Load-shedding, Zuma, Zim and racism

Well, I'm back in South Africa and life is just as hectic as it ever was - ministry on campus is back in full swing, homeless ministry is never finished and the roof has gone back on the house next door.

It's a bit of a difficult time in the moment in South Africa.

Eskom, the national electricity provider doesn't have enough capacity, and so the country is regularly plunged into darkness in scheduled blackouts euphemistically called 'load-shedding.'

My friends working in the Sandton CBD - Jo'burg's business hub - regularly have their entire office blocks knocked out so they play poker all day. Even the mines had to shut down last month.

Crime is still an intensely serious problem. Robbers broke into a house on Sunday evening and shot everyone in it - killing the husband - but didn't take a thing! That kind of violence leaves a lot of people on edge.

Things are stressful politically as well - Jacob Zuma, who has a terrible track record and is still up on corruption charge - has been elected President of the ANC, the ruling party, but Thabo Mbeki is continuing to serve out his term as national President.

It just means that very little governing is going on - Mbeki doesn't have the support of his party, and there's a great deal of uncertainty about the prospect of Zuma as national President.

And racism lurks below the surface of everything.

Last month the newspapers were full of the story of a video made by students at an all-white student residence at the University of the Free State. Racial integration in residences in the Free State had been delayed since the late nineties because of the tension, and the video was a protest against current moves to do.

But the video was horrific - the students put black cleaning staff through a humiliating range of 'initiation' tasks- playing rugby, sculling beers, and even eating food that had been urinated in.

On the other side, white journalists were barred from entering to report on Jacob Zuma's speech at the reinvigorated Black Journalists Forum, so there was a ruckus about that as well.

Today everyone's on tenterhooks about the results of the elections in Zimbabwe: we spent Sunday night in church hearing from Todd (the coordinator of Thembalethu who is from Zim) and praying for the situation.

Sangomas and Societies Week

So that's the context of ministry here. But things are going well. I've been the Acting Campus Coordinator at Kingsway Campus of the University of Johannesburg for Focus, the student ministry I'm involved in until Mark Grieve gets back in April.

It's been quite a task - but our recruitment in Societies Week went well. We made contact with something like 250 students, and signed up 83 paid members, which shows a lot of growth since last year.

I spoke on three parables to start the year at our main campus meetings: the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, and the Parable of the Ten Minas, looking at God's work, grace and discipleship. It was a good way to start the year.

So our main meetings have been going well, but our smallgroup Biblestudies have been slower to gain momentum. We've started - the first years are studying Mark and seniors looking at Romans, but some of the students are still taking a bit of coaxing to get involved. So please pray for the Biblestudies.

We've really been developing our student leadership this year. Shortly after I got back to South Africa, we had our first Leadership Conference, training students from both Kingsway and Bunting Road campuses for a year of ministry. And the students have been stepping up in every area - leading and assistant leading Biblestudies, being movers and shakers during recruitment, and meeting regularly in committee to plan and run Focus day to day.

I'm constantly reminded about how complex our context is though: one student lost his mother earlier this year, and was explaining to me the pressure he is under from sangomas ('witch doctors') to undertake protection ceremonies for himself. They've been telling him that his mother was bewitched by someone jealous of her children's success, and that they have it in for him as well. So it's just tricky - we've been reading Colossians, looking at the supremacy of Christ over everything and trying to work out the best way to go forward. It's not so easy.

A night on the streets and a visit to Khutsong

Thembalethu, Melville Union Church's ministry to homeless youth in the area continues, with still so much heartache. Last month I actually spent the night on the streets with a few of the guys, just to get a feel for it. My verdict: cold and uncomfortable. The bloke I was sharing a blanket with kept pulling it to his side, and so half of me froze. And this in summer!

The situations of many of the guys is so desperate. I visited the family of one young man yesterday, in Khutsong, a township near the mining town of Carletonville, west of Jo'burg. He has lost both his parents, two sisters and a brother. One of his sisters was burnt to death by a man with paraffin after he tried to rape her as she was walking home from school. She was only 15.

His only close relative is his six-year-old sister, who has just started school.

Where do you even begin to deal with a situation like that? We're hoping to sort out some accommodation for him in Jo'burg, so that he can start earning some money to support his relatives and sister back home, but life for many of the homeless youth is painfully similar.

Faced with the enormity of such problems, we've spent a bit of time doing strategic planning - with consultants - to work out the best way forward for a ministry like Thembalethu with limited staffing and resources. We plan to increase our partnerships with other ministries in the central Jo'burg area - there's quite a few - so that we can better connect the guys with services they need.

We've started a new program called BEADwork (Basic Education and Arts Development), in partnership with another ministry called Urbanvision. The idea of BEADwork is to use a bit of popular culture - a song, a film, a poem, whatever - as a launchpad, and from putting together performances, and in the process work on basic literacy and numeracy skills. Eventually, at intervals throughout the year, we'll perform what we've put together for local government, business, and other stakeholders who may be able to offer the guys apprenticeships or bursaries to study.

I'll keep you all posted on how that goes!

Anyway, there's a lot to go on there, but you can expect continued monthly updates from me this year! God is incredibly good to us, and I thank you profoundly for your continued prayer and financial support.

in Christ,

Andrew