South Africa and Beyond: Seth Mokitimi and the ‘Kingdom without Barriers’, 1939–1964

Abstract

Born in Basutoland in 1904, Seth Mokitimi crossed linguistic and regional barriers in his education, teaching career and ordained ministry in South Africa. As the long-serving housemaster and then chaplain at Healdtown, premier Methodist mission institution in the Eastern Cape, he was also drawn in the 1940s into advocating the crossing of the racial divide. He spoke out against segregation and then apartheid, asserting the undivided, multiracial nature of both church and society in South Africa. He also traversed the limits of both national and denominational Christianity in four ecumenical overseas trips between 1939 and 1961. In 1964 he was the first black minister to preside over the South African Methodist Conference, a pioneering development which too often remains the only basis on which Mokitimi is now remembered. This article uses the notion of boundary-crossing to interrogate the broader historical significance of his life, particularly exploring his transnational church experiences and appraising his precise political location, both still under-examined aspects of his ‘religious biography’. For Mokitimi has not really been perceived as crossing the boundary into what might be termed ‘political priesthood’ or ‘militant ministry’, yet he was an important black spokesman for liberal, multiracial, ecumenical Christianity from the 1930s to the 1960s – and is still sufficiently revered in our own time to provide the name for a new Methodist theological college recently set up in South Africa.

Notes

^*A phrase favoured by Mokitimi to translate Luke 1:33, where Jesus’ kingdom will ‘have no end’.

¹ J.W. de Gruchy, ‘Grappling with a Colonial Heritage: The English-speaking Churches under Imperialism and Apartheid’, in R. Elphick and R. Davenport (eds), Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History (Cape Town, David Philip, 1997), p. 155.

² Cape Times, 23 October 1963. By contrast, front-page headlines in the Rand Daily Mail (RDM), 23 October 1963, said ‘AFRICAN HEADS CHURCH – Sweeping vote for new Methodist president. Move thought likely to have world impact’. Interestingly, pioneering journalist Ben Pogrund had already launched an informative series on ‘The Church and the Race Problem’ the previous day – involving searching interviews with a range of church leaders, both black and white. See RDM, 22–31 October 1963.

³ Cape Times, 23 October 1963, gives Methodist numbers as 1,364,000 (of which 1,042,000 were African, 249,000 white and 103,000 coloured) compared with 1,696,000 in the NGK/DRC and 1,230,000 Anglicans.

⁴ T.S.N. Gqubule, Meet the Brown Bomber: An Account of the Life and Work of the Rev. Seth Molefi Mokitimi (Lovedale, Lovedale Press, 1996), where sermons fill over half the tripartite book. ‘The Person’, pp. 1–39, provides a biographical outline; ‘The Preacher’, pp. 45–108, reproduces sermons preached before, during and after the Second World War (largely at Healdtown); while ‘The President’, pp. 109–200, includes the texts of key presidential sermons, pp. 138–88. Cape Times, 23 October 1963, gives Methodist numbers as 1,364,000 (of which 1,042,000 were African, 249,000 white and 103,000 coloured) compared with 1,696,000 in the NGK/DRC and 1,230,000 Anglicans, p. 41, notes Gqubule's hopes, in Mokitimi's last illness in 1971, of writing his life-story and publishing his sermons. Asked now about his motivation for authorship (of a book appearing 25 years later), Gqubule says, ‘I think I had a unique relationship with Mokitimi’. After matriculation, when Gqubule could not afford university study, the chaplain encouraged him to return to Healdtown for teacher training, organised a bursary, and then helped him get a teaching post in Grahamstown. Once ordained, Gqubule later taught for many years at the Federal Theological Seminary (Fedsem). ‘So Mokitimi gave me my life's work. Apart from that I was close to his family from my student days. After leaving Fedsem I thought I should write the biography’. E-mail, Gqubule to author, 7 May 2012.

⁵ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 45. Gqubule studied at Healdtown from 1943–49, at the height of Mokitimi's service as school chaplain.

⁶ Rev. Peter Storey, quoted in L. Green (United Methodist News Service), ‘Former Bishop of South Africa to Preach at South Indiana Conference’, available at http://www.inumc.org/news/detail/601, retrieved on 2 June 2011.

⁷ These trips, with their implications for global ecumenism and the growth of world Christianity, are treated at greater length here than the earlier biographical data, to compensate for the lack of such detail in both Gqubule's accounts and D. Gaitskell, ‘Mokitimi and the Missionaries: Appraising South African Methodism's First Black President of Conference’, Swedish Missiological Themes, 97, 4 (2009), pp. 517–39. Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 36, 39, does, however, include photographs of Mokitimi ‘going to preach in a Church in Accra, Ghana, in 1958’ and ‘home again from Canada, 1947’.

⁸ G.M. Gerhart and T. Karis, Political Profiles 1882–1964 (Stanford, CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1977), Vol. 4 of T. Karis and G. Carter (eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa 1882–1964. The clergymen concerned are mostly early ‘Ethiopian’ church leaders, ANC office-holders or chaplains, and leaders (like Z.R. Mahabane) within the Interdenominational African Ministers' Federation (IDAMF). Mokitimi is not even listed in the very lengthy tables for South Africa compiled by the online Dictionary of African Christian Biography, whose interest is ecclesiastical and spiritual, rather than political. See http://www.dacb.org/stories/southafrica/southafrica.html and http://www.dacb.org/stories/potential%20subjects/southafrica_index.html, retrieved 25 May 2011.

⁹ S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (eds), South Africa's 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities (Cape Town, Double Storey Books, 2005).

¹⁰ See http://www.smms.ac.za for more information about progress at the Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary since January 2009.

¹¹ A key shift discussed briefly in Gaitskell, ‘Mokitimi’, pp. 517–19.

¹² B. Sundkler, The Christian Ministry in Africa (London, SCM Press, 1962), p. 40.

¹³ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 1–2.

¹⁴ T.S.N. Gqubule, ‘The New President of the Methodist Church of S.A.’, South African Outlook (SAO), (November 1964), pp. 170–71.

¹⁵ T.S.N. Gqubule, ‘The New President of the Methodist Church of S.A.’, South African Outlook (SAO), (November 1964), p. 171. This mentoring role is underlined by the photograph in Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 128, of Mokitimi as president, posing with ten former students, eight of them in clerical collars. See also ibid., pp. 3–8 for an overview of this period.

¹⁶ N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (London, Little, Brown and Company, 1994), pp. 36–7. Another eminent Healdtown graduate (1947) was Robert Sobukwe, founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress (1959). See Gerhart and Karis, Political Profiles, p. 148.

¹⁷ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 9–12.

¹⁸ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 19.

¹⁹ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 15–16.

²⁰ See J. Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940–1990 (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1999), pp. 7–10.

²¹ See further Gaitskell, ‘Mokitimi’, pp. 527–8; Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 13–15.

²² See further Gaitskell, ‘Mokitimi’, pp. 527–8; Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 16 & 18.

²³ See further Gaitskell, ‘Mokitimi’, pp. 527–8; Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 19. Indeed, the Methodists' national newspaper headed Mokitimi's substantial posthumous tribute: ‘GOD'S SHOCK ABSORBER’, and quoted him speaking in just Gqubule's terms. See Dimension, 1 February 1972, p. 4. Many thanks to Annwen Bates for relevant copies from Dimension.

²⁴ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 28.

²⁵ See Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 20–24.

²⁶ See Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 16–18, and p. 88 for Mokitimi's funeral address for Wellington, recalling the deathbed scene.

²⁷ S. Mokitimi, ‘Race Relations’, in Christian Council of South Africa (CCSA), Christian Reconstruction in South Africa. A Report of the Fort Hare Conference, July, 1942 (Lovedale, CCSA, 1942), p. 40.

²⁸ S. Mokitimi, ‘Race Relations’, in Christian Council of South Africa (CCSA), Christian Reconstruction in South Africa. A Report of the Fort Hare Conference, July, 1942 (Lovedale, CCSA, 1942), p. 40

²⁹ S. Mokitimi, ‘Race Relations’, in Christian Council of South Africa (CCSA), Christian Reconstruction in South Africa. A Report of the Fort Hare Conference, July, 1942 (Lovedale, CCSA, 1942), p. 40, p. 41.

³⁰ S. Mokitimi, ‘Race Relations’, in Christian Council of South Africa (CCSA), Christian Reconstruction in South Africa. A Report of the Fort Hare Conference, July, 1942 (Lovedale, CCSA, 1942), p. 40 For a fuller assessment of the conference and African participation within it, see D. Gaitskell, ‘E.W. Grant and Two 1940s Crises: The Response of the Christian Council of South Africa to the War and to Apartheid’ (unpublished paper, NEWSA Conference, Vermont, 2008), especially pp. 10–13.

³¹ S. Mokitimi, ‘African Religion’, in E. Hellmann (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 570.

³² Mokitimi, ‘African Religion’. He is presumably referring to radical political forces.

³³ Mokitimi, ‘African Religion’, He is presumably referring to radical political forces

³⁴ H. Hughes, ‘Leadership in the Early ANC’ (unpublished paper, London, 2012, forthcoming in Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library).

³⁵ Mostly to the USA, for education, ordination and fund-raising for Ohlange school.

³⁶ Quoted in H. Hughes, First President: A Life of John Dube, Founding President of the ANC (Auckland Park, Jacana, 2011), p. 225.

³⁷ C. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality: the Public Lives of D.D.T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1997), p. 65.

³⁸ C. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality: the Public Lives of D.D.T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1997), pp. 66–7.

³⁹ T. Ranger, Are We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family & African Politics in Zimbabwe 1920–64 (London, James Currey, 1995), p. 73, and most of Chapter 3, ‘Tambaram: A Re-Making’.

⁴⁰ N. Erlank, ‘ “God's Family in the World”: Transnational and Local Ecumenism's Impact on Inter-Church and Inter-racial Dialogue in South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s’, South African Historical Journal, 61, 2 (2009), pp. 290–91.

⁴¹ N. Erlank, ‘ “God's Family in the World”: Transnational and Local Ecumenism's Impact on Inter-Church and Inter-racial Dialogue in South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s’, South African Historical Journal, 61, 2 (2009), pp. 278–79. She points out (p. 283) that J.H. Oldham, key figure in the formation of the IMC, had likewise worked hard to ensure suitable African representation at Le Zoute, choosing a past and current president of the African National Congress, both also ordained ministers: John Dube and Z.R. Mahabane.

⁴² Basil Mathews, quoted in Ranger, Samkange, pp. 70–71.

⁴³ R. Seabury, Daughter of Africa (Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1945).

⁴⁴ A. Luthuli, Let My People Go: An Autobiography (London, Collins, 1962), p. 78.

⁴⁵ A. Luthuli, Let My People Go: An Autobiography (London, Collins, 1962), pp. 79–81. See also S. Couper, Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith (Scottsville, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2010), pp. 44–5.

⁴⁶ J. Doidge, ‘As I Remember Amsterdam’, in Journal of Ecumenical Studies (JES), 16, 1 (Winter, 1979), p. 41. The cover reads: ‘Can You Still Say “Christus Victor”? Reflections by Delegates to Amsterdam 1939, in Commemoration of the Fortieth Anniversary of the First World Conference of Christian Youth’. Many thanks to Dana Robert for alerting me to this rich special issue. There seems to be no reference to Mokitimi in the otherwise informative records at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (hereafter SOAS), Conference of British Missionary Societies (hereafter CBMS), 575 C/BCC/13, World Conference of Christian Youth Amsterdam 1939.

⁴⁷ W.A. Visser’t Hooft, ‘Amsterdam 1939 in the Perspective of 1979: An Introduction’, in JES, 16, 1 (Winter, 1979), p. 5.

⁴⁸ R.H.E. Espy, ‘Foreword: In Celebration of Amsterdam’, in JES, 16, 1 (Winter, 1979), p. 2.

⁴⁹ Visser’t Hooft, ‘Amsterdam 1939’, p. 2.

⁵⁰ Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Amsterdam 1939’, pp. 4–6.

⁵¹ Doidge, ‘As I Remember Amsterdam’, pp. 45 & 42.

⁵² Identity unknown.

⁵³ D. Nyland, ‘“Prepare through Prayer”’, in JES, 16, 1 (1979), pp. 38–9.

⁵⁴ R. Strong, ‘Footprints of Amsterdam in Ecumenism around the World’, in JES, 16, 1 (1979), pp. 104, 108.

⁵⁵ C.A. Kirkendoll, ‘How did the Amsterdam Youth Conference of 1939 Affect the Black Church?’, in JES, 16, 1 (1979), pp. 77–8.

⁵⁶ Details from Ranger, Samkange, pp. 70–71 and n. 27, with quote from Basil Mathews.

⁵⁷ SOAS, CBMS/IMC 1225, South Africa: Christian Councils. File, Christian Council Quarterly (CCQ) 1942–7 and 48–9, [S. Pitts], ‘Three World Conferences’, CCQ, 18 (October 1947), p. 1.

⁵⁸ SOAS, CBMS/IMC 1227, South Africa. File E, Wilkie, Rev. A.W. Wilkie to B. Gibson, 25 October 1946. Her reply, 30 October 1946, made it clear that ‘the African delegate would be invited from this end’.

⁵⁹ See W.R. Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations: the International Missionary Council and its Nineteenth-Century Precursors (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1952), pp. 336 & 339.

⁶⁰ SOAS, CBMS 524 C/IMC/15, IMC Meetings Whitby 1947. File, Papers 1946/7, Record of Discussion Whitby 5/18 July, entry for 8 July, afternoon. (An invaluable team of stenographers provided a verbatim account.)

⁶¹ SOAS, CBMS 524 C/IMC/15, IMC Meetings Whitby. File, Whitby Follow-Up. Booklet, James Chamberlain Baker, The Church in a World in Ferment: A Study Guide Based on The International Missionary Council Meeting Held at Whitby, Canada, July, 1947, p. 31. Baker also (p. 11) included Mokitimi when illustrating an ecumenical conversation from the conference where ‘there was equal ability in the speakers’: an Anglican Archbishop from Sydney, Baez Comargo from Mexico, Rezavi, a converted Muslim from Iran, Hartenstein from Germany, Schloessing from France, Rumambi from Indonesia, Sihombing from Sumatra, and Mokitimi from South Africa – indeed a perfect portrayal in miniature of the expanding world church!

⁶² SOAS, CBMS 524 C/IMC/15, IMC Meetings Whitby. File, Papers 1946/7, Record of Discussion Whitby 5/18 July, entry for Thursday 17 July, morning.

⁶³ S.G. Pitts, ‘Impressions of the Whitby Conference’, SAO (October 1947), p. 156, and pp. 150–54 for the official message, ‘International Missionary Council Whitby Meeting July 5–8, 1947’.

⁶⁴ SOAS, MMSL [Methodist Missionary Society Library] AF.SA 1250, Healdtown 1947. The Annual Report of the Healdtown Missionary Institution, p. 17.

⁶⁵ ‘Christian Council Notes. The Follow-up of Whitby, 1947’, SAO (December 1947), p. 183.

⁶⁶ ‘Editorial’, International Review of Missions (IRM), 38 (July 1949), p. 273.

⁶⁷ This conference is explored further in the second part of Gaitskell, ‘E.W. Grant and Two 1940s Crises’.

⁶⁸ S. Mokitimi, ‘Apartheid and the Christian Spirit’, IRM, 38 (July 1949), pp. 276–79.

⁷¹ M.S., ‘The Christian Mission at this Hour: The Ghana Assembly of the I.M.C.’, IRM, 47 (April 1958), p. 142.

⁶⁹ SOAS, CBMS 527, C/IMC/18, IMC Meetings Ghana 1958. File, Assembly Ghana 1957/8, The Assembly of the International Missionary Council and an All-Africa Conference West Africa Dec 1957–Jan 1958 (leaflet).

⁷⁰ SOAS, CBMS 527, C/IMC/18, IMC Meetings Ghana 1958. File, Assembly Ghana 1957/8, IMC Associated News release No. 2, 5 January 1958.

⁷² See SOAS, CBMS 272, A/AACC, All-Africa Churches Conference. ‘All Africa Church Conference Officials’ (mimeo); ‘Resolution on “Continuation”’ (Ts. notes); AACC List of Delegates. Ninety delegates from 20 African countries were African, with 50 additional guests from 17 countries in Asia, Europe and America. See L.B. Greaves, ‘The All Africa Church Conference: Ibadan, Nigeria: 10^th to 20^th January, 1958’, IRM, 47 (July 1958), p. 257.

⁷³ A.H. Zulu, ‘The South African Church in the Light of “Ibadan, 1958”’, IRM, 47 (October 1958), pp. 377–85.

⁷⁴ A. Hastings, A History of African Christianity 1950–1975 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 120, comments of the IMC meeting, ‘It was for the old Protestant missionary bodies something of the end of the road’.

⁷⁵ ‘Mokitimi in High Office’, Dimension, 10 November 1971, p. 2.

⁷⁶ He had suffered from diabetes for many years, but had cancer as well by then. See front-page article, ‘CHURCH MOURNS MOKITIMI’ Dimension, December 1971.

⁷⁷ See the fascinatingly diverse list of South African Alumni in University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers (hereafter Wits), United States – South Africa Leader Exchange Program (USSALEP), Records 1955–2003, P1, available at http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventory.php?iid = 8951, retrieved on 25 May 2011. Heartfelt thanks to Natasha Erlank for having Mokitimi's file, P1.14, copied for me.

⁷⁸ Wits, USSALEP, Historical Notes.

⁷⁹ Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America Division of Overseas Ministries Records, 1914–1972, Call No: NCC RG 8, Box 15, Folder 12, ‘Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation; Mokitimi, Seth M.’, ‘Memorandum on Rev. Seth M. Mokitimi’, 4 March 1960.

⁸⁰ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Rev. Seth Mokitimi. A few biographical notes, 16 March 1959.

⁸¹ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi to F. Loescher, 28 February 1959, 30 December 1960, 4 and 18 April 1961.

⁸² Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, ‘UNITED STATES–SOUTH AFRICA LEADER EXCHANGE PROGRAM, INC. Report on Exchange Visit by Rev. and Mrs Seth M. Mokitimi’ [n.d.] (hereafter Mokitimi Report).

⁸³ See Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, The Silver Bay Conference on the Christian World Mission, 12–19 July 1961 [printed pamphlet], for an idea of one packed programme schedule.

⁸⁴ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi Report.

⁸⁵ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi to Loescher, 12 June 1961.

⁸⁶ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi Report.

⁸⁷ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi to Mrs Burr, 6 October 1961.

⁸⁸ F. Corson, ‘Introduction’, in Bishop T.O. Nall (ed.), The World Methodist Conference Speaks to the World: Excerpts from Many of the Major Addresses Delivered at the World Methodist Conference in Oslo, Norway (Nashville, Methodist Evangelistic Materials, c.1961), p. 3.

⁸⁹ See Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks.

⁹⁰ Sir Hugh Foot, in Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks.

⁹¹ A. Carey, ‘The Negro Churches in America’, in Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks, pp. 113, 115.

⁹² E.L. Smith, ‘Co-operation in Missionary Witness’, A. Carey, ‘The Negro Churches in America’, in Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks, pp. 50–52.

⁹³ L. Hewson, ‘The Holy Spirit in New Testament Teaching’, in Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks, p. 24.

⁹⁴ F. Corson, ‘Greater Achievement through the Spirit’, in Nall, World Methodist Conference Speaks, pp. 124–25.

⁹⁵ E. Morier-Genoud, ‘Mission and Institutions: Henri-Philippe Junod, Anthropology, Human Rights and Academia between Africa and Switzerland, 1921–1966’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte (2011), pp. 193–94.

⁹⁶ H. Niellsen, I.M. Okkenhaug and K.H. Skeie, ‘Introduction’, in H. Niellsen, I.M. Okkenhaug and K.H. Skeie (eds), Protestant Missions and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Unto the Ends of the World (Leiden, Brill, 2011), p. 3. Both chapter and book explore the mission movement as a transnational network.

⁹⁷ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi to F.J. van Wyk (Johannesburg), June 17, 1960 [forwarded to USSALEP].

⁹⁸ Wits, USSALEP, P1.14, Mokitimi to Frank Loescher, n.d. [but filed with above letter of 17 June].

⁹⁹ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 130–33.

¹⁰⁰ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, pp. 169–70.

¹⁰¹ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 171.

¹⁰² Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 174.

¹⁰³ ‘The Church's Role in South Africa. President Talks to the Recorder’, Methodist Recorder, 9 September 1965, p. 8.

¹⁰⁴ ‘The Church's Role in South Africa. President Talks to the Recorder’, Methodist Recorder, 9 September 1965, p. 8

¹⁰⁷ C. Ryan, Beyers Naudé: Pilgrimage of Faith (Cape Town, David Philip, 1990), p. 59.

¹⁰⁵ Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 33.

¹⁰⁶ According to Helen and Theo Kotze, interviewed by Henry Mchlauli, 24 November 1998. See H. Mchlauli, ‘The Africanization of the Methodist Church: with Special Focus on the Revs. Zaccheus R. Mahabane and Seth M. Mokitimi’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999), Appendix D, p. 161. The Kotzes called Mokitimi ‘a shining Christian. His face shone with goodness, a very remarkable, brilliant man, amazing man’, ibid.Gqubule, Brown Bomber, p. 33 See p. 85 for Naudé and Mokitimi meeting again in Zambia in June 1964 at the Mindolo ecumenical consultation.

¹⁰⁸ For background, see T.S.N. Gqubule, ‘An Examination of the Theological Education of Africans in the Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational and Anglican Churches in South Africa from 1860–1960’ (PhD thesis, Rhodes University, 1977). For a summary overview, see T.S.N.Gqubule, ‘The Birth of the Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary’, an address delivered at the SMMS Opening, 22 January 2009, available at http://196.214.145.179/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 53&Itemid = 70, retrieved on 31 May 2011.

¹⁰⁹ See further, P. Denis and G. Duncan, The Native School Which Caused All the Trouble: A History of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg, Cluster Publications, 2011).

¹¹⁰ ‘The Federal Theological Seminary: Impressive Openings’, SAO (October 1963), p. 268, and SAO (July 1963), p. 110.

¹¹³ The Friend, 2 December 1971, p. 5. This quote from Griffiths was reprinted and amplified in Dimension, 1 February 1972, p. 4, noting (alongside his offering of domestic, racial and national reconciliation) Mokitimi's particular grief at ‘strife and ill-feeling’ amongst his fellow ministers which he had designed regional retreats to eradicate. ‘In conference, in conversation, in counselling, in the heat of debate and controversy, Seth Mokitimi possessed that rare faculty of being able with unfaltering touch to speak the right word at the right moment’. Griffiths also recalled his evangelistic zeal, whether via ‘hut-to-hut campaigns in the Transkeian hills’, or targeting both lapsed and heathen in the Herschel district, or more recently preaching revival in the Kimberley and Bloemfontein District, all speaking ‘so eloquently of his passion for the Kingdom of God and the souls of men standing in such great need of shepherding and health of spirit’.

¹¹¹ The Friend, 2 December 1971, p. 5.

¹¹² Boraine also mentioned how prayer with Mokitimi after his own similarly controversial presidential nomination had given him courage to serve. (Boraine, much later, became deputy chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.)

¹¹⁴ See discussion throughout Couper, Luthuli.

¹¹⁵ S. Kumalo and N. Richardson, ‘Seth Mokitimi and Education for Ministry: What's in a Name?’, Missionalia, 38, 1 (2010). This article is very informative on the post-1993 debacle in theological education in South Africa, and Methodism's response.

¹¹⁶ Mchlauli, ‘Africanization’, p. x. Yet he also asserts (p. 4) that Mokitimi was ‘without doubt determined to oppose colonialism and racism’ and ‘issues of justice and democracy were important for him’.

¹¹⁷ See fascinating interviews in Mchlauli, ‘Africanization’, Appendices, pp. 142–76.

¹¹⁸ C. Mayson, A Certain Sound: The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 1985 [first pub. Epworth Press, 1984]), p. 11.

¹¹⁹ Mayson, A Certain Sound, p. 37.

¹²⁰ Interview quoted in C. Villa-Vicencio (ed.), The Spirit of Freedom: South African Leaders on Religion and Politics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996), pp. 210–11.

¹²¹ Ross Olivier (Seminary President), ‘SMMS Opening, Key Note Address, “Building on the Rock”’, 4 September 2010, available at http://196.214.145.179/images/documents/smms%20opening.doc, retrieved 9 May 2011.