Category Archives: theology

Fighting for Justice in Rural KwaZulu-Natal

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Fighting for Justice in Rural KwaZulu-Natal

by David Ntseng with Mark Butler, 2010

Introduction

Over a number of years, Thulani Ndlazi has been Church Land Programme’s primary link with the emergence, growth and struggles of the Rural Network. During 2010, while Thulani took some sabbatical leave, colleague, David Ntseng, took on temporary responsibility for sustaining those links. Up until then, David’s contact with militants of the Rural Network in Northern Zululand had mostly been enabled through participating in solidarity actions – especially at the eShowe Magistrates Court where a case of murder of two scholars is being tried against two security guards.

I have participated in protest marches, picketing outside court and sitting inside the court room listening to the trial. But I had no idea where these villages are that the people come from, nor what their life is like. I have always enjoyed hearing the testimonies by these militants describing their experiences on the farms and their revolutionary attempts to resist brutalities on the farms. One of the militants invited me to come with him to see where people live and how they live, so I can connect their struggles to their daily experiences. In this short article I present my reflection of what I was invited to see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Continue reading →

Bishop Rubin Phillip’s Christmas Message

Christmas Message

Bishop Rubin Phillip, Anglican Bishop of Natal (KZN)

 

 

 


 

 

 

As 2010 draws to a close our growing inequality, deepening political intolerance, widespread contempt for the poor, awful propensity to violence against our women and children, our greedy exploitation of other people's poverty and joblessness, and our rape of the resources of the world that we share, are all an affront to God.

All these remain markers of the presence of death against which we commit ourselves to fight.

Continue reading →

A Letter to our Comrades in the Clergy

A Letter to our Comrades in the Clergy

We greet you all in the name of Jesus Christ.

When we are evicted, beaten, arrested, attacked and slandered we always remember that God chose a poor man, a humble carpenter, a man with the rough hands of worker, to bring his message of salvation into the world. Jesus Christ must have had mud on his shoes.

Sometimes all the powers in this world seem determined to work together to deny our equal humanity and to keep us silent and locked into in the darkness and degradation of our suffering. But the fact that God chose a poor man to bring his good news to humanity always reminds us that our equal humanity is a fact that cannot be denied. If God recognises the humanity of the poor then no man or woman has a right to deny it. Continue reading →

Finding Our Voice in the World

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Finding Our Voice in the World

by Mark Butler, with Cindy Dennis, Thulani Ndlazi, David Ntseng, Graham Philpott, Zonke Sithole, and Nomusa Sokhela.

Since the Church Land Programme’s (CLP) conscious shift to a broadly Freireian and emancipatory commitment to ‘animation’ as its core process, continued attention to ongoing cycles of reflection and action is central to its organisational life. In the build up to its 3 year Strategic Planning process in July 2010, CLP staff conducted a series of reflection sessions. In January a joint session developed elements of a collective ‘contextual analysis’ and, in the months that followed, each staff member was responsible for preparing and facilitating reflective sessions looking at their own and CLP’s work through the lens of ‘praxis’ or animation. Much of that thinking and material from those sessions was taken into the evaluation process and is captured in that documentation. In this short note we bring together contributions made around a couple of related themes that ran through many of the discussions.