generalspeaking

The Methodist Church in Johannesburg

South African Bishop Paul Verryn is one very special human being with an irritated conscience that simply will not let him rest. Yet his devotion to humanity has caused him to be suspended by the Methodist Church which he serves in a downtown neighbourhood of Johannesburg. True, his neighbours are not fond him. Because of what this man engages in, local companies in the area and shopkeepers hold an incendiary grudge against him.

For creating, in their already-rundown neighbourhood a chaos of conflicting emotions. In fact, Bishop Paul Verryn is so detested by some that when police arrested two men who had threatened to kill Mr. Verryn they discovered that it was local businessmen who paid $4,000 for the thugs to kill him, and thus conveniently solve their problem. Their problem being that the Central Methodist Church under Mr. Verryn has become a haven for tormented and fearful Zimbabweans.

Their lives threatened at home in the misery of hugely dysfunctional Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe's thuggish regime, thousands of Zimbabweans have fled into neighbouring South Africa for another chance at life. But unemployed and xenophobic South Africans have no love for their neighbours and resent their presence, seeing their search for employment and stability directly impacting on their own similar searches.

At times up to three thousand Zimbabwean refugees take refuge in the church, thanks to the generous compassion of Bishop Verryn. The church property itself has been violently attacked by South Africans incensed at the refuge it offers to foreigners. Lawmakers in the province threatened to close the church, characterizing it as a "ticking time bomb."

Several months earlier exasperated Church authorities had refused to extend Bishop Verryn's ten-year term at the Methodist Church of Central Johannesburg. They are angered and embarrassed by his 'unauthorized' statements and by his initiation of court action to appoint an independent curator to protect children at the church, without their specific 'permission' to do so.

Bishop Verryn was an anti-apartheid activist who moved to Soweto in 1988, and at that time was supportive of and helpful to black activists, hiding them in his home. One of those he sheltered was Stompie Seipei, whom Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her Mandela United Football Club had abducted from his home and had in beaten and murdered him in 1989.

After Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the dissolution of the apartheid government, Bishop Desmund Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission ruled that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela "deliberately and maliciously slandered" Bishop Verryn, claiming that he was a sex pervert, preying on young boys.

Bishop Verryn not only fills every nook, cranny and corner in the church with desperate refugees, anxious to find night shelter to avoid beatings and worse by those who prey on their presence in South Africa, he also opens his home to their presence, earning him very little peace or privacy.

He personally interviews each and every new Zimbabwean refugee, making note of their stories of escape, rape, torture. One man singly doing his utmost to help where he can to preserve the lives of desperate refugees. One can only wonder where the Government of South Africa is in all this turmoil, the same government that has continued to defend Robert Mugabe's continued misrule in Zimbabwe.

Despite all the promises, all the initiatives taken by the Government of South Africa, its own citizens' poverty, the huge issue of joblessness, the dreadful statistics revolving around rampant crime, and the urgent need to decently house its poor appears to be festering. One wonders whether it could be otherwise given the gross ignorance of basic truths about AIDS/HIV exhibited by the country's president and its health sector.

If there is promise yet that South Africa will eventually emerge as a developed society, a fully capable government proudly leading its people to future prosperity, the world has yet to see that revealed in some persuasive measures, rather than the existing misery of abandoned hope.

Labels: Social-Cultural Deviations, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 17, 2010