To the Laos - To the People of God – October 2017

Dear People of God

I am writing this as I prepare to travel to Canterbury, where I will attend a meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion over the next week. Following that I will chair a meeting of the Lambeth Design Group, a body which oversees planning for the next Lambeth Conference, to be held in 2020. Our Province is committed to faithfully showing up and participating in these key meetings of the Communion, doing so because our reward is to be faithful servants of God and God's witness and mission in the world. Please pray for both meetings.

The Communion meetings follow a busy week of debates and decisions, first at the second session of the Synod of Bishops this year, then at the annual Provincial Standing Committee (PSC), at which bishops, clergy and lay representatives from every diocese in the Province are represented. The Dean of the Province, Bishop Stephen Diseko, “embarrassed” me, almost marketing my new book to both meetings by congratulating me on it. I appreciated it but as you all know me, I always try to push attention to Jesus, the church and not me. 

The bishops dealt with a wide range of important issues, including the election of a new bishop for Mthatha, the situation in the Diocese of Umzimvubu, the future of the College of the Transfiguration and the Archbishop's Commission on Human Sexuality. You can read the details in our Pastoral Letter.

At PSC we also considered in detail a very wide range of questions ranging from theological education and the environment to how we should organise our youth work and our role in combating substance abuse. Of particular note was the statement we received from the special conference marking the 25^th anniversary of the ordination of women as priests in ACSA, which was held at the same venue and simultaneously with the Synod of Bishops. At the end of their conference, we all celebrated a special Eucharist with arriving members of PSC.

While those who met in conference celebrated the 1992 decision to ordain women as priests as “a victory over exclusion, inequality, and injustice in the church,” they said these features continued in our leadership, structures and practices. They called for a series of changes, including the election of more woman bishops. You can read their statement on the ASCA website, as well as a pledge to which they committed themselves.

Apart from the challenging task of presiding over the deliberative bodies of the Province, the life of an Archbishop is also taken up with difficult pastoral issues. Before the recent Provincial meetings got under way, my ministry and that of a number of my fellow bishops in a number of dioceses in the Eastern and Western Cape were overshadowed by tragedy.

Firstly, I had to preach and preside at the funeral of a senior priest, Archdeacon Lunga Vellem, in Kokstad in the Diocese of Umzimvubu. As someone who held an MBA, he was a valuable asset to the Diocese but was killed when he sustained head injuries in a car accident. Then in Cape Town we had the sudden death of the Revd Mark Abrahams, Rector of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Heideveld. He died just after undergoing an operation and only a week before his 54th birthday. Large numbers came both to the Church of the Resurrection in Bonteheuwel and to Holy Spirit to commemorate his life and ministry.

Soon after that, I buried a young priest in the Diocese of Mthatha, Archdeacon Sibulele Njova, his wife, his son and his younger sister. They all died in a head-on collision with a van which was allegedly forced out of its lane by a taxi – which then sped off without stopping, apparently realising what it had inflicted on this young family. As we lowered the four coffins into the grave in Mqandule in rural Transkei, not far from the picturesque Wild Coast resorts of Coffee Bay and Hole-in-the-Wall, the wailing of the mourners seemed – very painfully – to be matched by the sound of the sea. After the funeral I went to Mthatha Hospital with the Dean to visit the two surviving daughters, aged 11 and four. The 11-year-old was battling with her injuries but the four-year-old could hold a conversation with me and even gave me a high-five. She was happy that we were in cassocks because we reminded her of her dad. But she had not yet been told her parents had died and thought they were arriving back from a conference later that day. I suspected she must have sensed that her parents had gone – she was, after all, in the car with them – and I felt that I was betraying her by not saying anything. But I was on my way back to Cape Town, so I resisted the temptation to tell her and then to leave her and fly off. If her sister pulls through, they will both be orphans. Their grandparents are ageing, so they will have to stay with an aunt in conditions far inferior to those of a rural Anglican rectory.

As I reflected on the lives of these three clerics and their families, I thought of the Gospel assurance that “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) – but also of the Psalmist's words: “Why are you so full of heaviness, my soul: and why so unquiet within me?” (Psalm 46) We all have finite lives, and as St Paul says to us, “We do not want you to be uninformed... about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (Thessalonians 4:13) Well done, good and faithful servants, and may you enter into your Father's rest.

Fortunately I can end this letter to the laity on a note of hope and new life. On my return from the Communion meetings, Bishop Martin Breytenbach of the Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist will marry Colleen Thomas of Cape Town. After they both suffered the loss of their spouses in tragic circumstances in recent years, we celebrate and rejoice that they have found new happiness and give thanks for this life-giving sacrament, marriage. God be praised!

God bless,

†Thabo Cape Town

We must not lose our sense of moral outrage

Note: This commentary by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba was published in this form by City Press, Johannesburg on September 17, 2017. It is posted here for the record: 

The controversy surrounding the private life of Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has confessed to an extra-marital affair in the past, and the response of an Eastern Cape student to receiving an erroneous payment of R14 million, highlight the divisions in our nation in addressing public and personal morality in our society.

When Nelson Mandela's administration developed its Reconstructon and Development Programme to combat poverty and inequality, Madiba also called for an “RDP of the soul” to address the nation's spiritual brokenness. Twenty-three years later, we have to ask whether this objective has received adequate attention.

Comments in the media indicate a worrying consensus in the political class that personal moral uprightness is no longer a criterion for leadership in our society. Such tacit acceptance is very worrying, and challenges religious leaders to do more to instil high moral values in current and future generations.

It is heartening that leaders such as the Deputy President and Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who was recently caught up in an alleged “sexting” scandal, have admitted their wrongdoing. But just as the church has in the past criticised President Zuma's extra-marital affairs, we must be consistent and require other leaders to respect the sanctity of marriage and practise sexual fidelity.

The young student who received money in error seemed to see nothing wrong with spending the money extragavantly and on luxuries at the same time as other students were being expelled from university for financial reasons. There was far too little outrage at her behaviour in spending money that was patently not hers to spend. Worse, many on social media made light of the matter.

Along with this decline in standards of personal morality, there is a collapse in standards of public morality. Over recent years there has been a catalogue of court cases and decisions that are indicative of our moral collapse: the Nkandla judgement, the State of Capture report, the denial of a visa to the Dalai Lama and allowing Omar al-Bashir and Grace Mugabe to escape justice. The levels of misappropriation of public funds being perpetrated or tolerated by other leaders at the highest levels in government are shocking. We may justifiably call such leaders disciples of corruption and inequality.

We have slowly lost our sense of moral outrage and shame – we should therefore not be surprised when there is no condemnation of glaring examples of what is a departure from values that Mandela had in mind when he advocated the RDP of the soul.

Respect for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law must be linked to the personal values that leaders are expected to display. The restoration of morality as the basis on which South Africans aspire to live is part of the new struggle for a better, more equal society – it is inextricably linked to the economic emancipation of our people. We should be deploying resources that are currently being stolen in institutionalised theft to fight poverty.

It is time to take moral regeneration to the next level – fully recognising that for many of us, our own houses need to be cleaned—for example, as a result of a recent elective assembly in the Anglican Church, disciplinary steps are being taken against a candidate who is alleged to have falsified his qualifications.

We need to do the following:

    • The charter of positive values adopted by the Moral Regeneration Campaign is perhaps a good starting point for reflection. Respect for human dignity has been destroyed across all sectors of society, and these positive values can help us reclaim our basic goodness.

    • All branches of the State need to re-commit to moral and ethical values. We must encourage a culture in which people take responsibility to the consequences of their action. Without this no one will think it matters to pursue a righteous life that is focused less on self-preservation and more on servant leadership focused on the needs of our people.

    • We need to revive the values of Ubuntu in pursuance of the spiritual reconstruction of all sectors of society and in the individual lives of our citizens.

    • We need to support and strengthen the Chapter Nine institutions that seek to instil a sense of order in the stewardship of resources meant to combat unemployment, poverty and inequality.

    • We need to teach morality and ethics throughout our education system, from primary to tertiary level, and make it compulsory in training for professional careers.

If we are serious about restoring private and public morality, we have to agree on the fundamentals of setting higher standards for our leaders as a way of focusing the minds of our people to achieve the reconstruction and development of our society and of our souls.

[AUDIO] Anglicans pray for Lesotho

Commemorating Robert Gray

The text of remarks by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba at Bishops School in Cape Town:

Today we give thanks to God for our founder Bishop Robert Gray and his wife Sophy Gray. Thank you, the Revd Terry Wilke, for the invitation and thank you, Mr Pearson, educators and students for your warm welcome.

Today we celebrate the 169th anniversary of the arrival on our continent of Robert Gray, first Bishop of Cape Town and the founder of this school. As you will hear shortly, in the prayer the Church prays to commemorate him, we remember today “the constancy and zeal” with which he laid firm foundations for Anglicanism in Southern Africa.

Archbishop's Charge to Cape Town Diocesan Synod

The text of the Archbishop's Charge to the 65th Session of the Synod of the Diocese of Cape Town, delivered during the opening Eucharist at St George's Cathedral: 

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

"Follow your conscience," says Archbishop ahead of no-confidence vote

Remarks prepared for delivery to Monday's civil society march under the banner #UniteBehind, ahead of a debate of no-confidence in President Jacob Zuma, scheduled in Parliament for Tuesday. The remarks were delivered by the Bishop of Table Bay, the Right Revd Garth Counsell: