Mysterious Ways of God April 2020
-
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 20th
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
17th
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 15th
to 18th
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 19th
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 6th 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 4th
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 20th
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 20th
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 20th
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
20th 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 20th 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 11th
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 20th
Century
In
this chapter we highlight the special contribution of a few
individuals towards the end of the 20th
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 20th
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-19th
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 70th
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 10th
and 40th
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 9th
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 9th
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 6th
to the 15th
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 30th
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,
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Albert A. – Andrew
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Reginald G, An
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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]
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Richard & Davenport, Rodney -
Christianity in South Africa,
David Philip, Cape Town, 1997
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G.B.A. - Two
Centuries of Grace,
S.C. A. of South Africa., Stellenbosch, 1937
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Recent
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L. - Die
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Louis – The
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Cape Town, 1941
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J.W. and.Pillay Gerald J, A History of
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Krüger,
Bernhard - The
Pear Tree Blossoms,
Rhodes University (Ph.D. Thesis) Grahamstown, 1969
Müller,
P. Karl – Georg
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Verlag
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Karel - The
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Robert Ch. - Children
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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 16th
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 16th
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 16th
of June 1976 made even more of an activist out of me as I feared an
escalation of violence that could lead to a bloodbath in my beloved
South Africa.
I
saw it as my moral responsibility to continue working towards a
non-racial set-up in South Africa, using non-violent means. I
attempted to start a ‘Peaceful Front' to change the racist
structures of our country. I wrote letters in all directions. But
support was not forthcoming. The brutal government repression of the
peaceful protest of the students was to all and sundry the proof that
the days for boycotts and the likes were over. My compatriots
overseas felt that the government in our home country could only be
toppled through the barrel of the gun. All bar one of those whom I
approached had given up on the option of peaceful transition to
change in South Africa. Our friend Rachel Balie, who was studying in
Berlin, was the only one of our circle of countrymen and -women who
were still supporting the idea of non-violent change.
The
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.)
y
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 20th 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
70th 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.
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.