https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/the-man-who-shook-mountains-in-the-footsteps-of-my-ancestors?Itemid=491
The man who shook mountains: in the footsteps of my ancestors
Lesly Mofokeng
Jonathan Ball
ISBN: 9781776192519
I was brought up in the NG Kerk, a church that birthed and justified apartheid. My family – Black people, the very people it helped a cruel government oppress in too many ways to name – has devoted its life to this church for decades. I carry on this legacy of fidelity towards this church. It has morphed into the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). It has denounced apartheid and called it a sin against humanity.
These conflicting truths trouble me.
Yet they live in me, in my blood. (143)
So goes the thesis of this confessional and wise-in-quiet-ways book. The author, Lesley Mofokeng, a practising South African journalist, wonders whether those like his grandfather, uncles, himself, the rest of his brethren and those of similar disposition suffer from Stockholm syndrome for feeling no qualms about being part of a denomination “rooted in the politics of Afrikanerdom”.
Similar questions can be posted of the rest of Christendom’s denominations, from Anglicans to Methodists to Presbyterians, etc – all whose missionaries were once what Nkosi Maqoma called the sharper end of the Colonial Force of Britain. Mofokeng softens the blow by remembering what Dr Allan Boesak (himself a member of the NG Sendingkerk/Dutch Reformed Missioned Church for so-called “coloured” people) wrote about the ambiguity of being black and reformed:
The God of the Reformed Tradition was the God of slavery, fear, persecution and death. Yet for those Black Christians this was the God to whom they had to turn to for comfort, for justice, for peace. [144]
In his seminal book, Recreating Africa: Culture, kinship and religion in the African-Portuguese world, 1441-1770, James H Sweet is of a similar opinion to Dr Boesak. He says African slaves in Brazil, brought by the Portuguese, and their descendants in particular, reacted to the pain of slavery and its “pressures with the most potent weapons at their disposal – not muscle and might, but religion and spirituality”. It is no small feat to say that sometimes that’s the only thing that kept them going. In the end, they kept their rituals and beliefs in parallel with the Catholic religion and practices forced on them.
Those who have studied the impact of Christian missionaries in the Eastern Cape under the British Empire would tell you the same thing about the Xhosa: even those who called themselves amaGqobhoka (converts) still continued with some of their traditional beliefs: divination, circumcision and other rituals. They even used traditional medicines alongside Western ones. Though this happened gradually, they ended up creating their own brands of enculturated Christianity whose roots go back to their own prophet Ntsikana, whose emphasis was on praise-singing songs. It is wonderful to hear the similar take from the Sotho branch of the Nguni people.
The man who shook mountains: In the footsteps of my ancestors is a painstakingly researched account of not only one man who became an evangelist for “the daughter church”, the NG Kerk in Afrika (the black branch of the Dutch Reformed Church), but of his whole family. Mofokeng tells us that the church was a family affair, with roots from his stern and patriarchal grandfather (Mongangane Wilfred Mofokeng). Mongangane studied in a famous, racialised Dutch Reformed Church, the Stofberg seminary for blacks. In doing so, like other black seminarians:
He accepted the racism, paternalism, alienation and exclusion that Black evangelists and ministers experienced in these institutions, the narrow and limited theological perspectives presented to them, as well as subservience and conservatism transferred to them by the (almost exclusively White) group of lecturers. (63)
Without overlooking these, he chose what he saw as the greater good of getting the qualifications that would open doors for him to serve his own people.
..........
Without overlooking these, he chose what he saw as the greater good of getting the qualifications that would open doors for him to serve his own people.
............
After that, he was sent to various posts, beginning at “Gelukspan, a rural settlement in the district of Ditsobotla (Lichtenburg), North West”. Here he built on a self-sustaining community through the church:
A magnificent church, built in typical NG Kerk style of steeplechase mounted by a cock and the cardinal signs, soon went up, and stood then as a testament not only to my grandfather’s commitment to his faith and his people, but also to his physical work. (80)
He built clinics and schools also as he went around evangelising with his famous bicycle (church-provided), scooter (children knew him as the scooter Ntate Mmoledi) and Ford Cortina. We are given the wonderful spirit of an enterprising man whose commitment to helping others is channelled through the Gospel, with the crucial help of his hymn-singing, industrious wife, Mahadi. Some of Mongangane’s children went on to obtain not just degrees but PhDs in Ivy League universities like Princeton, because of their father’s strict discipline. The author, the grandson he wished would study at Wits University, has a master’s degree from there.
Beyond hearing the story of the author’s ancestors and relatives, we also get a pretty good view of NG Kerk history within the black communities in particular; the history of black communities under the oppressive yoke of the apartheid system was then maturing into legislation and cruel policies, which led to the known evictions from so-called black spots. As an Orlando Pirates Football Club fan, I enjoyed the history of that township, its nooks and crooks and why the club was called Ezika Magebhula from illegal land occupations. Though the family moved a lot to different places before finally settling in Mahikeng, most of the story is set in Gelukspan. Not only will you learn about the marabi music rhythm of the Soweto township from the book, but you’ll also be updated on the current kwaito or gqom music artists who come from the various small areas the author grew up in.
............
This is a book of nostalgia and lamentations about not just lost innocence, but the current decay and brokenness in the national and personal sense of things, from politics to lack of moral rigour and government incompetence. He laments the decay he sees in public buildings, rails and general infrastructure.
...............
This is a book of nostalgia and lamentations about not just lost innocence, but the current decay and brokenness in the national and personal sense of things, from politics to lack of moral rigour and government incompetence. He laments the decay he sees in public buildings, rails and general infrastructure. Those of my age and older will recall how Germiston featured in the vocabulary of black mineworkers. With an architectural eye, the author describes and laments the dereliction of such buildings as the station that have been left to crumble. To that, may I add my recent pain and disgust in seeing the Rotunda building next to Park Station looking like a buffalo skeleton after a pride of lions and hyenas are done with it.
This is not a depressing book, if by depression we mean melancholy fallen out of grace. If anything, the book carries the pain it narrates with graceful eloquence, even though, by necessity of our state’s disrepair, its tone is often tinged with melancholy. For instance, talking about his dead grandmother, Mofokeng looks back in nostalgic gratitude:
These days the blooming jacarandas are a reminder of my loss …. I have added the season of the blooming trees to my calendar. It is a reminder of my loss and my tears, but it is also a beautiful time to celebrate the life of a woman who gave me so much. (118)
If you want to know why sometimes the book takes a sombre tone, do yourself a favour by learning about one of the tragic episodes in the history of this beautiful country of ours, by doing some quick desktop research on the Beersheba massacre of 1858. If that piques your curiosity, then buy this book to read how poignantly it is narrated there, with the historical context drawn from the diaries of founder missionary Samuel Rolland’s wife, Elizabeth Rolland, and an article by David Coplan based on his dissertation.
............
If you want to know why sometimes the book takes a sombre tone, do yourself a favour by learning about one of the tragic episodes in the history of this beautiful country of ours, by doing some quick desktop research on the Beersheba massacre of 1858. If that piques your curiosity, then buy this book to read how poignantly it is narrated there, with the historical context drawn from the diaries of founder missionary Samuel Rolland’s wife, Elizabeth Rolland, and an article by David Coplan based on his dissertation.
..............
You will learn about how more than 2 000 black bodies lay dead, never to be buried, but only to end up as carrion for vultures and wild animals after being shot at close range by “the Boer burghers, under the leadership of Johannes Sauer, the landdrost of Smithfield, acting on instructions from Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff, the president of the Orange Free State”. Perhaps, then, you will stop wondering why the book sometimes assumes a melancholic tone. You might even agree with the author that “[t]here is a page missing in the chapters of South African history. A part overlooked, forgotten and not spoken about as often as it should be” (129).
Dear reader, pages like Beersheba are legions in the South African book of historical tragedy. Go ask people on the foot of Ntab’Ethemba, and see how they still weep because of the Bulhoek massacre. The crying voice of Ramah will forever be heard with those with sensitive Jeremiah souls like Mofokeng, who “scavenge” the ruined walls of history that emit the stench of blood. And they’ll forever meet “Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15).
The post <em>The man who shook mountains</em> by Lesley Mofokeng: a book review appeared first on LitNet.