a prophetic act in District Six. He had previously researched the history of Devil’s Peak. Along with Eben Swart, Bridgman provided some research that encouraged Dr Henry Kirby to lobby Parliament to change the name of Devil’s Peak to Dove’s Peak. (Duivenkop had been an earlier name.) Kirby’s role as the prayer coordinator of the African Christian Democratic Party resulted in a motion tabled in the City Council in June 2002. The motion was unsuccessful, fueling suspicion that satanists also had significant influence in the City Council.

In 2002 President Mbeki announced that the Moravian Church building in District Six, which had been used as a gymnasium by the Cape Technikon, was to be returned to the denomination. The terminal heart patient Hendrina van der Merwe, a faithful City Bowl Afrikaner prayer warrior, had been praying for many years for a breakthrough towards renewed church planting in Bo-Kaap, and for a 24-hour watch to begin at Moravian Hill. With the origin of the modern prayer movement dating back to the Moravians of Herrnhut in 1727, this would have been very appropriate. Hendrina van der Merwe hoped to be part of this prayer watch before her death.

Diagnosed with Prostate Cancer

A medical checkup was due a year after my stress-related temporary loss of memory in March 2002. This led to a period that seemed to lead to the last lap of my 'race' on earth.

I was told that I had contracted

Prostate Gland cancer

On 9 October 2003 I was told that I had contracted Prostate Gland cancer, which in the past had been like getting a death sentence. However, the Lord had encouraged me with Psalm 117:18 the previous day. I saw that verse as an encouragement to ‘proclaim the works of the Lord.’

Looking back over my life, it seemed as if my (semi-)academic studies and anti-apartheid activism did not bring me anywhere. But the Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the removal of my Prostate Gland during a surgical operation in December 2003.

We also discerned some of the pieces in the mosaic, the puzzle of our chequered lives that were fitting so perfectly into each other. Rosemarie challenged me with regard to my chaotic research and writing activity. I had so many unfinished manuscripts on my computer. 'What would happen if something happens to you? All that work would be in vain'. That was wise counsel.

The testimonies of a few Cape Muslims had been on my computer already for about two years. Some of them we had printed as tracts. The result of Rosemarie’s prodding was that Search for Truth 2 could be printed within a matter of weeks. Over the ensuing decade the booklet would find its way into many a Cape Muslim home.

A Wave of Opportunity

At this time Rosemarie and I were seriously praying about relocating. After almost 12 years at the Cape in the same ministry, we thought that we should have a change. But no ‘doors’ opened with regard to a move.

We felt increasingly challenged to

reach out to refugees and foreigners

Instead, we felt increasingly challenged to reach out to refugees and foreigners who had been coming to Cape Town, for example by using English teaching even more as a compassionate vehicle. We prayed that the Lord would give us more clarity with regard to our future ministry by the end of 2003.

In October of that year Rosemarie had a strange dream cum vision in which a newly married couple, clad in Middle Eastern garb, was ready to go as missionaries to the Middle East. Suddenly the scene changed. While the two of us were praying over the city from our dining room facing the Cape Town CBD, a massive tidal wave came from the sea, rolling over Bo-Kaap. The next moment the water engulfed us in her dream, but we were still holding each other by the hand. There was something threatening about the massive wave, but somehow we also experienced a sense of thrill in the dream. Rosemarie woke up, very conscious that God seemed to say something to us through this vision-like dream.⁵⁶ What was God saying?

The day after Rosemarie’s dream we heard about a conference of Middle Eastern Muslim leaders in the newly built International Convention Centre of Cape Town. We decided on short notice to take our Friday prayer meeting there instead of having it in the regular venue, the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk. It seemed as if the Lord was confirming a ministry to refugees and other foreigners who would be coming to Cape Town. In November 2003 we baptized a Muslim background refugee from Rwanda. The Lord used Daniel Waris, a co-worker from Pakistan, quite prominently at this time. He led a few people from the group of refugees, as well as vagrants, to faith in our Lord during the last weeks of 2003. Shortly hereafter, the Lord also brought to our attention various groups of foreigners who had come to the Mother City, including a few from a Chinese minority group.

The 7-DAYS Initiative

As a follow-up strategy of Transformation Africa prayer in stadiums all over Africa in 2004, a ‘7-Days initiative’ was launched. Daniel Brink of the Jericho Walls Cape Office distributed the following communiqué: ‘...From Sunday May 9^th thousands of Christians all over South Africa will take part in a national night and day prayer initiative called „7 Days”. The goal was to see the whole country covered in continuous prayer for one year from 9 May 2004 to 15 May 2005. On relatively short notice, communities, towns and cities in South Africa were challenged to pray 24 hours a day for 7 days. The prayer initiative started with the Western Cape taking the first seven weeks. Daniel Brink invited believers of the Cape Peninsula to ‘proclaim your trust that, when we pray, God will respond. Declare your trust that if we put an end to oppression and give food to the hungry, the darkness will turn to brightness. Pray that houses of prayer will rise up all over Africa as places where God’s goodness and mercy is celebrated in worship and prayer, even before the answer comes.’

Global Prayer Watch, the Western Cape arm of Jericho Walls, 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 evening on May 9. Every two hours around the clock a group of musicians led the ‘Harp and Bowl’

intercessory worship, whereby the group prayed over Scripture. In another part of the compound,⁵⁷ intercessors prayed or pasted prayer requests in the adjacent ‘boiler room’.

A few of us who were present on 1 November 1997 at the memorable occasion outside the District Six church were moved. What a joy it was for Hendrina van der Merwe, the fervent intercessor, to be present on the 9^th May 2004 in the Moravian Church. She had so much hoped that a 24/7 prayer watch would start there. But that was not to be. In fact, she was neither to experience a spiritual breakthrough towards new church planting in Bo-Kaap nor the start of a 24-hour Prayer Watch in the City Bowl. She went to be with the Lord on 31 December 2004 with the Bible in her hand.

The 7-DAYS Initiative led to

the Global Day of Prayer

Jericho Walls challenged millions of believers everywhere ‘to seek the face of the Lord and ask him to fill the earth with his glory as the waters cover the seas’ (Habakkuk 2:14) from the 6^th to the 15^th May 2005. Young people were encouraged to do a ‘30-second Kneel Down’ on Friday 13 May, and to have prayer, a ‘Whole night for the Whole World on Saturday 14 May. This happened just before the first Global Day of Prayer. ’

Influx of Muslim Foreigners

The new millennium saw a major influx of Africans and other foreigners, many of whom are Muslim. Since the New York Twin Tower tragedy of September 11, 2001 Cape Town became a favourite destination for learning English. But also tourists from the Middle East started streaming to the Mother City of South Africa. In the late 1990s the economic refugees were predominantly men, who could somehow make a living. Often they merely subsisted in crowded unhealthy hazardous conditions. Government agencies seemed to turn a blind eye to these conditions and corruption at the offices of the Department of Home Affairs. This aggravated the problem. Later they also brought or fetched their wives and children.

The success of traders from East Africa, notably from Somalia, created a crisis among local traders. Unlike other foreigners, they made no attempt to mingle with other nationalities. In due course they became targets of attacks in places like Mitchells Plain.

Matters became really bad when an unknown number of Somalians were killed in September 2006, many in the informal settlement Masiphumelele near Simon’s Town. Some of them lost everything they possessed as they fled the township. The King of Kings Baptist Church in Fish Hoek gave refuge to some of them. Thereafter the Muslim religious leaders became involved, allowing the Somalians to sleep in a local mosque. For Ramadan they had to vacate the sanctuary when they were taken to Saldanha Bay where they however had to live in subhuman conditions.

A special Evangelistic Tool

The DVD More than Dreams tells the true stories of five Muslims who came to faith in Jesus Christ in their original languages, with English subtitles. Copies found there way into many a home. Translations in Arabic and French became available in 2010. One of the highlights of our World Cup outreach was the day Algeria played in Cape Town. During the day we distributed many DVDs to the Algerian fans - so easily detectible in green and white attire. What made this outreach so special was that our colleague Rochelle Smetherham, on a visit on 'home assignment' in Washington D.C. in 2012, bumped into a Syrian national there who reacted so excitedly when she saw a copy of the More than Dreams DVD. She wondered whether this was the same one about which Algerians had been raving!

Missionary Impact from the Cape

Many prayer endeavours of the early 1990s were connected to missionary work. The bulk of these efforts fizzled out towards the end of the twentieth century.

Pastor Bruce 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 more intensely. Now he could fly cheaply, albeit only on a standby basis. In 1995 he started a Mitchell’s Plain-based movement 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. God used Pastor van Eeden to challenge and equip Indian evangelists to take the Gospel to the unreached tribes of their country.

God put Africa on his heart, after an invitation to Uganda in 2003. After his return he received the vision to challenge believers of seven countries around the lakes of Central Africa to reach the northern part of the continent. Another visit to Central Africa in April 2006 led to a conference where steering committees were formed for Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda as a spiritual gateway to the northern countries of the continent.

Africa arise, your light has come

Divine Infusions?

Towards the end of 2005 some rebellion in the WEC evangelistic team brought Rosemarie and me to resign as team leaders. This triggered a significant crisis within the mission agency at large. Looking back, we discern that this was too much for new inexperienced agency leaders. The ultimate result was that we resigned from the agency in 2007.

We heard from our dear friends, the Fahringers in Hawaii, who had also nudged us to get the Ramadan Prayer focus booklets in the early 1990s, that Floyd and Sally McClung had come to Cape Town with the vision to ‘establish a training and outreach community in Cape Town that impacts Africa from Cape Town to Cairo’ and the vision ‘for a multi-cultural community that exemplifies the kingdom of God’. We became quite excited. This was more or less what we wanted to see happening, even though our vision at that time was somewhat broader, having already started outreach to Chinese and other Asians. Getting the vision across to local Christians and pastors remains however a big challenge.

One of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad (FFA), long before its official inauguration on 17 February 2007, with which we started before we left for Europe in 2006 was fortnightly sessions of fellowship, Bible Study and prayer with a hitherto unreached people group in respect of the Gospel, a few Uighur believers from China in Cape Town, as well as other Asians. The philosophy of FFA is to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, akin to the way I had been impacted while in (in)voluntary exile in Holland.)

Sovereign Moves of God

On 11 October 2010 the Lord ministered to me from Romans 1:16 when we received the LCJE Bulletin. In that edition Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus, highlighted 'Jews first' in his paper delivered as part of the Jewish Evangelism track at Lausanne II in Manila, 1989. In the summary of his paper of 1989 he suggested that 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization is to bring the gospel to the Jews first as a priority as printed in the LCJE Bulletin.

On 19 October 2010 we received an email from our friend Liz Campbell Robertson, in which she wrote that ‘Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five amazing children are back in Cape Town from Israel.  A quick and sovereign move of God, believe me, and worth coming and finding out why! … we have sent this out to not only those who know Baruch and Karen, but also to those we know will be greatly touched and taught by Baruch's ministry.'

The meeting on the Saturday afternoon of 23 October at a private address in Milnerton with the Maayan family was a special event. I was very much embarrassed though when I broke down in tears uncontrollably. At that occasion I was completely overawed by a sense of guilt towards Jews while I felt a deep urge to apologise on behalf of Christians for the fact that the Emperor Constantine and Christian theologians have been side-lining the Jews. Our fore-bears have haughtily suggested that the Church replaced the nation of Israel and the Jews. My weeping was an answer to my own prayers, but it was nevertheless very embarrassing, especially as many others present followed suit. (On Signal Hill at the beginning of that month I had stated publicly the need for tears of remorse as a prerequisite for revival and that I was praying for it that I may also genuinely experience this.) The 'sea of tears' however knitted our hearts to the Maayan family. After an absence of 11 years, the Lord had called them back to be part of a movement to take the gospel via house churches from Cape Town throughout the continent of Africa, ultimately back to Jerusalem.

On Monday evening June 27, 2011 we were praying concretely with Baruch, Karen and a few other believers that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the Jerusalem convocation or do the workshops. A letter which I received from Germany, informed me that I am eligible to receive a monthly pension of 129 Euro, retrospective since 1 January 2011. I don't know how they got my address. On Thursday morning, the 30^th June, during my quiet

time I felt that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for all the funding to attend the Jerusalem convocation as a couple, even though the situation in Israel was very unsettled and everyone knew that war could break out in the Middle East any day.

Arabs and Jews in Harmony

At the prayer convocation in Jerusalem we were blessed to listen to Israeli Arab and Jewish pastors who met each other regularly. As in every effort of reconciliation, a price has to be paid. But the biggest price of all has already been paid by no less than God himself, who gave his one and only, his unique Son to reconcile us to himself. This is the basis of Paul’s challenge to all followers of the Master, viz. to get reconciled to God, to accept his gift in faith, the death on the cross for our sins.

What a surprise it was to hear and see how Orthodox Jews and Arabs were actually living in close proximity in the controversial East Jerusalem. How prophetic and sad that all around the world people were clamouring for this portion of land to become the capital of a Palestinian State and thus perpetuating the strife, instead of praying that the day might be hastened when the inhabitants would serve the Almighty together as descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. This would of course be the culmination of the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We were challenged towards increased commitment, to usher the millennial reign of the Messiah in via a ‘Highway’ from the Cape to Jerusalem via a 24/7 prayer room.

Is this your idea, Lord?

Rosemarie and I were challenged with regard to the building of a prayer room that we felt we should facilitate at our home. On the first Saturday of December we had the prayer worriers who normally congregate at our home because of inclement weather conditions. What an encouragement it was when Baruch climbed on to the roof above our dining room where the prayer room was due to be built to anoint it.

By the end of the year a few gifts had come in towards the project in drips and drabs but nothing really substantial. At the turn of the year, amid the blessings we experienced with the many believers who turned up for the prayer events with which we were closely involved, we became somewhat unsure whether it was indeed the Lord's commission to have the prayer room built or was it just a nice idea? In His faithfulness, the Lord confirmed this in no unsure way when Rosemarie came out of the dining room door one morning, seeing a repetition of the fleece experience of Joshua. Above the awning and the area adjacent to it on the table on our balcony outside the dining room it was completely wet, whereas the rest of the balcony was completely dry. Because the awning was just below the place where the prayer room was to be built, we gladly interpreted this as a confirmation that the Lord was very much approving the project.

A few weeks later, just before the Passover week-end, we had a devout young German with us after our treasure hunting outreach. When he heard about the prayer room project, his down to earth question was how we expected to fund it. Because we had experienced it so often in the past, we had little hesitation to tell him that we expected that God would see to that.

We were however very much overwhelmed ourselves when the practical reply to that question transpired already the very next day. An email from the Dutch WEC International HQ informed us that a substantial bequest was due to us from the estate of an old missionary friend in Holland who had passed on some time ago. We knew that this was the divine provision for the prayer room.

A Role for the revived Church

Home churches led by teams of young people and older folk who have been taught in obedience-based training, obedience to the Holy Spirit – in contrast to traditional knowledge based training – have started to make a difference in the lives of many people. It may not take very long before communities will be transformed as new believers share the story of how personal faith in Jesus changed their lives, their outlook and mind-set. The question is what the role of the Church – the united body of Christ - could be in the future. Adaptation to the secular society of our age seems to me the sure way to fade further into irrelevancy. In a society of brokenness where so many carry a heavy burden, scars caused by abortion, alcoholism and drug abuse, the Church faces an immense task. By contrast, the much less expedient and inconvenient road of the cross – swimming against the stream in self-denial, in sacrificial obedience to divine commands could contribute to transformation. An anomaly is that confession of guilt, a ‘tool’ that had such a great track record down the centuries, has not been used more often. The Stuttgart Confession after World War II, which ushered in the economic recovery of Germany and our Rustenburg Confession of 1990 come to mind. The latter brought about national reconciliation and it also ultimately led to democratic rule in our country.

The question is of course who could speak on behalf of Christianity at large. Who should confess the guilt against Israel and the Jews, e.g. their side-lining by Emperor Constantine? Would some new gestures or expressions of regret and restitution for the horrors and abuse of the Crusades be an aid for Jews and Muslims to open up to the Man who was innocently crucified and in whose name these atrocities were conducted?

What could ignite a possible route to revival? This is nevertheless the Church that is needed - a new distinctive community that reflects the values of the kingdom of God. A body is needed that is an agent of healing and a place of belonging. Nothing else will suffice. Ian Cowley refers so aptly to a new voice within the possible future role of the Church at large in his book The Transformation Principle: '... a model of Christian discipleship that calls women and men everywhere to change their way of thinking and lay down their lives in following Jesus... those who serve the poor and care for the lost and broken-hearted people of our consumerist and self-indulgent age'.

The challenge for the church and Christian missions is not new at all. The bottom-line teachings from the Man of Nazareth have stood the test of time: confession of sin, followed by restitution and commitment towards justice and love. The age-old battle cry of the Moravian Unitas Fratrum, is still valid – The Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him!

Select Bibliography

Balie, Isaac - Die Geskiedenis van Genadendal, 1738-1988, Perskor, Cape Town, 1988

Botha, D.P. - Die twee-eeue erfenis van die SA Sendingsgestig, 1799-1999, LUS Publishers, Cape Town, 1999

Brandt, Albert A. – Andrew Murray Immergroen, More Light Publications, Helderberg, 1998

Codrington, Reginald G, An Appraisal of Modern Jewish Evangelism, - with special reference to

Southern Africa, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 1985

De Gruchy, - Cry Justice, Collins, London, 1986

Du Plessis, Johannes - A History of Christian Missions in South Africa, Facsimile Reprint, Struik,

Cape Town, 1955 [1911]

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

Gerdener G.B.A. - Two Centuries of Grace, S.C. A. of South Africa., Stellenbosch, 1937

- Recent developments in the S.A. Mission Field, N.G. Kerkuitgewers, Cape Town, 1958

Haasbroek, L. - Die sending onder die Mohammedane in Kaapstad en omgewing (A

Historical survey), University of Stellenbosch, Unpublished doctoral thesis, 1955

Hanekom - H.R. van Lier: Die lewensbeeld van ‘n Kaapse Predikant, N.G.Uitgewers,

Kaapstad, 1959

Hermann, Louis – The Cape Town Hebrew Congregation, A Centenary History, 1841-1941, Cape Town, 1941

Hofmeyr J.W. and.Pillay Gerald J, A History of Christianity in South Africa, HAUM Tertiary, Pretoria, 1994

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

Müller, P. Karl – Georg Schmidt, die Geschichte der ersten Hottentottenmission, 1737-44,

Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung, Herrnhut, 1923

Schoeman, Karel - The early Mission in South Africa, Protea Boekhuis, Pretoria, 2005

Shell, Robert Ch. - Children of Bondage, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994

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

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

Appendix

Some Autobiographical Notes

Although I spent my childhood in District Six where I had quite a few Muslim classmates in the reputed Zinzendorf Primary School, I never even thought that Muslims should also be challenged with the Gospel. I reckon an open air occasion at the Goodwood Showgrounds on 17 September 1961 as my first serious positive encounter with Jesus and challenge to become his follower. The audience at that occasion was addressed by Dr Oswald Smith from Canada. Not properly discipled hereafter, I became more or less backslidden but revived at the beginning of 1963 under the preaching and teaching of Ds. Piet Bester, the new local Sendingkerk minister of Tiervlei, who also became such a big influence in my life at that time, notably for missionary and evangelistic outreach.

Ready to be ex-communicated

At youth services in our Moriavian church of Tiervlei, we invited not only experienced (lay) preachers from other churches, but also other teenagers like me to come and preach. Attie Louw, a very committed believer who was with me in Matric, had contacts via the Christian Students Association (CSV). He came to preach at one of our youth services and he also recommended Allan Boesak from Somerset West. The Lord used Attie to bring new life into the CSV of our school.

Allan Boesak came to preach in our fellowship soon after he started with his theological studies. Allan had to come from Somerset West, 30 kilometres away. Allan slept with us on the Saturday evening. This gave me a good opportunity for some theological discussion. I eagerly grabbed the occasion to sound Allan out about the christening of infants. (On the issue of believer’s baptism a Pentecostal friend had been influencing me. If the friend had pitched up on the arranged day to immerse me in a lake, it would probably have had dire consequences.)

Allan Boesak couldn’t really convince me, but I was satisfied that he was honest enough about it - that he believed that infant christening is the sign of the new covenant, a substitute for circumcision in the old one. According to him, circumcision was the visible sign of the ‘Old’ Covenant of God with Israel. (I still accepted this clear evidence of Replacement Theology without any opposition or resistance. This would change substantially in later years.) Neither did the arguments used by Ds. Piet Bester of the local Moria Sendingkerk make a big impression on me. If my Pentecostal friend had come on a Saturday afternoon to take me to a baptismal service in a lake as he had promised, I would have gone with him: I was ready to be immersed and thereafter to be ex-communicated from the Moravian Church because of believers’ baptism. That is what happened to people in those days who dared to get ‘re-baptised’. But my new friend didn't pitch, so I stayed in the Moravian Church.

A major turning Point in my Life

A major turning point in my life occurred when Allan Boesak and another teenage friend nudged me to attend the evangelistic outreach of the Students’ Christian Association (SCA) at the seaside resort of Harmony Park that was scheduled to start just after Christmas at the end of 1964.

Allan Boesak’s dedication to the Lord made a deep impression on me. When he spoke about the ‘stranddienste’, the beach gospel services of the Students Christian Association at Harmony Park, he sowed seed in my heart. This seed germinated when my Moravian soul mate Paul Engel joined me at Hewat Training College in 1964. I was soon ready to join the Harmony Park outreach after Christmas.

The Christmas of 1964 had me however initially spiritually in tatters. I was getting ready for the Harmony Park ‘stranddienste’ (the evangelistic beaches services), but I was feeling completely barren. In desperation I called to the Lord to meet me anew. I felt that I had nothing to share with anybody from a spiritual point of view, unless God would fill me with His Spirit. And that He did. The 1964 Harmony Park beach evangelism was destined to change my life completely. I was spiritually revived there. At that occasion my friendship was forged with Jakes, a young pastor who came to join us after a long drive through the night from far-away Umtata in the Transkei.

My first Personal Encounter in Spiritual Warfare

For the other participants it might not have been so significant, but the unity of the Christians coming from different church backgrounds there left an indelible mark in my heart. I did not know the divine statement yet that God commands his blessing where unity exists (Psalm 133:3). I received an urge there to network with other members of the body of Christ, with people from different denominational backgrounds. I also saw the Holy Spirit at work there, as I had not experienced before. Along with my new friend Jakes and David Savage from the City Mission,⁵⁸ I started learning the power of prayer there at Harmony Park. When Jakes came into the tent one night after a fierce discussion with a Muslim, he quoted Jesus’ words about prayer and fasting. This was my introduction to spiritual warfare.

Four hectic Years

Looking back, the years from 1965-68 constituted probably the most hectic period of my life. Next to my first years of teaching at Bellville South High School I also completed studies for a B.A. degree extra-murally and was also involved with diverse evangelistic and church activities and camps during the school holidays and over the week-ends.

I was a regular of the Sunday early morning prayer at the Moria Sendingkerk of Tiervlei (later called Ravensmead) where a mini revival erupted that would bring us to pray simultaneously. This was quite ‘revolutionary‘ in mainline churches at that time, regarded as sectarian. Here I also said to the Lord that I was ready for theological studies if He would call me. Before that, various people nudged me in this direction including Chris Wessels, who had led the stranddienste of Harmony Park. I wanted to be sure however that it would be a divine call and not merely man’s idea.

The call came at the funeral of my teenage hero Reverend Ivan Wessels. He contracted leukaemia at the beginning of 1968. He passed on after a few weeks in Groote Schuur Hospital, only 43 years old. When Bishop Schaberg challenged the congregation: ‘Who is going to fill the gap caused by our deceased brother’, I discerned God’s voice in my heart. Back home in Tiervlei after the funeral, it was not difficult at all to go to my knees and say ‘Yes, Lord, I’m prepared to be used by you to fill the gap.’

The next day I was completely surprised when Reverend August Habelgaarn, a member of the church board, approached me with the question whether I would be interested in a bursary for two years of theological studies. I could just reply that I saw this as clear confirmation of the call of the Lord the previous day. Another few months down the road preparations were well advanced towards my leaving for Germany at the beginning of 1969.

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

Wrong Praying?

Praying for the right marital partner should be very normal for every believer. Can one however pray wrongly in this regard? Many of my peers were already married or getting married. Romances thus started to play a bigger role in my life, after I had previously decided that in terms of priorities, I was too busy with other things like studies and service for the Lord to have time for a girlfriend. If one has been raised in South Africa as a ‘Coloured‘ about to go to study in Germany, other dynamics come into play. I was determined from the outset not to marry a German girl because that would have prevented me from returning to South Africa due to the laws of the country at the time. Rationally, I considered that I would be of more use inside South Africa than outside of the beloved country.

I had not been in Europe for two weeks when ‘it’ happened. I fell in love as never before. I was really thrown into a spiritual crisis. I asked the Lord to take away my infatuation. I felt myself committed to a task and a commission that was awaiting me in South Africa. I had to learn the hard way (well, really?) that also my emotions had to be brought under God’s rule! His ways were indeed higher, also with regard to my future marriage partner. I still had to learn that it was not on to prescribe to the Lord the race to which my future wife should belong. About a year and a half later, I thought that I had learnt this lesson.

A clear challenge came from a completely different direction when I landed at Selbitz, a protestant institution that had all the hall-marks of a monastery. The life-style of these Christians challenged me to a celibate life, something with which I had not been confronted before. But I knew myself too well. I settled for a compromise: I decided to dedicate my ‘youth’ to the Lord, i.e. I wanted to stay unmarried until the age of thirty.

When Rosemarie Göbel entered the Jugendbund für Entschiedenes Christentum with her student colleague and friend Elke Maier in May 1970, I experienced something as close to a ‘love at first sight’ as ever there was one, especially after I had spoken to her afterwards. I could not keep it to myself, blurting it out and telling my two Stuttgart roommates immediately about ‘Rosemarie Göbel aus Mühlacker’, even though I still hardly knew her.

This was however only the beginning of a roller coaster romance that would take me to the mountain tops of elation and the pits of disappointment and despair after my return to the Cape in October 1970.⁵⁹

Further Challenges for Muslim Outreach

The Moravian Theological Seminary of the early 1970s in District Six was a ‘liberated area’ - as one of our lecturers dubbed the Seminary complex in Ashley Street. The Seminary was closely involved with the activities of the Christian Institute. But it was also regarded by the government as a dangerous place because people of different races were entering and leaving there. The only surprise was that only one student colleague landed in prison because of our outspoken anti-apartheid attitude and activities. But a few of us were interrogated by the ‘Special Branch’.

The emerging ‘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 after the bulk of the Christians had left - complying to the Group Areas legislation - it was indeed an anomaly that Islam didn’t feature prominently in our curriculum. It was more or less an optional. (Muslims refused to allow their mosques to be demolished. Many more Christians than Muslims thus 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 for non-academic purposes. My knowledgeable close friend Jakes was only too happy to oblige, lecturing on Islam.

In his person Jakes would keep the interest in Muslim Evangelism burning at a time when Christians were completely oblivious of the challenge. His interest in this field was however completely stifled while studying in Holland in the 1980s. Nevertheless, he influenced a few people including me and Henry Dwyer, another Dutch Reformed Minister, to get involved with outreach to Muslims. (His personal wish to get practically involved with Muslim Evangelism - after early retirement - was cut short when he went to be with the Lord in 1997 after he had suffered a severe stroke.)

Deep Soul Searching

God had to humble me to accept His choice of a wife. I still somehow did not want to leave South Africa. There seemed to be only one way out: I had to choose between the love for Rosemarie and my love for the country.

I had set as one of my personal goals to oppose racial prejudice wherever it would surface. Operating almost exclusively within the confines of the ‘Coloured’ community, I knew that we had to address the superiority complex in respect of Blacks. My inner tussle came to a head one August Sunday of 1973 when we had the Congregational Church pastor Bongonjalo Claude Goba⁶⁰ as the 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! My inner voice told me that I should apply in time for the extension of my passport that would have elapsed on January the 16^th the following year. By applying in time for such an extension I would have been able to get peace at heart with regard to my leaving the country. But I just couldn’t stand the real possibility of a negative response to my application. The result was a real struggle between the love for my country and my love for a foreign girl who would take me out of my trouble-torn heimat. So much I wanted to make a contribution towards racial reconciliation. I thought, perhaps a bit arrogantly: “I am of more use in my native country than anywhere else.” I was still to be brought down from that presumptuous pedestal.

It would have solved the problem for me if I had fallen in love with a ‘Coloured’ girl. In fact, I actually started praying along those lines. This would have been proof to me that I was not destined to venture into the life of a voluntary exile. Was I still gripped too much by apartheid thinking?

Hesitantly, I opted to leave the country without applying for the passport extension, with little hope of ever being able to return. I did resolve though to fight the matter, to work towards returning to my home country by 1980 with my future wife Rosemarie. To this end I intended to attack the discriminatory laws from abroad, to enable our return as a couple.

In another initiative the seminary was prominent. Dr Beyers Naudé was invited to address a youth rally on Youth Power in the Old Drill Hall. This was typical of the position of the Seminary in opposition to the regime. Dr Naudé was a well-known anti-apartheid activist and the founder of the Christian Institute (CI). Dr Naudé was lodging with Henning and Anne Schlimm and their family in Rondebosch. (Henning Schlimm was our Seminary director.) There Dr Naudé heard about my pending departure for Germany to take up a position as assistant pastor and about the link to my darling Rosemarie. (Henning and Anne Schlimm had been my confidants during the three years of my studies at the seminary.) This caused me quite a lot of anxiety.

In the months prior to my scheduled departure, various leaders of the Christian Institute (CI) had their passports confiscated just prior to their respective departures from Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg. Although I was only a very inconspicuous CI member, one could never know. The presence of Dr Beyers Naudé at our youth rally did not augur well for me. I wrote to Rosemarie that I would phone her from Johannesburg if the government would prevent me from leaving the country. This thankfully didn’t happen.

Ducking and Diving on Honeymoon

Two years later – March 1975 – Rosemarie and I were already in South Africa on our very special honeymoon. We had to do some ducking and diving because Rosemarie had actually received permission a visa under the condition that she would not “travel to South Africa accompanied by your future husband.”

To ensure that our plans would not be wrecked on Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg, I was quite untruthful. I gave the impression in my correspondence to my parents and friends that Rosemarie would come alone. It would have been quite easy for the authorities to send one (or both) of us back with the next flight or to lock me up. I still possessed a South African passport.

Thankfully nothing untoward happened on that four-week honeymoon stint like arrest or even harassment by police.

Confessing a Lack of Virtue

My conscience didn’t leave me in peace because we had circumvented the condition of Rosemarie’s visa. However, I also felt that we should encourage the South African government towards real democracy. A letter to the Prime Minister served this double purpose well enough, but I went too far when I tried to justify our actions. In this letter, I displayed a lack of Christian virtue by hitting back quite hard at the officials because of the bureaucratic blunders made by the Consulate in Munich.

I was courting trouble by sending a copy of this letter to the Consulate. I “earned” the jitters a few days later: an element of revenge on my part had clearly played a role. I should not have been surprised when my activist attitude elicited a quick response.

The consul twice tried to contact me telephonically but on both occasions unsuccessfully. When the consul phoned the second time, he threatened with disciplinary measures, under which we understood the confiscation of my passport.

Rather fearfully I went to the phone at the set time. I suspected that it would be about our visit in South Africa and my letter to the authorities. It was very reassuring though that I knew that Rosemarie and other friends were praying while I was on the phone with the consul.

The Lord worked mightily: in the course of a few minutes the tone of the consul changed 180 degrees from tough to cordial. In the end he actually offered his aid in a very friendly tone if I should ever encounter any problems in Europe.

A ‘Peaceful’ Front to change the racist Structures?

In Germany I was soon reading and receiving the airmail edition of the International Star. Thus I kept abreast of developments in South Africa. In 1976 I read how trouble was brooding in Soweto. High school learners demonstrated after they were forced to learn othersubjects through the medium of Afrikaans. However, the uprising of the 16^th of June took all of us by surprise.

With Pastor Uwe Holm from the Landeskirche, the Lutheran State Church, I spontaneously got involved in organizing a protest meeting in the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis’ Church in central Berlin. The 16^th of June 1976 made even more of an activist out of me as I feared an escalation of violence that could lead to a bloodbath in my beloved South Africa.

I saw it as my moral responsibility to continue working towards a non-racial set-up in South Africa, using non-violent means. I attempted to start a ‘Peaceful Front' to change the racist structures of our country. I wrote letters in all directions. But support was not forthcoming. The brutal government repression of the peaceful protest of the students was to all and sundry the proof that the days for boycotts and the likes were over. My compatriots overseas felt that the government in our home country could only be toppled through the barrel of the gun. All bar one of those whom I approached had given up on the option of peaceful transition to change in South Africa. Our friend Rachel Balie, who was studying in Berlin, was the only one of our circle of countrymen and -women who were still supporting the idea of non-violent change.

The Power of Confession

After my ‘Soweto’ speech in West Berlin I was catapulted into the role of mediator in a dispute between foreign African students and the local authorities. This effort of mediation caught the eye of Heinz Krieg, who was connected to Moral Re-armament.⁶¹ He and his wife Gisela befriended Rosemarie and me.

In April 1977 we received a phone call from our church head office in Bad Boll (Germany) with the question whether we would consider pastoring the congregation of Utrecht in Holland. The church authorities needed someone who could learn Dutch quickly.

Heinz Krieg gave me a challenging book as a parting gift when we left for Holland in September 1977: South Africa, what kind of change? I was challenged once again to become an activist for racial reconciliation in my home country.

A visit to the Moral Re-armament conference in Caux (Switzerland) at the end of 1977 brought home to me the power of confession very intensely. The apology of the daughter of Ds. Daneel on behalf of Afrikaners for the hurts caused by apartheid legislation impacted me quite deeply. On the other hand, the Moral Rearmament practice of writing down thoughts fuelled my activist spirit. Hereafter I wrote various letters of protest to Cabinet ministers. Rosemarie felt that I was wasting my time. She was sure that my letters would never reach the likes of Mr P.W. Botha. I persevered nevertheless, but after 1982 the letters became very sparse compared to the years 1978-80.

Involved with the Discriminated and Persecuted

I resolutely continued towards my goal of returning to South Africa, i.e. trying to get the apartheid laws gradually repealed. (Much later I changed my views in my correspondence with the South African authorities significantly, after I had discerned from Scripture that one could not reform a wicked system; that it had to be eradicated completely.)

When we moved to the historical Moravian complex of Zeist, I was not aware of the special heritage of the place. In due course we would also get involved with the persecuted believers of Eastern Europe.

Rachel Balie, who had returned to South Africa after the completion of her studies, wrote to us that Chris Wessels, a minister colleague and long-time friend in whose home Rosemarie and I had slept on our honeymoon journey, had been imprisoned. Nobody from his family knew where he was incarcerated. He was never formally accused or brought before a court of law. Later we understood that his main offence was that he helped to care for the families of political prisoners. Shortly before this, Steve Biko died while in police custody. We feared that the same thing could happen to Chris.

My activist spirit was aroused. Everything was set in motion, to nudge the Moravian Church leaders into action on behalf of our brother in detention. Initially it involved something of a battle to get our church authorities in Bad Boll (Germany) on board, but they finally also encouraged their colleagues church leaders to write to the S.A. Embassies in their respective countries. We heard later that this move possibly saved Chris’s life.

Seeds sown for the Future

As a radical activist I continued collating all the documents and correspondence pertaining to our struggle with the authorities in South Africa. Also the Broederkerk (Moravian Church) leadership in South Africa authorities came under fire as I tried to nudge them to be more active towards racial reconciliation and equality between the privileged ‘Coloureds’ and the ‘Blacks’ in the denomination. My activism backfired. A church leader replied quite curtly to my request to return to the country to pastor in a countryside mission station. The last straw was a cabinet decision that elivated me to become an honourary White.⁶² It brought me boiling in a fierce mixture of anger and disappointment. I was so angry and embittered that I did not want to return to South Africa in future anymore.

In Johannesburg God used Dr Beyers Naude and a Dutch dominee, Joop Lensink, not only to cure me from that attitude, but also to instill in me a yearning to resume working for racial reconciliation in my home country from abroad, with even more determination to enable my return.

Determination to fight the demonic Apartheid Ideology

In His sovereign way God used the events of that Sunday to make me more determined than ever to fight the demonic apartheid ideology from abroad. From the time of our return to Holland after our six-week visit to South Africa, I saw a ministry of reconciliation now as my special duty to the country of my birth. As part of this effort, I continued to collate personal documents and letters with more verve, hoping to get it published in South Africa under the title ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’⁶³ (Hunger after Righteousness). In this manuscript I included and commented on my correspondence with the rulers of the day. Yet, I wanted to win the government over, rather than expose their practices abroad. As a means to this end, I targeted Dutch Reformed theologians whom I believed could play a pivotal role.

In my resolve to work towards racial reconciliation, I went out of my way to meet Professor Johan Heyns and a delegation of Dutch Reformed ministers, who attended a synod in Lunteren when they visited Holland in 1979. A few months prior to this I was not interested at all to meet Johan Heyns, the chairman of the Broederbond! The delegation furthermore included Dr O'Brien Geldenhuys and Professor Willie Jonker. I arranged to meet them again at the Amsterdam airport Schiphol on their return to South Africa. These three were to be quite influential to bring about significant changes in the Dutch Reformed Church in the years hereafter. I urged the clergymen to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted, challenging them also with regard to membership of the Broederbond, a secret society. Prof Willie Jonker, whom I still knew from my District Six seminary days, took me aside to explain to me that he was not a member of the Broederbond. (Years later Prof Willie Jonker would express regret at the Rustenburg Church Consultation in 1990 on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church.)

I was of course elated to read later that some of the Dutch Reformed church leaders had responded positively, however without initial success to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted. Because of the well-publicized tampering with post by the Special Branch of the police - which I had experienced myself - I contrived to send the draft manuscript of Honger na Geregtigheid to Dr Naudé with the delegation. This move was not completely wise, as I would discover later. (Although I had no proof that my activism had contributed in any way, I did get some satisfaction when the law that prohibited Whites to marry people from the other races was finally repealed.)

An Overdose to a sick Patient?

Hein Postma was the principal of the Moravian Primary School in Zeist, whom I got to know when he addressed the congregation at a love feast. We met soon hereafter and got befriended. Rosemarie and his wife Wieneke struck a close friendship, having babies of the same age. I sensed that Hein Postma had a kindred spirit, the real servant attitude of the Herrnhut Moravians. It did not matter one bit that he worshipped at another fellowship. When he invited us to a weekly Bible study with other local Christians that he was leading with Wim Zoutewelle, a biology teacher at the local Christian high school, I accepted without any ado. Through this influence I regained some of my evangelistic zeal that I had lost during my activist anti-apartheid period.

Hein Postma was God’s instrument to point out the basic deficiency of Honger na Geregtigheid. He described the treatise as an overdose of medicine to a sick patient. His loving advice was seed into my soul. I hoped hereafter that I would be able one day to become such a blessing to foreigners to South Africa. That was ultimately the seed for Friends from Abroad that we started in Cape Town in 2007.

Ministry of Reconciliation

I targeted Dutch Reformed theologians of South Africa whom I believed could play a pivotal role in effecting change for the better in my home country. A fairly extensive correspondence followed with different role players on the South African scene. My ministry of reconciliation also aimed at trying to heal rifts where I discerned them. Thus I attempted to reconcile (the later Arch) Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak. The latter, along with his Broederkring colleagues, were angry at the likes of Tutu - people who were still prepared to talk to President Botha. (It also affected me personally when my correspondence with the government estranged me to some extent from my close friend Jakes.) My effort to get Dr Boesak and Professor Heyns reconciled was unsuccessful, but I was happy to hear later that Bishop Tutu and my former evangelism buddy Allan Boesak were again operating in concert.

Professor Heyns went on in the mid-1980s to become one of the divine instruments of change in his church to take the denomination away from apartheid thinking and attitudes. (It is generally believed in South Africa that a right wing extremist, who could not accept Heyns’ role in the dramatic turn-around of the denomination, was responsible for his assassination in November 1994).

A Substitute for Circumcision?

During a Bible Study with Hein Postma, Colossians 2:11,12 was read: “In him you were also circumcised... with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith...” Although baptism was not discussed at all that evening, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart.

I was moved to discover that ‘circumcision of the heart’ - conversion to faith in Jesus Christ - was the actual basis of baptism according to the above-mentioned Bible verse. My own argument for practising the tradition of christening of infants was pulled from under me. Subconsciously I was still somehow influenced by the Calvinist argument – sowed into my heart years ago by Allan Boesak and others - in defence of christening of infants. According to this view, the christening of infants as the sign of the new covenant replaced circumcision, which is the visible sign of the old covenant of God with Israel. Due to my love for the Jews, I was deeply moved when I was now reading there in Colossians about the circumcision of the heart. How could we as Christians just substitute something for circumcision?

I was bowled over. I had not yet looked critically at the replacement theory, whereby it is believed that the Church replaced Israel. From the context of Colossians 2 it was clear that conversion through faith in Jesus was meant.

The last Straw

In the preceding years and following in the footsteps of the Count Zinzendorf, I got to love Israel and the Jews. When I now had to think of it more deeply, the untenability of the christening of infants struck home. How could the Church substitute circumcision, a practise so sacred to the Jews?

In the course of my participation in a liturgical commission of the church I was deeply troubled by the formulation in the Moravian (infant) baptism liturgy that has been dubbed ‘baptismal regeneration’. Thereby eternal life is apportioned to babies at their ‘baptism’. As I now also studied the liturgy used at the christening of babies, I knew that I couldn’t carry on with a practice that had indeed become a tradition that nullifies the power of God (Mark 7:13). The seed was sown in my heart for opposition to Replacement Theology, whereby the church is alleged to have substituted the nation of Israel.

This was now really like the proverbial last straw to me. How could I continue with the practice with a good conscience? I promptly put the problem to my church council. They were very sympathetic, especially after a traumatic common experience only weeks prior to this with a difficult church member. They suggested that I should discuss it with my minister colleagues.

My problem with infant ‘baptism’ developed into a saga that included many tears. In the end we found a compromise: I would continue as a minister without having to christen infants. This could of course not go on for any length of time. I was offered another post. Because the issue of radical stewardship had however become quite important to us, we could not accept a post where we were required to compromise on this issue. We agreed that I would terminate my services in the church at the end of 1980.

Attempting to win over the Afrikaners

It was still my conviction that ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ should be published in South Africa in Afrikaans first, as an attempt to win over the Afrikaners. Rosemarie still had little faith in my letter writing activity, but I just continued, albeit rather subdued.

Because different Cabinet ministers openly expressed their intention to move away from discrimination, I secretly hoped that they would co-operate with the publication. After our return from the trip to South Africa in 1978, I informed the government of my intention to publish the documents that I had collated. I naively hoped that I could help (White) South Africans to repent in that way. I hinted this in one of my letters. The curt reply of Dr Schlebusch, a Cabinet Minister, was to me the sign that the climate was not yet ripe for the venture. I decided to abort the publication attempt. Towards the end of 1980 it seemed as if the government was seriously trying to revive the momentum of change. (This was however effectively halted when Dr Andries Treurnicht started to breathe threatening down the neck of the government from the right wing.)

I noticed know how influential people got damaged spiritually when they came into the limelight. I wanted to be certain that my autobiographical material would be published in God’s perfect timing. The letter to Dr Schlebusch was another ‘fleece’ (Compare the story of Gideon in Judges 6:36-40) to ascertain whether I should have my autobiographical manuscripts published at all.

I had to agree with Hein Postma that the manuscript was possibly an overdose of medicine to a sick society. He noted that he missed love and compassion in it. I hereafter toned it down, planning three smaller booklets, of which the first one concentrated on issues around the Mixed Marriages Act. I revamped the manuscript, concentrating on the issues around the prohibition of racially mixed marriages and our own experiences, calling it ‘Wat God saamgevoeg het’’⁶⁴ (‘What God joined together’). The intention was also to diminish the possible shock effect for Afrikaners in that way. I hoped of course secretly that this could facilitate my return to South Africa.

An unexpected Stint in South Africa

In August 1980 we received the news that my only sister Magdalene had contracted leukaemia. There was no cure yeet for that disease at that time. This would become another one of those mysterious divine ways. After a great deal of initial hesitancy, we started the process to visit my family and to say farewell to my sister.

We experienced a few nerve-wrecking few weeks until we finally received the visas for Rosemarie and our two boys literally on the last minute. We could thus finalize our travelling plans at last. Unfortunately, all seats on the connecting flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town were already booked by this time – a week before Christmas.

We had no option than to sleep over in Johannesburg. My seminary colleague Martin October and his wife obliged without hesitation that we could lodge with them in the Moravian parsonage. The conditions under which the visit to the Cape would took place, were nevertheless rather traumatic. We were basically going to visit my dying sister. We had no idea what was to happen on our return to Holland because we had more or less used our last savings for the air fares. We were not used yet to taking steps of faith like this.

It suited me perfectly that my seminary colleague Martin October was willing to take me to Bishop Tutu and Dr Beyers Naudé when we would return to Holland. Fighting apartheid and racism and toiling for racial reconciliation in South Africa was very high on my personal agenda. From the Bosmont manse I made a few phone calls. Among others I contacted Dr Beyers Naudé. When I heard from Dr Naudé that he had never received the manuscript that I had sent with the delegation of DRC theologians the previous year, I was somewhat surprised, bu all the more keen to discuss my manuscripts with him and Bishop Tutu.

We left our winter coats with Martin and Fanny October, intending to collect them on our return to Europe. This was not destined to happen. More turbulent weeks followed which ultimately led to an unexpected stint of six months in South Africa.

On arrival at D.F. Malan Airport, the name of the international airport of Cape Town at that time, we heard that my sister had died the evening before. In a series of events prior to our scheduled return to Holland, we discerned God’s hand clearly. This happened especially during the evening devotion of 19 January 1981 in Elim. My late father was reading the scriptural Macedonian injunction: ‘Kom oor en help ons.’ (Come over and help us). Our mother was furthermore quite ill at that time. Her passing away was actually anticipated. With Daddy’s heart condition, which caused him to go on early retirement, it was a big question whether I would see one or both of them alive again.

The Anti-apartheid Spirit hardened me

By this time I had however become quite a hardened anti-apartheid activist. The only constraint I had was that I waged my opposition from a religious platform. I knew that the unity of believers was all-important. We were very much encouraged by a multi-racial group from different churches in Stellenbosch that had been started by Professor Nico Smith and a few pastors. This was a sequel to the SACLA event in Pretoria in 1979.

Rosemarie was deeply moved when she saw how our brotherinlaw Anthony was struggling after the death of his beloved wife, our late sister. My darling could not understand why I insisted to go to Johannesburg in the remaining week before our departure for Holland. The anti-apartheid activist spirit had made me hard and uncompassionate.

Many people asked me why we do not stay longer when they heard that I had no employment in Holland on our return there. According to certain trusted people to whom we turned for advice like our friend, the Anglican Pastor Clive McBride, I should easily get a post with my good reputation as a Mathematics teacher and the dearth of qualified colleagues in ‘Coloured’ schools for that subject.

When I checked it out, this was confirmed. But I was not to be moved to stay longer in Cape Town. I wanted to proceed to Johannesburg. Not even the possibility of my mother passing on soon - and that I would not see any of my parents again - could touch me significantly.

Divinely Cornered

On the afternoon that had been scheduled for our final time together, my special friend Jakes was at hand, taking us to the Strandfontein beach. A strong wind was blowing there. In the evening we were booke on the train to Johannesburg. This time we had received government permission to travel in the same compartment as a family without any ado, albeit that it bugged me that one still had to ask for permission. My manuscript had evidently done some intimidating work in government circles.

When we arrived in Sherwood Park at the home of the Esau family, the train tickets were however nowhere to be found. I must have lost them in Strandfontein. With the strong wind there, it would have been futile to go back and try and find them. God had caught up with me once again. I was trying to run away from the responsibility to my parents and the bereaved family.

The Holy Spirit had thankfully softened me up by now. Reticently I agreed to stay in Cape Town for another week. My parents were pleasantly surprised when we pitched up in Elim once again. This time we had interesting news for them. We had decided to extend our stay in South Africa unless I got the Religious Instruction teaching post in Holland for which I had applied.

After the extra week in Cape Town, everything was cut and dried. It was confirmed that we should try and stay for another six months. The church in Holland graciously agreed that we could leave our furniture in the parsonage in Zeist.

Indirect Muslim Evangelism

I took up a teaching post at Mount View High School in Hanover Park. During the short spell of teaching in 1981, I had a good percentage of Muslim pupils in my classes. During the intervals I had some interesting discussions with a teacher colleague, Mr Hoosain Solomons, a devout Muslim.

Just after Easter, Mr Cassie, the principal, asked me to address the school assembly in the weekly devotional exercise. In my mini sermon I stressed that Mary Magdalene had previously been an outcast and demonpossessed before she became a follower of Jesus. The pupils from the despised township could obviously fully identify with the message that I shared. I was deeply moved to see how open some Muslim learners were to the radical claims of Jesus. I furthermore highlighted in my message that the outcast Mary Magdalene became the first evangelist of the resurrection of Jesus according to John’s gospel. This was solid Contextual Theology. Others would perhaps have called it Black Theology. In my talk I challenged the township pupils and teacher colleagues, stressing that this could only happen to Mary Magdalene because she had first committed her life to Jesus as her Lord. Of course, that was outright evangelical language. Be it as it may, this sermonette harvested acceptance from the pupils in the highly politicised school.

(At the beginning teachers colleagues and learners were understandably very suspicious when I suddenly pitched up there after my predecessor had been sacked after he had distributed ANC pamphlets.)

In the Heat of the Battle

We furthermore had to request the extension of the visas of Rosemarie and the children that could still be turned down. Because of my track record of opposition to the government, the granting of visas could not be taken for granted at all. It was not easy to battle anew through all sorts of apartheid red tape. Then there was the attitude of locals and that of the church leaders; they feared to break through the racist customs. My church was clearly playing for time when we tried to find accommodation while a house – church property - was standing empty in a White residential area. We were ready to take the risk of being ‘caretakers’ for three months. Looking back, I can fully understand the fear of the church leaders that we could decide to stay in the country.

Repeatedly our friends Rommel and Celeste Roberts invited us to come and stay with them. The couple had been with us in Holland for a few months after they were more or less forced to flee the previous year. They were not only known as political activists, but just like us they were a racially mixed couple. To accept their offer would have meant inviting trouble with the government. After all other efforts to get temporary accommodation⁶⁵ had failed, we had no other excuse to turn down their generous offer. With quite a portion of trepidation we moved into their three bedroom house in Crawford.

From their home in Haywood Road, Crawford Rosemarie and the children valiantly joined me in some dangerous ventures, such as going with me to Crossroads as part of a church delegation after a busload of ‘illegal’ Black women had been forced to go to the Transkei. A crisis followed when the group returned to the Cape with a hired bus through secret compassionate assistance of the South African Council of Churches under the leadership of Bishop Tutu. This sort of defiant opposition was of course very much against the wishes of the government.

In the middle of the crisis I was preaching in the (White) Congregational Church of Rondebosch where our friend Douglas Bax was the pastor. Through his involvement other representatives of the Western Province Council of Churches got on board.

Military ‘Caspirs’ with soldiers driving along Lansdowne Road reminded us at our open-air meeting with these women and others in Crossroads that a shooting spree, in which we could lose our lives, was very much on the cards. The presence of a TV crew from overseas probably saved the day for us. On that occasion I was very much impressed by the performance of a young pastor, Elijah Klaassen.

Rosemarie and our two sons also joined me to Hanover Park when I decided to stand with the learners of Mount View High School. We were defying the government with a programme of alternative teaching on the ‘compulsory holiday’ of June 1.⁶⁶ On this occasion the police intervened when a few pupils entered the school premises illegally.

During these tense weeks we had to reckon all the time with the possibility of any one of us residing in Haywood Road, Crawford to be killed or arrested. In the meantime I had become quite bitter once again. Spiritually I still had to learn that God was more interested in my relationship with Him than in my activism. Of course, I regarded my political activism as a part of my service for Him, part and parcel of an effort to get the races reconciled to each other. Towards the end of our stay Rosemarie had however more than enough of all this turmoil and uncertainty. This was a scar that caused tension in our marriage. She was still ready for missionary work anywhere in the world, as long it was not in South Africa! And I still yearned to return to my Heimat not only soon but also permanently, despite the strenuous time.

Posting of Clothing

On our return to Holland, we discovered that a new small evangelical fellowship had been started in Zeist by our friends. I retained links with the Moravian Church while we also got intensely involved with the new fellowship that had no formal membership.

A visit to the new Panweg fellowship by Shadrach Maloka, a friend and an evangelist from South Africa, ignited the sending of clothing to needy evangelists who were linked to his ministry. Rosemarie had been sensitive to the nudge by the Holy Spirit. Financially we were just making ends meet as a family, but we had a surplus of clothing because we received used garments from different people. This encouraged us to start distributing clothing to missionaries, evangelists and other needy people. In our spacious home, the former parsonage, we always sub-rented at least one room or helped someone with accommodation - and yet we still had space to spare. A part of a big upstairs room that was only used as a guest facility, was changed into a small 'bring and share' clothing ‘boutique’ from where Dutch believers would come and help themselves, giving a donation in return. From the funds thus received, we could send parcels to missionaries and needy believers in different countries. Missionaries from overseas could come and make their pick there. Salou and Annelies, a befriended YWAM couple from Cameroon, even filled a vehicle that they had received as a gift.

A Period of great Uncertainty

After ceasing to function as a minister of the Moravian Church, a period of great uncertainty followed for us as a couple. This coincided with the practical need to feed the family. It was not easy at all to get employment as a teacher of Religious Instruction and my South African Bachelor of Arts degree was not recognised in Holland. I decided to resume studies in Mathematics, not only as a way of getting a post more easily, but also as a vehicle with which I could return to Africa in some ‘tent-making’ missionary work. We really wanted to get involved with missions but no door seemed to open. One of the major handicaps was my South African passport.

Starting Evangelistic Outreach in Holland

Rosemarie and I started and led a local a non-denominational evangelistic group Goed Nieuws Karavaan, using a big vehicle that was especially converted for this purpose. Various facets of evangelical outreach included outreach to Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, who were of course all Muslims. Lining our outreach to Gospel for Guests, the loving move towards local Moroccans and other foreign guest workers sowed seats into my heart. That would germinate back in South Africa decades later.

In the mid-1980s a speaker from OM (Operation Mobilisation) pitched up at one of our Panweg church meetings. I sensed a challenge to venture into one of the Middle East countries as a missionary. A simple comparison of the number of missionaries in Islamic countries brought home to me the dire need to share the gospel there. It was clear that I could not go into one of the closed countries as a Christian minister of religion. I was thus highly motivated to get an updated Mathematics teaching qualification for this purpose. Rosemarie was however not at all enthralled with my idea of going to a country like Egypt. But she agreed that I could continue with my studies in Mathematics, in order to use that as an entrance into one of the countries that were closed for Christian missionaries.

Opposing the Ceauşescu Regime

Financially we could also not afford to go on holiday as a family, but we had learned by now to take bigger steps in faith. In 1987 we prayed that the Lord would use a period of vacation in the southern German village of Tieringen in a strategic way. We had heard that the German government heavily subsidized that facility to enable big families to go on holiday.

Tieringen was to become the beginning of the next chapter of our struggle against the atheist East European Communist regimes. There we met Erwin Klein and his family, who had just come out of Romania because of his German ancestry. Through them we not only got valuable inside information, but we also received addresses from Christians in Romania.

After September 1987 we started sending used clothing to Romania from our 'clothing depot’. The Holy Spirit was evidently orchestrating things. From the little Dutch town of Zeist almost a mini Romania fever broke out in support of the persecuted Christians. Believers from different church backgrounds supported various mission organizations that supported Romanian Christians. We gradually understood why God wanted us to stay in Zeist, our ‘Jerusalem’. This town is more or less in the middle of the Netherlands. Parcels with clothing and articles that were scarce in Romania, were sent to different addresses supplied to us by the Kleins. Our ‘clothing depot’ came in handy with the Goed Nieuws Karavaan funding the postage. Another source of income for this project was females who ‘purchased’ dresses (Often some of the dresses ‘bought’ were back in the ‘boutique’ after a few weeks, ready for resale or to be sent to some foreign country.) For some Dutch believers who had never before considered wearing used clothing, this was a new experience in good stewardship.

Soon the communist regime was ‘attacked’ in this way by the compassionate care for the persecuted Christians. Clandestine visits to Romania followed from different parts of Holland. Various organizations that brought aid to the Communist world intensified their aid to Romania, although this apparently had not been formally orchestrated. This was seemingly part of God’s Master Plan to break down the Communist stronghold. Of course, this made the Ceauşescu regime quite nervous because their nationals were officially not expected and allowed to have contact with people in the West.

Africa, here I come

At the annual Dutch national mission day of the Evangelical Alliance of 1988, a sequence of events led to my application for a Dutch passport. The same event a year later was held in the little town of Barneveld. October 1989 was to become one of the very special months in our lives. We were challenged in that month when Marry Schotte of WEC International shared there in Barneveld about a mission school in Vavoua (Ivory Coast) where they needed teachers. We soon arranged for her to come and visit us.

The attitude of our children in respect of Africa changed when Marry Schotte came along with a video of the mission school in Côte d’Ivoire where she was teaching. Videos were still something special in those days. Suddenly the children caught the vision to go with us to Africa. At our extended weekly family devotions even the little ones now started to pray fervently for a teacher to accompany us to England where we were required to do our WEC candidates’ course. The need of the WEC school in Vavoua seemed geared to what I could offer. In the school for the children of missionaries, they had departments for Dutch and German children. The common language of the school was English. I could teach Maths - for which they indeed had a vacancy - in all three languages.

Very soon thereafter our friend Bart Berkheij, who had lost his wife in a car accident in 1988, phoned with the request whether I could join him on a trip to Mali at the end of January 1990. All expenses would be paid for him and a friend, to go and wind up matters there where he had stayed with his family. I declined Bart’s initial invitation to join him because I was still unemployed. It all sounded very attractive to get a feeling of West Africa in the light of our own preparations to go to Côte d’Ivoire. However, I found it ethically incorrect to plan this while I was still hoping to get a teaching post. Everything looked cut and dried when I heard that someone else was due to join Bart on his trip to Mali.

God mysteriously at Work

We knew that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform! Unwittingly I assisted in preparing my return to Africa, to my dear heimat at that! On 4 October 1989 I wrote a letter of confession to President De Klerk, the new State President, after I sensed an inner conviction to confess to him my activism and arrogance, offering an apology. (Over the years I had written quite a few letters to the presidential incumbent’s predecessors and to some of the Cabinet ministers. The Holy Spirit had convicted me of an accusing activist attitude in my correspondence towards his government colleagues. In this letter I confessed this and duly apologised.)

At our regiogebed meeting of 4 October 1989, I mentioned in passing to someone just before we were due to start the prayer event with about 10-15 people, that I had posted a letter to President De Klerk that day. Spontaneously the one-off visitor of our prayer meeting suggested that we devote more time that same evening to pray for South Africa especially. Nobody objected. That must have been supernatural guidance. It was the only occasion that we did it in that way, i.e. praying for only one country and not for other people like missionaries from our region, along with other issues.

Nobody of us present at the regiogebed was aware that President De Klerk was due to meet Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak the following week. That strategic meeting became in a sense a watershed in the politics of the country, the prelude to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid. Also in other countries - especially in South Africa itself - people had been praying for a change of the suicidal direction of the political system.⁶⁷

A Trip to West Africa.

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

We were scheduled to fly from Abidjan, the capital city of Côte d’Ivoire on 16 February, 1990.

Bart and I spent the morning doing some sightseeing and shopping – buying small artefacts to take along for the families at home! Nostalgia overtook me as I looked over the Islamic city! When I saw a few mosques, it so much resembled the old District Six, the slum-like area of my childhood. I had thought that South Africa was way out of my mind in terms of a return there! But in a fleeting moment I was overcome by nostalgia. It was strange that my trip was supposed to be an orientation for us as missionaries to West Africa, but I was now also ambivalently longing to return to my home country once again.

In chapter 12 I narrate how I experienced a thrill there in Abidjan after attending a mosque service by default. It was as if the Lord was reassuring me there that someday the Islamic wall would also crash like the communist ‘iron curtain’ had started to do. The experience of that day helped me to persevere over the next decades with low-key missionary work among Muslims although it seemed as if we were wasting our time. (In the 1990s Islam was expanding all the time at the Cape. Muslims were buying property in Cape Town and they were building mosques all over the Cape Peninsula, even in former White areas. I treasured the Abidjan experience in my heart, assured that the days of the Islamic deception were numbered.)

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Come over and help us!

On my return from West Africa there were quite a few letters awaiting me, two of which were challenges to new areas of ministry. Most of all I was surprised that Rosemarie appeared quite tense about my response to a letter from South Africa. Out of the blue there was a hand-written letter from Pietie Orange, a friend from our Tiervlei/Ravensmead days.

There was not much in Pietie’s letter in terms of contents, but very clearly there was the clarion call: COME OVER AND HELP US. Under normal circumstances I would have jumped at this opportunity to return to my home country, but with many different missionary opportunities that had suddenly opened up, I was quite confused. The experiences in West Africa especially were still fresh in my mind. For years the doors to mission services seemed to remain closed and now there appeared to be many doors wide open. Which was the right one?

I was surprised to sense Rosemarie’s excitement about the possibility to go to South Africa. She knew of my fervent desire to return to my home country. In the early years of our marriage it caused a lot of strain when she sensed that I perceived it as a sacrifice to be in Europe. Through my ‘Joseph experience’ during personal devotions the Lord had however thoroughly dealt with my craving after a return to South Africa. Like Joseph who was exiled to Egypt, I was in the meantime prepared to serve the Lord anywhere in the world, quite willing never to return to South Africa if that was the confirmed divine guidance. However, the African continent was still my silent preference.

God continued to work in mysterious ways. Two years later we were already back in Cape Town.

Glossary

Afrikaners: Whites of primarily Dutch descent, whose home language is Afrikaans.

Apartheid: A formal system of racial segregation. Forcefully implemented by the National Party after it came to power in 1948, it entrenched White domination in virtually all sectors of South African life.

Bo-Kaap: The geographical area of the Cape Town City Bowl which borders the lower slopes of Signal Hill. It is sometimes also erroneous referred to by parts of the area, viz the Malay Quarter or Schotse Kloof.

Ds. is the abbreviation of Dominee, who is the minister of an Afrikaans-speaking Reformed congregation.

1 Thus Marthinus Theunissen, a neighbouring farmer of the Moravians at Baviaanskloof/Genadendal would tell one of the missionaries how the colonists regarded the indigenous Khoi and ‘Bushmen’ as game that can be shot down at will.

2 Derived from the Indonesian word mardycka, that denotes free people.

3Both 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).

4 Prior to Magdalena of Baviaanskloof, it is known about a female slave named Marotta who must have had some supernatural encounter with God. Hutton (approximately 1909:65f) narrates how she set apart one day as a Day of Atonement. She was already old when the first Moravian missionaries arrived on St Thomas in 1732. God could have used her to prepare the way among the slaves of the island.

5 The other woman to be baptized received the name Christina.

6 Translation: his faithfulness as teacher… as if he committed himself anew to the Lord.

7 Along with Lovedale in the Eastern Cape, the Genadendal training institution was one of the best in the country for many decades while the normaalskole for Whites were floundering (see Coetzee, Onderwys in Suid-Afrika, 1652-1960, 1975 p. 61f)

8 Only after the (worldwide) Unity Synod of Bethlehem (USA) in 1857, on American urging, the Moravians decided to become a fully-fledged denomination under which American and British ‘Provinces’ came into being, next to the one on the European Continent.

9 Especially in the field of education and church music the influence of the Wessels and Joorst clans were to impact Cape Coloured society throughout much of the 20^th century. Two grandsons of Genadendal-trained Daniel Joorst, Bishop John Ulster and his brother Dan, laid the foundations of Cape choral work from which the famous Eoan Group would evolve.

10Translation: Died in complete rest and peace and in trust in the Lord (Schmidt, Ds Dr Helperus Ritzema van Lier, Genadendalse Drukkery, 1937, p.6)

11 The famous hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ was written by John Newton. Rev. Newton influenced the evangelical parliamentarian William Wilberforce tremendously.

12There seems to be no evidence that the two ever met personally, although Dr G.B.A. Gerdener described Rev. Vos as a ‘boesemvriend’ of Van Lier. This could of course have developed through correspondence. Vos was born and raised at the Cape, and Van Lier is known to have been a keen letter writer.

13Schoeman (The early Mission in South Africa, Protea Boekhuis, Pretoria, 2005 p. 42), quoting Lichtenstein: ‘Vooroordelen tegen zijn afkomst en zijn eigene armoed schijnen hem het eerst op’t idee gebracht te hebben zijn bestaan buiten de limieten der colonie te zoeken.’

14Kapp (Dr John Philip: Die grondlegger van liberalisme in Suid-Afrika, Staatsdrukker, Pretoria, 1985 p.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 very important, even as that of Governor John Caledon also was in a certain way.

15 Translation: It was regarded as not fair that the Khoi would become wiser than them (the White colonists).

16 Marsveld possibly confused the wish of the authorities for missionaries to pacify the Xhosas and other groups on the Eastern border. This was thus another example of the abuse of missionary work in the colonization of parts of Africa.

17 In the case of McKenny fear seems to have been an overriding factor; fafraid of opposition from the minister of the Church of England who had just been appointed to serve the soldiers. With regard to the work among slaves, Somerset feared opposition from the DRC.

18Nelson Mandela as the incoming president in 1994 displayed his sense of historical acumen when his official residence was named Genadendal.

19 The Moravian Bishop Kruger gave the honour of the name-changing to De Mist’s colleague Janssens.

20Paraphrase: The mosque is the church for the Blacks.

21It is not completely clear whether she had been one of the three wives of Coenraad Buis, a rebel against the British and an associate of the Blacks. On his farm in the Langkloof, Buis was quite progressive for his time, teaching his workers reading, writing and the principles of the Christian faith (Krüger, op cit p.105).

22It is interesting that this tribe thus called themselves Afrikaners long before White colonists of Dutch origin called themselves ‘Regte Afrikaners’, from which the Afrikaans language evolved.

23 Morgan later became the minister of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Green Point.

24 An oral tradition dictates that it was also called Kannaladorp from the custom of Cape Muslims to say kanalla (please) in order to get favours from each other.

25The old Moravian-Bohemian Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren) had been the first Protestant church to publish a hymn book, and also the first denomination to bring out a pocket Bible in 1590.

26Just like their male counterparts, Roman Catholic nuns were the real worldwide pioneers. The French nun Ann Marie Javouhey (1779-1851) founded the sisters of St. Joseph, starting with missionary work in 1822. On the Protestant side, Betsy Stockton, a former slave, was the first with a clear calling in this regard, albeit that the directors of the American Mission Board only agreed that she could go abroad as a domestic servant to another couple. (Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, Zondervan, 2004, p. 288.)

27 The Mfecane (Zulu for crushing or scattering), also known by the Sesotho name Difaqane or Lifaqane, was a period of widespread chaos and warfare among indigenous ethnic communities in southern Africa during the period between 1815 to about 1840.

28Trained in Genadendal, their son Johannes Nakin was to become the very first Moravian Black pastor to be ordained.

29The YWCA subsequently moved to its present premises at 20 Bellevue St, Gardens.

30Translation: By 1857 the number of ‘Coloureds’ had become so big that the synod regarded it as advisable to let White and ‘Coloured’ church goers congregate in separate buildings.

31 Literally: De Synode beschouwt het wenselijk en Schriftmatig dat onze lidmaten uit de heidenen, in onze bestaande gemeenten opgenomen en ingeljft worden, overal waar zulks geschieden kan.

32 Literally: zonder onderscheid van kleur of afkomst

33A similar effect has been achieved when the 24-hour prayer watches were revived in the late 1990s. Namibia’s Bennie Mostert and John Mulinde from Uganda were prominent on the African continent. Before that, isolated prayer events in Herrnhut (Germany) in 1993 and at the Moravian Church of District Six on 1 November, 1997 appear to have prepared the movement globally and continentally respectively.

34 We could say that the real border crossing started at His crucifixion. There one of the murderers and the Roman centurion both discovered something of His divine nature. His crucifixion was in another way a double pointer to the Church. The woman who faithfully stood by Him till the very end represented the 'old' Jew and the Roman was the new Gentile believer. In this way the crucified one draws people from different backgrounds and nations.

35The manuscript is accessible at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com

36I have not been able to find out whether Isaac da Costa was related to (or even a descendent?) of one Da Costa to whom Count Zinzendorf had given his cabin on the trip from the Caribbean in the 1730s.

37The supernatural intervention by God in the run-up to the miraculous elections in April 1994 is beautifully described in Cassidy, Michael: A Witness for Ever, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1995.

38The booklet contains chapters from two books, viz. Rees Howells Intercessor by Norman Grubb and ?? by F.J. Huegel

39Gill Johnstone, the first wife of Patrick, finished the children’s version of Operation World during the last days of her life, giving it the title You can change the World.

40Internationally Dr Andrew Murray was the big model, pioneering with writing 31-day or 365-day devotionals.

41In South Africa CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) printed an own version of the Ramadan Muslim Prayer Focus for 2003 with national prayer fuel. The 2008 version was called Light the Darkness. Due to sponsorship via adverts the latter booklet was distributed much more widely. From 2002 Shnat Razon Ministries (Australia) published the Jewish Prayer Focus, preparing material for the annual festive season.

42 Much of God’s intervention in the run-up to the miraculous elections in April 1994 is recorded in Michael Cassidy’s book, A Witness for Ever, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1995.

43The full story of how this occurred can be found in I was like Jonah.

44 The institution, later called Cornerstone Christian College, was started as a parallel Bible school for ‘Coloureds’ to the renowned Bible Institute of South Africa in the White suburb of Kalk Bay.

45They are accessible at my autobiographical manuscripts, e.g. I was like Jonah at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com

46 From May 1521 until March 1522, Martin Luther stayed at the Wartburg castle, after he had been taken there for his safety at the request of Frederick, the Wise, following his ex-communication by Pope Leo X and his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms. It was during this period that Luther, under the pseudonym Junker Jörg (the Knight Jörg), translated the ‘New Testament’ into German.

47I changed the latter title subsequently to Forerunners and ‘Successors’ of Islam in Heretical Christianity and yet later to The Roots of Islam. We finally printed a limited number of copies as The Spiritual Parents of Islam, which can now be accessed at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com

48 The building belonged to the premises at which the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) started, being thus the cradle of all missionary work from South Africa.

49 Some of the insensitivities are listed in Gerrie Lubbe’s article Wit Afrikane en Afrika se ander godsdienste in

Wit Afrikane?, an anthology to commemorate Professor Nico Smiths’s 70^th birthday, p. 60.

50 Before her however, quite a few other people of colour had served overseas as church workers. Furthermore, others served the Lord in missionary work and evangelism while they were studying in other countries. In fact, Rev. Tiya Soga was already studying in Scotland in the mid-1850s.

51The building of the former ‘Coloured’ Gestig had been ‘saved’ by Dr Frank R. Barlow, a Jewish academic. Barlow had a keen sense of history. The Sendingkerk congregation had to move because of apartheid, and thereafter the former church was turned into a museum.

52An arrangement was made to that effect after the original Vineyard Church denomination of John Wimber started to have congregations at the Cape.

53We yearned to be part again of a congregation that has the unity of the Body of Christ as a priority, where mutual close fellowship on more than only one day of the week is a reality along with at least some evangelical outreach. This had been partially realized during our time in Zeist, Holland, where we had real fellowship with local believers from different denominational backgrounds as we ministered together with the Goed Nieuws Karavaan initiative from 1982-1991. )

54 Personally I would have preferred a more central venue but I compromised, not wanting to wreck the initiative because of a peripheral matter. The course was subsequently repeated annually.

55I had been declining nomination for election to the triennial WEC national field committee because I felt that one delegate for the Western Cape was sufficient. When our colleague Shirley Charlton went into retirement, I felt duty-bound to accept nomination and election. This required the occasional travelling to Durban and Johannesburg for the committee meetings.

56 Later we discovered that other people had experienced similar dreams.

57 This had been a parsonage in the hey-day of District Six and the venue of the temporarily displaced theological seminary where I studied from 1971 to 1973.

58 Dave Savage later became a pastor in the Full Gospel Church and still later he became the Principal of Chaldo Bible School, the theological institution in Wynberg-Wittebome for ‘Coloureds’ of the denomination.

59A fuller version can be accessed at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com, e.g. I was like Jonah.

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

61In 2001 the MRA movement changed its name to Initiatives of Change.

62I was given special permission to travel with my wife and son in an overnight train compartment usually reserved ‘for Whites only’ and given VIP treatment through a cabinet decision as we understood, during the journey from Cape Town to Johannesburg in November 1978.

63 The title alludes to one of the Beatitudes. In Afrikaans Geregtigheid has two meanings, viz. righteousness and justice.

64 The other two, Sonder my kan julle niks doen nie and As God die Huis nie bou nie did not get much further than the collating and commenting stage of the respective documents.

65 These efforts are described in more detail in Jumping over Walls.

66 Secondary school learners at many schools had decided that they did not want the celebration of the birthday of the Republic which was normally celebrated on 31 May. The director of ‘Coloured’ education had given a strong warning if anybody was found on school premises on June 1.

67 I am aware of other efforts like that of Nelson Mandela from prison, of Mr Rosenthal, a lawyer who was financed by the Swiss government and Mr van Zyl Slabbert and his IDASA, apart from a few others that became known in the 1990s, but I still maintain that prayer was the main catalyst for change.