With apologies to the author of the biography of C S Lewis by that name, today has been a day of joyful suprises.
I had been telling people over the last couple of weeks that I was expecting to find some of the contrasts in South Africa disturbing – between white and black, rich and poor in particular – and that I expected to be exposed mostly to white wealth in the first half of my stay here and mostly to black poverty in the second half. Actually, the reality of black poverty has been opened to us by our wealthy white hosts from the outset.
Bloemfontein is part of South Africa’s Afrikaans heartland. It’s in what was, after all, the Orange Free State. This is hardcore Boer country – the part that gave Kitchener and his colleagues such a hard time 120 years ago. And our conference is being held on a University Campus (in fact, still called the University of the Free State). Most of the students and staff (but not all) are white, as you would expect; and the University plant is every bit as privileged and posh.
But first thing this morning one of the options presented to us before the official start of the Congress programme was to visit a Sutu-congregation: a church in a local township, whose services are held in the local indigenous language. About a dozen of us went first to a recent church plant, w
here we were applauded one by one as we conference delegates introduced ourselves. We were asked to do so in our own native language. So I was the boring one, relative to colleagues from, say, Taiwan or South Korea. The Dutch and German delegates could make themselves understood, at least a bit, because of the proximity of those languages to Afrikaans – which at least some of the Sutu speakers seemed to know. The biggest cheer was reserved for an American who had served for some years as a missionary in the Congo, when she greeted them in what was obviously an African language.
The poverty in the township was startling. No doubt things are better now than 30 years ago, and no doubt there are parts of the world where the poverty is still more extreme. But we have nothing like this in England. Many buildings are still made only of corrugated iron. Most dwellings, packed tightly together, are simple single-storey boxes of breeze-block or brick, maybe 5m by 5m, with a corrugated iron roof, often weighted in place only by more breeze blocks and brick-piles. Inside there may be one room, or two or possibly three; no more. Many homes still have outdoor toilets. Most of the township roads are not metalled, but are still just dusty, rutted tracks.
We went on to a full-scale church service. It was a bit odd to sit through a 25 minute sermon of which I didn’t understand a word… it was an exposition of Jeremiah 23.1-9, all very impassioned, but all incomprehsensible because it was all in Sutu. Somehow the language barrier mattered much less when it came to the hymn-singing. Not only could I sway gently to the music (I was probably among the less inhibited of those present, but it felt a bit like sharing the dance-floor with a bunch of teenagers at a disco: if you can’t compete, and imitation will look phoney, you’d best just do your own thing in a relatively inconspicuous way!), but I could also clap to the rhythm (which seemed like the most natural thing in the world in this context, which I don’t often feel at church in England). Even for a person as cerebral and verbal as I am, the meaning of the words didn’t matter too much – the joy in the church was contagious.
Then, after lunch, another joyful surprise… I found that my beloved Newcastle United’s first home game of the season was live on terrestrial TV. So I spent a delicious 45 minutes watching us go 3-0 up against Aston Villa. (I relied on a text from home, however, to tell me the final score was as the Congress began at half time. It was 6-0 – I’ll put that again since I won't often have opportunity – it was 6-0.) This was to be surprised by joy a second time in the day.
The Congress opened with two sessions: a brief act of worship, with the sermon (again, contrary to my apparently prejudiced expectations) delivered by a black pastor, and again with a black gospel choir singing before and after; and then an opening lecture, delivered by Dr Dolf Britz, a member of the theology faculty here and our principal host. He spoke movingly about his conversion to the evil of apartheid and about his painful recognition of his part in bolstering an oppressive structure. This was the third and biggest surprise of the day: ‘I didn’t just steal the land of the indigenous people’, he said, ‘I stole their lives’. He was exploring this against the context of Calvin’s treatment of Isaiah 61.1, and his understanding of Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophecy: ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners’. It was hard not to think of Nelson Mandela in connection with the final clause, and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu in connection with much of the rest.
And did I mention that Newcastle won?
I had been telling people over the last couple of weeks that I was expecting to find some of the contrasts in South Africa disturbing – between white and black, rich and poor in particular – and that I expected to be exposed mostly to white wealth in the first half of my stay here and mostly to black poverty in the second half. Actually, the reality of black poverty has been opened to us by our wealthy white hosts from the outset.
Bloemfontein is part of South Africa’s Afrikaans heartland. It’s in what was, after all, the Orange Free State. This is hardcore Boer country – the part that gave Kitchener and his colleagues such a hard time 120 years ago. And our conference is being held on a University Campus (in fact, still called the University of the Free State). Most of the students and staff (but not all) are white, as you would expect; and the University plant is every bit as privileged and posh.
But first thing this morning one of the options presented to us before the official start of the Congress programme was to visit a Sutu-congregation: a church in a local township, whose services are held in the local indigenous language. About a dozen of us went first to a recent church plant, w
here we were applauded one by one as we conference delegates introduced ourselves. We were asked to do so in our own native language. So I was the boring one, relative to colleagues from, say, Taiwan or South Korea. The Dutch and German delegates could make themselves understood, at least a bit, because of the proximity of those languages to Afrikaans – which at least some of the Sutu speakers seemed to know. The biggest cheer was reserved for an American who had served for some years as a missionary in the Congo, when she greeted them in what was obviously an African language.The poverty in the township was startling. No doubt things are better now than 30 years ago, and no doubt there are parts of the world where the poverty is still more extreme. But we have nothing like this in England. Many buildings are still made only of corrugated iron. Most dwellings, packed tightly together, are simple single-storey boxes of breeze-block or brick, maybe 5m by 5m, with a corrugated iron roof, often weighted in place only by more breeze blocks and brick-piles. Inside there may be one room, or two or possibly three; no more. Many homes still have outdoor toilets. Most of the township roads are not metalled, but are still just dusty, rutted tracks.
We went on to a full-scale church service. It was a bit odd to sit through a 25 minute sermon of which I didn’t understand a word… it was an exposition of Jeremiah 23.1-9, all very impassioned, but all incomprehsensible because it was all in Sutu. Somehow the language barrier mattered much less when it came to the hymn-singing. Not only could I sway gently to the music (I was probably among the less inhibited of those present, but it felt a bit like sharing the dance-floor with a bunch of teenagers at a disco: if you can’t compete, and imitation will look phoney, you’d best just do your own thing in a relatively inconspicuous way!), but I could also clap to the rhythm (which seemed like the most natural thing in the world in this context, which I don’t often feel at church in England). Even for a person as cerebral and verbal as I am, the meaning of the words didn’t matter too much – the joy in the church was contagious.
Then, after lunch, another joyful surprise… I found that my beloved Newcastle United’s first home game of the season was live on terrestrial TV. So I spent a delicious 45 minutes watching us go 3-0 up against Aston Villa. (I relied on a text from home, however, to tell me the final score was as the Congress began at half time. It was 6-0 – I’ll put that again since I won't often have opportunity – it was 6-0.) This was to be surprised by joy a second time in the day.
The Congress opened with two sessions: a brief act of worship, with the sermon (again, contrary to my apparently prejudiced expectations) delivered by a black pastor, and again with a black gospel choir singing before and after; and then an opening lecture, delivered by Dr Dolf Britz, a member of the theology faculty here and our principal host. He spoke movingly about his conversion to the evil of apartheid and about his painful recognition of his part in bolstering an oppressive structure. This was the third and biggest surprise of the day: ‘I didn’t just steal the land of the indigenous people’, he said, ‘I stole their lives’. He was exploring this against the context of Calvin’s treatment of Isaiah 61.1, and his understanding of Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophecy: ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners’. It was hard not to think of Nelson Mandela in connection with the final clause, and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu in connection with much of the rest.
And did I mention that Newcastle won?
Am enjoying your S African blog Pete. You'll not (I take it) be returning via Oberammergau! Best wishes. Peter D.
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