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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have added their voices to the chorus denouncing Zimbabwe’s decent into anarchy as Robert Mugabe seeks to maintain his hold on power.

On April 24, Dr. Rowan Williams and Dr. John Sentamu released a joint statement warning that unless the international community takes action, the “continuing political violence and drift could unleash spiraling communal violence.”

Nobel laureate and former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu warned “Zimbabwe is staring into the abyss. Violence is growing and the people are suffering greatly as a result. It is now vital that we all do what we can to calm the situation.”

He backed the call of the present Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe. “It is obvious that supplying large quantities of arms at this stage would risk escalating the violence, perhaps resulting in the large-scale loss of life,” he said on April 24.

The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane joined his Roman Catholic counterpart Archbishop Philip Wilson and other church leaders in releasing a statement of “deep concern over the deteriorating political, security, economic and human rights situation in Zimbabwe.” If “nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be witnessing atrocities similar to that experienced in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi,” they warned.

Drs Williams and Sentamu also voiced concern over the state sanctioned violence unleashed against the people of Zimbabwe. “Faithful men, women and young people who seek better governance in either political or church affairs continue to be beaten, intimidated or oppressed,” they said.

“Churches across England have been praying for Zimbabwe before, during and after the polls,” the English archbishops said. They urged all Christians to pray for the peace of Zimbabwe, adding “we must work to build a civil society movement that both creates political will and gives voice to those who demand an end to the mayhem that grows out of injustice, poverty, exclusion and violence.”

Nobel laureate and former leader of the Church in South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tut, has been tapped by the Marylebone Cricket Club to give this year’s “Spirit of Cricket” Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s on June 10.

Archbishop Tutu will be the first non-player speaker in the lecture series, which was inaugurated in 2001 in memory of Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge.

Lord Cowdrey and Ted Dexter, two former MCC presidents and ex-England captains, were instrumental in having the “Spirit of Cricket” included as the Preamble to the 2000 Code of the Laws of Cricket.

“Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this Spirit causes injury to the game itself,” the Preamble states. It also delineates the roles and responsibilities of captains, players and umpires in respecting and upholding the Spirit of Cricket.

An avid cricketing enthusiast, Archbishop Tutu was chosen by the MCC to speak on sportsmanship and fair play.

Archbishop Tutu “is revered around the world as a moral voice and someone who speaks with gravitas on a range of issues,” Keith Bradshaw, the MCC’s secretary, said. “He’s an inspirational man who has spent a lifetime speaking out for truth and justice and I am sure that his views on the game - and the Spirit of Cricket in particular - will be hugely interesting to cricket followers around the world.”

Approximately 500 guests, members of the MCC and noted figures from the cricket world, will gather in the Nursery Pavilion at Lord’s to hear the lecture.

The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe has called upon the Anglican Communion to mark this Sunday, April 27, as a day of prayer for the strife-torn Central African nation.

Meanwhile, The Archbishop of Cape Town has called upon the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo upon Zimbabwe.

In a statement released on April 22, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba also criticized the foreign policy strategy of President Thabo Mkeki, saying the South African leader’s efforts were failing the people of Zimbabwe.

The Chancellor of the Diocese of Harare, and Vice-Chancellor of the Province of Central Africa, Robert Stumbles, said a “desperate cry from the hearts of Zimbabwe screams across the world.”

The Church called upon all Christians to pray and reflect “on the critical situation in Zimbabwe, a nation in dire distress and teetering on the brink of human disaster.”

“Let the cry for help touch your heart and mind,” the statement said, urging “everyone anxious to rescue Zimbabwe from violence, the concealing and juggling of election results, deceit, oppression and corruption” to pray for “righteousness, joy, peace, compassion, honesty, justice, democracy and freedom from fear and want.”

On April 22 the leaders of all of Zimbabwe’s main Christian churches released a statement condemning the growing anarchy and violence within the country in the wake of the March 29 General Elections.

“We warn the world that if nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be witnessing genocide similar to that experienced in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and other hot spots in Africa and elsewhere,” the leaders of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches said.

“We appeal to the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the UN to work towards arresting the deteriorating political and security situation in Zimbabwe,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, a South African court has granted the Bishop of Natal and a church group an emergency order banning the transshipment of Chinese weapons from the port of Durban to Zimbabwe.

On April 18 lawyers for Bishop Rubin Phillip and Patrick Kearney, executive director of the Diakonia Council of Churches, presented a petition to Durban High Court Judge Kate Pillay asking her to bar the shipment of Chinese weapons destined for the Zimbabwe security forces.

According to the bill of lading for the Chinese flagged freighter An Yue Jiang,the cargo destined for Zimbabwe’s security forces included three million rounds of 7.62mm bullets - the calibre used in AK47 assault rifles and 69 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with munitions.

The new archbishop’s statements on Zimbabwe mark a new era in church-state relations in South Africa, with a new generation coming to fore with less ties to the African National Congress (ANC). While former Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane would challenge the ANC government’s health and development polices, critics charged he backed the government’s hands off policies toward the Mugabe regime.

“The plight of the people of Zimbabwe is heart-breaking,” Archbishop Makgoba said. “Already bruised, broken and crushed by oppression and economic hardship before the elections, they are now even more divided, despondent and, in many cases, hopeless than they were before.”

Church leaders have urged the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) to press Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe to abide by the results of the March 29 general elections. However, democracy activists fear little of substance will come from the April 12-13 emergency summit in Zambia.

Anglican bishops from nine African countries meeting in Pretoria on April 11 released a statement urging the SADC to “prevail upon” President Mugabe to honor the rule of law, AFP reported. “We are concerned that this situation has given rise to rumour and uncertainty which are bound to fuel despondency, tension and social upheaval,” the bishops said

The urged the SADC heads of state to intensify the diplomatic efforts led by South African President Thabo Mbeki to end the stalemate and urged the UN and African Union to send envoys to Harare.

On Friday, World Council of Churches general secretary Dr. Samuel Kobia stated it was “the sovereign right of the people of Zimbabwe to choose their leaders, define the future of their country and insist upon a peaceful transition.”

Writing to the President of Zambia Levy Mwanawasa on April 11, Dr. Kobia thanked him for convening the emergency summit to “address the growing political crisis paralysing life and safety in Zimbabwe.”

The World Council of Churches believes “this [meeting] will help to peacefully resolve the current political impasse.”

However, Moeletsi Mbeki, a political economist and the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, said he expected little to be accomplished.

“SADC has given ZANU-PF [Zimbabwe's ruling party] comfort to do what it is doing,” he told the IRIN news agency last week.

Zimbabwe’s MDC opposition party was a threat not only to Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party but to South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), Angola’s MPLA government and other SADC governments as it was democratic movement while most SADC governments were “nationalist parties, created by black elites during the colonial era, who saw themselves as colonial equals. They see themselves as superior to the black masses.”

The summit was most likely called by the SADC governments as a result of international pressure, not in reaction to the Zimbabwe political crisis, he noted.

The call issued by the weekend meeting for South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue his mediation efforts was challenged by Zimbabwean democracy activists. “For the SADC to have mandated President Mbeki to continue with the (facilitation) exercise, that is the joke of the year,” said Wellington Chibebe of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions on April 14.

Irene Petras of Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights told the South African Press Association that President Mbeki’s insistence that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe revealed a “measure of dishonesty.”

“There is a constitutional crisis; there is no parliament that can pass any laws, we have a caretaker president who cannot act with any legitimate powers, we have an election process which is in disarray,” she said, adding that “there is no separation of power and the rule of law is under attack especially through the use of political violence.”

“I think any reasonable person would see there is a crisis which should be addressed in an honest manner, and it needs to be addressed urgently,” Ms. Petras said.

The political, social and economic transformation of South Africa is under threat from crime and moral corruption, the Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa have warned.

In an Easter Pastoral letter released after the March 31-April 2 meeting of the House of Bishops in Cape Town the Bishops said the “social trends” confronting Southern Africa were “distressing” and must be met by the moral regeneration of society.

The Bishops also affirmed their intention to attend the forthcoming Lambeth Conference, chiding those African Anglicans who will absent themselves from the gathering of approximately 600 of the Communion’s roughly 900 bishops at the University of Kent in Canterbury this June.

During their time together, the Southern Africa bishops reflected on the Easter season scripture readings.  “We have been reminded again of the worship, the compassion and the responsible lifestyle of the early Christians when they came to care for their neighbours and act generously with land and property. Their celebrations always reflected the face of God into the cultures and contexts in which they were living,” they said.

And it was in this “spirit” they greeted “fellow Anglicans across Africa and wish them well as we prepare for the Lambeth gathering of Bishops in England this year. We do so with confidence in the presence of the living God who will help and envision us as we gather,” they said, writing in distinction to recent statements by the Nigerian Church that have questioned the wisdom of holding a Lambeth Conference at this time.

Southern Africa’s deteriorating social and economic conditions, however, were the central concern of the bishops’ letter.  “We are especially disturbed that the miracles of political transformation in southern Africa, which gave such hope of a safe and prosperous environment for women, children and refugees to live in, are being undermined.”

“Teen pregnancy and abortion, drug abuse and crime, violence in schools and child trafficking, racism and xenophobia on the part of citizens and of the forces of law and order, all perturb us as they do our neighbours,” the bishops said.

They urged the Anglicans of Southern Africa to adopt a communitarian approach to the social and economic inequalities besetting the region and to “renew the compassionate spirit of our church in its outreach to our neighbours in need.”

The bishops also had sharp words for the region’s governments, which were “delivering services to their people which are at best, patchy and inadequate. The humanity of widows, children and refugees deserves better,” they said.

Archbishop Makgoba at St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town: Photo James Rosenthal/ACNS

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba was installed as the 12th Archbishop and Metropolitan of the South African Church on March 30, at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu blessed the new archbishop as he was seated on his cathedra and joined former Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the archbishops of the Congo, Tanzania and the Indian Ocean in welcoming the 48 year old to the ranks of the church’s primates.

South African President Thabo Mbeki told the new archbishop the government would work closely with the Church to address the country’s social and economic ills. “Ahead of all of us as a nation is a long and arduous journey as we strive to achieve the goal of a better life for all our people,” said Mbeki.

The government was confident the new archbishop was a “fellow worker,” seeking the betterment of society and was confident he would be a worthy successor to his predecessors. “We are happy to recall the eminent contribution made by leaders of the Anglican Church” President Mbekis said, “and the church as a whole in the struggle to liberate our people from the apartheid crime against humanity.”

In his address to the congregation, Archbishpo Makgoba called on South Africans of all faiths to bring healing “wherever old divisions of the past or new inequalities of the present rear their heads - whether of race, or wealth, or status, or power; whether in politics, or sport, or on university campuses.”

A member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Conference Design Group, Archbishop Makgoba urged his fellow African church leaders to attend the gathering of bishops this July.

“It is my earnest prayer that our time together will rekindle this same life-giving spirit and bring a renewed confidence in Christ and his Spirit of reconciliation and renewal. I share my predecessors’ yearning to breathe peace, healing and wholeness into the painful divisions of our beloved Anglican Communion. I will never tire of pointing out, as our own diverse Synod of Bishops has affirmed, that those fundamentals of faith that unite us far outweigh all that divides us. Perhaps the Communion needs to know Christ’s breath in our own locked and fear-filled rooms,” he said.

The Diocese of Cape Town has suspended for three years one of its senior priests following his conviction for fraud by a civil court.The Rev. Matthew Esau, the Anglican Church’s “transformation officer” and press spokesman for Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane pled guilty on Dec 13 to embezzling £35,000. During the apartheid era, Fr. Esau served as personal assistant and chaplain to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Fr. Esau admitted stealing the money from the Career Research and Information Centre (CRIC), a now defunct Cape Town NGO that provided job training for disadvantaged youths where he served as chief executive officer.

The terms of the guilty plea require Fr. Esau to make restitution of R100,000 and perform community service at St George’s Cathedral’s soup kitchen. The court also sentenced Fr. Esau to five years’ imprisonment, conditionally suspended.

A statement from the Anglican Church’s Diocesan Tribunal last week ruled that “Father Esau is to be suspended for three years from the ministry.”

The Diocese of Niassa is providing emergency assistance to villagers in the Zambezi River valley after spring floods in Northern Mozambique forced 170,000 people from their homes and left 20 dead.

The USPG reports that its mission companion, the Rt. Rev. Mark van Koevering, Bishop of Niassa and the diocese have been distributing mosquito netting, plastic tarpaulins to provide shelter, water purification tablets, and clothing to those displaced by the floods.

“We wanted to show that our church cared,” the Bishop said. “We had planned to help just 200 families, but with hard work and careful budgeting, many more than this have been assisted.”

Bishop van Koevering stated that one priest, Padre Albano—who has founded 16 churches in the past two years—lost his home to the flood, despite being 200 metres from the river. The village well was also destroyed as the polluted flood waters collapsed its walls

“Padre Albano’s request is for prayer, for his congregations and the communities of the Shire area of Zambezia, as well as for himself and his family. Please do pray,” the bishop wrote.

The 2,574 km-long Zambezi, Africa’s fourth largest river, flows through Zambia, Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, where it enters the sea. The river has flooded its banks four of the last seven years, prompting the Mozambican government to urge villagers to move to higher ground.

However, the Zambezi flood plain provides the livelihood for the peasant farmers of the region. New planned government villages above the flood plain are on land less fertile, and require greater labor and more land to support the villagers.

“We can’t encourage people to move to higher ground if you don’t offer an economic alternative,” said Chris McIvor, country director for Save the Children UK told the UN’s IRIN news service.

In November Save the Children UK organised agricultural giving farmers vouchers to purchase £8 of seeds and tools from local merchants. However, the new floods have destroyed the newly planted crops. The NGO said it would be encouraging displaced farmers to take up new trades—fishing, carpentry, craft making—so that the local economy would not be held at the mercy of the river.

The Church of England Newspaper.

The Bishop of Swaziland has denounced his nation’s new constitutional government as a “fig leaf” that cloaks the continued rule of King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) led by Bishop Meshack Mabuza charged that “very little” had changed with the granting of constitutional liberties to the kingdom.

Swaziland had been ruled by royal decree since a state of emergency was declared in 1973 by King Sobhuza II.  King Mswati, who ascended the throne in 1986, has been criticized for his lavish spending, including a collection of exotic sports cars and an assortment of palaces that house his 13 wives when over 70 percent of the population live in rural poverty.

Unemployment stands at 40 percent of the workforce, while the rate of life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world at 33 years of age.  Approximately 33.4 percent of the population has HIV/AIDs, giving it the highest national rate of infection in the world.

On Feb 6, 2006 a new constitution went into effect granting parliamentary government. However, it forbad candidates from forming political parties, effectively giving the King the sole authority to appointment ministers and squelching organized dissent.

The new constitution was being used by royalists as a “fig-leaf to cover the international shame of 33 years of rule by decree” by the King, Bishop Mabuza charged.  It was a “piece of paper that is not being promoted or even defended by the government,” he said, and its guarantees of the rule of law had been ignored.

“This year has seen defenceless suspects killed by the police, public meetings broken up or prevented from happening, union members harassed, property taken without due court processes, newspaper editors intimidated, journalists threatened by government. The people of Swaziland are in the dark about the constitution and their rights and the government seems more than happy to keep them that way,” Bishop Mabuza said.

The Swazi people were no longer “subjects” of the King, but “citizens” of a constitutional democracy, the bishop said.  “The difference is profound” he noted as “citizens cede their power to politicians and then call them to account for their stewardship. Subjects do as they are told.”

He denounced the royalist and traditionalist cliques governing the kingdom and urged “the democrats in government reach out, respect diversity of opinion and pluralism, embrace civil society and work with us in partnership. The present system has failed and can only continue to do so. Talk to us, we are listening,” he said.

The USPG’s Canon Edgar Ruddock, director of its International Relations Team which has supported the work of the diocese, applauded the bishop’s stand for democracy saying it was a fine example of “the holistic mission that defines the Anglican Communion at its best.”

The Church in Swaziland was “taking a firm stand for justice in society, and rooting it in the prayer and worship of the church. The gospel of God’s loving justice is shaping people’s lives, and is beginning to make the difference,” Canon Ruddock said.

Religious leaders in South Africa have voiced mixed responses to the election of Jacob Zuma as leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC) party on Dec 18.

Nobel laureate and former Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu had urged the ANC to reject Zuma’s candidacy, while independent church leaders have applauded his election.

Archbishop Goodman Khanyase, leader of African Independent Church the Foundation of the Apostles Congregational Church, said South Africa had been the winner in the ANC leadership race.

“He is a patient leader who cares about others,” Archbishop Khanyase told the ANC party conference in Polokwane after the election. In March, Archbishop Khanyase ordained Zuma as a minister of his church.

“We anointed him after realising that he had remarkable leadership qualities… South Africans must consider themselves blessed that Zuma is now about to be elected ANC president and become the country’s president in 2009,” he said, according to a report published by South Africa’s Independent newspaper.

However Archbishop Tutu had urged the ANC to reject Zuma, saying South Africa would be ashamed to have him as their leader, while outgoing Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane had urged the ANC to elect a man of moral “excellence” to lead the party and country.

Last year prosecutors dropped rape charges filed against Zuma citing a lack of evidence. He is currently being investigated on corruption charges and was forced from office as vice president in 2005 by President Thabo Mbeki following allegations he received kickbacks from arms dealers.

“We’re very worried that this leader had relations with a woman who regarded him as a parent,” Archbishop Tutu told the Mail & Guardian, in an apparent reference to the rape trial.

Last year Archbishop Tutu called upon Zuma to withdraw from the party leadership race. “I pray that someone will be able to counsel him that the most dignified, most selfless thing, the best thing he could do for a land he loves deeply is to declare his decision not to take further part in the succession race of his party,” he said at the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture in Cape Town.

Tutu also said Zuma did nothing to rebuke ANC activists who demonstrated outside the Johannesburg High Court every day of his rape trial, vilifying the accuser and threatening her life.

“I for one would not be able to hold my head high if a person with such supporters were to become my president, someone who did not think it necessary to apologise for

A leading priest of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa has been convicted by a Cape Town court of stealing £35,000 from a charity helping disadvantaged youths.

The Rev. Matthew Esau, the Anglican Church’s “transformation officer” and sometime spokesman for Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane pled guilty on Dec 13 to embezzling R460,957.

A high flyer in the South African Church, Fr. Esau had been the personal assistant and chaplain to Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the struggle against the apartheid regime.

In recent years he has served in parish and staff positions in Cape Town and in 2005 accompanied Archbishop Ndungane on the South African Council of Churches fact finding mission to Zimbabwe. In October he served as the Church’s press liaison for the election of the new primate, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.

Active in a number of church and civic society organizations, he is an Honorary Fellow of the Guild of Church Musicians and in 1999 was appointed by the government to the Board of the National Development Agency.

Fr. Esau admitted stealing the money from the Career Research and Information Centre (CRIC), a now defunct Cape Town NGO where he served as chief executive officer.

The terms of the guilty plea require Fr. Esau to make restitution of R100,000 and perform community service at St George’s Cathedral’s soup kitchen. The court also sentenced Fr. Esau to five years’ imprisonment, conditionally suspended.

The former Archbishops of Cape Town has urged the African National Congress (ANC) to elect a leader of integrity at its party conference next week.

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane urged the ANC to look at “people who have a track record, not of serving themselves and their closest associates, but of serving the country especially those people who are least able to help themselves. That’s a mark of true leadership.”

“You may choose anybody you like,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu told Reuters, “but don’t choose somebody of whom most of us would be ashamed.”

The fight for control over the ANC has pitted the country’s current president Thabo Mbeki against former deputy party president Jacob Zuma. Holding the support of South Africa’s trade unions, Zuma is expected to clinch the post, and is likely to be the country’s next president after President Mbeki steps down in 2009.

The alliance between the two party leaders ended in 2005 after Mbeki sacked Zuma after he was implicated in a corruption scandal—a charge Zuma supporters say was fabricated by Mbeki loyalists.

The split has divided the ANC and slowed government progress on the battles against corruption, crime and the HIV/AIDs pandemic.

Archbishop Ndungane urged the electors “to use their votes wisely - not only voting with their hearts, but voting with their minds, with their souls.”

“I exhort them to vote for leaders who are not afraid to pursue perfection and strive to grasp for excellence - in political, economic, social and moral spheres,” the former South African primate said. “We must dare to demand excellence in our leaders. Only the very best is good enough.”

If he loses the party vote, President Mbeki said he would not rule out calling an early election. However, he rejected suggestions that he could be a lame duck president, saying the ANC’s policies would remain in place.

“Whoever is in government would have to implement ANC policies and that is what would happen,” he said.

“I believe these policies remain correct, so it is critically important that, at all times, as members of the ANC, we defend these policy positions and don’t get them compromised … by leadership contests in the ANC,” the president said.

(Photo: The Rev. Willie Akena, Diocese of Northern Uganda)

An Anglican priest who lost his hands and an eye in a terror attack by the former South African apartheid regime travelled to Northern Uganda last month to meet with victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The Rev. Michael Lapsley, the director of the Institute for Healing Memories in Cape Town, met with mutilated victims of the LRA as well refugees from the fighting that has ravaged Northern Uganda for the past two decades.

“We have something horrible in common that changed our lives,” he told a group of amputees. In its civil war with the Ugandan government, the LRA has terrorized villages with a campaign of destruction and murder that includes amputating the hands, feet or lips of perceived enemies.

In a talk to the Mother’s Union of the Diocese of Northern Uganda, Fr. Lapsley recounted his struggle to forgive those who had crippled him, urging them to put aside their hatred also and give their lives over to Christ and be healed.

A native of New Zealand, Fr. Lapsley trained for the ministry in Australia and went out to South Africa in 1973 to serve as a university chaplain. In 1976 the government refused to renew his visa due to his political activities. He left South Africa for Lesotho and then Zimbabwe, serving as a chaplain for the African National Congress (ANC).

In April 1990 a letter bomb disguised in the pages of a religious magazine posted from South Africa blew off his hands and blinded him in one eye.

On Nov 14 at a meeting in Gulu he said: “I had a choice, Am I going to have hatred and bitterness all my life or am I going to travel a journey of healing? “

“I realized that if I was full of hatred then I would be a victim for ever, they have failed to kill the body but I would have killed the soul,” he said.

There was a conception that healing occurred in an instant, “like taking tablets and everything will be okay. But people who have been hurt deeply the journey of healing takes some time,” he said.

He urged the Mother’s Union to “offer your selves to listen to the pain of others not just once but again and again” and “listen not only with our ears but also with our hearts.”

Violent crime is set to destroy South Africa, church leaders said last week. Pastoral letters released by the Bishop of Natal, the Rt. Rev. Rubin Philip and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Johannesburg, Msgr. Buti Tlhagale have warned that a culture of lawlessness and moral decay had taken hold of the country.

“Violent crime, after the scourge of HIV/AIDS, is the biggest and most sinister threat to the well-being and security of South Africa,” Archbishop Tlhagale said on Oct 11 at the funeral of a priest murdered in a car-jacking incident.

Crime threatened to “undo past gains almost overnight. Our streets, our neighborhoods, our shopping malls and highways, have simply become unsafe. It does not matter whether you are in the township or in the suburbs. The marauding criminals are all over,” he said according to a Catholic Information Service for Africa report.

Roman Catholics who aided and abetted criminals “ought to be banned from receiving Communion. They are collaborators in crime. Their hands are dripping with the blood of innocent people,” he said.

On Oct 18, Bishop Philip said last week’s “vicious attack on elderly parishioners attending a Bible Study” at the home of Daphne Pechey along with the violent robbery of one priest and the murder outside a church of Elaine Anderson and Patsy Kippen in an attempted car-jacking had brought crime “into particular focus.”

Bishop Philip said the “inability of the police and the judicial system” to protect people was a “scandal. It is imperative that the growing loss of confidence in the police system, from its highest levels, and in the effective functioning of our courts, be urgently addressed.”

The criminal justice system was partly to blame for the crime wave, Archbishop Tlhagale also said. “In an attempt to reverse or undo the harshness or cruelty of the apartheid justice system, [it] has simply softened its policies and laws to a point where criminals feel that they can commit murder and get away with it or that if they are caught, they will simply get a slap on the wrist.”

It was no good blaming the legacy of apartheid either, he said, as “criminals are home-grown. They come from our own communities.”

Bishop Philip said it was the “responsibility of all sectors of society and each individual” to combat the “growing culture of lawlessness.”

To keep silent and not inform the police of criminal activities was an outrage, he said. Bishop Philip called on “religious organisations and groupings to stand in compassionate solidarity with the victims of violent crime, and to unite in challenging the guardians of public safety to fulfill their responsibilities” and fight crime.

HRH Princess Anne addressed a “Festival Meeting” of the St. Helena Diocesan Association held Oct 12 at Pusey House, Oxford.  Princess Anne is patron of the organization, founded in 1960, to support the work of the South Atlantic diocese.  (Photo Bishop John Salt, OGS)

Golfing legend Gary Player should be banned for his ties to the military regime in Burma, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said last week.

Last Sunday, the former Archbishop of Southern Africa and Nobel laureate told the Weekend Argus he backed the call made by imprisoned democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi for a boycott of overseas firms doing business in Burma.

Based in Florida, the Gary Player Group designed and built the Pun Hlaing Golf Club in 1999 on a one-time rice paddy, 45 minutes outside of the capital Rangoon. Democracy activists charge the project violated the 1997 the Clinton Administration ban on new investment by US companies doing business in Burma.

An Oct 2 opinion article by George Monbiot published in the Guardian sated in Burma golf was the sport of the generals “who conduct much of their business on the links” and asked whether the course had been built with forced labour or on land expropriated from peasants.

Player responded that he was “very disappointed” that his “integrity and support for human rights” had been questioned and stated his firm’s involvement in the Burmese project had “been taken entirely out of context.”

The work in Burma began during a thaw in the regime’s relations with democracy activists and it “seemed as though real political change was in the air” the Player Group said in a statement released Oct 8.

Building the golf course was “actually humanitarian” in that it was paid its expenses only and “encouraged the developer to put the money toward creating jobs, as well as the establishment of a caddy and agronomy program” he said.

“Let me make it abundantly clear that I decry in the strongest possible terms the recent events in Burma and wholeheartedly support Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu in his efforts to bring peace and transition to that country,” Player said.

Archbishop Tutu’s push for sanctions against Burma’s military regime has put him at odds with the ANC government of South African Thabo Mbeki. In February while chairing the United Nations Security Council, South Africa voted against a motion brought by Britain to condemn the Burmese generals for their human rights abuses.

South Africa has elected a new primate.  The Cape Town diocesan electoral assembly on Sept 25 selected the Bishop of Grahamstown, the Rt. Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba as Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

Bishop Makgoba will succeed the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane as archbishop, and will assume office on Jan 1.  The Dean of the Province, Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld will serve as interim primate until Bishop Makgoba assumes office.

Viewed as a conservative on issues of human sexuality, the new archbishop is expected to move the South African church closer to the other African Anglican provinces, while maintaining the Province’s support of HIV/AIDs ministries, economic empowerment and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The spiritual reconstruction of the Church and of South African society will guide his tenure as Archbishop, Bishop Makgoba told the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

The 47 year old Bishop of Grahamstown was elected on the second ballet by the Cape Town electoral assembly.  His name will now be submitted to the Province’s House of Bishops for confirmation.

Delegates from each of the Provinces 25 other dioceses and Cape Town chose Bishop Makgoba from a field that also included the Rev. Nyameko Barney Pityana, Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa and the Bishop of Pretoria, the Rt. Rev. Johannes Thomas Seoka.

Bishop Makgoba was educated at St. Paul’s Theological College in Grahamstown, and earned a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Witwatersrand.  Elected Bishop of Grahamstown in 2004, he had previously served the diocese as a parish priest, archdeacon and suffragan bishop.  He is currently on sabbatical leave, studying at Harvard University.

The new primate has been active outside the Province, and has served as a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Conference Design Group.

In interviews with the South African press following his selection, Bishop Makgoba stated he would be his own man as Archbishop.  While he valued the witness of former Archbishops Desmond Tutu and Njongonkulu Ndungane, “it will be my own spirituality” that would guide his episcopate.

Archbishop Samuel San Si Htay of Myanmar (Burma) Photo from Global South Anglican

Church leaders have joined the chorus of support for pro-democracy activists in Burma, adding their voices to the denunciation of the military regime’s crackdown on protesters.

On Friday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the government’s violent attacks upon unarmed protestors, and called for the international community to intensify diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the crisis. The “word is watching” he said.

In a statement released by Downing Street, Mr. Brown said the protesters had been exercising “great bravery” by protesting peacefully. “I had hoped that the Burmese regime would heed the calls for restraint from the international community.

“But once again they have responded with oppression and force. This must cease,” he said on Sept 28.

The Anglican Primate of Burma, Archbishop Samuel San Si Htay of Rangoon told ENI, “We pray for peace and the future of the country.”

Archbishop Si Htay said a meeting had been planned with the country’s Roman Catholic bishops to forge a common front in response to the week of street protests in Rangoon and Mandalay. The Associated Press reported that on Sept 24 over 100,000 protesters led by Buddhist monks filled the streets of Rangoon staging the largest protest in 20 years to military rule.

The Bishop of Colombo, Duleep de Chickera called upon Burma’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, delivering an open letter deploring the violence. “As a fellow religious leader, I wish to express my solidarity with the commendable leadership provided by the Buddhist monks of Myanmar to this mass agitation.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Sept 25 released a statement from Cape Town likening the marches to the non-violent protests against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

“It is so like the rolling mass action that eventually toppled apartheid,” the Nobel laureate said. “We admire our brave sisters and brothers in Burma and want them to know that we support their peaceful protests to end a vicious rule of oppression and injustice.”

Archbishop Tutu, who along with former Czech president Vaclav Havel has led the international campaign to bring Burma before the UN Security Council, called upon the military regime to release jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and restore the rule of law.

“Victory is assured. They are on the winning side, the side of freedom, justice and democracy,” Archbishop Tutu said.

On Saturday however, the AP reported Rangoon’s streets were empty, with democracy activists awaiting further international support.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has begun soliciting the views of the primates as to whether the Sept. 25 statement from the House of Bishops adequately responds to the primates’ request for clarification on The Episcopal Church’s stance on gay bishops and rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Archbishop Williams has begun telephoning and writing the primates, seeking their views. However, his trip to Armenia and Syria, and the opening of the Church of England’s House of Bishops meeting on Oct. 1, has hindered a speedy response to the New Orleans statement.

Public statements from some of the primates indicate a split of opinion along factional lines, with some declaring the statement adequate, while others have dismissed it as dishonest and non-responsive to the primates’ request.

Archbishop Alan Harper, Primate of Ireland, said the “American bishops have gone a considerable way to meeting the reasonable demands of their critics.”

Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld, the acting primate and vicar general of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, said he welcomed the decision “for the simple reason it gives us more space and time to talk to each other.”

The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane said he believed the bishops had “responded positively to the substance of [the primates'] requests.”

Other primates were more critical. “What we expected to come from them is to repent. That this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what we, in particular, and others expected to hear” from the House of Bishops, said Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of Kenya.

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, said the bishops’ response fell short. The primates had given The Episcopal Church “one final opportunity for an unequivocal assurance” that it would conform “to the mind and teaching of the Communion,” he said, and the bishops failed to do that. The primates are unwilling to accept further “ambiguous and misleading statements” from The Episcopal Church, he said.

Published in The Living Church.

Reactions to the US House of Bishops New Orleans statement amongst the Primates have broken along factional lines, with conservatives denouncing the statement as insubstantial and dishonest, while liberals have praised its candor and modesty.

The divergent views of the adequacy of the US response to the Primates request for clarification of American church practices towards gay bishops and blessings further complicates the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hopes of forestalling a schism within the Communion.

Straightened finances and fears of a boycott by the primates of Wales, Ireland and Scotland to an emergency primates’ meeting to discuss the American response to the primates’ Dar es Salaam communique, has led to Dr. Williams telephoning the Communion’s primates to try to find a common mind.

Whether the primates’ round robin will produce an amicable resolution appears to be further hampered by the different world views of the players in Anglicanism’s great game. Aides to the Archbishop told The Church of England Newspaper during his meeting with the American bishops in New Orleans that Dr. Williams hoped to find the right combination of words that would satisfy the church’s disparate factions.

However, leaders of the Global South coalition have demanded not words, but action from the American church, and have little trust in the veracity of American promises of good behavior. Leaders of the liberal wing of the US Church and across the Communion are also divided, with some arguing that truth must not be subordinated to expediency while others hope their place within the councils of the church can be saved through the artful use of semantics.

The Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Alan Harper of Armagh lauded the American response, saying the American “Bishops have gone a considerable way to meeting the reasonable demands of their critics.”

Archbishop Harper noted the “generous agreement” of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori “to put in place a plan to appoint Episcopal visitors for dioceses that request alternative oversight” and stated that while the bishops had declined “participation in the ‘Pastoral Scheme’ offered by the Primates,” they had “at least” recognized the “useful role” of the Communion in these debates.

Dr. Harper stated this seemed to be a “balanced and relatively generous response in a very delicate area of inter-provincial relationships.”

Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld, the acting primate and vicar general of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, said he welcomed the decision “for the simple reason it gives us more space and time to talk to each other.”

The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane said he believed the US had “responded positively to all the requests put to them by the Primates in our Dar es Salaam communiqué.”However, he went on to damn the American Church with faint praise saying “Certainly they have responded to the substance of those requests.”
However the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Peter Jensen was not as sanguine. “At first reading, the statement from the TEC bishops does not seem to say anything new,” he noted. “The situation may not then be changed in any way.”

The African churches were stronger in their condemnation. “What we expected to come from them is to repent. That this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what me, in particular, and others expected to hear coming from this church,” Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said.

The Assistant Bishop of Kampala, David Zac Niringiye told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme Uganda believed the statement was inadequate as it was “not a change of heart”, but a temporizing solution.The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola stated the US response fell short of what was required. The primates had given the US “one final opportunity for an unequivocal assurance” that it would conform to the “to the mind and teaching of the Communion.”

He said the primates were unwilling to accept further “ambiguous and misleading statements” from the US Church. “Sadly it seems that our hopes were not well founded and our pleas have once again been ignored.”

Meanwhile the Anglican Mainstream group said they were disappointed with the response because it failed to address the specific questions asked of it by the Primates’ Meeting in February, and backed the Common Cause College of Bishops. In a statement they said: “The first two points — on the election of non-celibate gay and lesbian bishops, and on public rites for blessing same-sex unions — suggest that the TEC House of Bishops has agreed not to walk further away from the rest of the Anglican Communion for the moment.

“However, the TEC House of Bishops gives no indication of being prepared to turn and walk back towards us so that we may walk ahead together, and in reality same-sex blessings are continuing.

“Moreover, there is no response to the Primates’ request to suspend all legal action.”

The Church Society also rejected the House of Bishops statement saying it demonstrates TEC has ‘abandoned orthodox Christianity’.

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane celebrated his final service as the 11^th Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on Sunday at a farewell service at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.

“Thank you for putting up with me over the years of my ministry, which began a stone’s throw away, in Athlone and took me all over the country, before bringing me back to Cape Town and the daunting responsibility of Bishopscourt,” he said on Sept 23.  “Thanks for being partners with me.”

Archbishop Ndungane served 11 years as Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.  He entered the ministry after serving a three-year sentence on Robben Island as a political prisoner of the apartheid regime and as a priest and bishop championed a variety of causes from civil rights to abolishing third world debt.

In 2006, he launched African Monitor, an NGO dedicated to monitoring Western aid projects in Africa, and will continue that work in retirement.

“He did not linger one moment in the shadow of any of his predecessors,” wrote Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Ndungane’s immediate predecessor, in a written tribute.

“Without doubt, he has become the human, caring face of the devastating HIV and Aids pandemic, providing clear and unambiguous leadership at a distressing period in South Africa when confusing mixed signals were being sent from our government,” former Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in a statement read at the service.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams lauded Archbishop Ndungane’s work on behalf of the poor and oppressed.  He would “stand out as one of the great figures of the first generation of leaders in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid,” Dr. Williams wrote.

On Sept 25 the Cape Town electoral assembly will chose a successor to Archbishop Ndungane from among three candidates: the Bishop of Grahamstown, Thabo Cecil Makgoba; The Rev. Nyameko Barney Pityana, Vice Chancellor of UNISA; and the Bishop of Pretoria, Johannes Thomas Seoka.

Two clergy and two lay delegates from the ACSA’s other 25 dioceses will attend the electoral assembly, along with delegates from the Diocese of Cape Town.  Once a candidate is elected, his name will be passed to the Church’s House of Bishops for confirmation as Archbishop of Cape Town, president of the Southern Africa House of Bishops and Metropolitan of the Province.

The Rt. Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba, Bishop of Grahamstown, was elected Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on Sept. 25.

Bishop Makgoba, 47, will succeed the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane as archbishop, and will assume office on Jan 1. Viewed as a conservative on issues of human sexuality, he is expected to try to move the South African church closer to the other African Anglican provinces. The spiritual reconstruction of the church and of South African society will guide his tenure as archbishop, he told the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Bishop Makgoba was elected on the second ballet by the Cape Town electoral assembly. His name will now be submitted to the province’s House of Bishops for confirmation.

The outgoing primate celebrated his final service Sept. 23 at St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town. “Thank you for putting up with me over the years of my ministry,” Archbishop Ndungane said.

Published in The Living Church

The Primate of Southern Africa, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane has called upon South Africa to embrace tolerance and welcome diversity in order to build a new society.

Speaking at the Steve Biko 30:30 Conference in Cape Town on Sept 12, Archbishop Ndungane warned of the perils of romanticizing the past and “thinking that all that was pre-colonial or anti-apartheid is automatically more authentic and thus superior.”

The nation must shed its historical and “cultural baggage” to build a new society, he argued. While “some of our African heritage passes the necessary test that asks whether it contributes to the abundant flourishing of every child of God, in every aspect of our humanity,” he urged black South Africans to exercise a critical eye when addressing the “complex legacies of colonialism and apartheid.”

The new South Africa sought to build “a multi-racial, multi-faith and multi-cultural society,” he said. It was far easier to tear down than to build, the Archbishop said, and appealed for society to value the diverse voices found within society.

“If we are all on the same side - if we are all pursuing the quest for true humanity - we should not feel threatened by such diversity,” he said. “We should see it as a powerful resource for creative mutual engagement.”

God does not have favourites, Archbishop Ndungane said. “His promise of true humanity is for everyone, as he affirms our equality before him in all our differences and diversity.”

South Africa has lost its way since the end of the apartheid era Archbishop Desmond Tutu said last week, as government corruption and indifference coupled with grinding poverty remained the lot of most South Africans.

In an interview published Sept 13 in the Baltimore Sun, Archbishop Tutu said “We’re really mucking it up unnecessarily” as the camaraderie of anti-apartheid struggle had not survived the advent of majority rule.

“I imagined that we would almost all of us want to say, ‘I don’t want to be richer than another, stinking rich, when somebody else is at the bottom of the pile,’” he said.

Archbishop Tutu admitted having been naïve and criticized the African National Congress (ANC) government, urging a challenge to President Thabo Mbeki’s culture of “kowtowing sycophancy.”

While he was pleased that “injustice and oppression had disappeared,” crime had become so bad that “hijackers could kill, almost for the sheer hell of it, car owners who had surrendered their car keys.”

While a small minority of blacks had prospered with the advent of majority rule many “still lived in shacks” and in government built housing inferior to the “ghetto matchbox houses of apartheid days.”

Archbishop Tutu told the Sun he was compelled to speak out, just as if he saw a child in the path of a speeding car.  Rather than pondering what to do, “you just jump and hope you can save the child, isn’t that so?”

From The Church of England Newspaper

The Anglican Church in South Africa will not permit blessings of same-sex unions or gay marriage, the Bishop of Mthatha told his diocesan synod on Aug 25, as it is contrary to Scripture and God’s plan for humanity.

The Rt. Rev. Sitembele Mzamane told the 48^th meeting of the diocesan synod that he forbad clergy in the Diocese of Mthatha (formerly the Diocese of St. John the Evangelist) from solemnizing gay marriages under South Africa’s new civil marriage code.

“We still embrace the Biblical truth that homosexual behaviour is a sin, not an orientation as others would like us to believe,” he said.

“Same sex union is something that has been accepted by the government. But that does not mean that everything the government accepts or condones as right, the church will simply say “Yes” and toe the line as well. No, it’s not like that, we base everything on the Bible,” Bishop Mzamane said according to accounts printed in an Eastern Cape newspaper, the Daily Dispatch.

The Bishop of South Africa’s Transkei region said he supported the Windsor Report’s ban on gay bishops and blessings. “We need to set an example for our people that our people should know that this kind of behaviour is generally not acceptable,” he said.

Next year’s Lambeth Conference he predicted would be dominated by Gene Robinson affair which has “nearly divided the church. Please pray fervently for the Anglican Communion that we may be one and remain united,” he asked the diocese.

The South African Church was discouraging its clergy from registering as civil marriage officers out of concern this would open the door to clergy performing same-sex unions.

“This is a moral issue which calls upon people of integrity and worth to stand by the book of moral code. If God never ordained these civil unions, why bother. We, therefore, call upon our clergy to stand united with us and never be lured or enticed into thinking that this kind of behaviour is acceptable.”

The Southern African Church has not yet issued a formal statement on gay marriage. On Nov 30, 2006, the South African government enacted a Civil Unions Bill making it the fifth country, and the first in Africa, to legalise same-sex marriage. However in May the South African House of Bishops crafted a resolution in response to Civil Union Act. The Dean of the Province, the Rt Rev David Beetge, Bishop of the Highveld told The Church of England Newspaper that the details of the bishops’ position had not yet been made public.

A “resolution was passed in principle but was to be sent to the Bishops for further consideration before being finalised,” he said, and would be released once complete.

Comment at Titusonenine

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu has criticized the government of South African president Thabo Mbeki for failing to take decisive action over the spiraling crisis in Zimbabwe.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Aug 8 while in Perth, Dr. Sentamu touched upon Lords’ Reform, institutional racism in the Church of England, the 2008 Lambeth Conference, and his relations with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams-denying suggestions that he was an “Archbishop in waiting” for Canterbury.

Asked about the situation in Zimbabwe, Dr. Sentamu lauded the actions of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, saying he “has been actually fairly courageous in the things he’s been saying” in opposition to the regime of strongman Robert Mugabe.

However, the church in Zimbabwe was unable to speak with a single voice as the controversial Dr. Nolbert Kunonga, “the Anglican Bishop of Harare has tended to side more with Mugabe and therefore caused the split within the Christian community.”

Dr. Sentamu stated South Africa should take a greater role in resolving the crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe.

“South Africa could have played a major part in making sure that Mugabe over the last four years at least, does not continue telling the world that actually there isn’t any violence, there isn’t any hunger, there isn’t any starvation, because a lot of Zimbabweans are now refugees in South Africa, and it’s quite obvious that Mugabe’s regime is so brutal, that it is so dictatorial, and a lot of people are dying and starving,” he said.

The Archbishop of York denied he had designs upon Lambeth Palace and rejected press speculation that Dr. Rowan Williams might step down. “Those who say that I’m an Archbishop [of Canterbury] in waiting, I’m sorry, they’re going to be disappointed,” he said.

“The higher the baboon climbs the tree, the more it reveals its rather less attractive parts,” he observed, disclaiming any further ambitions towards higher office in the Church.

Asked about his views on institutional racism within the Church of England, Dr. Sentamu said the Church had no racist policies in effect, “but to say there is institutional racism within the church, yes, that much I’ll accept.”

He likened the climate of the Church of England to a smoke filled room. “You could go into a room when people have been smoking and there isn’t anybody you can see in sight who’s smoking, and you know there has been smoking. That’s what I call institutional racism: you know there are some behaviors that are unacceptable, but you can’t quite pinpoint anybody who’s done it,” he said.

Dr. Sentamu repeated comments made to the Daily Telegraph last month that there was a danger that those who would sit out the 2008 Lambeth Conference were risking exclusion from the Anglican Communion. It was necessary to attend Lambeth, he said, so as to take the Anglican Covenant process forward and find a lasting solution to the current crisis of doctrine and discipline within the Anglican Communion.

He rejected suggestions that a reformed House of Lords exclude the “Lords Spiritual”. Bishops could only be excluded from the Lords, he argued, if the monarchy and the Church of England were disestablished. The role of the Bishops in the House of Lords was “to hold up before the nation the need for God and the need for spiritual dimensions of life,” he said.

THE PRIMATE of Southern Africa has called upon the European Union to live up to its promises of support for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane also urged Africa to honour its commitment to tackle poverty and called upon the continent’s political leaders to make good their pledges of support for the poorest of the poor. Chairman of the African Monitor, an NGO that monitors relief and development work across Africa, Archbishop Ndungane told SABC, “African countries have said they want to designate 15 per cent of their budgets to health and 10 per cent for agriculture and they are falling short of these targets.”

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has restructured its HIV/AIDs ministries, forming the Anglican AIDS and Healthcare Trust (AAHT). The Church’s liaison bishop for HIV and AIDS ministries, Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld reports the decision to break apart the ministry into four programme units was taken to allow for greater autonomy and to conform to structural guidelines suggested by overseas funding agencies.

The HIV/AIDs ministries of the AAHT will consist of four “portfolios” fun by independent programme directors: Siyakha (We are building); Public Relations, Ecumenical Relations and Training; Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC); and Siyafundisa.

Siyafundisa, Zulu for “Teaching our Children,” focuses on abstinence training, promoting fidelity in marriage, decreasing harmful behaviors, increasing the number of people who know their HIV status, and promoting the discussion of the illness amongst all classes.

Two bishops and a university vice-chancellor have been nominated to stand for election as Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA).

Meeting on June 30, the ACSA’s Advisory Committee for the Election of the next Archbishop nominated Bishop Thabo Makgoba of Grahamstown, Bishop Johannes Seoka of Pretoria, and the Rev. Dr. Barney Pityana, vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA) as candidates to replace outgoing Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane.

Dr. Pityana, the former director of the World Council of Church’s Programme to Combat Racism, read law at UNISA, theology at Kings College, London and received a doctorate in religious studies from the University of Cape Town in 1995. He trained for the ministry at Ripon College, Cuddesdon and was curate of Woughton, Milton Keynes in the Diocese of Oxford, and was vicar of Immanuel Highters Heath in the Diocese of Birmingham. In 2001 he was named vice-chancellor of UNISA.

Bishop Makgoba was educated at St. Paul’s Theological College in Grahamstown, and earned a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Witwatersrand. Elected Bishop of Grahamstown in 2004, he had previously served the diocese as a parish priest, archdeacon and suffragan bishop. He is a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Conference Design Group.

Bishop “Jo” Seoka of Pretoria was educated at the Eshowe College of Education, and earned Masters and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Chicago Theological Seminary and a Master degree from the University of Chicago. He trained for the ministry at St. Bede’s Theological College and was ordained a priest in 1975 in Natal. Following pastoral cures in Soweto and Pretoria as well as a stint as priest in charge of an Episcopal parish in Chicago, Bishop Seoka was named dean of Pretoria in 1996 and elected bishop in 1998.

Long active in the South African church’s hierarchy, Bishop Seoka is the church’s representative to CAPA, (Council of Anglican Churches in Africa) and the South African government. He has also served as a mission advisor to the USPG since 2000.

In September an elective assembly comprised of the House of Bishops and two clergy and two lay delegates from the Provinces 32 dioceses will elect the Archbishop, who must receive a majority in each house.

The three candidates represent a cross section of the South African church. While all three candidates are black, they represent divergent theological viewpoints. Bishop Makgoba’s views on the pressing issues before the Communion are akin to those held by the majority of his colleagues among the African episcopate, while Dr. Pityana follows in the tradition of the present incumbent, Archbishop Ndungane. Bishop Seoka draws support from both camps and with ten years service as bishop in Pretoria, is considered the favorite.

Comment on this news at Standfirm

BISHOPS of the Anglican and Methodist churches of Southern Africa have written to State President Thabo Mbeki asking him to intervene in the three-week-old civil servants strike. Archdeacon Wilfred Meyer told the South African Broadcasting Corporation on June 24 church leaders were concerned with the social and economic costs of the strike by 500,000 public employees that has closed most of the country’s schools and hospitals.

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Nobel Peace Prize was stolen late Saturday evening by burglars who ransacked his Soweto home. However Johannesburg police report the gold medal has been recovered.

Johannesburg Police Superintendent Thembi Nkwashu told the South African Press Association on June 11, “Immediately after midnight we arrested five suspects and recovered some of the stolen goods, including, remarkably, the Nobel Peace Prize medal.”

While not all of the stolen items have been found, several items including a “golden key” to the California city of Sacrament have been recovered, Nkwashu said.

Tutu’s home in Vilakazi Street in Soweto was once owned by former president Nelson Mandela and is a popular tourist attraction.

Archbishop Tutu was not home at the time of the robbery, but was in Valencia, Spain attending the 32^nd America’s Cup yacht race. The former South African primate is the patron for the South African team.

A sporting enthusiast, Archbishop Tutu told a dinner hosted by America’s Cup sponsor Louis Vuitton on the night of the robbery, “Sport has been a powerful agent for our nation that was for so long divided. When we won the 1995 Rugby World Cup it did more for South Africa than the speeches of the politicians or even of archbishops. We were not the better side on that day but the side that desperately needed that victory. It was very important for the evolution of our country.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Feb 20, 2006 press conference on church unity at the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This photo appeared in Touchstone.

The pan-Anglican congress of lay and ordained leaders from across the Anglican Communion will take place in March 2007 outside Johannesburg, South Africa, the Primate of Southern Africa, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, told a Feb. 2 news conference in Cape Town.

Lay and ordained leaders from across the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion will be invited to participate in the gathering, titled “Towards Effective Anglican Mission: An International Conference on Prophetic Witness, Social Development and HIV/AIDS,” or TEAM.

Speakers at the Cape Town press conference said they hope to redirect the Anglican Communion’s energies away from the debates on human sexuality toward “things that really matter.” Organizers for the pan-Anglican congress also hope the Archbishop of Canterbury will attend and that lessons learned at TEAM will provide background material and information for the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

“What has happened in our Communion is that some people, who happen to be few in number, make the loudest noise,” Archbishop Ndungane said, as reported by Reuters. “In my travels around the Communion, I would like to think that the majority of Anglicans want to get on with the business of the Church.”

Seven objectives were set by the TEAM steering committee at their organizational meeting in Cape Town. They expect to encourage a “prophetic articulation for an Anglican theology which supports witness and action for social justice”; share the African experience of HIV/AIDS with the rest of the Communion; review the Communion’s response to the Millennium Development Goals; design new models of “relevant and sustainable development”; encourage “transformation through dialogue among peoples with diverse experiences and perspectives”; explore “resource mobilization”; and foster “mutual commitments and partnerships within the Anglican Communion.”

Although not “an Anglican Communion event,” the mandate to hold the congress, which had been cancelled by Archbishop Rowan Williams in 2004, had been given to Archbishop Ndungane at the 2001 primates meeting at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, N.C., a statement released by the steering committee said. “Archbishop Ndungane was entrusted with the responsibility of moving the Anglican Communion forward by addressing the vital social issues of poverty, trade, debt and HIV/AIDS.”

The Rev Canon Gregory Cameron, deputy general secretary for the Anglican Consultative Council, told The Living Church last month his office had been “offering advice and suggestions,” but the ACC was not involved in any official capacity with the TEAM congress.

The members of the TEAM Steering Committee include: The Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, Archbishop of Cape Town; the Rev. Canon George Brandt, rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, New York City; Jean Duff, managing director, Center for Global