A WOMAN OF AFRICA: ABUSE AND ABUSABILITY: THE DEDICATION OF ST MONICA’S CHURCH CENTRE, ORANGE FARM 9 MAY 2009

1 Kings 8:22-30 Ps 84 1 Peter 2:4-10 John 2:13-22

Friends in Christ, I welcome you all to this wonderful occasion. It has literally been a 20-year project and I can hardly believe we are here; as Solomon said in the Old Testament reading (1 Kings 8:24), God has kept his promise – and by God’s grace, we have been able to keep our promises to one another. We do praise our God for his goodness today as we dedicate St Monica’s Church Centre together in the presence of Diocesan Council and our many visitors.

Now who is this St Monica?

Well, she was a woman of Africa; a woman of prayer; and a woman who changed the lives of others. Those will serve as points for this reflection. Monica lived in the north of Africa about 400 years after the time of Christ – that is about 1600 years ago. Her son Augustine caused her great grief because of his loose lifestyle and his involvement with many of the religious cults and philosophies of his day. Monica prayed for him for many years until he returned to the Christian faith and became one of the church’s most famous bishops and theologians. (You can see how big some of his writing was! (Show City of God). This is of course why we dedicated the younger congregation in Orange Farm to Augustine – they are both saints of Africa, and that congregation is the child of this one – though of course they have not caused their mother grief as he did. Monica then was a woman of Africa – a woman who grieved and a woman who believed. We need not say that ever since then, the women of Africa have grieved; they have grieved over their sons going to war, grieved over the sick, grieved over the hunger of their children and the break-up of their homes under the many pressures of African life. Yet too, the women of Africa have so often also been the ones who believed and went on believing. The very first time we came here to this site, I think in 1989, we were trying to connect with the local community and establish our ministry. Guess what we found? In that very house over the road, a meeting of the Mothers’ Union! 4 women and 2 children, praying together and caring for each other. It was they who told us that they desperately needed a school; at that time there was not a single government school in Orange Farm, and the only community school was the chicken farm down by the railway bridge – a long way from here. So it was that we invited Lulama Dumezweni to kick off what we called the ‘bring your own chair’ primary school here on this site in January 1991 – so called because the 19 children had to bring their lunch in one hand and their chair in the other so they could study under a tree; except that there wasn’t a tree. Soon after, Ntombi Mbatha started the creche which fed smaller children into the school; Ntombi is here today as a member of this congregation, and her creche is about to move into this building. The school grew until we had at one time about 300 children in mkhukhus on this site – what has now become Lesedi la Kreste Anglican School in extension 8, with 1150 children in the care of the church and the department working together on a daily basis, in the care of Nthekeleng Tshabalala. We are about to open our doors to a Bambanani HIV and AIDS Centre under the care of Nandi Tshaka, and to give space to the Helping Hands NGO which assists largely in developing skills for women – led by Hettie Mfikwe, a parent at Masibambane College, the other Anglican School in Orange Farm. We have set aside space for the MU and the AWF and the Diocesan Women’s Development Project in this building; and of course we officially welcome today into this building the congregation of St Monica’s who have worshipped in all sorts of temporary conditions over the years – in fact we welcome them back from the garage where they have worshipped during building operations. St Monica’s is also largely led by women and it will not surprise you that their representative at the endless early-morning site meetings during the building work and the holder of the keys is a young parishioner, Paulinah Mokapela. Did you notice the number of Christian women in that little story? Monica is a fore-runner of many thousands of godly women who have made this continent what it is, and we honour them in making this dedication today to a godly woman of Africa. Unfortunately the church cannot entirely boast about its record where the care of women is concerned. We follow a man whose attitude to women was quite revolutionary in his day – so revolutionary that we have not been able to keep it up. While the church has sometimes been good at honouring and protecting women, it has all too often ignored or despised them. Here in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa as it now is, the church existed for many years before we even let women sit in synod – never mind ordaining them to the ministry which they do so well. We have a great deal still to learn and to apologise for in this regard. I say this because we need to speak strongly into our society at this point, and it is good to recognise humbly our own inconsistencies before we do that. However I want to say something from church to society on this occasion. It happens that we are opening this building on the day that a new administration is installed in Pretoria – and our Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said he is embarrassed to live under that administration. Is he just getting old or is he expressing concerns that other Christians - and Christian leaders in particular – should echo? I have not discussed his reasons with him but I strongly suspect that one of them has to do with the new administration’s attitude to women. If we share that concern we should stand by Archbishop Desmond and say so – not leave him to be (as he would say) clobbered all on his own. The ruling party has a very long and honourable record for defending the dignity of women and promoting the rights and the role of women in our democracy; for that reason we are about to get a woman premier in Gauteng. But it is not about how many women get to be premiers; it is about continuing to foster a culture of respect for women and driving back the tide of abuse. We will never get a grip on HIV and AIDS in this country until we stop the sexual abuse of women by their husbands and boyfriends. We talk about abstaining and being faithful but that presupposes that women are free to choose their own sexual partners and activities; that is simply not the case. We need to re-translate the ABC as ‘abstain, be faithful and cut out abuse’. As long as men abuse their power to force women into sexual activity, debating condoms is a waste of time. I want to teach you a new word. You will not have heard it before because I only invented it this week it is the word ABUSABILITY. Now let me tell you the difference between abuse and abusability. Abuse is what happens between people – when a person is verbally insulted, or a foreigner is physically assaulted, or a woman is sexually compelled by the power of a man. A culture of abuse is a culture where a lot of that happens between people. But when we say that it is ok for a Zimbabwean to be assaulted just because he is foreign – then we are saying he is abusable. If we say that a woman can be abused just because she is a woman, we are saying she is abusable; it is ok, it is normal, it is legitimate to do it. That is the propaganda of abusability. Abusability is the culture which justifies abuse; which says it is ok, or normal, or legitimate for abuse to happen – because I am older or more powerful than my victim, or because I can pretend that my culture excuses my abuse. It says, women or children or foreigners are abusable, and that is ok. Unfortunately an impression has been given that some in the ruling party no longer stand by the historic values of gender protection held by the party and now entrenched in the Constitution. During the election campaign we even had the President of the ANC Youth League defending abusive behaviour in that disgraceful sexist speech about the girl who stayed for breakfast and did not ask for taxi fare. On that occasion a whole bunch of men students grunted their support for his sexist remarks and his defiance of the values of the Constitution. He was promoting the ideology of abusability, and no-one disowned his views in the name of the party. We are therefore faced with the question: does this administration stand by the historic stance of the ANC regarding the dignity of women, or are these premiers just window-dressing while we actually drift towards a culture which says says certain people are abusable just because they are women, children, old, poor or foreign? As church we need to be asking that question, demanding a broad and clear campaign against the culture of abusability (as many other African countries have done), led by the top leadership in both words and lifestyle. We need to be assuring women in political leadership (like our incoming premier) that we stand solidly alongside them in defending the historic stance of the ruling party from erosion by the sexist hooligans who want to undermine it with a new and crude ideology and propaganda which defends an old and abusive practice. As we celebrate Monica, the grieving role model for the women of Africa, we must assure her that we mean to protect her daughters from further abuse. Monica the woman of Africa is also Monica the woman of prayer. As you may know, the first donors to this project were clear that it must be a centre that serves the neighbours and is not just open for two hours on Sunday to sing hymns. We have developed the centre precisely in that way. But the other side is also true. When Jesus confronted the activities in the temple in Jerusalem, as in today's Gospel, he reminded them that it was meant to be first of all a house of prayer for everyone. At the centre of this centre is the church, the place of worship; that worship needs to be held always at the centre of everything else we do here. I hope that the creche will open with worship in the morning, that the Bambanani centre will open its day with prayers, and that every group which meets here will be conscious of the spirit of reverence and dependence on God which is soaked into the bricks. Monica prayed for many years for the redemption of her son. There are plenty of sons around here who need that kind of persevering prayer – like the little 10-year-old we saw walking to school one morning with a lighted cigarette in his hand. There are far worse dangers than that around here, and as Jesus said, '‘this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting'’. This place is meant as a service to the neighbourhood – but first it is a sign of God’s love, God’s presence and God’s involvement in the lives of the people of Orange Farm. Let me add that Jesus highlighted the words, ‘for all peoples’; it was part of his ongoing challenge to the narrow nationalism and xenophobia of his people, that he insisted that God’s place was meant to be open to everyone. St Monica’s centre must be a standing testimony to the welcome offered by the church to people of every age, gender, language or nationality; it must stand against the xenophobia which still bubbles in our country and is waiting to explode again very soon. Monica the woman of Africa, the woman of prayer, was also a woman who changed other people’s lives. She persevered in her care for her famous son until he was once again serving God with all his energy. In fact it should encourage us that as far as we know, she only changed the life of one person – yet that person in turn touched the lives of many others and his writings are still read today, 1500 years later. Sometimes we get discouraged that we have not changed the whole world but maybe God just wants us to influence one or two people God has put close to us, and that will be enough. St Monica’s Church Centre is here to try to bless the lives of other people round about. This does not start today; it started when the congregation started meeting 20 years ago and when Lulama opened the school and when Ntombi started her creche. But the lovely centre which we are dedicating today, for which we thank God and everyone who has helped it to happen, is here to make opportunities for hospitality, service and mission to those in many kinds of need in Orange Farm. That includes health needs, educational needs, social needs and needs for counselling and human development. It also includes spiritual needs because if we are not introducing God’s creatures to God and helping them to know God, we are adding nothing special that a social worker might not offer. We see people whole and we care for them as whole beings; that is why we will also sometimes have to speak up to protect people, because there is no point in tending people’s wounds if the wounding is continuing just around the corner by day and by night. We thank God today for this godly woman of Africa and we commit both ourselves and this place to the worship of God and the service of all the people.