St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town
Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
The Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba
Archbishop of Cape Town
Launch of the Global Centre for Peacebuilding and Business
February 8th, 2026
Isaiah 58: 1-9a; Psalm 112: 1-10; 1 Corinthians 2: 1-12; Matthew 5:13-20
May I speak in the name of God who calls, informs and transforms us. Amen.
Thank you, Dean Terry, the Church Wardens and the staff of the Cathedral for your leadership and your welcome today. To our ecumenical friends, fellow clergy and bishops, and colleagues a special welcome. To the regular members of the Cathedral congregation, today’s launch of a Global Centre for Peace-building and Business represents an important step forward in an initiative in which churches, including the Church of England, the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and the Methodist Church in England are working with actors from the mining industry to promote ethical, sustainable mining.
Turning to today’s readings in the light of that introduction, Isaiah’s challenge, the Psalmist’s blessing, Paul’s witness, and Jesus’ salt-and-light vision, frame our purpose today: that is, to pursue justice and peace in contexts all too often marred by extraction and exploitation.
The Story of Mining in Our Lives
Mining has shaped human flourishing since our ancestors chipped flint for tools. Today, minerals power everything from our toothpaste to the digital devices that connect remote rural areas to cities, and one continent to another—and will even drive spacecraft like NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. In my own family, faith and mining intertwined: my father, a self-supporting priest of the Zion Christian Church, was a travelling salesman who travelled from mine compound to mine compound, selling clothing to West Rand mineworkers; my maternal grandfather hailed from the platinum fields of Bapong. As a psychologist, I’ve sat beside miners in a Johannesburg hospital, bearing witness to their pain and trauma after their spinal cords had been crushed in rockfalls deep underground, rendering them paraplegics and quadriplegics.
However, I must confess that we in the churches have fallen short in our ministry to the mining industry. Although our congregations include people from all sectors of the industry – owners, managers and workers – we have, for example, often failed to minister to miners living in hostels. So we have had a limited understanding of the needs, including the spiritual needs, of those who work in extreme heat on stopes two or three kilometres below the surface of the earth. And we have little understanding of the impact on managers and owners of the volatility of commodity prices, of the relentless pressures from shareholders for better results every quarter, and of the demands posed by technically sophisticated and complex mining operations.
Faith-based institutions speak with unique authority
But by joining the initiative which has led to today’s launch, we in the faith community, besides acknowledging the shortfalls I have referred to, have declared that it is not too late to remedy our past failures. Across Africa, faith-based institutions speak with unique authority. The leading continent-wide opinion pollster, Afrobarometer, has reported that a survey of 53,000 people across 39 African countries showed that two in every three Africans trust religious leaders, while fewer than half trust political leaders. In Central Africa, where the mining of strategic minerals is widely associated with child labour, environmental degradation and conflict, religious leaders are the only institution trusted by a majority.
The words of Christine Firer Hinze, a theologian at the Jesuits’ Fordham University, sum up effectively the task we face. She has written that “in a world of radically unequal power and opportunities, one way towards justice and a better life for all is... about cultivating... practices of solidarity...” And her words challenge us here today to discern, in her words, “the interdependency of all peoples within earth’s habitats” and to work “collaboratively for the shared good of all people and the planet.”
It is within this context that in South Africa and elsewhere, faith communities and the mining industry have begun to work together to ensure that the industry develops in ways that are in harmony with new patterns of human thought and behaviour, so that mining is seen as a welcome and valued partner in society, accepted as promoting the common good.
Since 2013, we have been convening at Bishopscourt here in Cape Town what we have described as “Courageous Conversations” with mine CEOs, community leaders and NGOs. Beautifully, the conversations have been faith-led, starting with Evensong here at the cathedral, featuring the choir of St Cyprian’s Church, Langa. Morning Prayer has followed at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Protea, a site of apartheid forced removals. Key at these courageous conversations is seeking safe spaces to explore how the pursuit of business, the promotion of human dignity and caring for the environment intersect.
The challenges we face
Today the world confronts multiple fractures. Global norms are under strain, as the forum at Davos recently highlighted. Conflict is rising: in 2024 the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme recorded 61 state-based armed conflicts, the highest since 1946. Across Africa and beyond, local disputes over mineral wealth fuel ethnic tensions, insurgencies, and human suffering. The Democratic Republic of Congo, home to an estimated $24 trillion in untapped minerals, has seen six million deaths since 1996. And rebel groups profit from revenues from coltan, the mineral used in the manufacture of products such as smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles.
We in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa have a special place in our hearts for our sisters and brothers in Mozambique, and I am glad that Bishop Manuel from Nampula is here today. This is because they used to be part of our church and because the apartheid government helped sponsor a destructive civil war there for nearly two generations. Now, the discovery of gas and rubies in northern Mozambique, combined with tensions born of past central government neglect of the region, and further fuelled by Islamic militancy, have generated a vicious insurgency. Thousands of civilians have been killed and over a million people displaced from their homes. On top of that, the legitimacy of a government which is being called upon to bring peace is in doubt because of a disputed election result.
In mining areas across the globe, we also confront the destructive legacy of past operations: abandoned mines, toxic waste and the failure of tailings dams containing the waste left over from mining. The collapse of these dams releases floods of mud which overwhelm communities: in 2019, 272 people died in Brumadinho in Brazil; in 2022, three people died in Jagersfontein in the Free State. In response, an independent Global Tailings Management Institute has been established in South Africa, backed by the United Nations, the mining industry, and the Church of England Pensions Board’s global safety initiative. There are these little initiatives that say we cannot be overwhelmed by darkness. As the song which we sung today says so beautifully:
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts,
shine through the darkness.
Shine through the darkness.
Christ in your Church gathered today.
The challenges will grow over the next two decades as areas are mined out and the mines there begin to close. Old mining sites will need to be cleaned up and stabilised, hazardous material removed, waste dealt with and ecosystems restored. New mining ventures will need to adopt truly sustainable practices. At a meeting of investors and mining experts on Friday, our Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Gwede Mantashe, underscored this point. Observing that it is the sweat and blood of workers which transforms investment into wealth, he said investment needed to be accompanied by social responsibility, points that I would like to underscore too.
The Global Centre for Peacebuilding and Business
It is against this backdrop—over twelve years of prayer, study, and dialogue at Bishopscourt—that the Global Centre for Peacebuilding and Business has been conceived. The details have been fleshed out since a meeting at Bishopscourt two years ago, following a challenge I issued at the London Stock Exchange arising from the relationship between mining and conflicts.
Today, from this People’s Cathedral, we launch the centre. Our calling is to let our light shine, to be salt that seasons and preserves, to witness against injustice in mining practices, and to foster equitable partnerships that honour people and our planet. Our work will interrogate the questions: How shall we remain lamps and lamp-bearers in dark times? How shall our salt retain its flavour? I invite you now to join in this vital and ambitious work.
We will focus especially on regions where extraction fuels conflict: Goma in the DR Congo, Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, communities in Madagascar, parts of Brazil, and areas plagued by the Zama-Zamas in South Africa, the informal miners who work abandoned shafts. We will continue the Marikana renewal project, of which I am a patron, which we launched more than decade ago in response to the massacre at that mine.
Together, through prayer, advocacy, dialogue and innovative finance, we can promote the rehabilitation of old mine landscapes, prevent new harms, and build local infrastructures for peace. We will build permanent infrastructure for dialogue. We will nurture the Peace Huts we have established in the DR Congo, the Peace Clubs in Mozambique and the Courageous Conversations in South Africa and Madagascar. My challenge today is: Will you commit your voice, your influence, your resources, your prayers to this project?
As president of the Centre, I pledge to walk this path with you—speaking boldly against oppression, illuminating injustice, and stewarding God’s good creation. Let me end with the words of the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?” Let us answer that call today.
Amen.
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