Mayoral Inter-faith service at the Cathedral of St. George the Martyr, Cape Town

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, friends from the Western Cape inter religious group, dear people of this beautiful city, dear friends.

It is a great joy to be with you as we celebrate what we have termed the Mayoral Service.

Thank you, Mr. Dean and your staff for hosting this service and for the Western Cape Religious Leaders' Forum for coordinating this together with the city and the Cathedral: to everyone else who is here, who loves this city or who lives in the city or offers services to the city, feel welcomed.

The ancient Greek notion of the city implied that the polis is about citizenship and the body of citizens. In short, how space and resources are organized in service to the people of the city and how the people in turn engage to shape their destiny collaboratively.

So you, we all matter, for without you, we would not have the mayor to organize the affairs of this city, nor the mayor without the citizens.

May I also, on behalf of the Dean and his staff welcome all the other visitors here today.

Madame Mayor, Patricia De Lille: thank you, also for your leadership and presence with us and for your encouraging and challenging words; thank you for your welcome – we feel honored and humbled that you agreed to be here and to grace us with your presence, for without it we could not have a "Mayoral Service" as an inter-faith congregation.

In the Christian sacred text that was read this afternoon, John 10:10, the Johannine Jesus says, "I came so that you may have life and have it in abundance."

What is life in abundance? What is eternal life? It is about the flourishing of all human beings and not only some who are powerful and connected. It is the flourishing of us all or, put differently, it is about the common good or the public good.

The common good, simply put, is ensuring that what is good and beneficial for me, is also good and beneficial for the other who is my neighbour.

Put in a language understood by most religions, this is about doing what I would like done to me (love, respect, care, compassion) done to the other too. Yes, it is about respecting the dignity of each individual as reflecting the humanity of God and the divine in God.

The famous words are from the Christian sacred text, love you neighbor, with all your mind, soul and body, and love the Lord your God with the same mind as you love yourself and neighbor.

Life in abundance is life lived with a mentality of abundance and not a mentality of poverty; life lived mindful that it is not useful to amass riches, thinking that when your end comes, you will take these with you; it is life lived with contentment and generosity, wanting to make profit but not ignoring people or the planet that generates your wealth.

How might this life pan out in our beloved city? Our city is doing relatively well. You only need to look at the Currie Cup final, even though we are sorry the Sharks won. Visitors and tourists to this city bring a lot of revenue.

Or you can look at our status as world design capital or at the film industry, conferences, tertiary education, media, the financial sector, small grassroots enterprises such as B&B’s, NGOs, industry, including thriving and not so thriving small industries, and the large number of companies with head offices in this city. The economy is indeed thriving here in spite of challenges elsewhere, heralded by Minister Pravin Gordhan and his belt-tightening for ministers.

Economically, we are doing relatively well compared to the majority of the other provinces of our country and countries in our continent. For this, we are grateful to our city and mothers for the flourishing of the local economy.

However, as religious leaders, as we give thanks for this flourishing, we need to also ask deeper questions:

-- Who is benefiting from this economic flourishing?

-- Is it serving the common good or benefitting only some who are powerful, politically and economically well connected?

-- Is this result of this flourishing what Jesus envisaged in the passage from John: I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance?

-- Are the people without a voice in the city benefitting as well?

-- Are we reaching out?

-- Does the economic benefit bring joy and benefits to those on the margins, not just trickle to them?

-- Are the dividends of our democracy and freedom benefitting all, and are those who benefit helping others to have access to this boom?

In this past week, I did "huisbesoek" to Auntie Pat Gorvalla* in Durbanville, then licensed a new priest in Christ Church Claremont and visited Mfuleni. I could not help but feel torn by the feeling that this abundant life in our beloved city is still skewed in favour of those of us from a particular race and class and not for all as Jesus wished for, suffered for and died for.

The work is thus enormous. I must confess that we in the religious vocation often overlook these challenges. We are often tempted by the trappings of power, money and proximity to politicians and the potential for personal or denominational gain from such proximity.

Whilst we need to affirm the good that the city does, we equally need to raise critical questions about who benefits from the city’s flourishing, and why spatial apartheid for instance is so stubborn 20 years into our democracy. We need to raise these questions without fear, for ours is not a political mandate but a vocation to serve all in spite of power, status and political affiliation.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, friends from the Western Cape inter religious group, dear people of this beautiful city, dear friends.
Often, we are too aligned, or our mouths are too full of resources, personal or for our churches, that we are afraid to speak out clearly and prophetically for the cause of those marginalized and excluded, and plead their cause in attaining this abundant life in the here and now, and not only in heaven.

We confess our failures today and ask for pardon from God, from the poorest of the poor and all who are marginalized, be it materially, due to their sexual orientation, class or race. We say Lord have mercy on us and pardon us, our sins.

Two weeks ago at the National Church Leaders' Consultation, we confessed this sin of omission, the lack of coherence in our prophetic audibility and our courage to speak. We committed to being part of the solution, especially in education, and resolved to seek an audience urgently with SADTU and other teachers' unions as we look together at ways we can make education the tool of liberation it is supposed to be.

As we confess and acknowledge our own shortcomings in our city too, we should not be navel-gazing and becoming trapped by this sin of omission or our helplessness for not doing and speaking for the cause of the poorest of the poor.

We should equally engage with all for their sake as we plead for respect for their human dignity and for their true freedom. Let us re-commit to taking seriously our God-given mandate to serve others.

We commit to working as a collective with the city , the polis, in serving God's people and in bringing hope; hope that nothing will separate God's people from the love and care of God even in the midst of pain, suffering and squalor.

We commit to the ministry of reconciliation, reconciling communities and different faiths, rich and poor, and we encourage the spirit of generosity and cohesion amongst all people of this city and province.

We commit to walks of witness alongside the people of God to highlight: janitorial services gone wrong; poor school infrastructure; poor conditions of service and remuneration for farm and domestic workers; the need to investigate the effectiveness of policing in our townships; the impact which endemic corruption has on service delivery and social cohesion; as well as the many glaring economic disparities in our city.

We will continue to care for the xenophobically displaced, those trapped by drugs and the impact of gangsterism. We will continue through the Electoral Code of Conduct Observer Commission (ECCOC) to demand that our political leaders behave aptly as we all pray for, and ensure, a free, robust and fair context for electioneering and elections next year and beyond, as well as open the question of who funds political parties and demand transparency in this area.

Returning to the Christian sacred text as I conclude, the Lucan God, in Luke 4, reminds us as people of faith and in this city , that the spirit of the Lord God is upon me, he has anointed me and all of us to proclaim boldly without fear or favour good news to the poor....

Let us dare to do so.

May this mayoral service bring hope and courage to all in the city and a recommitment by us all to bring life in abundance for all especially those in the margins of the city?

Amen

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba
27 October 2013

* A leading citizen of Cape Town and former president of the Anglican Women's Federation.

Cape Town Must Set an Example on Sanitation

The following article was published in the Cape Times on 7 July 2011. It can be found at www.capetimes.co.za/city-must-set-example-on-sanitation-1.1095150

City must set example on sanitation

Last Thursday, I joined other Western Cape religious leaders on a “walk of witness” through parts of Khayelitsha to look at sanitation conditions, and the dangers they pose, not only directly to health, but also to people’s safety. I arrived straight from the memorial service for Professor Kader Asmal, and the juxtaposition was almost overwhelming: from the pristine City Hall auditorium, where we were welcomed with a bottle of water under every seat, to Khayelitsha, with its mud and stench of sewage, lacking the very basics of clean water and sanitation. After celebrating Asmal’s life, and the improvements that were achieved through his dedication, it was a shocking reminder of the challenges that remain and the dire situations in which far too many South Africans still live.

Our tour through RR and Taiwan sections was led by the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), a local community movement which has for the past two years been campaigning for improved access to clean and safe sanitation services for some half a million Capetonians without access to basic sanitation. It is not easy to grasp such vast numbers, but it is even harder to imagine the impact of seeing and hearing first-hand how the absence of these fundamental services affects residents daily.

The run-up to the recent local government elections saw an explosion of dissatisfaction with the state of municipal service delivery. The unenclosed toilets in Makhaza and Rammulotsi came to symbolise how municipalities across the country and across political parties are failing to uphold residents’ rights to safety, health and dignity. They also prompted wider questions about how our country engages with, and delivers to, society’s most vulnerable. With the elections behind us, sanitation no longer occupies the headlines, but it continues to dominate the lives of the millions of South Africans who continue to live without it.

This particular walk followed an earlier visit last August. I was shocked to see that many of the problems we witnessed then remain unattended to, almost a year later. A toilet which was blocked at the time of my first visit, not only remains blocked but is now in utter disrepair. The community has placed a heavy piece of concrete in front of the door to prevent it being used. Where one toilet can be shared between 60 and more people, it is shocking that those which exist can remain out of order for over a year.

Despite the terrible condition these toilets are often in, many residents would nonetheless rather use a blocked toilet than walk to a functioning one further from home, because of the dangers involved. The shocking truth is that for many, relieving oneself can be a life- threatening activity. We heard how residents are petrified of using the toilet at night, preferring to hold out until sunrise. It is hard to imagine telling toddlers that they must wait until morning to use the toilet, but this is the reality for many.

The fear is justified. Residents are frequently attacked while going to use toilets. SJC member Makhosandile Qezo has no toilet near his home. Instead, he must relieve himself in a desolate field between Lansdowne Road and the N2 highway. One morning last year, he was stabbed in the face while his trousers were around his ankles. Another young SJC member – 14-year-old Zanele – escaped an attack while relieving herself in the same field, but she was hit by a car on the busy Lansdowne Road and was seriously injured as she ran away. Women and children are frequently assaulted and raped.

The health risks of filthy toilets and water sources are also appalling. It is hard to find one family not afflicted by waterborne illnesses such as diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, worms, and severe rashes. When walking around Taiwan informal settlement, I noticed that the bank of chemical toilets on the community’s outskirts was surrounded by waste of every sort. Even at a distance, the stench was unbearable. Several of our party found ourselves battling with sinus headaches after our brief visit.

The provision of sanitation facilities for informal settlements that are in line with national norms and standards will take many years, and requires detailed planning. The city cannot do this successfully on its own. Alongside making the provision of clean and safe sanitation facilities for informal settlements a priority, it must call for public consultation through which experts and stakeholders can plan together. Residents and local authorities working co-operatively is always the best way to achieve effective, lasting results. In the interim there are tangible steps that can be taken to ensure that the existing infrastructure is utilised to its maximum potential.

At present, the city constructs toilets and standpipes, which then become the community’s “responsibility”. But it is completely unrealistic to expect a toilet that is shared, perhaps by over 100 people, to be properly maintained without state assistance. It is critical that the city budgets for and provides regular janitors for existing facilities. It is also unacceptable for the few toilets that do exist to remain in disrepair for months or even years, as we saw last week. Where I live, it takes less than 48 hours for sewerage faults to be repaired. The same level of service is unquestionably the right of those living in our poorer communities.

One lesson we learnt from the unenclosed toilet saga was how quickly delivery fails when there is a lack of meaningful engagement between communities and government. Civil society organisations and the religious community are uniquely placed to facilitate this process. For this reason, today we will join a meeting between the SJC and the mayor of Cape Town. This meeting follows an SJC protest, in which I participated, which was held on Freedom Day, April 27. Approximately 2 500 people symbolically queued behind a toilet outside Cape Town’s Civic Centre to illustrate how, 17 years to the day after we first queued to vote, far too many people still continue to wait for access to basic sanitation. A memorandum, signed by more than 10,000 people and 25 organisations, was handed over.

Mayor Patricia de Lille must be commended for agreeing to meet to discuss this important issue. I want to assure De Lille that I and the broader faith-based community will lend our support to attempts to bring various stakeholders around the table, to work together to ensure the progressive realisation of every person’s right to use a clean and safe toilet. Let us set an example in the City of Cape Town – a city which proudly encourages participation and values the rights of all inhabitants – that can be replicated in municipalities across the country.

Our problems are great, but we must make the needs of the neediest the highest priority of the whole nation, and every part of society. The solutions are neither quick nor easy. Effective consultation and communication, openness, honesty, transparency and trust, are necessary to ease our difficult journey forwards. Let us talk the talk and walk the walk together.

Offers to Assist in Mediation in Makhaza

This statement was issued on 8 December 2010

The Most Revd Dr. Thabo Makgoba, who has been actively involved in attempts to find a lasting resolution to the conflict in Makhaza over unenclosed toilets, has again offered to assist in mediation.

Archbishop Makgoba has visited the site on two separate occasions with the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) and has met with residents, community leaders, members of the ANC Youth League and Mayor Dan Plato. He has on numerous occasions publicly offered to serve as a mediator in the continuing dispute regarding the re-installation of toilets in Makhaza. To date, neither the City nor the ANCYL have accepted the offer.

During these visits, the Archbishop observed elderly and disabled residents forced to use toilets with enclosures hastily constructed from a few planks of wood. He saw the sites where the ANCYL had initially demolished the temporary structures, and where the City later demolished the remaining toilets and standpipes.

“The important issue is the provision of humane living conditions for the people of Makhaza who are directly affected. It should not be a political battle – it’s about the health and safety of our fellow citizens,” commented Archbishop Makgoba. “Anything I can do to resolve this conflict I will do gladly.”

It is evident that the people directly affected have been caught in the middle of a conflict between the City of Cape Town on one hand and the ANC YL on the other. The SJC has approached the Archbishop again, as it believes the impasse needs the involvement of a well-respected and independent leader and has welcomed Archbishop Makgoba’s acceptance of their invitation.

Despite a recent interim court order calling for the re-installation of temporary structures, the enclosures were this week rejected by some members of the community. This followed yet another apparent failure by the City to adequately consult the community and have its concerns heard, in addition to the ANCYL’s refusal to accept corrugated iron enclosures as a temporary measure. It is hard to see how the order will be implemented, without attempts to improve consultation and place the urgent needs of the community first.

The Archbishop calls on the relevant stakeholders to attend a meeting in the near future in which ways to resolve the situation – both in the form of temporary and long-term relief - can be discussed. Such a meeting would need to include representatives from the City, community leaders, the ANCYL, and the broader community.

It is hoped that consensus can be reached before the festive season, to allow for residents to enjoy this holy period with their family and community.

Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town on 8th December 2010 Inquiries: Ms Sisanda Majikazana on 021-763-1320 (office hours)