JourneyOnline
With commitment forged in South Africa’s era of civil disobedience, boycotts and torture, when the role of pastors in community leadership was crucial, Assembly Bible study leader the Rev. Dr Mvume Dandala is now helping his church face its biggest challenge: contributing to the new Africa.
While still a young teenager the Mvume Dandala began preaching and was mentored and given leadership opportunities by the principal of his school.
He sensed from that very early time the call of God into ministry in the church.
Youngest son of a South African Methodist minister and educated at a Methodist mission school, Dr Dandala was to become Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in Southern Africa and the General Secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, a fellowship with a congregational membership of 120 million.
Straight from high school as a 17 year old, Dr Dandala had served a two-year apprenticeship as a youth worker in a local congregation and candidated for the Methodist ministry in 1970, entering John Wesley College of the Federal Theological Seminary.
Describing the seminary as a “special place” in the difficult years of the 1970s, Dr Dandala said this was where his political awareness was developed.
“There was a lot of emphasis on contextual theology at the time and we had some very outstanding theological and social commentators.”
While at the seminary Dr Dandala was elected chairperson of the local branch of the all-black South African Students organisation, whose president at that time was Steve Biko.
The British Methodist Overseas Division recognised Dr Dandala’s leadership potential and provided him with a scholarship to study in Cambridge at Wesley House. He completed his BA and MA before returning to home in 1977 to be ordained and posted to the first non-racial circuit of the Methodist Church in South Africa.
“Of course the government was not happy (with racially integrated circuits) because it was going directly against the policy of apartheid.”
Paying the price
Dr Dandala moved on to be Superintendent Minister in the Methodist Circuit in Port Elizabeth, one of the key spots for black resistance.
“The additional pressure of Port Elizabeth was that most of the underground operatives of the time in the African National Congress (ANC) actually came from that region.”
It was the era of civil disobedience with boycotts, extreme pressure and torture, and the role of pastors in community leadership was crucial.
“Of course we paid a price for that in more ways that one. At one stage three or four of us pastors there, Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican churches, were rounded up by the security police and thrown into detention for a while.
“We were living every day with being tear-gassed in our properties and so on … It was not easy.
“Those three years assumed such visibility and significance for the struggle and truly it was a privilege to be there at that time.”
In his next appointment, as Head of the Missions Department of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa from 1986 to 1991, Dr Dandala developed a radical new strategy where black ministers were twinned with white ministers for four weeks to travel and undertake evangelism work together.
“It was a new experience for all our people and really had a powerful impact, focusing our church on the struggle and the situation of our people. It was a wonderful experience.”
Succeeding Peter Story as head the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, Dr Dandala took over when violence was at its highest between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
“The nice city of Johannesburg was in a mess at the time and we played a very pivotal role in the facilitation of peace.”
Dr Dandala said that, while church leaders had a certainty that things would change, they were somewhat astonished when it actually happened.
“I always get amazed when I revisit my sermons that I used to preach up until the ’90s. Most of them were faith-building, hope-building, that would say to people, ‘This will not last’ and yet, when it happened, we were taken by surprise.”
Dr Dandala said that he was still young when Nelson Mandela and the Rivonia trialists were sentenced to life imprisonment.
“The excitement of meeting them in the ’90s was absolutely overwhelming.
“Of course, when they came out they came out affirming the role and place of the church and what the church had been standing for, it was for us, who had been in leadership, a very encouraging thing to hear.”
Visionary leaders
Dr Dandala said at that point the ministry of the South African church had to change from a liberation role to the three tasks of peace, reconciliation and nation building.
“We hope history will judge us fairly.”
Dr Dandala said that his nation had been blessed with incredibly visionary leadership.
“South Africa should forever be grateful for Nelson Mandela and his colleagues at the time.
“These guys had spent so many years in prison and had taken so much hammering. Their families had been broken up and tortured, but they still came out saying the life of the nation is more important than anything else at this stage.
“Imagine for Mandela to come out and tell people who had been fighting in his name, ‘Let us throw our weapons in the sea’ before there was any election. He took very unpopular decisions.
“People often ask how is it that black people in South Africa were so ready to forgive and I say it was indeed because of people like Mandela and Desmond Tutu who had been at the heart of the struggle but at every turn were striving to purify the struggle.
“When people were killing one another and burning each other with motor car tyres, Desmond constantly said to our people, ‘That’s not what the struggle is about. This struggle is about values.'”
Dr Dandala is convinced that the ANC is the only political party anywhere that was actually “born in church” and that is why it was always values driven.
Now, in 2006, Dr Dandala believes the theology of the church needs to focus more than ever on values such as forgiveness, sharing, hard work and compassion that should form the bedrock of South African society.
“The social deficits that result from apartheid are vast and will take more than ten or 15 years to reverse but my sense is that we have done and are still doing reasonably well.
“But our biggest fear, as churches in South Africa, is that the younger generation will forget the struggle and, in forgetting, will become susceptible to the consumerism that tends to come with economic growth; and forget that the struggle was not merely for individual acquisition but rather was for the transformation of our whole society.”
Dr Dandala said that Africa had been an object of charity for too long and that economic growth was essential to turn the continent around by the creation of wealth.
But he also believes the church is very conscious of the need to highlight for its people the kind of value implications that underlie any drive for wealth creation.
“As a Methodist, I always think of Mr Wesley talking about, ‘Make all the money you can make (honestly), keep only that which you need and give away the rest for the welfare of humanity.’
“So the church has got to walk the delicate line of balancing the need for people to be innovators with the need for them to prioritise common wealth.
“That is the biggest challenge that faces the church at this point in time if the church is going to be a contributor to the new Africa.”
Read more about the 11th Assembly HERE.
Photo : Assembly Bible Study leader Rev. Dr Mvume Dandala
