Anglican Church of Southern Africa
37th Session of Provincial Synod
“Flourishing like a garden: Listening, reconciling and celebrating God’s new creation”
Charge by the President of Synod
The Most Reverend Dr Thabo Makgoba
Archbishop and Metropolitan
September 25th 2024
2 Corinthians 5:16-20; Ps 86:1-13; Luke 19:41-44
May I speak in the name of God, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Since the heart of thanksgiving lies in expressing gratitude to our Creator, let me start by thanking our Triune God for faithfully calling us again and again to participate in the work of reconciling the world to God in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity and joy of the apostolic vocation and ministry I share with others in our church, as well as granting us the opportunity to listen, especially to those in the margins and on the periphery of our societies as we seek to bring them to the centre of celebrating your new creation.
Let me also thank Lungi Manala, my wife, Nyakallo, our son and Paballo, Karabo, our daughter. They are the ones who listen to me rehearse sermons and speeches several times before and after they have been delivered. They know and feel the pulse of my episcopal vocation, with its joys, its challenges and, yes, sometimes its stresses and strains. As we say at home, thanks Ditlou, for your unwavering support. Let me also thank my intercessors, my friends and family and those who have supported us financially or are simply present in our lives, helping us to celebrate God’s steadfast love and mercies which are renewed every morning.
Thank you also to those who work at Bishopscourt, a team I consider as my immediate extended family: my personal staff, the staff in the Provincial Executive Office and John Allen in media and communications. Thank you to the Dean of the Province, Bishop Stephen, to the Provincial Treasurer, Rob Rogerson, and the Provincial staff, and in the Diocese of Cape Town, to Bishop Joshua of Table Bay, to Charleen van Rooyen and the Diocesan staff, to the members of the Canon Law Council, especially the Registrar and Chancellors based in the Western Cape. Thank you to all of you for your support and for bearing with my nature and temperament.
The joy and privilege of being an Archbishop in this Province is that, despite the heavy load, I am surrounded by loving—of course sometimes difficult!—but nonetheless loving, beautiful and hard-working selfless people who love our church. My thanks also go to those named in the Second Agenda Book who have helped prepare for this Provincial Synod, and who have met over the past 10 months to plan and pull together the agendas, draft measures and proposals for changes to the Canons. The Advisory Committee was joined and enabled by specialised sub-committees, the Liturgical Team, the Bible Study Team and those whom I have pulled out of retirement literally into full-time active ministry, Canon Janet Trisk and Bishop Luke Pato. I am very grateful for your support and friendship.
To the Synod of Bishops, your spouses and dioceses, thanks for your support and help always. Let me acknowledge all members of the Order of Simon of Cyrene, and extend a very warm welcome to Bishop Anthony Poggo, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, the Ven. Kofi deGraft-Johnson, General Secretary of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary of USPG, and all our invited guests. You are all very special. A particularly warm welcome to all Synod members attending for the first time. This is a unique experience in the life of the church, and I hope you will enjoy it. We all had our first time here and, never fear, we all survived it. My current plan is to make September 2026 my last Provincial Synod and, God willing, to retire on March 28, 2027, the anniversary of my installation, and Provincial Synod is one of the meetings I will miss most.
To unpack my message today, allow me to use the multiplicity of layers we are all so familiar with; that is Scripture and Reason in the light of our Tradition and our lived Experience.
Today’s scripture invites us to listen to the almost apocalyptic language in Luke’s Gospel, which unarguably describes the world we lean into as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century, and as we face the reality we are called to navigate, the reality which we must enfold into our prayers and inspire our action as we seek to be ambassadors or reconcilers in God’s garden. In our respective nations, we experience the ramparts hemming us in, of which the passage in Luke speaks, in the culture of death which casts a long shadow over all of us.
To take perhaps the most glaring example of suffering among God’s people in Southern Africa, consider the levels of poverty which intensify their pangs of hunger. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says he came that God’s people may have life, “and have it abundantly.” (Jn 10:10) But what does the promise of abundant life mean to the one in every three South Africans—nearly eight-and-a-half million people—who are unemployed and the four out of every five who have given up even looking for a job. Moreover, it is of no help to create well-paying jobs if we don't have people qualified to do them. The failure of the government to increase funding for provincial education departments to cover the salary increases granted to public servants has thrown the education sector into a funding crisis in which provinces have to decide what to cut to be able to pay the increases. Gauteng has reported that it has to cut back on feeding and transporting learners in order to avoid eliminating teachers' posts. The Western Cape is reported to be facing a shortfall of R3.8 billion, leading to the prospect of eliminating 2,400 contract posts for teachers. Other provinces face the same dilemmas in the coming weeks and months. In the sea of unemployment in which we are drowning, cutting education budgets spells disaster. If we are to educate a modern workforce, we should be increasing investment in education, not reducing it. Adopting “austerity measures” in the fields of education, health and social welfare is a recipe for trouble.
The unemployment rate in the other nations of our Province is just as distressing. In Namibia it is approximately 33.5% and in Lesotho and Eswatini, it is only a little better—24.6% in Lesotho (but youth unemployment is extremely high, at about 30 to 35%) and 28% in Eswatini. The effects of unemployment, low wages and poor economic growth are seen in the shocking levels of poverty in our different nations. In South Africa, a country blessed by natural resources is blighted by the fact that nearly 40% of people earn less than R65 per day and 60% earn less than R125 a day. In Lesotho, poverty is more severe, with a staggering 27% of the population living on less than R33 a day, while more than half live on less than R56 per day. In Eswatini approximately 59% of people live below the national poverty line and 20.1% live in extreme poverty. In Namibia, approximately 27.8% of the population lives below the national poverty line. By any definition, great numbers of our people are chronically poor and vulnerable. And while unemployment rates on St Helena are lower, the cost of living is high, due to the cost of importing most of their requirements, forcing people to emigrate to be able to afford housing.
We also cannot live lives of abundance if our environment continues to deteriorate the way it is doing as climate change alters weather patterns, creating different kinds of hardship. So beyond this Season of Creation, I urge our parishes and Dioceses to continue engaging in projects, such as tree-planting and the Anglican Communion Forest, to rescue our environment. I also urge South Africans to join the new “Cleaning and Beautification of South Africa Initiative”, a nation-wide programme of clean-up and beautification activities, endorsed by the South African Council of Churches, which will be launched on Saturday the 12th of October. I want to encourage our young people especially to see cleaning up our suburbs, townships, cities and villages across Southern Africa as a “cool” activity.
If we look at the landscape of violence across the world, researchers have counted nearly 50 conflicts ranging from skirmishes to full-scale wars in the past two years. Looking at our own continent, more than 20 African nations to the north of us have been afflicted, ranging from the insurgencies in the Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique and the Sahel region of West Africa to the fighting in the eastern DR Congo and the war which has destroyed much of Sudan in the past 18 months.
The United Nations reported earlier this year that in the first three months of 2024, more than 730,000 people were driven from their homes in the DRC, bringing the total number of displaced people to more than seven million. In Sudan, where the army is fighting a paramilitary group created by a previous regime, the UN says more than 18 million people face acute food insecurity in the worst humanitarian disaster in recent world history. Nearly three-quarters of a million Sudanese children are believed to be suffering from severe malnutrition. Reported deaths total more than 20,000 but The Economist magazine suggests that up to 150,000 people have actually been killed, with the bodies which are piling up in makeshift cemeteries visible from outer space.
Here in Southern Africa, as I deliver this Charge this evening, too many homes are battlegrounds of vicious domestic violence. South Africa in particular has notoriously high levels of violence against women and among the highest rates of rape in the world. Researchers tell us that although people of all genders perpetrate and experience intimate partner or sexual violence, the men to whom women and children look for protection are most often the perpetrators. We are seeing some action to fight this evil, but there are not enough prosecutions of the perpetrators.
Turning to those ramparts which are hemming in the international community, I have just returned from Athens, where I co-chaired a World Council of Churches working group reviewing the WCC’s policy on Palestine and Israel. The group was convened after the last WCC General Assembly declined, under pressure from the German Protestant church, to characterise Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as apartheid. Since the Assembly in 2022, the conflict in the land three religions call holy has become much worse, with Israeli leaders including their President, their Prime Minister and their Defence Minister responding to the vicious attack on Israel a year ago with what I have publicly described as “genocidal rhetoric” in which they made clear they were drawing no distinction between militants and civilians, but were, and I quote, “fighting human animals”.
The war in Palestine underlines the importance of the Bible studies we prepared for Lent last year, teaching our people about the difference between the biblical idea of Israel as a people and the modern secular state. The late Bishop David Russell of Grahamstown once said, “Please don't make an idol of the Bible. The Bible is not a textbook or a history book. It is a collection of theological writings.” In other words, the texts describe a particular theological position, particularly in South Africa, where the Bible was used as textbook to attempt to justify apartheid. It is both dangerous and wrong to assume that all opposition to Israel’s cruel and pitiless assault on Gaza, and now the violence of Israeli settlers in the Occupied West Bank, comes from Muslims. This incorrect assumption can lead quickly to Islamophobia. There should be no easy conflation of the terms “Muslim”, “terrorist” and “jihadist”. In fact, opposition to Israel’s policies and actions comes from Christians, Muslims, Jews and people of other faiths or no faith.
In South Africa, the rest of the continent, and abroad, the ramparts which surround us enable heinous crimes against humanity to be normalised as exclusion and separation become the dominant, hegemonic narrative. All the while our planet burns and, as Pope Francis has said, we are fundamentally challenged by the incessant cries of the earth and the cries of the poor. This is what tonight’s passage from Luke speaks of in the reference to encircling and crushing to the ground “you and your children within you”, a phrase which can be unambiguously understood as killing our future.
As a church, a deeply believing body of witnesses called by God to be light and salt to the earth, challenged by the outrages of our times, by the cruel legacies of our past and by the rampant individualism and materialism of our present, we cannot be silent, nor can we remain indifferent in the face of the suffering of God’s people, whether of poverty, war or exclusion. It is not an option for the Church of God. We literally stand between the destruction of our world and the forfeiture of our children’s future and the flourishing of the Kingdom. In Martin Luther’s words in 1517, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” In Southern Africa in 2024, we too need to say: Here we stand and we too can do no other. It was that great African saint, Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in The City of God, his philosophical treatise in defence of our faith, that “Without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?” He was speaking of governments but we can also apply his words to organisations, especially our own, where we are responsible for power and co-operating with power, legitimising the power of others in society.
In our own time, we can apply to ourselves the words of Jesus as he wept for Jerusalem. Just as he challenged the people of the Holy City, saying, “You of all people should have understood the way to peace,” we could say of ourselves: We of all people should know that if we want peace, we must implement justice. We of all people have been anointed by the Spirit, given a vision and given spiritual gifts that allow us to build different communities, rear supportive families, and shape societies differently. We are called to practise bold stewardship, take custody of the future, and hear again those life changing, challenging words of Paul to Timothy: “You have not been given a spirit of timidity but of power, love and self-control.”
Our Synod theme compels us to bring God’s reconciling presence and transformation so that all, not some, may celebrate the joy of new creation. As Paul reminded Timothy, we have boldness and courage on our side and therefore need not be daunted by what the future demands of us. If we are to contribute to transformation in our different countries, and create different and better futures for our people, we need to ask: On the long road to reconciliation in our societies, divided as they are by income inequality, what self-control do we need to exercise with regard to the accumulation of personal wealth? What self-control do we need to exercise to resist corruption, and indeed benefitting from it? What self-control do we need to exercise in the face of the destruction of our planet, our only home?
Wrestling with these questions, I turned to our Province’s mission and vision and read it again in the light of the measures, motions and reports which are before this Synod and appear in the Agenda Books (and which I urge you to read and engage with again). Having read each one, I asked: Are we fully aware of the nature and the power of the spirit Paul talks about? Are we drawing on the power of that same spirit in us which raised Christ from the dead? Can we draw from the documents before Synod, from our imaginings, and from the values we proclaim, a vision for a church which will now, in three years from now, and in five and ten years from now, help transform unjust structures in society and within our own ranks?
My own assessment is that the reports before us—for which I thank the organisations and ministries which produced them—do indeed express our aspirations, but that the data does not demonstrate that our actual interventions are fulfilling those aspirations. Do not get me wrong: our diaconal ministries in the areas of climate change, gender justice, feeding the poor, peace-making and development are valuable, but they could benefit from targetted public policy work. And our outreach and evangelism too could benefit from more biblical teaching and discipleship. We need to reach beyond denominational initiatives, webinars and statements. Instead we need to enhance our prophetic ministry and apostolic vocation with engaged spirituality rooted in Scripture, scholarship and courageous walks of witness.
Put differently, considering our Synod Bible Studies and the theological rationale behind the Synod theme, we need to ask: How do we participate as organisations of ACSA, not by regurgitating concepts and formulas we have learnt elsewhere or in the past, but in a ministry of reconciliation, whether between God and humanity, (Rom 5:1-11), between different people (2 Cor 5:17-20 and Eph 2:12-20) or reconciliation with the whole of Creation (Eph 1:10 and Col 1:19-20)? In God’s garden that is ACSA, we have patches of weeds, but we also have blossoms, flowers and fruit. Let us build on what is beautiful and productive as we choose our goals and focus our efforts to bring about the reconciliation which will make God smile.
Just to pick out a few examples, what are the appropriate modalities of being and doing church in the light of what the Technology and Ethics Commission ( or the Commission on Valuing Diversity: Disability Justice raise in their reports? Since Provincial Synod 1989 we have been trying to reconcile our understanding of the nature of God with how we minister to LGBTQI+ members in our pews. Have we listened to and adequately sought reconciliation with one another on providing appropriate pastoral care to loving faithful couples in same-sex civil unions? What is this Provincial Synod, 35 years later, going to resolve beyond flowery words? In my past 16 years as your Archbishop, I have relied for guidance on such matters on, in no particular order, theological advisers, the Canon Law Council, the Southern African Anglican Theological Commission, Safe and Inclusive Church, the Anglican Board of Education, the Synod of Bishops, Scripture of courses, and on the lived experiences of our parishioners in such unions and relationships. At this Synod, we will convene a Conference of Synod on this issue and on Disability Justice. Will we be able to craft a pragmatic, re-conciliatory outcome which takes account of the differing pastoral needs for effective ministry in our varied Dioceses which are called to minister in widely divergent contexts?
The latest reports from the various Diocesan annual planning meetings that you have held show that, over the next three to 10 years, most of you envisage an Anglican community that is:
Prophetic, trans-formative, inclusive, contextually rooted and guided by the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission;
Hospitable and characterised by serving the interests of justice, social needs and the protection and enhancement of the environment;
Honest and humble, committed and passionate, disciplined and outward-looking; and
Also sensitive to the tensions within the Anglican Communion of those disaffected in the Communion.
You say furthermore that we must continue being pioneers; that we must be a church marked by empowering communities through integral mission; that we must heighten the communication needs of the Province across social media and beyond in a digital era; and finally that in a constantly-evolving world we must not overlook the importance of familiar and old-established traditions, such as celebrating Sea Sunday.
Let me conclude by drawing on the wisdom of our spiritual ancestors to remind us of the power, the life force, which will enable us to overcome despair as we face the challenges which beset us, and to break down those ramparts which surround us. I speak, of course, of the power of hope. There is a saying attributed to St Augustine of Hippo, that “Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to ensure that they do not stay that way.” In an essay written on the 150th anniversary of Robert Gray’s arrival in Southern Africa, Archbishop Emeritus Njongonkulu Ndungane said, "...we dare not be hopeless. For Christ is our hope. The risen Jesus is our strength. Christian hope is the beginning of the possibility of transformation. It was that which brought a Bishop Gray to our shores. It is Christian hope that must revive and strengthen us as missionaries for the new millennium.” And hope, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu famously reminded us, “is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
My generation in the church drew deeply from the wisdom and indomitable witness of Jürgen Moltmann, the German theologian who died this year at the age of 98 and who has left a legacy, vital for our times and our country, of what hope looks like in the public space. His ground-breaking book, Theology of Hope, published 60 years ago, was prophetic for our generation, giving meaning to various political theologies and soon afterwards the nascent theology of liberation and the important variants that grew from it.
In a perceptive reflection on Moltmann’s theology and the South African reality which has been so short on hope in recent years, Prof Jacobus Vorster of North-West University makes a powerful point in stating that South Africans have tied hope to our liberation event of 1994 rather than on the ongoing liberation process which the methodology of the “Theology of Hope” encourages. He suggests that hope as a process is built on the often small signs of what he describes as “the living, moving God” working through small acts that are the witnesses of God’s Kingdom; acts of compassion and care for the poor, justice in policies and public life, a just economic system and the care of creation, all of which we can consciously give expression to in our daily lives.
In each of the nations of Southern Africa, our church communities, filled with a spirit reflecting the acceptance of our Lord for each one of us, are well placed to be sacred spaces for truth-telling, for repentance, for contrition for our past and for re-commissioning to “go out and sin no more.” Hope is not a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept. No, hope is the driving force which motivates our determination to name our problems, to identify solutions to them and to mobilise people to overcome them. Hope must be what drives us to work to fulfill the promise of societies based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights. Small steps taken in hope can become islands of hope and as they come together we can in turn create landscapes of hope. We need to be cautious though, because it is not simply about “good deeds or works”, it is about those deeds infused with love, which in the public domain means deeds infused with justice. If I might quote St Augustine once more: “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.” And God must be acknowledged as being at the centre of all that we are and all that we do. When we see signs that we are making progress, says Professor Vorster, “The church must always remind people of the reality of the moving God who erects these signs, irrespective of human failures, as the constant impulses of the hope that never fade away.” And he sums up beautifully our spiritual exploration, our counter to Luke’s despair. “To find hope in South Africa,” he writes, “is to see and testify about the moving God who continuously grinds out of the hard rocks of evil the visible and touchable signs of goodness that can serve as the solid foundation of hope.”
This is the testimony we must offer, the hope which we must realise, the love which we must give expression to in the world, the wisdom that must flow from our resolutions, the intellectual rigour which we must bring to our arguments, the clarion call to fill the spaces between the silences of our prayer, and the prophetic challenge which we must issue from this Synod to ensure that the kingdoms of this world can surely be transformed into the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. (Rev 11:5)
References:
Ndungane, W.N., 1998, “The relevance of Robert Gray for the contemporary church”, in Change and Challenge, eds. John Suggit and Mandy Goedhals, CPSA Publishing Committee.
Vorster, J.M., 2023, “Six decades of Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and tangible hope in South Africa today”, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 79(1), a8988. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v79i1.8988
https://scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v79n1/102.pdf
