May 2007

Autumn, arrests and anger

It's well and truly autumn here, and the streets of Jo'burg's suburbs are awash with leaves. We've just finished the Freedom Day long weekend which stretched from Friday until the May Day public holiday. They really know how to do holidays here, and it's been a good rest.

It's actually been an eventful and tiring couple of weeks.

Tangles with the law

Last Friday I was arrested. Yep, arrested, handcuffed and locked in a cell. And for what? Being an illegal immigrant.

The story goes like this. Last Friday I was at Park Station - Jo'burg's central transport hub. Two of the guys I work with at Thembalethu, Melville's homeless ministry, were heading home to Welkom in the Free State. (One of the challenges of the homeless ministry is dealing with the fact that we actually succeed when people leave our work.) As we walked through the station heading to the taxi rank, we were stopped by the police, who searched us. Pretty normal.

But then they asked me: "Where are you from?"

"Australia," I replied.

"And where is your passport?" they asked.

I was a bit nonplussed: my passport was at home, of course, I was hardly going to carry it around Park Station.

"Well, if you have no passport with you," the policeman said, "I must arrest you. You could be an illegal immigrant!"

And with that, they handcuffed me, took me to the police station and locked me in a cell.

It was a mildly scary experience.

"You're lucky you were caught by the good police," one policeman warned me. "Otherwise you might have got a beating!" And I was lucky - I was out in a couple of hours: my friend Pule, who I'd been with, managed to get home, found my passport and came back to bust me out. My biblestudy leaders told me later that the same thing had happened to one of their friends last year - a Cameroonian - and he was stuck in there a week until he paid a R1500 bribe.

Any publicity's good publicity?

Earlier that week, we'd had trouble of a different kind at Thembalethu.

I woke up Tuesday morning to find that our local paper, the Northcliff-Melville Times had published a front-page article about our work - surprisingly, because no one from the paper had spoken to any of us.

It was a fairly laudatory article, praising the work we did and encouraging the community to support us. Most of it was based on an interview with one our local ward councillors: she exhorted the community not to give money or food to the homeless youth, as it only perpetuates the problem. And she singled out as a irresponsible a local tow-truck driver who informally employs some of the homeless boys to wash his car and scout for accidents.

Now, this lady spoke wisely, on the whole. That's where public policy on homelessness is going, and I've been told that the guys are often given alcohol as payment for their services.

But the homeless boys were not at all impressed. That morning, the tow-truck driver had understandably refused to keep employing the boys, and many of them boycotted the ministry that day, seeing us as responsible for the article. That afternoon Joseph, one of our regulars came to the church in a fury.

"Melville Union Church!" he thundered as he came into the yard. He stormed up to Stuart, one of our volunteers, who was reading the Times article and flicked open a knife. "I'll cut that article to shreds!"

Stuart refused, trying to pacify him, and Joseph turned the knife on him. "I'll cut you!" I tried to make the peace with him, and Joseph left to go and cool down.

I spent a bit of time that afternoon making peace with the guys, talking to them about their point of view and wrestling with the issues in my own mind. Living in Auckland Park is like living next to the ABC studios in Ultimo, and so our homeless guys are probably some of the most famous in the country: the SABC as well as an independent film maker came that week to cover the ministry

But it's all very confusing: now more guys are attending the ministry now than ever.

God wants everyone to be rich

Varsity came back last week and so student ministry is back in full swing. This will be a short term, peppered with public holidays and exam preparation, but an exciting one. We're basically looking at Issues facing South Africa (HIV/AIDS, wealth and poverty, domestic violence) from a Christian perspective.

At the Bunting Rd campus, Billy, one of the pastors I work under, gave a talk on the 'prosperity gospel' - the teaching that God basically wants Christians to be rich. This teaching seems to dominate South African churches, white and black, rich and poor. Before he spoke, he got the students to discuss, in small groups, what they thought of such teaching. Is it God's will for all Christians to be rich? To Billy's surprise, every group except one insisted that this was emphatically so: God's will for Christians was to live in lanie (posh) houses and drive fast, slick cars.

But Billy went on to gently but firmly insist that Jesus teaches otherwise: that the Christian life is one of generosity and not accumulation, and that material wealth does not necessarily equate to faithfulness. There were, I'm told, (I was locked in a cell at the time) not a few open mouths in the room.

"I've never seen the sea"

In June we'll be heading to Durban for our mid-year mission: the students from Focus will be working with disadvantaged youth in Kwa-Zulu Natal. It will be an incredible opportunity: a taste of real ministry, and a change for many to see the sea for the first time. But it's a costly activity: R1000, which is only $A200 but more than most students (and many families) live on in a month.

Ministry is challenging but incredibly exciting: I need your prayers like I need sleep, so please keep praying for me and those I encounter here in Johannesburg.

grace and peace,

Andrew