Kwa Thema

When you hear the word, Township’ associated with South Africa images of poverty and danger can easily come to mind. Laura and I have already experienced so much more during our visits to Langa and Guguletho in Cape Town and Soweto in Johannesburg. We have found communities of people coping with need, hopeful, grateful for gains that have been made, feeling some impatience for improvements promised but not-yet-delivered, caring for one another, finding ways to be industrious. They can be vibrant; with markets In Soweto we discovered that townships are not only places of extreme poverty, but can be communities of mixed economic levels and standards of housing. Now in Kwa Thema we have discovered how the Township may also be a place of rich spirit.

We found our way to Plain Field Methodist Church (where Trevor Hudson serves) in Benoni, a West-side suburb of Johannesburg where we met Rev. Phidian (Smadz) Matsepe. Smadz led us from there through the busy streets of the suburb to the equally busy streets of the Township to Kwa Thema Central Methodist Church, where we met Zolela (Zoli) Ngewabe, who be our host for the weekend. We discovered later that Zoli is a medical doctor and is the chief administrator of a government hospital. She lives with her daughters, son, and several grandchildren in nearby Sharon Park. Zoli loves to exercise her gift of hospitality. Before we left her house to return to the college, we had experienced such a range of activity: we had become friends with her family, including her sister, Thembakazi (Thembi); we were taken to eat with a group of leaders from the church; we enjoyed recreation together with her family; and we were served an authentic African dinner.

While Laura and Zoli went to shop at a few markets for Sunday’s dinner items, I had an opportunity to spend time with Smadz. Over breakfast, he had shared the story about his experiences of activism, imprisonment, and faith during the struggle against Apartheid. During our time together he expanded to discuss his ministry and dream for the church. Smadz has a two-fold quest. First, he wants his church to be relevant to the emerging needs and expectations of young people. He expects the church to grow, so he and other leaders of the church are making ground-breaking changes – introducing contemporary worship, emphasizing youth ministry and planning for building programs in the near future. Expecting continued growth, he hopes that Kwa Thema Central will become a model for the rest of The Methodist Church in South Africa, especially Black churches.

Smadz’s second quest is that mission will be central to the church’s character. They are already shining in this respect. He talked about ministries that are already in place: meals for school children; food for indigents; ministry to child-led families. The latter is emphasized by the church’s youth minister, responding to an urgent need: the AIDS pandemic has resulted in a very large number of families left with no adults. The oldest children of a family are left to care for themselves and the little ones, a desperate situation which can leave the children with few options to climb out of poverty in the future. The church is striving to intervene with a ministry of hope and substance to give them better care today and a future with brighter options.

Sunday’s worship revealed the life of this congregation. For an hour this congregation of many young families and youth, a youthful praise band/choir, and people of all ages, some who had come from throughout the Township and beyond sang in indigenous languages, danced and whooped in praise, prayed and gave testimony. I had been advised that if I preached any less than 30 minutes, the congregation would be disappointed: that came after the first hour of worship. I was able not to be a disappointment. Then there were announcements and celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries: including Laura’s and mine.

Worship is the heart of the congregation. Smadz told me, he so looks forward to Sunday. To be with the people, praise and worship together, to spend time as God’s sacred community of brothers and sisters together is real blessing. The church proved him right. The mission to change the world by the power of Christ through their faith, as well as the endeavor to be the church for the people who are not yet there are given life through the rhythm of their praise.

They know about God’s love: they practice it. And they share it: they said as much when they waved their greeting to their Northville: First United Methodist brothers and sisters in Christ through the lens of our camera. They are a people of God’s love; and having been with them, I know that Laura and I have been to the heart of Africa.

Experiencing Africa

It’s been nearly two weeks since we’ve had Internet access to be al to post an entry. We have seen and experienced so much. I wonder if I can capture the essence of this pilgrimage of the last two-and-a-half weeks through the words of a blog which would be brief enough to hold the interest.

I remember the sky of the Northern Hemisphere on a clear night with the constellations clearly defined: Ursa Major and Ursa Minor with Draco winding in-between; Cassiopeia and Orion and Polaris, the North Star, to guide me. All so familiar. Looking up to the night sky as I did in Kruger Park last week, it seems as though someone took a big spoon and stirred the heavens, stars coming to rest in all strange, yet beautiful arrangement. We have had little difficulty communicating, yet we hear the music of several different languages at once. Now at John Wesley College, we discovered today that the students, when engaged in informal chat, will speak in one mother tongue and hear a response in another’s. Within a group discussion Zulu, Tswana, Xhosa, and Shona may all be used at once, with a little English or Afrikaans mixed in. This, indeed, has been a considerable step into a new world.

And it is a beautiful world. Look at the photographs and you can glimpse what it and you can glimpse what it is like to stand atop the Knysna Heads and see the Indian Ocean pound at mountainous shores that reach their fingers back into the sea. You can almost sense the lush green sugar cane caress the sky along the winding roads of KwaZulu Natal. The sudden speed of the leopard seems to promise a leap from photograph to your lap (yet you’d better hope it doesn’t). The depths of Blyde River Canyon reach up to embrace you. The frenzied dance of the Zulu and the Gospel song of the Pilgrims’ Rest cooks are difficult to record in two dimensions. Rush hour in Johannesburg notwithstanding, the people here are a hopeful, beautiful, struggling, hurting, persevering lot.

I love my homeland; and I have seen God’s hand in another. We are among those who were strangers, many of whom have become friends and, as brothers and sisters in the one Body of Christ, family. I have discovered that we in America have a stake in Soweto. This has impressed upon me how I also have a stake in the Detroit City neighborhood and what happens to a family in Baghdad. As strange as the night sky is in another part of the world, we are bound together; we cannot escape it; it is God’s given.

We've now been driving back and forth from Pretoria to Jo'Burg, and negotiating the traffic through rush hour. The day before yesterday we went to Soweto for a tour. Interesting, and after our interactive tour of the Cape Town townships which were all "informal hosing" - intense poverty, Soweto was surprising. Much of it is developed and some is even up-scale property. There are some informal sections, but not like Guguletho or Langa and many others we've seen on town outskirts through the country. Langa and Guguletho are startling and go on and on as far as you can see. Soweto is especially important for its history as one of the centers of resistance and sites of violent confrontation and suppression in the resistance to apartheid. Yesterday we went back in that direction on our own and toured the Apartheid Museum. It was very sobering, comprehensively marking the whole 350 year history that led up to the severe oppression and segregation, and the events that led to the establishment of democracy. Today I led a class in the seminary after Laura and I accompanied some of the seminarians to their introduction to pastoral care in a hospital setting at Pretoria University Hospital. Tomorrow I will preach during morning chapel, and then we will go to Central Methodist Church to visit an AIDS ministry. Friday we will join Rev. Phidian Matsepe to stay with his family in Kwa Thema Township and will preach at his church on Sunday. Phidian was a prominent leader in the struggle against apartheid, and we expect to learn much from him as well as from our stay in his community.

I will look at the sky again tonight. It will still be new and strange, yet becoming to my eye more familiar and ordered. With someone’s help, I may even find out will look at the sky again tonight. It will still be new and strange, yet becoming to my eye more familiar and ordered. With someone’s help, I may even find the Southern Cross and know all the more that though America is my home, I am also connected to Africa.

To the Center and Out

Laura and I have discovered how cyber-spoiled we have been. Almost two weeks at a Cape Town hotel that had excellent, albeit expensive, wireless Internet access, and all of a sudden we have had several days without workable coverage, at all. I’m writing this “in reserve” and will post it as soon as I can.

Today was a beautiful day. We left Cape Town after two weeks, and discovered we were leaving some friends behind who are certain to be of the life-long variety. In particular, Mark and Arlene Stephenson have vowed to keep in touch with us; and Mark was already figuring out how he could find a way to visit Laura and me as well as the church. Mark is a fourth-generation Methodist minister who leads a courageous ministry in the inner city of Cape Town. He has developed a way to provide jobs for the poor in a printing venture called Salty Print. Mark was the one who made most certain that Laura and I were getting along well while in Cape Town, and we had a few occasions to share quality time together.

Back when we visited Salty Print, Mark and I were already discussing his mission and comparing notes with Northville missions and the needs of Greater Detroit when Tami (pronounced Tommy) stopped in to ask if we wanted tea. While she was in the room, Mark asked her to go to a huge world map on the wall and point to the wall and point to the place where she lives. She walked up to the map and pointed to Cape Town. Then he asked me to do the same for Tami. She smiled as I traced my finger from Cape Town along the general route of our flight and finally stopped west of Detroit. Mark noted that at this moment there was a new connection made in the world between Detroit and Cape Town.

He likes to emphasize that point. Laura and I attended his church, a wonderful little congregation located nearby. He delighted in asking Laura and me describe our congregation and setting for ministry, and explain why we were in South Africa. He seized the moment to drive home the significance of the global ties we have, that when we are in ministry, anywhere in the world, we are connected together in a powerful mission of God: participating in global redemption.

Global friends. Global ministry. Global God.

This outward journey is also inward. We did some research and found there is a Reconciliation Labyrinth at the Slingkop Lighthouse at Kommetjie, along the Southwest Coast of Cape Peninsula. Not only did we find the lighthouse, but we located the designer: Clare Wilson, whose husband Rory had recently retired as the managing editor of the English-speaking newspapers in Cape Town, and had been Managing Editor of the Soweto Newspaper during the turbulent ‘80’s, when that township had been one of the centers of resistance to apartheid. They invited us to their home and carried on a conversation over tea before taking us to the labyrinth.

Clare explained that, for her, the labyrinth is a tool. It is a way a person can connect with that which is going on within, connect with the universe, connect with God. She talked about how, in South Africa, there is still a disconnect between people. Most Whites have never been to a township and, unless they have kids in school where they are apt to meet parents who live in townships, they may never cross paths. Without meeting, people who are intended to live in community with each other will never know each other; they will never understand; the relationships between Black and White may never heal. She said, “We have to have meeting places.”

The Reconciliation Labyrinth is a meeting place. She designed it so there are two entrances; and when at least two people use it they will walk along the course for a ways in a very personal experience. They have opportunity to visit their personal center. Yet, at some point their paths will cross. They will meet each other; and the experience also becomes communal. Then, each walks where the other has walked. Their paths, now, become common as well as private. Each continues along the course until they could reach one another in the center. It isn’t rigged, though; even entering the center of the labyrinth is a decision that the walker makes. In either case, there is one way from the labyrinth out into the world.

Global connections, lasting friendships bound in the Spirit of Christ, excursions to the inner self, meeting places where there is healing and new community given birth because of people awakening to say, “I am beginning to know you beginning to know me:” these all bear the mark of the reconciling work of God. They are ingredients to Beloved Community.

Umntu, umgumntu, ngabantu: “A person is a person through other people.” God made us for each other – to the center and out.