Revival Seeds Germinate Part 3 (December 2024)

Revival Seeds Germinate Part 3 Contents 1. Special Housing Provision 2. Diverse Ministry Challenges 3. Back to (Bible) School 4. Taking Back Lost Territory 5. Can an Angel Bring a Flawed Message? 6. A Season of Increased Spiritual Warfare 7. On the Receiving End of Attacks 8. Diverse Prayer and Compassion Initiatives 9. Drug Lords in the News 10. Seed Germination at the Turn of the Century 11. Spin-Offs of the Newlands Event 12. Grabbed by the Scruff of the Neck 13. A ‘New Thing’ Sprouting 14. New Church Planting Experience 15. Christians Respond to Xenophobia 16. Ministering to Jews and Muslims 17. A New Season of Spiritual Warfare 18. Correctives in Church Practice 19. A Special MBB Impact 20. Church Unity Addressed More Intentionally 21. Time to Rise 22. Jerusalem …. a Cup of Trembling? Epilogue Main Abbreviations ANC - African National Congress CCM - Christian Concern for Muslims CCFM - Cape Community FM (radio) CEBI - Cape Evangelical Bible Institute CSV - Christelike Studentevereniging DRC - Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk) Ds. – Dominee (equivalent of Reverend) DTS - Disciple Training School IDASA - Institute for Democracy in South Africa OM - Operation Mobilization PAGAD - People against Gangsterism and Drugs SACC -South African Council of Churches UDF - United Democratic Front UNISA - University of South Africa UCT - University of Cape Town UWC - University of the Western Cape WCC - World Council of Churches WEC -Worldwide Evangelization for Christ YWAM - Youth with a Mission YMCA – Young Men's Christian Association YWCA - Young Women's Christian Association Introduction The teaching of His higher ways (Isaiah 55:8) had become all too clear by January 1992, when I was blessed so much, able to return to my homeland with my wife and five children. The Father somehow used my flawed activist Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger for Justice) nevertheless – next to the actions of many other people - to enable that return. I still had to learn though, that united prayer, rather than activist actions, made the essential difference. In Holland we were able to assist significantly in the formation of the Regiogebed in 1988, of which the roots can be found in Dave Bryant's Concerts of Prayer. At a Regiogebed event in Zeist on 4 October 1989 we prayed in a divinely orchestrated move for South Africa, not knowing that the new State President had an important meeting lined up with two Church leaders, Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak, the following week. By the beginning of 1992 official apartheid was dying fast... The world-wide prayer army had been bringing down the Communist Iron Curtain. Before leaving for our missionary candidate's orientation at Bulstrode near London in 1991, I had been able to arrange for the covert Albania role player Gesina Blaauw to come and speak at a Regiogebed meeting. The dynamic physically small believer would play a big role behind the scenes - to bring down the last European Communist bastion. The back of atheist Communism was broken by then, albeit that fierce repression of all faith expression was still present in China and North Korea. A personal challenge to tackle the Wall of Islam came through only faintly when I studied at the Moravian Theological Seminary in the early 1970s. The institution was temporarily located in District Six at a time when the former slum area was becoming increasingly Islamic. All the more, the challenge became forceful during a visit to West Africa in the beginning of 1990 as part of my preparation and possible orientation for service there; to serve as a teacher in a school for the children of missionaries in the Ivory Coast. That trip to West Africa would bring divine correction. It also included a significant part of the run-up to engage in prayer ministry in the battle against the Islamic ideology. The Yoke of Ritual Bondage We discerned that many Muslims were wrestling under the yoke of ritual bondage. The question became even more pressing: How will all those millions of people ever get rid of the thick veil over their eyes, spiritually speaking? As my wife and I read 2 Corinthians 3 once again, we were reminded that Martin Luther only got into the freedom of Christ when he discovered that he needed a Saviour. This only occurred when he developed a deep sense of urgency about his own sin. We realized anew that the removing of such a spiritual veil is something that only God can accomplish. God doesn’t need us, but we can be instruments in His hands to change the world, especially through prayer. Three weeks in West Africa were sufficient to excite me about possibilities to share the Gospel in West Africa. The discussions at the WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ ) International school in Vavoua, Ivory Coast, were promising. I regarded that as a chapter and prelude to get involved in other missionary activity in that country after a few years. Quite unexpectedly, the 'door' to that country closed, but the one to South Africa opened almost simultaneously, ushering in our coming in January 1992. Prayer walks in Bo-Kaap, stints at kramats (Islamic shrines) along with weekly, fortnightly and monthly prayer events at different venues were very much a part of my personal journey in the 1990s as a missionary of WEC International.1 Targeted intercession for missionaries and countries belonged to the fare. A post graduate course at a Bible School in 1992 wetted my appetite for more Church historical and Isaac Ishmael-related research. Many a manuscript followed – many of them still incomplete. The prospect of decease via prostate gland cancer pushed me, however, into bringing quite a few of them to some state of completion, accessible now on the blog www. Isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. Engagement with Judaism played a very peripheral role initially. My 'discovery' in 1979, via Colossians 2:11,12 that Reformed Protestantism had replaced the revered circumcision of Judaism with the christening of babies. This brought a significant shift in my own thinking. The phrase 'circumcision of the heart' ushered in my ultimate resignation as pastor of the Moravian Church. That the Church at large was regarded by rank and file Christianity, as having replaced Israel, was an issue that became known as Replacement Theology. Only much later would I start opposing that notion stronger. Praying for the Middle East, and interceding for both Jews and Muslims, came to the fore in mid-1992. We started a prayer group where Elizabeth Robertson who had almost been married to an Orthodox Jew in Israel and Achmed Kariem, a Cape Muslim background believer, were regulars. The vision to add outreach to Muslim foreigners to our service as leaders of the Cape WEC International Evangelism team ushered in a traumatic time. It ultimately resulted in the starting of an umbrella NPO called Friends from Abroad. Friendship with Brett Viviers, a Messianic Jew, led to the start of Isaac Ishmael Ministries in 2010. This transpired after Baruch Maayan, a Messianic Jewish pastor had returned from Israel with his family with a vision to work towards the establishing of a spiritual highway' from the Cape to Jerusalem. We hoped that the bringing together of believers from Messianic Jewish and Muslim backgrounds occasionally, could make some contribution towards special reconciliation between the two religious groups at the Cape. The conscious misspelling of retirement as 're-tyrement' had been on our hearts since December 2010, when I turned 65. Rosemarie and I started praying for any new 'tyres' of ministry, considering even relocation to Europe, to serve there among refugees from the Middle East. After I had turned 70, we prayed more concretely for three couples to take the baton from us in certain areas of ministry. Down the years we had been praying in District Six, the slum-like residential area of my childhood. Already on 1 November 1997 we had been interceding there with other intercessors when District Six was still lying forlorn and desolate in the wake of the apartheid-related forced removals of the 1970s and 1980s. (When we were accepted as missionaries of Worldwide Evangelization for Christ in 1991, ahead of our coming to South Africa, one of the challenges given to us by the Dutch leader, was a challenge to be repairer of broken walls, Isaiah 58:12). Actual personal involvement in District Six would still remain outside of our radar for many years. We had been restricting the vision of the repairing of broken walls to ministry in Bo-Kaap, unintentionally overlooking that Bo-Kaap and District Six had been an economic and cultural entity before the apartheid calamity. At the beginning of 2019 District Six came to our prayerful attention again. The Lord reminded us of the Isaiah 58 word before we came to the Cape. In the courser of that that year we continued to pray more intentionally for clarity as to what our involvement there should look like. As I start working at the preparation of the E-book version of Part 3 of this trilogy, involvement there had started to take shape. Throughout this book, I speak about 'Coloured' people. In a country like ours where racial classifications has caused such damage, I am aware that the designation 'Coloured' has given offence to the group into which I have been classified. For this reason, I wrote ‘Coloured’ between inverted commas and with a capital C when I refer to the racial group. To the other races I refer as 'Black' and 'White' respectively, with a capital B and W, to denote that it is not normal colours that are being described. For bibliographical detail and the origins of quotations the reader is referred to unpublished manuscripts such as Spiritual Dynamics at the Cape, Mysterious Ways of God and The Mother of the Nation. Along with other titles, this material is accessible at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. Ashley Cloete, Cape Town, ?? 2023 1.`Special Housing Provision After my return to Holland from West Africa in February 1990, various 'doors' for missionary service seemed to have been opening. The 'door' to Ivory Coast closed soon thereafter. On the other hand, the 'Macedonian call' of our friend Pietie Orange was very much of a challenge. The invitation to come and help at the Cape touched a sensitive chord! One hurdle after the other was cleared until an orientation trip at the end of that year with two of our children was part of the run-up to the two-phased missionary Orientation Course WEC International. The six months in Bulstrode (London) and at Emmeloord in the Netherlands turned out to be a precious period of preparation for our move to the Cape in January 1992. When we came from Holland we didn’t have any accommodation sorted out. We were already considering approaching my faithful friend and teacher colleague Ritchie Arendse, as in 1981, for the use of his caravan again, when just before our departure to South Africa we heard that we could be housed in a Bible School in Athlone during the month of January. There was a big difference this time. Now we had five big children and not two small ones as the previous time. The Cape Evangelical Bible Institute - it was later renamed Cornerstone Christian College - started originally as an evening Bible School in a home in the slum-like suburb of Elsies River in 1970. The institution was regarded as a parallel for ‘Coloureds’ to the renowned Bible Institute of South Africa in the 'White' suburb of Kalk Bay. At that time only 'Whites' had been allowed to study there because of apartheid restrictions. Two Priorities Our number one priority after arrival at the Cape was to get our accommodation settled. We were shocked how rents had increased since our sojourn in 1981, when we had been sharing a cottage in Crawford with four other people for R200 per month. Our sending church in Holland pledged to support us monthly with the equivalent of R1500. Rosemarie and I decided to use the monthly pledge of the church as the basis for our rent. We would trust the Lord for provision for all other daily needs like food, transport and funds for the education of the children. That the government had published its intention to scrap the Group Areas Act, made matters a lot easier, giving us more options to find accommodation. At one of the houses we looked at, there was a swimming pool. When we prayed as a family subsequently for the right accommodation, our seven year-old Magdalena saw no problem to include this in her prayer request a house at a devotional exercise. Just under two years later we moved into a house with a big swimming pool! How many people from many nations have been baptised there subsequently. Priority number two was to sort out the schooling of the children. Already during the occasion of our spying the land in December 1990, we thought that our two eldest children should attend the German school. We ultimately enrolled all five of them there. Also Tabitha, our youngest sprout, was accepted for the first grade, although she was only five years old. Strategic Contacts The Bible School period was quite strategic in terms of contacts. A few months before we came to South Africa, we had met Johan van der Wal and his wife Maaike in our home church in Holland. Through them we got to know interesting people. Thus we met Alan de Cerff and his American wife Jennifer, who operated at UCT under the flag of Campus Crusade. The De Cerff couple took us to the Community Bible Fellowship at the Baker House in Crawford. On the last Sunday of January we shared our housing predicament with the latter fellowship. They promised to pray for us in their all-night event the coming Friday. In Dire Straits Finding suitable accommodation that would be more or less affordable was almost like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Whenever the home owners heard that we have five children, they were not interested any more. Thus we soon made a point of mentioning this fact right at the outset whenever we enquired. That spared us unnecessary waste of time, petrol and further disappointments. We were quite frustrated when all our attempts at getting a house seemed to have brought us nowhere. We were in quite dire straits because we had to get out of the Bible School before the end of the month. Sleeping On the Street? This was still the position on the 30th of January. The wife of the house owner not very far from the German school took for granted that her husband would agree to have us because he was a German-speaking Swiss. The timing seemed to be perfect, because it was almost the end of the month and we could move in straight away. We were really in the clouds when the phone call confirmed that he agreed initially. We were already praising the Lord at the table at suppertime, when the phone rang once again. This time it was the husband himself. He had just heard from his wife that we have five children; this was a major problem to him. They would not rent their house to us. When I returned to the supper table with the shattering news, all of us were devastated. Little Tabitha vented her fears spontaneously as she cried uncontrollably: ‘Will we now have to sleep on the street?’ How thankful Rosemarie and I were when Rafael attempted to console her: ‘No, the Lord will see to it that we need not go and sleep on the street.’ I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like and yet also mature faith into which our children had started to grow. Rosemarie had of course similar emotions. I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like and yet also mature faith into which our son had started to grow. As a family we had been experiencing so many special answers to prayer. And we did not even share with the children the financial challenges we had been experiencing! Something Happening in the Heavenlies On Friday the 31st of January 1992 we packed all our belongings together, without knowing where we would be going the next day. On Sunday the arrival of Bible School students was expected. We were now clinging to our last hope. Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, was going to ask her landlord whether we could move into her two-bedroom flat in Diep River temporarily. She would then go to a friend. When we phoned Shirley the Saturday morning, this last hope was all but dashed … We were not aware how many people were praying for us. Of one group we knew. They were Christians from the Community Bible Fellowship in Crawford that we had attended the previous Sunday. They said that they would pray right through the night from Friday to Saturday, and also for us! In the heavenlies something had obviously been happening, because somewhere in the suburb of Kenilworth – a few kilometres from Crawford - a Greek lady could not sleep. Ireni Stephanis never had problems with sleeplessness, not even when her husband died, but that night she constantly had to think about the family from Holland about which she had heard from Shirley Charlton. Ireni was curious whether the family of seven had found accommodation in the meantime. After hearing of our predicament, Ireni offered to share her big house. Her daughter had just married and left the home. Ireni’s two adult sons were overseas. They would not be around for some time. When we learnt this story from Shirley Charlton, we stood there in awe! We could only marvel at the timely intervention of the Lord! It looked to be the most practical thing to sleep at the Bible School for the last time on Saturday. Even in this little detail we could see the hand of the Lord. At this time we also met someone who offered to assist us with the clearance of our container, once it would land in the Cape Town Docks. 2. Diverse Ministry Challenges The first morning after our arrival at the Bible School, we were awakened by a deafening roar at half past four. The cause was the prayer call from the seven mosques within a radius of two kilometres of the The loud roar was the first indication that the Lord might be calling us to interact with the Cape Muslims. Another clear confirmation along these lines could have been when we were able to rent a house in Tamboerskloof, almost a stone’s throw from Bo-Kaap, the cradle of Islam in South Africa. God had evidently started fitting things together in his perfect mosaic. Prayer Walking in Bo-Kaap Soon after our move to Tamboerskloof Rosemarie and I decided to do prayer walking in the adjacent Bo-Kaap, asking the Lord to lead us to those people in whose hearts the Holy Spirit had already have done preparatory work. But we sensed very soon that we should not be alone in this venture. We discovered that we needed the prayer backing of other Christians. As a family we had started to attend the city branch of the denomination that became known as the Jubilee Church/ Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders of the fellowship at the Cape Town High School, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims, although the new denomination was not supportive of such outreach. Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings More prayer walks in Bo-Kaap resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in mid-1992 in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer in 73 Wale Street. We hoped to reverse the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap, praying that the suburb would become more than merely the nominally Christian residential area it had been in earlier days in spiritual terms. Two regular attendees of the city Vineyard Church fellowship were Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background believer and Elizabeth Robertson, who had a special love for the Jews. At the prayer meetings Liz and Achmed were regulars from the beginning. Our prayer meetings thus had an Isaac-Israel component because these two believers love both Jews and Muslims, just like us. We had as an ultimate goal the planting at least one simple church in the most extreme Islamic stronghold of the Cape Peninsula. We were yearning to see our vision implemented to be part again of a congregation that has the unity of the Body of Christ as a priority, where mutual close fellowship and outreach on more than only one day of the week is a reality. (This was partially realized during our time in Zeist, Holland, where we had real fellowship with local believers from different denominational backgrounds as we ministered together with the Goed Nieuws Karavaan initiative from 1982-1991). At one of these meetings, Achmed Kariem suggested that we start a lunchtime prayer meeting on Fridays, it is at the same time that Muslims attend their mosque services. Such prayer events started in September 1992 in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street. A Special Impact on (Cape) Jewry When the Bo-Kaap prayer meeting in the Abrahams’ home in Wale Street was changed to a monthly meeting, it made room for a prayer event where intercession for the Middle East was the focus. The new monthly meeting at our home in Tamboerskloof, and later in the suburb of Vredehoek from 1994, also included prayer for the Jews, those in Israel as well as for those in Sea Point, the hub of Cape Jewry. The goal of these prayers was that Jews may recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. The catalyst for the Jewish part of the prayer meeting was Elizabeth Robertson, whom God had used to stir the Jews of Sea Point in 1990. (She had been confronted at that time with a very difficult choice when she was about to convert to Judaism, in preparation for her marriage to an Israeli national.) The unexpected choice of Elizabeth Robertson shook Cape Jewry. Surprisingly, she was encouraged by Jews to publish her special story. Her autobiography, The Choice, made quite an impact on South African Jewry when it was published in 2003. Elizabeth wrote about the predicament into which the rabbi put her in the final interview of the procedure before she was about to convert to Judaism. She described the turmoil with the following words: I cleared my throat to speak, when unexpectedly an anointing fell upon me, and I found myself asking if I might go on my knees. A holy boldness overtook me and in a loud, firm voice, with an authority that shocked even me, I heard myself saying: “To me Jesus Christ is the Son of God! He is the one who died for me,” then, pointing at the rabbis one by one, “and for you and for you and for you. He is the Messiah. He was born of a virgin, and His blood cleanses all of our sins. This is who I believe Jesus Christ is!” I then collapsed onto the floor in a sobbing heap. Attempts at Correction Our mission agency WEC International expected Rosemarie and me to put a strong emphasis on missionary recruitment. Soon after our arrival, the Lord guided us clearly towards an involvement with the Cape Muslims. One of our aims at that time – the first months of 1992 - was a correction of the competitive spirit, which we discerned among the local missionaries. This was partly achieved by working together at a children’s club inter alia with Marika Pretorius, and helping TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission) missionaries with convert care, by providing transport for the meetings at their home in the Cape Flats suburb of Southfield. The networking became especially practical through the initiative to join forces in the training of prospective missionaries to Muslim countries at the Bible Institute of South Africa. This started as an initiative to bring teaching on Muslim Evangelism at the Bible Colleges at the Cape, a project during which Manfred Jung and I joined forces. Representation Work The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which our WEC colleague Shirley Charlton took me soon after our arrival at the Cape in January 1992, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. Here I met strategic people from the Cape mission scene like Jan Hanekom, Martin Heuvel and Bruce van Eeden. Rosemarie and I prayed for guidance where we should start with ministry. By June 1992 our ministry was not focused at all. When I spoke during a phone call to Val Kadalie, the matron of the G.H Starke old age home in Hanover Park, I sensed confirmation that this township, where I had been teaching in 1981, was the place where we should get involved with ministry. Soon I linked up with a former gangster cum drug addict, a convert from Islam. He was leading a vibrant prayer group at the G.H Starke home on Saturday afternoon. Via our Worldwide Evangelization for Christ (WEC) colleague, Shirley Charlton, we were approached to assist with the training of Xhosa young people in children’s work at Camp Joy, a campsite in Strandfontein during the June holidays. The week turned out to be quite strategic. There we met the gifted Melvin Maxegwana, who was translating the teaching of Ammie Coetzee of the Child Evangelical Fellowship into Xhosa. For the rest, our ministry still had no clear direction. Trying to achieve unity among the churches of the Mother City turned out to be a daunting challenge. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be when I started with tentative steps. During our first year we would often go to churches where Shirley Charlton had arranged the meetings. Occasionally also our children were involved. In one instance we dramatized the story of Jonah at a church in the ‘Coloured’ suburb of Kensington. Special Operations from Cape Townships Bless the Nations conferences influenced the Church at the Cape quite significantly. Bruce van Eeden, a pastor from Mitchell's Plain who was powerfully touched by God in 1990, started Great Commission Conferences in ‘Coloured’ residential areas. After ministering at one of these conferences in 1992, Rosemarie and I started to assist with children’s ministry at the Newfields Clinic near the township of Hanover Park. There Bruce van Eeden was the pastor at an Evangelical Bible Church congregation. Law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality At this time, I participated in the establishment of Operation Hanover Park. The stimulus for the latter operation was given by Everett Crowe, a police officer, who approached the local churches in a last-ditch effort to secure peace in the Hanover Park township that seemed to be ruled by gangsters. The law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality in the area any more. Operation Hanover Park was led by Pastor Jonathan Matthews of the Blomvlei Baptist Church, the main driving force behind the initiative. A Saturday afternoon prayer meeting of the City Mission fellowship became the precursor to a monthly event of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. Believers of diverse church backgrounds who came together to pray once a month on a Saturday afternoon in different buildings was the mainstay of this Operation. Dean Ramjoomia, a Muslim background believer who grew up in a gangster-related environment, was eager to serve among the gangsters as the local evangelist on behalf of the churches. A tract that he wrote and designed, made quite an impact. Blomvlei Baptist Church offered the Ramjoomia family accommodation on the church premises and a few other churches pledged financial contributions. Things looked quite promising. Furthermore, it seemed as if our vision - to get local churches networking in missions and evangelism - was coming to fruition. At least, this was how it appeared! At the same time, this would also give an example to believers in other parts of the Cape Peninsula and possibly elsewhere as well. This was a model to combat criminality and violence – through united prayer and action! Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993. That was however not to be. A leadership tussle stifled the promising movement. Ministries to the Homeless Down the decades many a fruitful ministry to the homeless was started. The compassionate Henry Davids, one of very few 'Coloureds' at the Cape Town Baptist Church in the early 1990s, linked up with a few others like Bev Stratis in this ministry. Every Sunday afternoon a meal was served to a whole group of vagrants after ministry from the Word. For decades hereafter Henry would serve the homeless, also planting a church in Woodstock. Later we got very close to Bev and Pasques from the same congregation. A Bergie Becomes a Pastor Pastor Willie Martheze, a qualified welder from Mitchell's Plain, was still a so-called bergie, a vagrant, when he was initially ministered to. Jesus found me first! Humorously he would recollect how he had been such a good-for-nothing alcoholic that his own mother sent the police and the gangsters after him. ‘But Jesus found me first’, he proclaimed. Willie Martheze was radically delivered by the Gospel after attending an evangelistic service on the Grand Parade in February 1974, where the Scottish missionary Pastor Gay preached. Soon hereafter, the latter got a job for Martheze at the Arthur’s Seat Hotel in Sea Point. The prayerful ministry of Pastor Gay in District Six caused him to attend an evening training course at the Bethel Bible School in Crawford. Obedient to God’s voice after seeing a very destitute vagrant, Martheze followed a call to work with homeless people, with the intention of ministering healing to them. One of the aims was to empower the homeless, and to enable them to return to the homes they had left. In the spiritual realm it was significant that Pastor Martheze was allowed to use facilities at the Azaad Youth Centre, one of the few buildings that remained intact from the old District Six. (This complex was the former Preparatory School in Upper Ashley Street.) He and his wife were blessed to see quite a few of the homeless changed dramatically for the better, and some of them returned to their families. A Cross-Cultural Choir In 1992 the racial divide was still a major challenge in our country. From the outset of our service at the Cape Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, took me to various Bible schools in the Cape Peninsula, sharing the challenge of missionary outreach. At one of the events to which Shirley took me, I heard Joyce Scott reporting. She was a missionary of AIM who used her gift of music in ministry, while lecturing at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute. This was the catalyst for us to start a choir with singers coming from different cultures, a vision that I had brought along from Holland. (In Zeist I had attended a performance of a culturally mixed group from New Zealand.) At occasions to which I was invited as speaker, I took along the cross-cultural choir that we had formed. Apart from Grace Chan, our WEC Creole colleague from Mauritius, we also had people from different races in the choir. We recruited the choir members predominantly from Capetonian Bible Colleges. How special it was that I got into contact with two Xhosa speakers and a Zulu within the first three months. Two of them became members of our choir, one a Zulu Bible School student and the other a Salvation Army officer from Langa. That I bumped into Elijah Klaasen, a pastor from Gugulethu on the Grand Parade soon after our arrival, was definitely providential. (He had been the bold young pastor of 1981 who translated for us when Celeste Santos and the late Nomangezi Mbobosi fought for the women who had been transported back from the Transkei. Celeste and Nomangezi were two of the generals and pivots of the valiant fight in the Battle of Nyanga!) Rosemarie and I realized that we needed to get the backing, moral and prayer support of other Christians. At the same time we prayed, asking the Lord where we should start to serve him. By June 1992 our ministry was still not focused at all. We had not discerned properly that we should focus on Cape Muslims. Outreach to Jews was almost completely of our radar, albeit that we had once a month prayer meetings soon hereafter, interceding for both Sea Point and Bo-Kaap, for both Jews and Muslims. It would take many years before the biblical challenge of 'Jews first' (Romans 1:16) came through to us. Centre for Missions at BI When our renowned British missionary colleague Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa in 1994, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started, conducting services on Sunday evenings. At that occasion Dr Roger Palmer, the leader of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) branch at UCT and a board member of the Bible Institute of South Afri ca (BI) in Kalk Bay, shared his vision with me to have a centre for missions at BI. I had already been in discussion with Manfred Jung of SIM to bring the teaching of Muslim Evangelism to different Bible Schools. In fact, I had already approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about Islam at these institutions, remembering the lack we had in our own curriculum at the Moravian Theological Seminary. This research resulted in the start of annual intensive two-week courses in Muslim Evangelism at BI from January 1996, which led in turn to a teaching session of Rosemarie and me at the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) base in Muizenberg. Prayer Undergirding Evangelism From oral reports of Life Challenge workers like Neville Truter, who later became a SIM associate missionary, I heard that the Muslim evangelistic work was accompanied from the start by an emphasis on prayer. For many years Muslim outreach at the Cape and SIM Life Challenge were almost synonymous. The mission continued with an annual prayer initiative during Ramadan when they usually stopped their door-to door weekly outreach for that month. Under the leadership of the German missionary Gerhard Nehls, his team had people interceding while co-workers would be visiting Muslim homes. In other cases, groups prayed before they would go on outreach. In the mid-1980s, Nehls’s German missionary colleague Walter Gschwandtner got believers praying in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap. The Muslim head of the home came to faith in Jesus as his Lord just before he died in 1983. The knowledge of the Bo-Kaap prayer meetings got almost lost when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya in the early 1990s. At the Cape Town Baptist Church a few believers, including Hendrina van der Merwe, prayed at the church when outreach groups would go to nearby Muslim areas like Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. That congregation was well-known for its pioneering work in various places including District Six, Roggebaai and Woodstock. The fellowship however never succeeded to bridge the cultural gap to the Muslims. Gerhard Nehls, the old pioneer, did not sit still after his retirement from active mission work in 1997. In conjunction with Trans World Radio, he became the master mind behind a video series, using important Islamic apologists of the day. The result was The Battle for the Hearts. In due course the video series (later also available as DVD in different languages) went around the globe making a significant impact wherever it was used. Already in his early seventies, Nehls also delved into the modern electronic technology, starting with a data base of all materials for Muslim evangelism. In the age of the internet many Muslims would be impacted in the new millennium through this medium. Breaking New Ground My first major attempt at uniting churches of the city area was trying to get them to pray for Muslims. We organized for converts from Islam and various missionaries to speak in different churches on the Sundays during Ramadan 1993. When I observed that this merely resulted in entertainment - with no subsequent commitment - I aborted the practice. Hereafter I would challenge churches towards loving outreach to Muslims whenever they invited me to come and preach. We found that the WEC International prayer group that met in our Tamboerskloof home, was so much more committed and interested. Margaret Curry, a member of this monthly group of a few elderly ladies, introduced us to the matron of St Monica’s Maternity Home in Bo-Kaap. (Margaret Curry had been a missionary with the Hospital Christian Fellowship). In Hanover Park we started the first cell group with male Muslim background believers. In Hanover Park we started the first cell group consisting of male Muslim background believers. There we studied biblical personalities that also figure in the Qur’an. (This cell group ceased in September 1993 after our old VW Microbus was stolen and we had been conned – all in one week-end! Personally we went through a very difficult patch at this time, the result of an obvious demonic attack.) In this research and studies I was very fascinated and humbled to see how biblical figures that are mentioned in the Qur’an, foreshadow Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures and Talmudic sources. I also discovered that many pointers to the Cross and Jesus’ crucifixion had been omitted in the Qur’an.2 Fruitful Networking In the course of my representation work of our first year, I met Martin Heuvel, a pastor from Ravensmead. It was only natural that I would visit him when I helped prepare the October 1992 visit of Patrick Johnstone, the author of Operation World, a book that had already influenced prayers for missions like possibly no other with the exception of the Bible. A touch of nostalgia was hardly to be prevented when I visited the premises of the Fountain Family Church complex in Ravensmead. (The property had been there from where our family had to move.) Until 1994 Pastor Martin Heuvel was the principal of the Cape School of Missions. He was succeeded in 1995 by Rev. James Selfridge, an Irish missionary of the Metropolitan Church, who led the teaching and proceedings there until the school was disbanded and merged with the Bethel Bible School in 2004. Interesting ramifications would ensue after a short occasional lecturing there in 1992-1994, when I got befriended to Jeff Swartz, a student and a member of the Ravensmead Calvinist Protestant Church. Subsequently he would introduce me to Tim Makamu, a talented Venda student from the Cape Peninsula Technical University (CPUT). In the new millennium Tim would become the senior pastor of the mega church His People, albeit only for a short period. When Shirley Charlton organised for me to preach at the Docks Mission Church in the Mitchell's Plain township Lentegeur, another meaningful contact ensued. Pastor Walter Ackermann had a heart for missions second to very few in the Western Cape. I was soon preaching there regularly until Pastor Ackermann left the church at retirement age. Having ministered to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, he was keen to introduce me to the prominent politician when he became the State President. Pastor Ackermann was rather concerned with the way the Mandela government accepted financial assistance from the oil-rich Arab states. However, I could not quite see how a single meeting with the President could influence matters. That I declined that opportunity was something which I still regret. It was false humility. I should at least have asked God to either enable such a meeting or close the door. The Goodwill of Promising Beginnings Evaporate Much of the goodwill of the promising beginnings in our country after the 1992 referendum seemed to evaporate during the transition to democratic government. In Kwazulu, civil war conditions had been simmering for years. The tension between African National Congress (ANC) followers and those of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) was simmering. That could get out of control quite easily. The apparent, if perhaps not intentional simultaneous side-lining of Dr Mangusuthu Buthelezi and his IFP in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) talks, spelled danger. Over the Resurrection commemorative weekend of 1993, the country seemed to have been pushed over the precipice of major racial conflict. On 10 April 1993, the news reverberated throughout the country that Chris Hani, an outspoken Communist who had been mooted for a top position in a possible ANC-led government, had been assassinated. A ‘White’ woman provided information leading to the prompt arrest of the alleged perpetrators, two right-wing activists. This fact helped to lower the political temperature momentarily, but the situation remained extremely tense. The death of an American exchange student and other terrorist-related incidents made clear that matters were very serious. But satan overplayed his hand in July 1993. So-called freedom fighters stormed into the evening service at the St James Church in the Cape suburb of Kenilworth, killing and maiming several people. This massacre turned out to be a divine instrument par excellence, ushering in prayer unprecedentedly. Simultaneously, a movement towards racial reconciliation in the country received a boost. Those family members who lost dear ones were given divine grace to forgive the brutal terrorists. The killing of innocent people during a church service sparked off an unprecedented urgency for prayer all around the country. 3. Back to (Bible) School During the course of interaction with Cape Muslims as I joined missionary outreach with colleagues, I discovered my own inadequacy in respect of knowledge of Islam. Soon I was driving every Monday evening to Kalk Bay, doing a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) with a special focus on Islam. Post-Graduate Studies Things were auguring well for the future. Our friend Jutty Bredenkamp, who had visited us in Zeist a few times, had become professor of History at the University of the Western Cape in the meantime. He assisted me in my research on the establishment and spread of Islam at the Cape for an assignment. When I shared with him some of my 'discoveries', especially with regard to the misrepresentation of missions in the available literature - notably in the writings of Professor Robert Shell and Dr Achmat Davids - he encouraged me to publish my findings. Dr Davids proved to be a real gentleman, even putting some of his unpublished research at my disposal. The last interview with him occurred a day before his death in 1998. One of my assignments about Jesus in the Qur’an – in conjunction with Bible Studies with monthly male Muslim background believers - would bring me to another special 'discovery', namely how the Cross of Calvary has been consistently omitted in the Qur’an. Other Types of Revival Seed Various types of ‘revival seed’ were sowed during the 1990s. Some of the most notable ones transpired through the various prayer networks, for example the Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA) and its successor Jericho Walls. (The leader, Ds. Bennie Mostert, collaborated closely with the AD2000 & Beyond Movement.) Operation Desert Storm was the successful U.S.-allied response in 1991 to the attempt of Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, to crush neighbouring Kuwait. That US-led operation had a significant impact. Many Christian soldiers distributed Arabic Bibles when the Allied troops moved around the Middle East. Coming fairly soon after the fall of the Soviet Empire and their successful seven year prayer campaign, Open Doors launched a new campaign, ten years of prayer for the Muslim world. Floyd McClung and other Youth with a Mission (YWAM) leaders retreated to a secluded place in Egypt in 1991. There the Lord gave them the vision for prayer mobilization during Ramadan - the Muslim Prayer Focus - to be printed as booklets that would cause unprecedented changes in the Muslim world. The 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed and distributed around the Globe with information on different issues relating to Islam. This was repeated for many years until the internet option made its actual printing more or less redundant. CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) in South Africa printed their own version of the Ramadan Muslim Prayer Focus for 1998 and since then every year till 2017, after which it moved into electronic mode. In 1993 the first teams started praying through information gained from serious research. From 1993 South Africa also participated in the Praying through the Window initiative that was launched internationally by the AD 2000 Prayer Track. I discerned furthermore that the Master was teaching me many new lessons. A student from the Baptist Theological Seminary, the Zambian Kalolo Mulenga, would become God’s instrument to lead me to the small Woodstock Baptist Church. There I started discovering many a lesson that Jesus had been teaching via his conversation with the Samaritan woman of John 4. At that congregation which had no full time pastor in 1992/3, I preached three sermons on that Bible chapter. I expanded on that in a repetition at the Cape Town sister fellowship which we joined in 1993. However, I collided with some of the missionary practices at the Cape when I went overboard in my application of one lesson. Some expatriate missionary colleagues especially found it rightfully unpalatable when I suggested much too radically that God could use the immoral lady better among her own people than Jesus. It was surely theologically flawed to suggest that a sinful woman was, so to speak, better than our sinless divine Lord. I rubbed some of the colleagues up the wrong way My conviction that Muslim background believers could similarly witness much better to their peers and family than we as missionaries, was however perfectly in order. But this rubbed some of the colleagues up the wrong way. Being the only ‘Cape Coloured’ among many expatriate colleagues at that time, this was not very charitable and very unwise, understandably interpreted by some as arrogant. Thankfully, hardly any visible damage resulted from my haughty attitude. Nevertheless, I landed in some corner once again, ostracised by other colleagues. This was not the first time that my radical views threw me into hot water! An Ideal Opening for Satanism Crime at the Cape increased and drug trafficking spiralled! The warfare from the enemy of souls was conducted in the Cape Flats townships mainly through drug addiction, gangsterism and prostitution. These vices proved the ideal opening for satanism. In the mid-1990s the drug- and gang war kept the Mother City of South Africa in suspense for months. drug addiction, gangsterism and prostitution grew rapidly. (These triplets of vice still remain unsolved problems of the City and the country as a whole.) A situation developed by the end of the 20th century that could only be countered with spiritual warfare on a national scale. A Dynamic Church Evolves A Christian surfing club was started at the Cape Town Baptist Church in 1991 as an attempt to reach unchurched surfers. Mike Geldenhuys, a young believer who went on to study Theology at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary, invited Roy Harley, a devout surfer from Durban, to come and challenge the youngsters at a camp. Nathan, the son of Graham Gernetsky, the pastor, invited his friend Terran Williams. Demitri Nikiforos and Nathan Gernetsky were two other teenagers who, like Terran Williams, later went into full-time pastoral ministry. Nikiforos became the pioneering pastor of Calvary Chapel in the Mother City and Terran Williams became the leader of the Common Ground denomination in 2017. Heidi Pasques and Carol Günther, an American volunteer, pioneered with the teaching of English to foreign students. With predominantly Asians attending these lessons, the church started to become quite cosmopolitan. Another ministry, to serve people with homosexual tendencies or who had been damaged in that regard, brought healing and help to many. These people received assistance at the Cape Town Baptist Church when the issue was still muzzled in other churches. Sadly, country-wide a situation in gender politics evolved negatively later from a biblical point of view. that it became politically incorrect to see marriage as a union between a male and a female. Due to clever manipulation and the use of bribes, the ANC majority in parliament legalized same sex marriages in 2006. (Corruption in the party would spiral in due course.) An Impact Via Bo-Kaap Minaret Calls The Lord himself seemed to confirm our link to Cape Town Baptist Church, using the eight-year-old daughter of one of the elders of the church. The girl had been terribly troubled by the calls from the minarets in the nearby mosques of Bo-Kaap. Her father, Brett Viviers, a Messanic Jewish believer, suggested that she should start praying for the Muslims. That Heidi Pasques and her husband Louis displayed interest to become missionaries to a Muslim country. This became the factor that ultimately nudged me to join the congregation formally with our family. Furthermore, two members of our Bo-Kaap prayer meeting, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids, already belonged to the congregation. Yet, Rosemarie was not quite convinced that this was where we should link up church-wise. Its proximity to Bo-Kaap, where we wanted a spiritual breakthrough, clinched the matter for me. There is where we wanted to plant a simple home church. Rather hesitantly she agreed to join the congregation. For many years this would cause some strain in our relationship, notably when we became increasingly unhappy there. We had apparently not yet learned the lesson well enough, that we should not proceed with major decisions like this without complete unity as a couple. God could subsequently nevertheless use us at that congregation in many a way for the longest stretch to date in a single congregation. Carol Günther was part of our home ministry group that met on Wednesday evening in our home initially, and later in that of Alan Kay, a Telkom employee. He later became the administrator of the church. A later addition to the group was Gershin Philander, a young man who was raised in the tradition of the Plymouth Brethren. He had a phenomenal knowledge of the Scriptures. 4. Taking Back Lost Territory The indifference of churches to evangelistic outreach has always been a problem in around the Cape Peninsula. In this regard, the suburbs Woodstock and Salt River were no exception. People with low income have been living in these two suburbs, which had become predominantly Islamic within a few years in the early 1990s. Christians were fleeing Woodstock as gangsterism and prostitution took the area by storm. Prayer Warfare in Woodstock In March 1994 a group of theological students of the Cape Town Baptist Theological Seminary served also in Woodstock for a local missions' week. Pastor Graham Gernetsky, the senior pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church, invited me to share teaching with him, along-side Bobby Maynard, a church member who had in depth insight in missions and related topics. Pastor Gernetsky reacted positively to my suggestion to engage in prayer warfare with the students not only in Bo-Kaap, but also in nearby Woodstock. This would amount to an attempt to take back some territory that satan had stolen through drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism. During a prayer walk with the students as part of the missions' week, a local Woodstock resident mentioned Pastor William Tait and his fellowship. He had started his ministry there in 1989 as a local Assemblies of God congregation. The 1994 missions' week became the start of closer co-operation between the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God fellowship and the small local Baptist Church that had no minister at the time. By 1990 Woodstock had become the drug hub of the metropolis. The Face of Woodstock Changing Towards the end of the millennium, Woodstock slowly changed its religious complexion. The centre of drug-peddling and prostitution moved to more lucrative areas in the democratic dispensation. Pastor Tait and his church were ably assisted by the small local Baptist Church under an inspiring pioneering new minister. Pastor Edgar Davids was in poor health, a kidney patient, when he finished his studies at the seminary. The fellowship met in a house in Mountain Street, Woodstock where the congregation also met for all their meetings. Edgar Davids, a visionary pastor, challenged the few members to buy the former Aberdeen Street Dutch Reformed Church. The building had been ransacked by homeless people, some of them Angolan refugees. It ultimately had become a ruin more or less. Inspired by their sickly pastor, the members began to restore the premises with financial and practical aid from North Carolina believers in the USA. A kidney transplant and dialysis treatment however merely extended Pastor Davids's suffering. Sadly, in March 1998, Pastor Edgar Davids passed on to eternal glory. The Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God initially rented a dilapidated building from the Woodstock Presbyterian Church which found it difficult to survive in the fast deteriorating suburb. Starting in 1994, the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God had begun to conduct prayer meetings every morning on weekdays at five o’clock. God started using the two fellowships of Woodstock to gradually change the face of the suburb. Before our eyes we could see this happening. The restored churches, respectively in Clyde and Aberdeen Streets, that once had been the shame of local Christianity, became a visible testimony to God’s renewing power in that suburb. We continued praying that something similar would also happen in the spiritual realm. Taking Bo-Kaap Back for the Lord? When Pastor Angelo Scheepers and a few Cape Baptist big names came to approach Rosemarie and me to pioneer Muslim outreach in Michells Plain on behalf of the Baptist denomination, we sensed no calling at all in this regard. Likewise, their suggestion to get the former Baptist building in Bo-Kaap's Jarvis Street back on behalf of the denomination, found no resonance in my heart. (Due to Group Areas legislation it had become a photographic studio.) I was ready to co-operate if it would be a cross-denominational venture, but this idea was possibly too radical for the brethren. Looking back just under thirty years later, my resistance to the move, preferring to get some non-denominational fellowship going there, may not have been the best one to achieve a breakthrough in the Muslim stronghold. Preparation For New Initiatives One of the events organised in the first term of 1993 by the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop at the Cape Town Baptist Church with John Robb of World Vision. I used the list of participants at this event to organize Jesus Marches the following year. In this way, I updated my contacts for further mission endeavour in the Western Cape. There I met Trefor Morris and Freddie van Dyk, two City Council workers. Trefor was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor became a regular at our Friday lunch time prayer meeting while he was assisting with work on the OM missionary ship the Doulos in the City dockyard. He was also the link for Rosemarie and me to be invited to the radio station to give some advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends.’ These were the people who had to advise Muslims who phoned CCFM (Cape Community FM) for telephonic counselling. Trefor became my Fish Hoek link for the 1994 Marches for Jesus and a hopeful recruit for the envisaged prayer network in the Cape Peninsula. (The seed of the vision of a prayer network germinated in the new millennium when the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in the Western Cape, in conjunction with Jericho Walls, attempted to stimulate the formation of houses of prayer across denominational barriers.) Freddie van Dyk’, a member of the Logos Baptist Church of Brackenfell, became a regular attendee at our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting. He would lead us to a very strategic hospital outreach every Saturday morning. Danie Heyns was another member of his congregation who would become a pivotal link as a contact for the organisation of Jesus Marches in June 1994 The David and Jonathan Foundation Jack Carstens served in Israel as Trade Attaché of South Africa for 4 years from 1976 to 1980. Living there with his wife Annalee and their children, they met Messianic Jewish believers in the land. At that time only a handful of small fellowships met secretly because of persecution especially from Orthodox Jews. The Messianic believers often endured hardship from family, who rejected them for putting their faith in Jesus. After their return to South Africa, Jack and Annalee kept contact with some of these believers. The couple founded David and Jonathan Foundation in 1996. The main thrust of the organisation is to get support from South African churches and Christians for the believers in Israel. David and Jonathan Foundation encourages individuals and congregations to pray for Messianic congregations in Israel and to give them financial support. Funds are spread amongst several congregations with whom the foundation has built sound relations. The money is used to assist these congregations to spread the Good News to their fellow countrymen in Israel. Aware that the Jewish people’s eyes have been partially blinded to allow the Gentiles to come to faith ( Romans 11:26), God has always ensured that a remnant of Jews have entered into faith so that they can witness to His people. God is lifting this veil and many Jewish people have been coming to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah! As a result, faith in Messiah Jesus has grown and there is now more than 100 Messianic congregations established in Israel. To God be the glory! Cape Catalysts Into the Ten Forty Window The first Love Southern Africa Conference was held in Wellington in 1993, with the Nigerian Panja Baba and Operation Mobilization (OM)’s international leader George Verwer as the main speakers. This coincided with the renovation of the OM ship the Doulos in the Cape Town Docks. The ship's young people from many countries were hosted privately all over the Cape Peninsula, spreading blessings wherever they served. Pastor Raymond Lombard of the Lewende Woord congregation in the suburb Parow was moved by the Holy Spirit in September 1995 to initiate a project that would ultimately reach many a home, tribe, clan, family, and village throughout Africa with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This outreach that surged through 44 countries, became known as 'Wheels for God’s Word'. By August 2021 4000 plus bicycles ('rural Mercedes' as these have been called in Africa), have been given to pastors and evangelists and many motorcycles. To date 22 000 pastors, evangelists and church leaders have been trained with the “Heart of Man” charts in hundreds of churches. Wherever a bicycle was given to a preacher of the gospel, large and pocket-size “Heart of Man” charts, along with accompanying booklets, were distributed. Pastor Bruce van Eeden passionately attempted to get South Africans involved in missionary work. The Lord laid India and China on his heart. In 1995 he started a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. With his daughter serving as an employee of South African Airways enabling Pastor van Eeden to go to India for three months a year to minister, he partnered with Indian believers, taking volunteers from South Africa with him. In due course many Indian national evangelists and pastors became linked to the mission agency. From the outset Pastor van Eeden made it clear to the Christians in India that they should not expect funding from outside their own country. He did not want to see the dependency syndrome repeated as it happened in so many African countries. (Many a Western missionary, along with their church leaders, spawned or developed cripple Christians, who kept looking for financial support from rich countries, in stead of seeing God as their main source.) Two Special Incidents At a time when foreign visitors were still a rare site in China, Pastor Bruce and Brother ( ??, not his real name or now with the Lord?) was travelling in a bus with two boxes of Bibles to the Northern part of China for messianic Jewish believers there when the travellers on the bus were scrutinized. The two of them were sitting at the back of the bus. The travellers had to leave the bus one by one while there luggage were investigated and the passengers interrogated (??. The two of them could do nothing else but pray and getting ready for a possible lengthy term in prison. But just before it was their turn to be questioned, the order came that all those outside could return to their seats. They were not interrogated or their luggage scrutinized at all. The second incident happened in rural China (India??) where Pastor Bruce had been invited as speaker for a three day Gospel Campaign. To this end he had to travel for 38 hours in a train in which not a single person could speak English. Soon after his arrival there he was told that the authorities had made a clear that the foreignerwas not allowed to speak at the campaign for which he had to endure this tortuous journey sacrificially. When Ps. Bruce prayed about the matter, the only word he heard was that he should be the speaker. Three battalions of armed guards, thus around 300 of them, were sent to make sure that the government ruling would be adhered to at the campaign, with 8000 people present every time. The organizers had a brilliant solution to enable Ps. Bruce to speak and yet respect the ruling. He would be sitting near to the podium on the stage but he would not have a microphone. Only his interpreter had the microphone in his hand,'preaching' to the crowd from at the podium, translating what Ps. Bruce was quietly passing on from his seat. And thus also the guards could hear the gospel in their mother tongue! Prayer Inspired by the Fear of Civil War At the beginning of 1994, the concrete fear of civil war continued to inspire prayer across racial divides. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Methodist Bishop Stanley Mogoba convened a meeting between Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, trying to resolve the deadlock posed by the threat from the Inkatha Freedom Party to boycott the elections. Africa Enterprise, led by Rev Michael Cassidy, enlisted prayer assistance from all over the world. Believers from Kenya and Nigeria participated vigorously in this international prayer effort. In February 1994, in response to a special leading of the Holy Spirit, Pastor Willy Oyegun from Nigeria, along with a group of prayer warriors, came to South Africa to intercede on behalf of the country and especially that God would avert civil war. Soon thereafter, on 16 March 1994, General Constand Viljoen of the national Defence Force, severed the close links he had with Dr Buthelezi through the Freedom Alliance. General Viljoen formed his own political party, the Freedom Front. He agreed to participate in the elections, scheduled for 27 April, 1994. This was surely the result of the many prayers offered in various places at this time, making the feared civil war less ominous - for that moment at least. The country was still very close to a civil war. The country came close to civil war. God also called a police officer, Colonel Johan Botha, to recruit prayer warriors. The press took up his story, reporting how Colonel Botha shared that God supernaturally came to him in a vision. An angel stood before him on 23 March, 1994 with the message: “I want South Africa on its knees in prayer”. Subsequently, a national prayer day was announced for 6 April, 1994. This was a public holiday called Founder’s Day. Reputable International Negotiators Engaged To help with the negotiations, two reputable international negotiators came to work with Professor Washington Okumu, who was less known internationally. Lord Carrington was a former British Foreign Minister, who had brokered an accord for Zimbabwe at Lancaster House in London in 1980. The second prominent negotiator was Dr. Henry Kissinger, a former US Secretary of State, who through his shuttle diplomacy, headed off a major crisis in the Middle East in the 1970s. The distinguished group of three negotiators had great difficulty however in their attempt to get Dr Buthelezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) to participate in the elections. A Calamitous Civil War Loomed After both President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela refused to postpone the elections, and because of other difficulties during the negotiations, a mere two weeks before elections were due, Carrington and Kissinger left the country on 13 April1994, acknowledging their failure to achieve a settlement. The scene was set for the outbreak of civil war of massive proportions. Journalists flew in from all over the world to witness and record the carnage that was expected to follow the elections. God Intervenes Spectacularly Professor Okumu heeded the request of Michael Cassidy to stay behind when his prominent Western colleagues left. The request to Professor Okumu coincided with a special prayer event, organised on short notice at Durban’s King’s Park Stadium for Sunday 17 April. Under the spiritual leadership of Rev. Michael Cassidy, thousands would come to pray for peace. With godly wisdom and insight Cassidy and other Christian leaders pursued peaceful elections with great community support. On Friday 15 April, Professor Okumu rushed to meet Buthulezi by taxi at the Lanseria Airport to explain a new proposal to be presented to the Zulu King. But he was too late. Professor Okumu could only see the aeroplane taking off. Divine intervention occurred! Divine intervention occurred when it was announced that the aircraft was returning. Some strange navigational reading caused the pilot to return to the small airport. Afterwards no fault could be detected with the machine. God intervened supernaturally to bring the aeroplane, in which Dr Buthelezi was sitting, to return unexpectedly to the airport for a divine appointment with Professor Okumu. Media teams from every major network around the world were waiting to report the expected violent revolution, a bloodbath. The general journalistic practice was – and still is - to concentrate on calamities and catastrophes. The Church of Kwazulu and Natal took the opportunity to pray in all urgency. In spite of warnings and the risk of bombs exploding, 30,000 Christians gathered on Kings Park Stadium. Prof. Okumu’s proposal was passed to leaders of the IFP, the ANC and Danie Schutte of the Nationalist Party at the big Kings Park event. In the course of frantic negotiations - almost around the clock - the IFP agreed finally to participate in the elections. The photo of Dr Buthulezi was added to the millions of ballot papers in a gigantic last minute operation! To God Be the Glory! A few days later millions of people stood in long lines waiting to cast the first vote of their lives. What would follow was in fact a miraculous story. Media teams were called home. There was no story to report of calamitous revolution. The peaceful elections were a resounding success! This was God answering the cries of His children. This was a miracle happening in our generation! Many Kenyans had been praying for South Africa in its moment of crisis. It was so fitting that God used Professor Okumu to broker the accord with the IFP and Dr Buthulezi. It was a move that literally steered the country away from the precipice just before midnight. Believers in different parts of the world, including Kenyans and thousands of South Africans, gave God the honour for divinely guiding the country to an unprecedented four days of peaceful revolution, as the election process was dubbed. In answer to the prayers of millions, God brought about the miracle elections that might have gone awry if satan had his way. It was clear that it was neither military actions nor boycotts which toppled apartheid. It was sovereign divine work. Indeed, to God be the Glory! Prayer Warriors Respond A fourth national forty day fast was organised in conjunction with an international initiative called A Day to Change the World. A divine response followed when individual prayer warriors from different communities signed up. Thousands of people participated, culminating in Marches for Jesus all over the country on 25 June, 1994. The country lapsed back into its traditional racial and denominational divisions Although much of the mutual distrust was temporarily overcome, the country lapsed back into its traditional racial and denominational divisions. The recipe of Pete Grigg, an internationally known prayer leader, was very appropriate: ‘If there is not significant unity, the first step is to bring together the believers in prayer or in renewal and teaching until there is reconciliation and brokenness.’ Jesus Marches and Their Aftermath Jesus Marches were planned for 24 June, 1994 all over the world. In a letter from our friend and WEC missionary colleague Chris Scott from Sheffield (England), he wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. Inquiries on this side of the ocean brought the co-ordination of the whole effort in Cape Town into my lap. We had high expectations when I got involved in the co-ordination of about 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula and liaising closely with Danie Heyns and Chris Achenbach with regard to the northern suburbs of the city and the immediate ‘platteland’ (country side). I hoped that this venture would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest that our second attempt with our updated audio visual had stimulated in various areas, petered out. I deduced that it was not yet God’s timing and that we should do a lot more to stimulate the unity of the body of believers. In the run-up to the Jesus Marches I shared for the first time publicly what I had researched about the influence of the Kramats, the Islamic shrines on the heights of the Cape Peninsula. A strategic contact of this latter initiative was Trefor Morris, who was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor occasionally visited our Friday prayer meeting. He became a link to the radio station when we were invited to give advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends’ of the station, who had to speak to those Muslims who phoned in at Radio Fish Hoek. His radio series on old churches was valuable to me as an inspiration for further research. Another important contact of the Friday prayer was Freddie van Dyk, who linked us to the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell. Muslim Prayer Focus In 1992 mission leaders had decided to call the Christians worldwide to pray for the Muslim world during Ramadan. This was a natural follow-up of the call of Open Doors for 10 years of prayer for the Muslim world in 1990. Everybody was still vividly remembering the spectacular result of the 7 years of prayer for the Soviet Union. A little booklet called the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed with information on different issues relating to Islam. South Africa was soon in the thick of things when Bennie Mostert of OM initiated the printing of the booklet in South Africa. Hereafter it became an annual event. 5. Can an Angel Bring a Flawed Message? My teaching at the missions' week with Baptist Seminary students ‘backfired’ in a special way. It became one big personal lesson in spiritual warfare to us. We included early prayer times with the students, starting at 5 a.m. One morning my wife Rosemarie shared what she had ‘discovered’ in Galatians 1:8,9 – that even an angel could bring a flawed message, if that would deviate from the original Gospel revealed in the Bible. This amplified to us the origins of the Qur’an. We had been learning that the revered Islamic prophet Muhammad believed – after thinking initially that it was God himself – that an angel had brought to him the Surah (chapter) that starts with the notion that man was made out of clotted blood. We were filled with more compassion towards Muslims, as we realized that they have been severely deceived collectively in this way. This became to me the pristine beginnings of an in-depth comparative study of the Angel Gabriel in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud and the Ahadith. Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s words and deeds are regarded as equal in authority to the Qur’an. The consistent omission of the Cross in the Qur’an could not be coincidence I furthermore discovered how deceptive the arch-enemy was, that he had indeed been masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Thus the consistent omission in the Qur’an of everything alluding to the Cross of Calvary could not be coincidence. The latter discovery came to the fore as I prepared myself for teaching Muslim background believers. (The updated version of these studies can be found as Pointers to Jesus - a comparison of biblical personalities in the Qur’an and Talmud at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. There was surely some supernatural element at work because a book with similar content, The Great Deception, was published in Austria in 1995) . Discovering Resentment In My Heart One of the lessons of the missions week was quite painful. As I taught the theological students about the history of Islam in the Western Cape, I broke down in tears after I had to discern how deeply there was still resentment in my heart towards the Dutch Reformed Church. I suppose that it had expanded significantly when I had been reading how the denomination opposed the government when Mr P.W. Botha and his Cabinet were ready to repeal the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. (This was the law that had been keeping me in exile for almost two decades.) The increasing number of expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own people. 'Black' People Seen as Future Missionaries Two of the student participants at the mission week were Kalolo Mulenga and Orlando Suarez, respectively from Zambia and Mozambique. (During an orientation visit to the Ivory Coast in 1990 the seed had already been sown in my heart, to see Africans as future missionaries. We had hoped to go there as a WEC International missionary family.) Now the increasing number of African expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own folk, just like the Samaritan woman of John 4 in the ‘New Testament’. Orlando Suarez would become one of the first of those foreign Africans to return to his home country, albeit that in his case it was not completely voluntarily. The lessons in cross-cultural outreach that the Master Teacher passed on to us through chapter 4 from John’s Gospel, would guide us during the next few years. I not only used the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a woman from another culture as a prime example for the outreach to Cape Muslims, but by now we were concentrating our work on the local converts from Islam. (We noticed how much more effectively they were reaching out to their own people. Salama Temmers and Ayesha Hunter would be among those who came through the ranks of the ministry. Subsequently quite a few of them would be used powerfully elsewhere.) Two missionaries from the Cape who left for Malawi helped prepare the way for an attitudinal change of many a Cape Christian. Bobby Maynard attended the Cape Town Baptist Church before he left the Mother City for Malawi, touching the young (future) Baptist ministers during the missions’ week in March 1994, just before he left. Braam Willemse, another Cape missionary, ministered to the predominantly Muslim Yao tribe when he died at a fairly young age. The reality of spiritual warfare and casualties would come very close to us in our ministry with juveniles from Hanover Park An Extra-Ordinary Weekend Camp The preparation for a weekend camp with juveniles from Hanover Park developed into a major strain on our nerves. Two days before the camp was scheduled to start, I was the only one of the leaders left with reasonable health. Cheryl Moskos, our Hanover Park co-worker, was down with a heavy flu that more or less ruled her out and Rosemarie was out of contention due to a slipped disk. We approached Nasra Stemmet, a MBB from Woodstock, to assist. She had started attending our Friday prayer meeting after she got in touch with us through an American pastor in the Dutch capital Amsterdam. But Nasra had very limited prior practical driving experience, after she had passed the test for her driver’s license. God confirmed clearly that we should proceed with this camp, so that we had no hesitation to suspect that Rosemarie's condition was yet another onslaught from the arch enemy. The Wednesday evening Rosemarie stayed at home because of the slipped disc. It was just as well, because now she was at home to take a crucial phone call from our SIM missionary colleague Horst Pietzsch. He had been approached by Anthony Duncan, a young missionary from Frontline Fellowship who wanted to get involved with local mission work before his next stint to more dangerous operational areas. That phone call swung things around. We decided to go ahead with the camp. At that stage cancellation seemed to be the only logical conclusion. God used a chiro practitioner to whom we went the next day. Rosemarie was back in action even before the weekend. To God be the glory! What a blessing the camp became to those children, the majority of whom had hardly been out of the township Hanover Park where they were born and bred. Death is Nothing Special to Some People! All the more the shock was great when the news reached us a few weeks later that Anthony Duncan was killed in a motorbike accident on his way from Angola. We were surprised how little reaction the youths showed when we broke the news to them. We realized that death had become so normal to the children and young people from Hanover Park, nothing special at all. Very sadly, gun killings and other forms of unnatural causes of life termination belong to their everyday life. My presence at a meeting of the Alpha Centre, the venue of our weekly children’s clubs, led to our being approached by Shehaam, the mother of a few of our children’s club. Their youngest child had just been declared terminally ill because of an unknown virus. This got the ball rolling for many sessions of counselling and prayer when Rosemarie and I visited her. At one of these visits she shared a very special dream she had of a man with a long stick walking on grass that was very green. When I turned my Bible to Psalm 23, she got so excited!! 'That's exactly what I saw in my dream!' she exclaimed. She was like a ripe apple, ready to be picked. She was the first Cape Muslim we were blessed to lead to the Lord and to disciple. The latter was a major challenge of course. Collating Stories of Muslim-Background Believers In June 1992, Majiet Pophlonker and Zane Abrahams, two Muslim-background believers, visited our home with their families. After hearing Majiet’s moving story, seed was sown into my heart to write down the testimonies of converts from Islam. At one of the discussions with Manfred Jung, a SIM missionary colleague, the idea was mooted to publish the testimonies of local Muslim-background believers as a networking effort. I enjoyed collating the stories from some of these believers, sometimes making notes. Two of these special stories came from Salama Temmers and Esme Orrie, who would become special co-workers, presenters of a radio programme. The result was Op soek na waarheid, a booklet that we planned to launch at prayer seminar in January 1995. Assisted by Attie Kotze, a secondary school class mate who had become an Afrikaans teacher and a pastor of the Rhenish Church in Ravensmead, eleven of the stories were finally selected and prepared for publication. Once I took a cassette tape recorder to a house, where the believer from Muslim background shared how she came to faith at a mass evangelistic meeting with Reinhard Bonnke in 1984, along with many other Muslims. This struck a chord in my heart. I wondered what had happened to all the other Muslims who made a public profession of their faith as an indication of their intention to follow Jesus. This amounted to a wake-up call to Rosemarie and me. We decided to rather focus on the discipling of a few Muslim background believers. This proved to be very strategic! An Evangelistic Seminar in a Muslim Stronghold The New Year 1995 started quite well. We received a substantial sum of money from Rosemarie’s godmother, a retired dentist. We saw this as God’s provision to enable us to book air tickets for our four-month home assignment in Holland and Germany. (Our home church is in the former country; Rosemarie’s family and other supporting friends are in the latter one). But we still needed funds for the printing of Op Soek na Waarheid. Just after the summer school holidays we staged a Muslim seminar in Rylands Estate, a predominantly Indian residential area. Rainer Gulsow and his wife Runa, friends from the nearby German Stadtmission, introduced us to Gerda Leithgöb from Pretoria, who was still fairly unknown to Cape believers. Their recommendation was quite influential, nudging me to invite Gerda to come and teach at our seminar in Rylands Estate. ‘Spiritual Mapping’ Used ‘Spiritual Mapping’ is a term that has been used subsequently for research into spiritual influences, especially those of a demonic or anti-Christian nature. In respect of Islam, Gerda Leithgöb introduced Spiritual Mapping at the Cape at the prayer seminar. Ds. Pypers had originally been the scheduled keynote speaker in the Reformed fellowship where he had done pioneering work. Gerda would have been just an ancillary speaker. For the majority of the audience, the subject matter was completely unknown. With Ds. Pypers absent – the result of my failure to confirm the speaking appointment - she suddenly had much more time for teaching. Nevertheless, her talk changed the outlook of many a co-worker when they discovered the value of strategic prayer. That we could stage the evangelistic seminar in a Hindu-Muslim stronghold was quite significant. The bulk of the 'White' participants had never been to a suburb classified in race terms other than 'White'. For the rest however, the seminar was not a resounding success. Our time schedule for the publication of the testimony booklet had been much too tight. But this was only the start of many disappointments and attacks. It was nevertheless clear that the testimonies were strategic in our spiritual fight against the arch enemy’s hold on people. Prior to the prayer seminar I had given to Gerda Leithgöb some of my research results on the establishment and spread of Cape Islam. Among other things I pointed to the apparent effect of the shrines on the heights. We prayed that a network of prayer throughout the Cape Peninsula might be established, which could cause a breakthrough in the hearts of Cape Muslims. A Messianic Prophecy Divinely Used When I mentioned the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 as part of a devotional in our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting, the Lord used that to start calling Gill Knaggs into the mission to the Muslim World. She had been attending our prayer meeting on a one-off basis. This brought her into motion to pray about getting involved in full-time missionary work. Soon Gill was used by God to nudge the Muizenberg base of YWAM (Youth with a Mission) to get more interested in the Muslims. At her home she started a prayer group for Muslims that met every week for many years. Concretely, an interest developed there for Egypt where they started to network with the Coptic Church via links through Mike Burnard, the Western Cape leader of Open Doors. It was strategic to get befriended to him. (Subsequently he would start Incontext Ministries.) When we started with a radio programme in 1998, Gill was on hand for the writing of the scripts, something that she continued to do for many years, also after her marriage to John Wrench, who hereafter pursued theological studies with her at George Whitfield College in Muizenberg. Thrust Into the Front Line We still had little clue of the spiritual forces unleashed during the Islamic month of Ramadan. We had to learn that because we have been thrust into the front line of the spiritual battle at the Cape, we needed a lot of prayer covering. The battle heated up during Ramadan. In two cases we escaped serious car accidents on the highway by a whisk. In one of the instances it was very near to a miracle that Rosemarie was not killed. Some strange things also happened to our 1981 model Mazda that we bought after our minibus had been stolen. Twice I had to be towed to Warren Abels, a pastor who worked as a mechanic in Fairways. On both occasions he could not find anything amiss with the vehicle and also thereafter we had no problems with the car. It was evident that there were demonic powers at work. Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation did not arrive. It had left the bank in Holland all right, but inexplicably it never arrived at the bank of our headquarters in Durban. In the meantime we were forced to start using the money that was scheduled for the air tickets for our home assignment in Holland and Germany. Disappointments At about the same time two believers - one of our co-workers and one of our prayer warriors - became involved in moral failure. The brother was a convert from Islam, from whom we had really expected great things. Both he and his wife sensed some calling to missionary involvement. The effect on him was such that he became suicidal. He was really at the end of his tether. In the other instance, one of our prayer partners became pregnant from a Muslim young man. She was firm though that she would not marry him and become a Muslim. She knew enough of the bondage under which other women had come after landing in a similar situation. A Lesson from a Special Plant The Lord encouraged us after someone had tried to steal a special plant from our garden. The plant had one beautiful flower on it. Rosemarie had been awakened in the early morning hours by sounds outside the house. When we switched on the light, the damage was already done. The thief ran away, but this turned out to become God’s way to teach us an important lesson. The plant looked completely ragged and ruined after it had been uprooted. Carol Günther, a member from our home ministry group, gave us the advice to put the plant back into the soil and tie a stick to it. Already after a few days we noticed how the plant started recovering. In her quiet time, the Lord ministered to Rosemarie: we had to be such a stick to the spiritual casualties. Unlike other Christians who would only judge and condemn our battered brothers and sisters, we had to support them. The object lesson turned out to be a special blessing to the suicidal Muslim background believer when we told him about the plant. He had really thought that there was no purpose in life left for him. Now he could see how the plant had recovered. It still took a few years, however, until he got back onto the road spiritually. At some stage I started to attend a prayer meeting of young Baptist ministers in Woodstock. The visionary Edgar Davids - who still was a final year seminary student, was the initiator. I was excited, asking myself whether pastors would at last start to pray together for revival in the islamised residential area. Was God answering our prayer walking in and for the area with some of Edgar’s student colleagues the previous year? Turmoil and Stress It was a very special blessing for Rosemarie and me to witness how Shehaam, the mother of five children, four of which were attending our children’s club - came through to a living faith in Jesus. As we discipled her, we didn’t even dare to mention baptism. In fact, when we shared the Gospel with her, we spelt out the possible consequences quite clearly. The responsibility of having to find accommodation for Shehaam with her five children, if her husband would evict her, was a fact we had to face squarely. We were not ready for that eventuality. It was nevertheless a joy for us to lead her to the Lord - after she had phoned us - but we did not encourage her to share her new faith with her husband. We suggested that he should see the difference in her life first. This experience was valuable seed sown in our hearts for the need of a discipling house where we could disciple new believers. The run-up to our home assignment in Germany and Holland, scheduled to start at the end of March 1995, was one big turmoil and stress. Apart from the money issue - which was resolved just in time - there was a major problem to get seats on a flight. One international airline had a special offer for which we had provisionally booked. Some tense weeks followed when the airline with whom we had booked (but not paid), cancelled our seats without consulting us. Cape Town was fast becoming a favourite destination for tourists. The tension in the family in respect of getting seats became quite bad as the uncertainty took its toll. By this time also the other airlines had no cheap seats available for a family of seven. The best that we could manage, was to get wait-listed on different flights. Because of the uncertainty of securing seats, everybody in the family - also the children - had forgotten that it was our 20th wedding anniversary on the 22nd of March. I furthermore was involved in a minor car accident the previous day. My nerves were all but wrecked! A Red-Letter Day Our wedding anniversary - twenty years after the special ceremony in the Moravian Church of the Black Forest village Königsfeld - nevertheless turned into a red-letter day. On that memorable Wednesday morning we baptized five converts who came from Islam, including Shehaam Achmat, from Hanover Park and Nasra Stemmet from Woodstock. On the evening of 22 March the home ministry group of our Cape Town Baptist fellowship sprang a big surprise on us. We had no clue what they were up to when the group came to our home for a special farewell. Everybody in the family had forgotten that it was our wedding anniversary, but Carol Günther did not. She arranged with the participants to bring along some eats to make it a very special celebration. The day became perfect when the gentleman of Club Travel, who had been working overtime, phoned at approximately 21h that he could secure seats for all of us. This was thus only a few days before our intended departure! The three older children could fly on a youth fare of Lufthansa, with the rest of us flying Air France. MBBs Serving in Cape Townships Shehaam Achmat was one of five Muslim background believers that were baptised on the same day, on 22 March 1995. Shehaam remained a secret believer for about 20 years. She continued to shine for the Lord covertly. Among other things, while keeping contact with us, she ultimately impacted Lameez Ras, a young woman who got into a romantic relationship with one of Shehaam's two sons. ( Lameez would subsequently become an ardent disciple of our Lord, divinely used to see all three of her sisters in the Beacon Valley drug and vice infected township of Mitchell's Plain becoming following of Jesus in due course.) Prayer With Other Ministers Just before our departure for Europe, I was praying with a few students of the Baptist College in Mountain Road, Woodstock where the Baptist Church had a property – actually a residence. What a blessing it was when we heard that Edgar Davids accepted the call to be their pastor from the following year. This augured well for a close link to the Cape Town Baptist Church only a few kilometres away, where Louis Pasques was now the interim pastor. Edgar Davids proved to be a real visionary and a man of God, along with his devout wife Sandra. Edgar Davids introduced me to a group of pastors at Rondebosch Dutch Reformed Church with Dr. Ernst van der Walt, Pastors Fenner Kadalie from the City Mission and Theo Bowers from the Full Gospel Church as regulars. Walmer Estate and Salt River Personal involvement in the adjacent suburbs of Walmer Estate and Salt River started with prayer walking. In the latter instance it became the prelude to a children’s club that we began with Marika Pretorius, a SIM Life Challenge missionary colleague, after our return from ‘home assignment’ in Europe in 1995. (Marika had been used by God to introduce us to families in Bo-Kaap, and as a link to the Alpha Centre in Hanover Park, where we also conducted children’s clubs from 1993 to 1995). In our absence she did further spadework with a holiday club in Salt River in the Burns Road Community Centre. At some stage Marika brought along her room mate and co-worker from their Dutch Reformed congregation in Panorama, Jenny van den Berg. When Marika left for Germany to work among Turkish people, not only did Jenny become our valued co-worker in Salt River, but in due course she would also become one of the lecturers at the annual Muslim Evangelism course at the Bible Institute of South Africa that we started in 1996 under the umbrella of Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM). After we had handed the children’s work in Salt River to Eric Hofmeyer, Jenny van den Berg pioneered a similar ministry in Woodstock, based at the local Baptist Church, where she ministered until 2009. Spiritual Complexion of Residential Areas Changed An influx of exploited Africans sometimes shared their accommodation with other refugees who work at night.. (Not able to pay the inappropriate rents - along with meagre incomes - those who work at night, sleeping in the same beds during the day time.) This helped to change the spiritual complexion of the suburbs in Woodstock and Salt River, which had become fairly Islamic in the early 1990s. Small churches with especially French speakers sprang up all over from Woodstock to Maitland and Observatory. These refugee believers brought into the area the practice of all-night prayer from Friday to Saturday, a phenomenon that had become common in Central Africa. The sad side of this feature is that the seed of Prosperity Theology that entered the country in the 1980s, manifested itself amongst the new small churches in the most wicked and evil ways. Eloquent ‘pastors’, who were merely seeking a convenient life-style, abusing the national or language affinity of their refugee compatriots, sprang up like mushrooms. This made their days of fasting and all night prayer meetings quite hypocritical, the sort of thing that God hates (Isaiah 58). The Universal Church, a denomination that originated in Brazil, had already perfected the art of abusing Prosperity Theology to get money from the poor, and building big buildings. As the Francophone and Portuguese-speaking Africans moved into these residential areas, racist ‘Coloureds’ started moving out. Seed for a new South Africa was nevertheless sown. Tolerance towards our African brothers and sisters germinated there. During the mob violence of 2008 there was not a single xenophobic incident of note in these suburbs. The Foreigner in Our Gates We had to relocate our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting from the Shepherd's Watch in Shortmarket Street when the premises were sold. We moved to the Koffiekamer below the St Stephen’s Dutch Reformed Church at 108 Bree Street, that was linked to the compassionate ministry of Straatwerk. This prayer meeting soon became the cradle of yet another venture. A believer from the suburb Eerste River on the northern outskirts of the city, who had been a regular in the beginning of our prayer meetings, popped in again one day. He challenged us, mentioning the many French-speaking Muslim street traders from West Africa, who had been moving into the city: ‘Have you ever considered bringing the Gospel to them?’ When we started praying about possible ministry to foreigners at our Friday lunch-hour meeting, God used these occasions to prepare the heart of Louis Pasques. He had just become the senior pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church. When the destitute Congolese refugee teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka showed up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of Surgildas. One weekend Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a visit. They asked Alan Kay, an elder and the administrator of Cape Town Baptist Church, to provide accommodation to him. Gildas crept into Alan’s heart. This was the start of an extended and unusual adoption process. One thing led to the other until Alan Kay not only finally adopted Gildas, but he also became deeply involved in compassionate care of other refugees. Soon the Cape Town Baptist Church became a home to refugees from many African countries. Gildas and our son Rafael became quite close friends and basketball buddies. A Positive Change Towards Refugees The attitude of ‘Whites’ in the Cape Town Baptist Church gradually changed towards refugees in a more favourable manner. Before long, quite a few refugee-background Africans started attending the church services, especially after special ones in French were arranged monthly and later twice a month. This was an effort to help equip the Francophone believers for loving outreach to the Muslim French-speakers from our continent. That goal was not achieved, but the word spread quite well, so that in due course also other churches started opening their doors to refugees. The need for refugees to get employment was the cause for the English language classes at the church to be revitalized. This inspired the offer of 'free' English lessons to many of these refugees. Officially they had to pay a small nominal fee to preserve their dignity, with the understanding that there would be no big deal if they could not pay that. Nobody ever abused this. The simultaneous need for a discipling house for Muslim converts and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. Allain Ravelo-Hoërson of The Evangelism Alliance Mission (TEAM), who had been praying with us every Friday during lunch time in the early 1990s, played a big part in establishing the ministry among Francophone Africans at the church. Other missionaries who had been working in countries where French is the national language, were also part of this effort. Allain was ably supported by Ruth Craill, a SIM missionary, who had ministered in West Africa with her husband Edgar. Maria van Maarseveen, a member of our home church in Holland, came to do her Bible school internship from the Africa School of Missions with us. During this period Maria sensed a call to come and join us in ministry after completing her Bible School training. She had served in Haiti before and was therefore fluent in French, as were Doris and Freddy Kammies, WEC International colleagues, whom we had met in Germany during 'home assignment' in 1995. The example of Cape Town Baptist Church found emulation not only in sister congregations in Mowbray and Bellville, but also other ones with which we had close connections like the Atlantic Christian Assembly in Sea Point and the Jubilee Church in Observatory. When Jennifer Burgess, a 'Coloured' WEC International missionary from Natal was ordained at the Apostoliese Geloof Sending (AGS) as co-pastor of Vredehoek, a transformation of the former Afrikaner 'White' congregation started. Johan Klopper, the leading pastor, was a visionary who also launched a ‘seven-eleven’ tent campaign in Walmer Estate for (7-11) October 1998, supported by local churches under the auspices. a residential area, which had been completely islamised in the wake of apartheid legislation. It was quite special when the church continued the effort as an open-air campaign after the tent had collapsed due to the strong South Easter on the first evening. Angolan Refugees Find Their Niche In 1999 five Angolan refugees left Upington for Cape Town where they had no friends or family. At the City office of the Department of Home Affairs, the group slept outside the first night. They were then taken to the township Langa where all their belongings were however stolen. Back in the city, they ended up at the Catholic Welfare that helped them with food and accommodation for a few days. There they met another Angolan, Simao, who had met Adrian Khon, a friendly gentleman who had assisted him. Simao took them to Master Keys where Adrian was the boss. The latter gave them R20 each and told the young men to come back later, as he wanted to speak to his brother Colin. The end result was that Adrian Khon took three young men to work in the city and Colin took another three Angolans to the Woodstock branch of their company where they were taught to cut keys. They were also given accommodation in Brooklyn at the Head Office in a house that Master Keys was also using for storage. The compassionate Beverley Stratis, our friend and powerful intercessor at Cape Town Baptist Church, somehow got to hear about the Angolans. Because she was receiving an abundance of bread from a German bakery, she decided to pay the group a visit. She was met by six wide-eyed scared young men. When the Angolan refugees saw the bread, they were over the moon When they saw the bread, they were over the moon. Bev Stratis thereafter dropped a large black bag of bread at their home every second day or so. Luis Xiribimbi (Xiri) and Julio Fransisco continued working for Master Keys. Xiri went on to run the stamp making section in Cape Town. In 2007 Julio was able to take over the Rondebosch branch of Master Keys. Follow-Up of the Six Angolans Both Xiri and Julio definitely met the Lord here at the Cape. Bev Stratis also had a lot of fellowship with the young men at her big flat in Vredehoek. Xiri joined Cape Town Baptist Church and Julio started attending Mowbray Baptist Church, along with many other refugees. The six young men lived in Brooklyn for five months, whereafter they found themselves another house in Maitland. The Angolans attended Bible Study every Wednesday evening at 'Loaves and Fishes', an interdenominational ministry in Observatory where they also learned the basics of the English language. The six were also taken to the Portuguese Baptist Church in Goodwood where Pastor Mendez and his wife Nessie ministered. The Brazilian couple became like a Mom and Dad to many Angolans subsequently. Lima Zamba fled to South Africa from Angola in 1994. He became a follower of Jesus a few years later and married a South African. Recognizing his leadership potential and spiritual gifting, Bellville Baptist Church supported Lima through the four years that he spent as a student at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary. After completing his studies in 2006, Lima served as pastoral assistant at the Parow Portuguese Baptist Church. He had a strong call to serve as a missionary in his home country Angola. At the end of 2007 he left to serve there as a missionary. Transformation in City Bowl Churches The radical transformation in the City Bowl churches continued when Jean Baptiste, a Congolese pastor, joined the Vredehoek AFM church as the leader of the French speakers there. Florent Ndomwey, an OM Congolese missionary, joined the Cape Town Baptist Church to lead similar ministry for French speakers in ?? while Pedro Quinvardas served there simultaneously in this capacity for Portuguese-speaking refugees from Angola and Mozambique. Almost Unbearable Conditions in Manenberg From 1995 living conditions in the township of Manenberg became almost unbearable for the local people, and things seemed completely out of control. Rev. Chris Clohessy, the local Roman Catholic priest, had earned the trust of many people there, moving fearlessly in gangster territory. PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs), initiated by a group of Muslims in 1996, strived to create a gangster-free and drug-free society. Rev. Chris Clohessy joined the group but in the ensuing inter-faith venture Muslims soon dominated proceedings. PAGAD developed anti-government and anti-Western sentiments. The organisation believed that the South African government posed a threat to Islamic values. It also aimed to get better political representation for South African Muslims, although they were already proportionately over-represented in Parliament. Imam Achmat Cassiem, a prominent personality, performed a palace coup. As the leader of Qibla, Achmat Cassiem subtly changed the anti-drug, anti-crime movement into an organization that sought to bring Islamic rule into the Western Cape by any means. Counterproductive Islamic Moves The relative success of evangelistic efforts in the second half of the 1990s has to be attributed in part to ‘own goals’ by the Muslims. The general Christian indifference to the spread of Islam was temporarily checked through the report of an Islamic World Conference in Tripoli in October 1995. That conference resolved that Muslims would try to utilize South Africa’s excellent infrastructure to islamize the continent from the South. The assistance of Libya’s President Muhammad Khaddafi and other oil states was made practical through the provision of Islamic literature in African languages. Strategic property was bought up with the aid of oil revenue and funds from Muslim countries, notably from Libya and mosques were built in the 'Black' townships. New areas in different parts of the country were quietly islamized. (In other Southern African countries like Malawi it was happening even more pronounced). Initially the Tripoli announcement was not regarded as a real threat to the Gospel in Southern Africa. The prospect only hit home a few months later when Louis Farrakhan, a prominent Afro-American Muslim, visited the country. Fairly soon after his successful mass march to Washington D.C. with his Nation of Islam in October 1995, Farrakhan came to our country amid a lot of fanfare and prominent media coverage. The appeal to the 'Black' masses was evident as he appeared on television together with President Nelson Mandela. The confident prediction from Tripoli in October 1995 did not sound so preposterous any more by February 1996. That all this happened during Ramadan was just the spur for Cape Christians to pray as rarely before. Although Ramadan was almost over by this time, there was suddenly a big demand for the 30-Day Ramadan Prayer Focus booklets. Whereas the Church had been fairly indifferent about its outreach to Muslims until that time, things changed almost overnight. Unfortunately the initial interest was not sustained. PAGAD radicals saw the attempt to Islamise the African continent from the South merely as part of the plan to implement a decision in the Libyan capital Tripoli of October 1995. Soon Rev. Clohessy and other Christians had no liberty to continue working with them. 6. A Season of Increased Spiritual Warfare Spiritual strongholds became the focus of prayer drives. Pastor Edson from Mitchell's Plain initiated prayer drives. A few of them started at the Sowers of the Word Church in Lansdowne, where Pastor Andy Lamb was the pastor. This was not long after Ps Lamb, who grew up in Woodstock, had returned to the Cape after serving for many years in Durban. There he had been God's instrument to start a big multi-racial Full Gospel-related church more or less from scratch with only 15 believers. They formed a convoy of vehicles, taking along intercessors from different churches as passengers. on the last Friday of each month. The prayer drive of July 1996 started at the strategic Gatesville mosque - the same venue from where a fateful PAGAD car procession would start out a week later. (On Sunday 4 August 1996 an Islamic procession left for Salt River where Rashaad Staggie, a well known drug lord, was 'executed' by PAGAD publicly. In December 2019, just before Christmas, his twin brother Rashied was shot and killed in London Street, Salt River) Limited Spiritual Transformation The Christian prayer drives only had a short lifespan. Another initiative of Pastor Edson lasted much longer. This was the monthly pastors’ and pastors’ wives prayer meetings. Yet, it remained a venture of 'Coloured' pastors and their wives. It would take took years before the racial divide was bridged. Nevertheless, they prepared the soil for the start of limited spiritual transformation of the city. Sandwiched between the two processions that left the Gatesville mosque, a church service in the Moravian Church of Elsies River in the northern suburbs where Chris Wessels was a pastor. His wife Nabs was a Muslim background believer, whose story was also included in Op Soek Na Waarheid.) That service to which I took along a Muslim background academic from Egypt, would have world-wide ramifications. At a combined youth service at the same venue in on Sunday evening, 28 July 1996, the Egyptian Muslim background believer gave his testimony. (He had to flee after his father had attempted to shoot him after the discovery that his son had become a follower of Jesus.) This added a new dimension to the Cape Muslim outreach effort, notably when this ultimately led to the publication of a book in the US in 2002. That book became a major factor in the exposure of the violent side of Islam. Rashaad Staggie was burnt alive in full view of television cameras When the influential gang leader and drug lord, Rashaad Staggie, was burnt alive in full view of television cameras on 4 August 1996, PAGAD became known publicly. The crisis that followed the PAGAD eruption afforded the churches with a challenge and opportunity to impact the problem areas of the Cape townships. An Arson Attempt On a Church The preparation of a 10-week teaching course ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour,’ in which we worked closely with Renate Isert, a German missionary, emphasised prayer as integral to ‘spiritual warfare’. Just before the course was scheduled to start, there was an arson attempt on the intended venue, the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne. A Lebanon-type scenario with Christians and Muslims fighting each other loomed. When Muslims offered to assist with the repair of the damage, the suspicion was confirmed that satanists were not really behind the arson attack as had been suggested by a Cape Argus reporter. A Lebanon type scenario of the early 1980s loomed. Christians and Muslims were fighting each other in that country. (We did not know at that time that Lansdowne was a PAGAD stronghold.) We decided to relocate and postpone our ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour’ training course. We used the St James Church in Kenilworth as our 'fleece', as Gideon in the Bible had done. We wanted to make sure that we were in God’s will. (That congregation had experienced a vicious attack three years earlier in July 1993. God however used that to get South Africans to pray as never before.) It was duly confirmed that we could do the ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour’ course at St James in Kenilworth from 3 September to 5 November 1996. I used my devotional teaching on John 4, the interaction of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, for the first time as a ten-part series. June Lehmensich and Debbie Zaayman were two participants of this training with whom we would have ongoing contact and friendship for decades. Many people at the Cape feared that the gangsters might hit back with a vengeance. A meeting for church leaders and missionaries was organised at the Scripture Union buildings in Rondebosch on short notice. A wave of prayer by evangelical Christians was simultaneously ignited. Christ-centred drug rehabilitation was also suggested at that occasion. However, when the crisis subsided, pastors went back to business as usual. The idea of drug rehabilitation was picked up by the Muslims. It resulted in facilities specifically created to this end in the farming area of Schaapkraal as well as in Hanover Park at the former Alpha Centre, where we had been conducting a children's club in the early 1990s. The Koffiekamer as a Channel of Blessing The Koffiekamer in Bree street under St Stephen's Dutch Reformed Church became a major channel of blessing when an Alpha Course was started there. A special role in the effort towards transformation in the city was accorded to it when many a homeless person was transformed there by the power of the Gospel. Prayer meetings for the city started at that venue on the last Wednesday of every month. There I got in closer contact with Vlok Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner believer linked to the Gardens Presbyterian Church. In due course he became one of our faithful intercessors at the Cape Town Central Police Station. Many a homeless person was transformed by the power of the Gospel Diverse Churches Joining Hands It was truly significant for the Cape Town Metropolis in April 1997 when churches across the city and from many denominations joined hands for an evangelistic campaign at the Newlands Cricket Stadium with the evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of the renowned Billy Graham. Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur and Pastor Elijah Klaassen from a Pentecostal church in Gugulethu worked tirelessly to enlist people from the Cape Flats and ‘Black’ churches for this event. Transport from the townships was provided free of charge. In the Western Cape, Eben Swart became the coordinator for Herald Ministries. He worked closely with the Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA), which had appointed Pastor Willy Oyegun, a Nigerian national, as their Western Cape coordinator. Together they did valuable work in research and spiritual mapping, along with Amanda Buys who counselled Christians with psychiatric and psychological problems.) A Series of Divine Interventions In a series of divine interventions, our ministry touched the gangster scene in 1999. In the context of our hospital outreach, where we focused on the cancer ward of Groote Schuur Hospital, God healed Ayesha Hunter miraculously in 1997. She would subsequently become one of our presenters on CCFM radio while ministering to children linked to the Hard Living Gang that was led by the Staggie brothers. Ayesha Hunter, as one of our co-workers, shared her testimony at churches here and there. At one of these, Shamiela Philander came to faith. Ayesha took her under her wing. Subsequently she requested us to take Shamiela Philander into our home after the teenager had been terriby abused by her gangster husband. She was one of various women that we had been taking into our home within the space of a few months. Three of them were Muslim background believers, one of whom had two children. This was the immediate run-up to the urgency of having a facility to disciple new believers from another faith. Impact of Radio CCFM At the Global Consultation of World Evangelisation (GCOWE) conference in Pretoria in July 1997 Avril Thomas, the Director of Radio CCFM, a Cape Christian radio station, was challenged to use their facility to reach out to Cape Muslims, the main unreached people group of the region in respect of the Gospel. She offered airtime for a regular programme to this end. We had to warn Avril of the unsuccessful arson attempt on the Lansdowne church building where we wanted to stage a Love your Muslim Neighbour course the previous year. She and the CCFM Board were however prepared to take the risk for the sake of the Gospel. During comparative studies that I had done with male Muslim background believers in the township Hanover Park around biblical figures in the Qur’an and the Talmud, I was struck by the consistent denial of the Cross in the sacred book of the Muslims. It was more than compelling, too subtle to be humanly inspired. The question arose how I could share this potentially devastating information in a loving way. The fact that I would possibly be addressing Christians and Muslims via the radio simultaneously, complicated matters. During a prayer walk in Bo-Kaap I got the idea to have the text of a radio series presented by someone else. This was duly implemented, broadcast towards the end of 1997 and repeated in 1999. After a gradual increase of occasional programmes geared to address the Cape Muslim population, we felt challenged to start utilising the CCFM offer to use the medium on a regular basis. A Dutch TV testimony programme, God verandert mensen, was my inspiration to start a similar programme on a weekly basis. Once a month I started using a Muslim background believer with his/her testimony via God changes Lives. In this way Cape Islam got used to the idea of Muslims coming to faith in Jesus. An Anointed Ministry with a Big Impact Andre Beeton, the owner of Metadent, a small company of dental technicians in the northern suburbs of Cape Town, started Shiloh Ministries in 1993 as a service to the poor and needy. This includes building schools in informal settlements and serving children with meals. In due course they would build their tenth school, one in the 'Black' township Langa. Shiloh Ministries endeavour to serve the poor communities holistically, thus also making sure that the Gospel reaches them. A very special link came about when they met Pastor Nanda Govender, who had no formal theological training. Born and raised as a Hindu, Pastor Nanda stresses that his only teaching comes from God through His Spirit. His testimony is filled with examples of supernatural intervention from the day he left prison just under fifty years ago until the present. Below: A photo of the Franklin Graham Campaign at Newlands April 1997 7. On the Receiving End of Attacks The month of October in 1996 was one in which Rosemarie and I were tested severely. I had started to journal events. It went as follows one day: ‘the attack starts not only very early in the month. Neither Rosemarie nor I was able to sleep properly. For Rosemarie it was the second sleepless night in a row. She shares her concern that we were getting nowhere with our ministry: “For almost five years we have toiled here in Cape Town. And what have we achieved? Almost nothing! We might as well go back to Holland.” I had to concede that I also felt completely depressed. A Difficult Month Rosemarie and I were prayer walking through Bo-Kaap in October 1996 after nobody else had joined us for the Friday lunchtime prayer. (This was the only time when this happened.) We had also noticed how the churches around the Muslim stronghold had been ransacked in the period before that. We were blessed to discern how the Lord brought restoration, but we still did not see it as our duty to get more involved in any attempt at unifying the body of Christ in the city. This only started to happen slowly at the end of 2003. But we made very little progress. (The most successful attempt in this regard was years later in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010, but thereafter it petered out again.) The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when the arch enemy tried to attack us via our children. This seemed for Rosemarie to be the signal for us to stop with our ministry. She argued that the price was too high for her to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. Reminding her of the false alternatives, that I had to face years ago when someone suggested that I should choose between my love for her and that for my country, I encouraged her. This definitely paid off. Other Attacks on Spiritual Strongholds That God works in mysterious ways was of course known to us. A special version of it happened when we conducted a ten week teaching course in Muslim Evangelism at the Logos Baptist Church​ in Brackenfell. There appeared to be no immediate success in the recruitment of co-workers. Yet, a few of the participants were deeply impacted. Among the participants there were for instance Johan Groenewald and his wife Christine. The Groenewald couple took the message to the rural village of Eendekuil where Johan found a willing ear in Chris Saayman, the Dutch Reformed minister. Subsequently a group from that church would come and join our monthly prayer walks in Bokaap. The evident attack via one of our children in October 1996 was not an isolated experience. Other attacks were not so stark, but nevertheless very real. However, every time we experienced the Lord bringing us through supernaturally. We are so thankful for intercessors in different parts of the world who were praying for us. We would otherwise hardly have been able to survive all the onslaughts mentally and spiritually. A stranger put a briefcase in a somewhat hidden place of our house next to my office. A car passed our house slowly to and fro, with the passengers looking at our house. This was rather scary. We phoned our friend June Lehmensich who alerted the emergency service of the city. The slow reaction of the bomb squad, with a sniffing dog and all, an hour later, was quite a revelation. It fortunately turned out to be a fake. When the briefcase was destroyed by a detonating device, it merely contained music notes. If it had been a time bomb or the like and remotely detonated, at least much of our house would have been destroyed. Ramadan Attacks In previous years we were on the receiving end of major spiritual attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In 1994 I twice had the experience that our car had to be towed away but no fault found afterwards. The year thereafter Rosemarie was almost killed in a car accident and during the same period we were together in a car that skidded on the high way and miraculously we came out of the incident unscathed. In 1997 we experienced it almost as a satanic taunt when Rosemarie had symptoms of being pregnant just after Ramadan. That would have ruled her out for much of our ministry. Prior to this, we were quite happy when a daughter of a befriended Bo-Kaap family brought Rosemarie in touch with a home-craft club in the area. A pregnancy would have meant an abrupt end to her involvement with the new friendships. A subsequent scan did not show any foetus. A month or two later, when she was admitted to hospital for a suspected miscarriage, there was no trace of any pregnancy when the gynaecologist scraped the womb. What was this all about? It was too strange to be mere chance. Assisting a Pregnant Young Woman The request to help Nadia,3 a pregnant young woman who was expecting a child from a nominal Christian, seemed to be a pretty straightforward case. We fairly promptly visited the eloquent Muslim young mother of two other children. After hearing that she had already been divorced twice, we could never advise a marriage. The recipe for disaster was there for the taking. Rosemarie and I were almost on our way leaving the house where she was renting a room, when the conversation took another turn. A religious topic was mentioned and we were able to share the Gospel in some way. We combined the next visit to her with the collecting of a MBB Egyptian friend from the airport. The original idea was merely to pop in, but soon Rosemarie and Nadia were deeply involved in a discussion. We decided that I would go and pick up the Egyptian friend at the airport in the meantime, while they would conclude the conversation. When we returned, Rosemarie and Nadia were still very much in the middle of their conversation. Utilising the story of the adulterous woman of John 8 intelligently, our MBB friend was divinely used to bring Nadia under evident conviction. Crises in the Ministry I had to learn the hard way through this experience once more that we should not give satan too much honour. Soon we discovered that the deceiver was actually attacking our marriage relationship once again. A tension developed as Rosemarie could not accept the validity of my office ministry, including research and writing. Indeed, I was far too much on the phone, organising teaching courses and the like. This was happening at the expense of person-to-person contact. Communication between us was completely insufficient. The Lord used the crisis to help me regain sight of the priority of personal outreach to the lost and the needy. More Knocks, but Not Knocked Out Just prior to the Resurrection weekend Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) conference we got a phone call from my brother that our Dad had been admitted to the hospital in Bredasdorp. Preparations had been made for him and our Mom to be admitted to an old age home in Grabouw, where my brother Windsor and his family stayed. A second phone call notified us that Daddy had taken a turn for the worse and that his passing away was anticipated. Rosemarie and I drove straight to Bredasdorp. When we arrived there, he had already passed on to eternal glory. A few days later, we buried Daddy on the Elim mission station. We were still recovering from this shock when Rosemarie had some premonition as she was doing a chore in the kitchen that her mother was passing away. She was not surprised when her sister phoned hours later that this was indeed the case. Rosemarie flew to Germany for the funeral of her mother. Another Ramadan Backlash Another 1997 version of the Ramadan backlash appeared not as obvious. The trauma was nevertheless very real when the sale of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute to a Muslim buyer came up during a prayer conference with our friend Gerda Leithgöb of Herald Ministries. This was the very same building complex at which we had been called into Cape Muslim Outreach in January 1992. While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia telephonically. She manipulated cleverly, so that I soon felt compelled to arrange with Rosemarie on the phone that we would take Nadia into our home after her return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to accommodate Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. As arranged, Nadia soon moved in with them. That was a big mistake. Nadia would subsequently be so abusive that Rosemarie got burnt out a few months later on the day when we returned from Wellington from the funeral of Jakes, my best friend. We had to learn the hard way that we should not take decisions like this as a couple, without having prayed together sufficiently. A Base for New Initiatives? We were however on the receiving end of special blessings. In September 1996 we unexpectedly received access to St Paul’s Primary School, Bo-Kaap, through a teacher, Berenice Lawrence. (Her husband Elroy had been at our home in Holland in 1978, while he was attending Spes Bona High School.4 Knowing that we ministered to people from other countries, Berenice came with the idea to bring people from different countries to their school. I jumped at this idea to broaden the minds of the Bo-Kaap children, to open them up to the Gospel in a loving and non-threatening way. The first one of these people was our Egyptian friend, an academic who fled his home country after his father had tried to shoot him because of his faith in Jesus. I was overwhelmed by the thought that the Lord might want to use use our church to minister to Africans from other parts of the continent On Sunday October 6, 1996, I preached at the Cape Town Baptist Church. Towards the end of the sermon my emotions got the better of me and I could not finish my sermon. I broke down in tears when I was overwhelmed by the thought that the Lord might want to use our fellowship to minister to Africans from other parts of the continent. Seed was sown. (Within a few years there were more people of colour – the bulk of them foreigners - attending the church than 'Whites'.) A few days later, during our lunchtime prayer meeting with City Bowl ministers, Bruce Rudnick - a Messianic Jew - joined us. Bruce was the leader of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. (I had been attending Beth Ariel meetings on Friday evenings occasionally). In the prayer time with Louis Pasques and Bruce Rudnick, I felt quite strongly that Messianic Jews should play a bigger role in the leadership of the world missionary movement and ideally, that this should also start happening in Cape Town. 8. Diverse Prayer and Compassion Initiatives Personally I had to be reminded again and again that a revival in the Mother City of South Africa would be God’s sovereign work. We are mere instruments. Our own experiences highlighted the need for more prayer. The necessity for the unity of the Body of Christ had become even more clear to us in October 1996. Attempts Made to Rename Devil’s Peak As part of the effort to stimulate revival, attempts were made to rename Devil’s Peak, one of the city’s famous landmarks. The unofficial renaming attempt of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ in 1994 was led by Pastor Johan Klopper of the Vredehoek Apostolic Faith Mission Church. This, along with regular prayers at Rhodes Memorial with Hindu background Pastor Richard Mitchell and other believers, fitted into the pattern of high-powered spiritual warfare. These venues had been strongholds of satanists. Next to the battle against the lie and deception of Islam, the attempt to rename ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ would turn out to be a very high hurdle. Regret Expressed for Christian Folly? Christians overseas started organising a Reconciliation Walk in 1996, following the path of the Crusades. Bennie Mostert of Jericho Walls faxed the lengthy confession of the organisers through to our Western Cape CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) Forum on the very day that we had one of our meetings. It looked to me as if God had his hand in it. But it was not easy. The lengthy confession was rejected In our Western Cape Forum CCM meeting the lengthy confession was rejected because it was regarded as not relevant for us in South Africa. I managed to salvage the idea, suggesting that we could write our own confession. I reminded my colleagues how the Rustenburg confession ushered in our democracy in 1990. At our Resurrection weekend CCM Conference of 1997 at Wellington I had to remind the missionary leader colleagues about the confession. They were clearly not keen to comply, promptly giving me the homework to write a draft and then pass it on to all the colleagues, in preparation for our leaders’ meeting in October. It was obvious that they were just procrastinating, but I did not want to let them off the hook so easily. To me the matter was much too important. Whether that was wise, is another matter. Confession without remorse is possibly not worth much, if anything at all. Hopes and Dreams Dashed During the course of the year 1997 I had to see many of our hopes and dreams dashed. All our efforts failed to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity. We especially thought of it as the possible building for our new national WEC headquarters (A decision had been taken to relocate to either Johannesburg or Cape Town at a national conference), but it had also been my dream and vision to see the building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries to all parts of the world. How wonderful was the prayer seminar with Gerda Leithgöb at the former Cape Evangelical Bible Institute! This was still in April 1997. The news of the proposed sale of the former CEBI to Muslims coincided with the prayer seminar. What a sense of unity we experienced in spite of the sword of Damocles hanging over all of us. (The late Pastor Danny Pearson led the believers of the fellowship that was making use of the premises from there on many a prayer walk in the area.) At some stage Gerda Leithgöb approached me to become the co-ordinator for the Western Cape of Herald Ministries, but I had no peace to accept. I saw the need for strategic prayer, but nowhere did I sense a call for leading intercession events. Eben Swart turned out to be a much more capable person for that function. In May 1997 our WEC intercessor Sally Kirkwood was approached to organise prayer for the visit of Cindy Jacobs, a prominent intercession leader from the USA. She contacted people and also organised a prayer and fasting chain. She felt a nudge to 'establish a presence' at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. Taking a 'White' intercessor along at a time when it was quite dangerous to go and pray at the venue as 'White' people, the Lord used the two intercessors to open the way for others to follow. … But Also Divinely Used The visit by Cindy Jacobs from the USA brought a significant number of ‘Coloured’ and 'White' intercessors together at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. She confirmed the need for confession with regard to the blight of District Six. Lea Barends from Ravensmead and Sheila Garvey from Durbanville were faithful quiet intercessors. Sheila had been praying faithfully for District Six for many years in its hey-day. Diminutive Sally Kirkwood played a pivotal role, taking a huge burden on her shoulders in praying for District Six. When she approached me in October 1997 about the matter, I had already started with preparations for a visit of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng), scheduled to come to the city the last week of that month. (This was included in the two-yearly initiative, called Praying Through the Window). Intercession for breakthroughs in the so-called 10-40 window was the intentional agenda. Praying Through the Window At the sending of prayer teams to different spiritual strongholds in 1997 as part of the Praying through the Window initiatives, a team from the Dutch Reformed congregation Suikerbosrand in Heidelberg (Gauteng) followed the nudge of Bennie Mostert's NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa), to come and pray in the Mother City. This was quite significant in the spiritual realm because Heidelberg had once been the cradle of the racist and right-wing Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). That the AWB town was sending a team in November 1997 to pray for Bo-Kaap, might have hit the headlines had it been publicized! But all this had to be covert stuff. This was transpiring at a time when PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still terrorizing the Cape Peninsula. Bo-Kaap was not geographically situated in the 10/40 window, but NUPSA leader Bennie Mostert discerned accurately that it was the case ideologically. (It had become a Muslim bastion in the wake of apartheid legislation.) Moravian Hill Hosts a Strategic Meeting As part of the special mission from Heidelberg (Gauteng), a prayer meeting of confession was organized for 1 November 1997, in front of the (former) Moravian Church in District Six. Our intercessory co-worker Sally Kirkwood had a vision for the suburb District Six that had become so desolate, to be revived through prayer. She also informed Pastor Richard Mitchell, a Hindu background Full Gospel pastor, and Mike Winfield, an Anglican member of the congregation in Bergvliet, about the event. The Cape prayer movement received a major lift. I asked Eben Swart to lead the occasion. That turned out to be quite strategic as well. Swart’s position as Western Cape Prayer Coordinator of Herald Ministries was cemented. Through this event he got linked to the pastors and wives’ prayer occasions that were led by Ps. Eddie Edson of the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. The confession ceremony in District Six on November 1 closed with the demolition of an altar that satanists or other occultists had probably erected there. With Eben Swart as a member of the strategic Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow, this became a pivotal link for subsequent city-wide prayer events. The Moravian Hill prayer meeting attempted to break the spirit of death and forlornness over the area, so that it would be inhabited again. However, it would take another seven years before that dream started to materialise (and abused for election purposes in 2004). More than twenty years after 1997 new inhabitants started to move into District Six. A watershed transpired for many a participant The first of November 1997 became a watershed for quite a few participants. Gill Knaggs, Trish and Dave Whitecross were challenged to go and serve in the Middle East. Sally Kirkwood became a special Cape intercessory leader. Richard Mitchell, Eben Swart and Mike Winfield linked up more closely in a relationship that would have a significant mutual effect on the prayer ministry at the Cape in the next few years, and on transformation in the city at large. With Trevor Pearce as their new pastor, the Anglican parish in Bergvliet of Mike Winfield became prominently involved in the transformation attempts in the Mother City and in the run-up to the mass prayer rallies at Newlands Rugby Stadium in the first years of the new millennium. (After his retirement from the ministry in the Anglican Church in ??, Rev. Trevor went to serve with Alpha, which had been linked to that denomination, of course, already for decades.) The former slum area with its rich history was becoming increasingly Islamic. The process grounded to a halt in 2019 when the building company embezzled the funds for Phase 3, the project of erecting flats near to the Moravian Church. The group of people that determined who would be allotted accommodation there, manipulated the list in such a way that Muslims would be the bulk of the beneficiaries of new-built housing. Citywide Prayer Events 1998 brought significant steps in the attempt to bring about more unity in the body of Christ city-wide through the initiatives of NUPSA and Herald Ministries. There were regular prayer meetings at the Mowbray Baptist Church and believers came from different parts of the Peninsula and from diverse racial and church backgrounds. These meetings carried a strong message of unity. The Mowbray exercise brought together two racial groups for prayer, and became the forerunner of citywide events. A prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat A well-publicized prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat. Prior to this, churches across the Peninsula had initially been requested to cancel their evening services on Sunday, 19 April 1998 and join this service. In sheer zeal, a Christian businessman had thousands of pamphlets printed and distributed. Unwisely, he did not consult with the organizing committee about its content. The flyer and poster that invited believers to a mass prayer meeting against drug abuse, homosexuality and other moral concerns, unfortunately also referred to Islam in a context that was not respectful enough for some radical Muslims. It was however also sad that certain City Bowl churches had not been prepared to close their doors even on a one-off basis for this event. A PAGAD member apparently regarded the flyer as an invitation to disrupt the meeting, passing on a threat to that effect. The event was subsequently announced as cancelled, but a few courageous believers showed up nevertheless. These included the late Pastor Danny Pearson, who had been deeply involved with the preparation of the prayer occasion. He believed that we should not give in to the intimidation, and that, if need be, Christians should be willing to die there for the cause of the Gospel. The meeting proceeded on a much smaller scale than originally planned. The service included confession for the sins of omission to the Cape Muslims and to the Jews. And there was no PAGAD disruption of the meeting! A Fight for Freedom in Religious Expression On 2 September 1998 twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity in the fight for freedom of religious expression in reaction to a move by the atheist attempt to regulate radio stations. This would have had a big effect on Christian and other religious media. One of the banners of a marcher proclaimed 'United we stand'. (This was a wry reminder of PAGAD’s main slogan.) Thankfully, the government dropped its plans. (Behind the scenes God had used an ANC Member of Parliament, a believer, to share the relevant information with Rev. John Thomas of CCFM. In this way, amendments could be affected to the Bill that allowed the government not to lose face on the issue.) The mass march to Parliament, in response to the perceived government attack on community radio stations was followed by a big prayer event on Table Mountain a few weeks later. At a prayer rally on 26 September 1998, hundreds of Christians prayed along the contour road of Table Mountain for the effort to rename the adjacent reviled peak ‘God’s Mountain.’ New Prayer Initiatives The event inspired a new initiative, during which a few believers from diverse backgrounds began to pray at 6.a.m. on Signal Hill on Saturdays every alternate week. After we had started with these early morning prayer meetings on Signal Hill, we got into a close relationship with Pastor Richard Mitchell and his family. When a door opened for a regular testimony programme on Friday evening on Radio CCFM, Richard Mitchell was an automatic choice to be the presenter. The programme ‘God Changes Lives’ was used to advertise the citywide prayer events. Tygerberg Radio cooperated with CCFM in all bigger Christian events. During the course of my historical research I had discovered that Duivenkop had been an earlier name of Devil’s Peak. Around the turn of the millennium I got to know Murray Bridgman, a Cape Christian advocate. He had previously also researched the history of Devil’s Peak, even in more detail. At that time Murray felt God’s leading to perform a prophetic act in District Six, pouring water on the steps of the Moravian Chapel, signifyimg the showers of blessings to emanate from that building. Along with Eben Swart, another church historical researcher of note, Dr. Henry Kirby was encouraged to lobby Parliament, to change the name to Dove’s Peak. (Dr. Kirby and his wife had been serving as YWAM missionaries in Mozambique.) Dr Kirby’s role as the prayer co-ordinator of the African Christian Democratic Party resulted in a motion tabled in the City Council in June 2002. The motion was however unsuccessful, probably because satanists had been influencing the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) and the . In 2009 the issue was tackled again. In due course, it was decided to disseminate the notion by word of mouth. Is it mere wishful thinking that it will be ultimately given the name Dove’s Peak? It is probably much more than mere co-incidence that Jacob Zuma became State President at that time. Murray Bridgman, who approached me and Ps. Barry Isaacs in an effort to affect the name change to Dove’s Peak, saw quite early the similarity to the corrupt rule of Willen Adriaan van der Stel and the farm Vergelegen, whom he acquired with unust way. Only many years later President Zuma abused tax payers' money to build the Nkandla estate. Ministries to Drug Addicts The Lord brought new role-players to the city reaching out lovingly to drug addicts. One of these was The Ark, a ministry that started in Durban. When a few committed believers came to the Cape in the early 1990s, their ministry focused on the homeless, but drug addicts soon found their way there. Some of them came to faith in Christ. Another ministry that started serving drug addicts from the mid-1990s is Teen Challenge, that had been founded by David Wilkerson, through a special outreach to gang members in the USA. Teen Challenge started ministry in the northern parts of the metropolis at Eerste River. The drug rehabilitation ministry with arguably the greatest impact at the Cape is Victory Outreach, founded by Nicky Cruz. (He was one of the first converts of David Wilkerson's Teen Challenge. His story is told in the Billy Graham sponsored movie The Cross and the Switchblade). Victory Outreach came to the Cape with a small team in 2006. Within a matter of months the ministry blossomed and expanded. Through it, many young people have been delivered from drug addiction in Jesus’ name. How powerful a loving environment can be, has been amply demonstrated at the Agape Centre in the rural town of Grabouw, that was founded by Gerrit and Ammie Coetzee. Drug addicts or youngsters just released from prison became part of the youth ‘year of your life’ programme there. From the 2007 group a former prisoner who was incarcerated for five years for murder went to Bible school. Another participant went to university and a few of them entered Eagle’s Rising, a transformation cum prayer farm near to Somerset West. Ministry to AIDS/HIV patients At a time when AIDS was still being mentioned covertly, there was almost no ministry to people who suffered from HIV and AIDS. A ministry with close links to the Cape Town City Mission started when Val Kadalie, a trained nurse, had a deep concern for young people who contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). She was invited to speak in many churches and schools - to warn young people about the dangers of promiscuity and encourage them to abstain from pre-marital sex. After Val Kadalie had become the matron of the G.H. Starke Centre in Hanover Park, the institution also started functioning as a hospice for terminal patients. She warned her staff in the late 1980s that they might soon have to treat AIDS patients. Her colleagues were thus ready for that, trained to care for people with HIV and AIDS long before they received their first request. The acid test came when she and her husband, Charles Kadalie, were approached to take care of a four-year old boy, Jason, who was HIV positive. One day, when Charles put the phone down at the electric power plant in Athlone where he was working,5 he sensed that God was challenging them as a couple to practise what they preached. Jason was the first of four children they cared for in succession, until all but one died from AIDS. Val Kadalie became a pioneer fighter for AIDS awareness In the process Val Kadalie became a pioneer fighter for AIDS awareness throughout the country, responding to calls from churches and groups of the most diverse backgrounds. Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic institution in the City Bowl, performed the same work during this period. The occurrence of HIV-positive babies started to increase. At the building in Vredehoek where the Roman Catholic Church had already started caring for orphaned children and destitute elderly since 1888, they pioneered with the care of HIV-positive/AIDS babies in 1992, possibly the first ministry of this nature in South Africa. Toby and Aukje Brouwer, a Dutch YWAM (Youth with a Mission) missionary couple, soon took on the care of AIDS babies after their successful pioneering ministry amongst street children called Beautiful Gate. In 1999 they started to care for HIV-positive and AIDS-infected little ones with government aid in Crossroads, a 'Black' township. Since then, their ministry has expanded to neighbouring countries. On 8 December 2004 a new centre was opened in Lower Crossroads. Broken lives were restored and in the case of at least one young man, a desire was born to enter missionary work. In the southern suburbs of the metropolis, Pastor John Thomas and his wife Avril were moved in 1999 to start with HIV and AIDS-related ministry. They soon built a hospice to care for people with HIV and AIDS, beginning a ministry of prevention and support which today reaches thousands of people. In due course Living Hope, with various related ministries, became a significant agent of loving service to the community. An Achilles heel of this service to the disadvantaged communities was that it remained very dependent on aid from overseas. Protests For the Life of the Unborn Reminiscent of the protests of the Black Sash with their actions to mourn the rape of the constitution in the apartheid era, when people of colour were removed from the voters’ roll, Africa Christian Action has hosted a March for Life every year on 1 February, followed by a prayer rally outside parliament. For the emulation of a funeral procession, participants dress in black. A short memorial service and wreath laying ceremony is usually held outside the Parliament buildings in memory of babies killed by abortion in South Africa since 1997. Special Healings Special cases of divine healing occurred here and there. One such healing took place at the Agape Centre in Grabouw in the life of Jessica. As a baby, she was diagnosed with hydro cephalous and cerebral palsy. The doctors told Gerrit and Ammie Coetzee, the founder-leaders, that Jessica had little brain function; she would be a 'vegetable', unable to walk or talk. Today Jessica is an active teenager who knows exactly what she wants, a clear result of divine healing. To God be all the glory! Samuel came to the Coetzee couple in 2006 when he was three months old, diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and Bulbar Palsy (the nerves in his brain stem were damaged so that he could not swallow.) He arrived with a feeding tube where food goes directly into the stomach. The doctors gave him little chance of survival. So many times, when they rushed Samuel to hospital in an ambulance, prayer was all they held on to as they trusted the Lord for a miracle. God heard and answered the prayers for Samuel. In due course Samuel was running around, climbing on everything, a real outdoor boy. Now he is a teenager. Prayer Efforts in the City Bowl A local visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ remained elusive. A semblance did occur however in the City Bowl at the end of the millennium. Two members of Cape Town Baptist Church, the intercessors Hendrina van der Merwe Hendrina van der Merwe and Beverley Stratis, did some precious spade work to forge more visible expression of the body of Christ locally, visiting various City Bowl churches. Believers across the country participated in a forty-day period of prayer and fasting from Resurrection Sunday to Ascension Day 1998. Rev. Louis Pasques of the Cape Town Baptist Church led the City Bowl effort. After the 40 days, a weekly meeting of pastors with a prayer emphasis slowly gained ground. Later that year, combined evening services were held once a month, rotating among the participating churches. A corresponding Jericho Walls initiated period of prayer and fasting in 1999 - this time for 120 days - was concluded in the Western Cape in the traditional Groote Kerk celebration of the Lord’s Supper when pastors from different denominations officiated. At that Ascension Day event, Dr Robbie Cairncross was divinely brought into the equation. He came to the Mother City with a vision to see a network of prayer developing in the Peninsula. His prayer for an office for his Christian Coalition/Family Alliance near to Parliament was answered in a special way. He could move into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce (SACB), a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. In due course, Achmed Kariem, a MBB, and Pastor Eric Hofmeyer would serve there with him. In due course the City Bowl weekly pastors' prayer meeting was changed to 8 a.m, for a year apiece at a different venue. Special initiatives that grew out of this change were combined events. At Christmas there were combined Carol services and on Resurrection Sunday a sunrise service was held at the noon gun. A monthly combined prayer meeting on a Friday evening at the Cape Town Baptist Church, with missionary input, was furthermore quite unique. This sadly ground to a sudden halt as a result of an over-zealous insensitive Pentecostal intercessor. Her vociferous extended speaking in tongues drove main-line denominational prayer warriors away. Combined City Bowl Church Events In due course monthly combined evening services rotated at various venues. This however stopped after less than a year when two of the churches refused to 'close the door' of their own building on the one Sunday evening of the month. Towards the end of 2000 a few City Bowl ministers who had been praying together on Thursday mornings, approached the office of Mr Mark Wiley,6 the minister responsible for law enforcement in the Western Cape. They offered to pray for him, promising not to take more than ten minutes of his time. Wiley responded positively, whereupon a delegation of the pastors went to pray with him. A few months later however, Wiley resigned due to his inability to resolve the protracted dispute between taxi operators and the Golden Arrow Bus Company. This dispute had kept the Cape 'Black' township dwellers in suspense for months. Everything pointed to the fact that the spiritual battle was again raging at a high pitch. On 27 October 2000 the Ministers’ Fraternal of the Atlantic Seaboard organised a half-night of prayer. Wiley’s successor was Hennie Bester, who had been a school friend of Eben Swart, the Western Cape co-ordinator of Herald Ministries. The new provincial Cabinet minister’s request - prayer from Christians - was a catalyst to send intercessors into action. In answer to prayer, the perpetrators responsible for the bombs that had been plaguing the region, were apprehended soon thereafter. Multiple Blows to the Body Spiritual Warfare raged fiercely at the turn of the century. This became visible when internal wrangling and moral failure hit not only two of the City Bowl churches that were in the forefront of evangelistic outreach, but also two mega churches. Looking back over the last two decades, these can be compared to much more than merely blows to the Body of Christ. The arch enemy achieved gains at that time from which the City-wide Church has yet to recover. Discussions in different churches around same sex marriages that had become legal in 2006, created the need for the Church to speak out. Ds. Johan Botes of the Groote Kerk drafted a beautiful document for discussion that highlighted that the Bible regards marriage as a union of one male and one female. It is nevertheless still incumbent on believers to be loving and caring towards believers who display homosexual orientation tendencies. The ministers of City churches who were part of the fraternal agreed to read the document on Pentecost Sunday in 2009. Diverse compromises would however militate against this decision. One church refrained from reading the document because this could have offended one of the affluent members who was gay. In another one it surfaced that the pastor himself had been secretly involved in a compromising relationship with another male, who leaked it to the press. The meaningful document was only read in the Cape Town Baptist Church. Quite a unique service took place in the Groote Kerk on Pentecost Sunday the same afternoon in 2009 when pastors prayed for Alderman Dan Plato, the mayor. A choir from a Francophone refugee-background congregation brought joy to a rather poorly attended service. A visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ locally would become the exception in the City Bowl to this day. Exceptions were events in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup of 2010. 9. Drug Lords in the News Through the late 1990s, twenty-two bombs exploded, killing and maiming hundreds of men, women and children who happened to be in the path of this nameless cruelty. Ordinary citizens became fearful, numerous lives were lost. As chaos ruled the streets, the Church continued to pray more earnestly once again. PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was taken to be behind the terrorism. Eddie Edson, a pastor in a poor community of Beacon Valley in Mitchell's Plain, had first-hand experience of conditions. He lived in the heart of the troubled areas. He had not only been gathering pastors to pray every month, but he also started to disciple gangsters. Believers interceded with a new fervour and determination, attempting to access the powers of heaven for the transformation of South Africa. A Cape Drug Lord on the Front Page In March and April 1999 dramatic things happened in quick succession. Rashied Staggie, the twin brother of the executed gang leader, had become a famous Cape drug lord by this time. He was shot and hospitalised by PAGAD perpetrators. Staggie made the news headlines from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus Christ. After his discharge from hospital, he went to a secret hiding place in Kwazulu Natal. A Drug Lord Shot and Killed On Resurrection Sunday 1999 Ayesha Hunter, one of our co-workers, phoned to inform us that Glen Khan, a drug lord and gang leader, had been shot and killed. The Mitchell's Plain man, whose wife had been a secret Christian believer for some months, was assassinated only a few days after he had committed his life to Jesus as his Lord. The next morning Rosemarie and I rushed to Mitchell's Plain to assist with the funeral arrangements because a crisis had arisen. The Muslim family was claiming to have the corpse for an Islamic funeral that would have happened within twenty-four hours! The young widow, still a secret follower of Jesus, insisted that her husband should have a funeral from the Shekinah Tabernacle where he made that commitment under the ministry of Pastor Eddie Edson. The new babe in Christ gave a powerful message to the packed church When ‘Brother Rashied’ was called upon to give a tribute at the funeral service, it caused quite a stir because the media had possibly been tipped off that the changed drug lord would be present, having come from his hide-out. Almost overnight he had become a celebrity of a different sort. The new ‘babe in Christ’ gave a powerful message to the packed church. Many were listening outside to the service, that was relayed via the public address system. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of Hard Living gangsters. Rashied Staggie, who had been avidly reading the Bible in the preceding weeks, challenged those gangster followers present. He cited from Scripture that the Lord was the only one to take revenge: ‘My kom die wraak toe!’. He emphasised: 'We are not going to retaliate!' Coming from someone who had virtually escaped death after an assassination attempt not long before that, the message could hardly miss the mark. Renewed Interest in the Lives of Gangsters Glen Khan’s assassination was divinely used to bring many a church in the city together, not only for prayer. To some extent the Church was challenged to reach out to Muslims in love. Following Khan’s death, some churches showed renewed interest in the lives of gangsters. Pastor Eddie Edson saw the need to disciple them, starting a programme of special care for gangsters who wanted to change their life-styles. The gang war triggered a significant increase in evangelistic ministry, notably at Pollsmoor prison. In the wake of the assassination of Glen Khan and Rashied Staggie’s powerful testimony at the funeral, a trickle of Cape Muslims started turning to Christ. A direct result was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI), where church leaders mediated between PAGAD and gang leaders. The contribution of Errol Naidoo, a young journalist and pastor at His People Ministries, was significant, as was that of Hindu background Ps. Richard Mitchell, his mentor, who had originally led Errol Naidoo to the Lord. PAGAD Marginalized Suddenly PAGAD felt themselves cornered. At a consultation in the Pinelands Civic Centre on 22 April 1999, God intervened powerfully. PAGAD was suddenly ready to speak to the government together with the church leaders - unarmed! This was an answer to the prayers of the warriors around the country,with Sally Kirkwood playing a pivotal role. Intercessors had been interceding for the proceedings. To all intents and purposes PAGAD was marginalized. In due course, the element of fear of possible Muslim reprisals was steadily eroded, even the fear of being ostracised by the Muslim Umma (community) if they would become followers of Jesus. In due course many MBBs could be found in 'Coloured' townships, notably in Mitchell's Plain and Manenberg. Steady inroads among gangsters and drug addicts continued nevertheless, even though many of the new converts did not persevere in their new faith. A Localised Gangster Impact The intense involvement of Muslims with illicit drug peddling had a long-standing connection to gangsterism. In 1992 a fairly successful response to the gangster violence transpired through Operation Hanover Park in a networking effort of local churches. All too often, the gang lords were Muslims and many a businessman with collar and tie was a co-religionist, who was plying the same trade. When the locally produced drug called ‘Tik’ (crystal methamphetamine) swept across the Cape Peninsula, causing great devastation among the youth, we attempted to revive Operation Hanover Park. (The drug had been virtually unknown as late as 2003.) This attempt was seriously impeded when it became known that certain pastors were on the payroll of drug lords. The link between township pastors and drug-related activity - along with back slidden drug addicts, would remain a weak point. This was hanging like a dark cloud over wonderful ministry and victories in the outreach to gangsters and other criminals in prisons. From the view of drug lords and gang leaders, this appeared to be more effective than the requirement of 'protection money' which the gang leaders used in the heyday of the PAGAD scare. Peace Deals Between Gangs The Cape Peace Initiative of the late 1990s, the role of which has been recorded fairly extensively in Seeds Sown for Revival, possibly had the biggest impact of all gangster-related peace accords to date. It became the divine instrument that ultimately marginalised PAGAD (People against angsterism and Drugs). Simultaneously this period catapulted Rashied Staggie, a drug lord, into prominence. Rashied Staggie became however the proverbial ‘Achilles Heel’ of gangster conversions. He became quite an embarrassment to Church folk after he had been paraded publicly – possibly prematurely – as a sort of trophy at the big Newlands Stadium event of March 2001. So many gangsters returned to their previous lifestyle of criminality after their getting parole or discharged from prison. Rashied Staggie also went into this league when he participated in gang raping a state witness. He was subsequently jailed again for many years. When he was finally set free from prison, he displayed no remorse, nor did he become positively involved with Christians. Pastor Ivan Waldeck, a former gang leader from Hanover Park, assisted him with employment. A gang-related assassination brought his life to an end in December 2019. His funeral with pastors was conducted at the Jubilee Church in Observatory. Before the procession went to a cemetery in Durbanville, thousands flocked to a sports field in Manenberg where the former gang leader was celebrated as a philanthropist who had been putting food on the table of many poor families and who had been assisting them to pay school fees. Prison Ministry Snippets Volumes could be filled with narratives of prison ministry. A former prisoner at Pollsmoor Prison, Jonathan Clayton, developed a special concern for prisoners. His conversion was the fruit of the prayers of his family and friends, including his (future) wife Jenny (Adams), an Africa Evangelical Fellowship missionary. Clayton attended the Cape Town Baptist Seminary after his release. While he was still a theological student, he started to minister in Pollsmoor Prison on Saturday mornings. Members of the Strandfontein Baptist Church, the home congregation of his wife, assisted him. In 1999 Clayton became a prison chaplain. A special ministry started with Pastor Emmanuel Danchimah, a Nigerian national. He networked with Marius Boden to beam Gospel messages with a car radio at Pollsmoor. This developed into fully fledged in-house radio and television transmissions, which impacted many inmates as some of them discovered their giftings in the process. Shona Allie, a Seventh Day Adventist from Muslim background, has been powerfully and divinely used in prisons. Shona Allie angered many Muslims when she honestly stated her conviction - in a mosque of all places - that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, and that he died on the cross for our sins. Throughout the country, prisons have been influenced by her ministry. The challenge of all prison ministry remains the restorative sector. The need for half way houses is massive. There is a dire need for families that are willing to walk a road full of risks with ex-prisoners. In 2019 Marlon Petersen and his family moved into a half-way house for ex-convicts in the ministry linked closely with Message Trust. Incarnational Ministry Pastor Alastair Buchanan, an old stalwart and friend since our short stint at the beginnings of the Jubilee Church in the early 1990s, has been the pivot of Message Trust, with Anja Morkel as his very able assistant. The present leader is Tim ??, a British missionary. Down the years, the lives of many homeless and struggling people have been touched and changed through this blessed incarnational ministry. Message Trust gives convicted drug addicts and former gangsters a new chance in life at the Cape. Anja married MK (??) Letsati, one of the colleagues of Message Trust, who has been involved with impactful service with soccer in Nyanga. The Community Hubs of Message Trust seek to empower youth to share their faith in their daily lives. We also facilitate opportunities at schools and through community outreaches, for young people to serve their community alongside our team. Former Gangsters in Divine Service Ministry to gangster and drug addicted people belonged to the most difficult, but also among the most fruitful. Many of those who became followers of Jesus all too often got back slidden. But quite a few of them became powerful ministers of the Word, still serving in that capacity after many years. In part 2 we gave a summary of how Neville Petersen was so to speak catapulted into evangelism from death row, after he had been imprisoned innocently as a teenager. In the big Pollsmoor prison Neville he became the leader of the 26 gang syndicate after two years, receiving the nick name geweld (violence). Eric Hofmeyer, who became a believer with a gangster background, went on record saying already in the 1990s, that he 'had been a disaster who became a pastor, now serving the Master'. He would ultimately become an important leader in sports ministry and in the discipling of inmates at Pollsmoor Prison. One of the inspirational stories is his discipling of Sollie Staggie, who had been raised as Suleiman, the brother of the well-known Rashied. Sollie would become a community worker with the Evangelical Mission Church in Newfields, where he served especially among learners of three high schools. (Sollie led a failed attempt to assassinate Eric Hofmeyer after he had left the gang. Shamiela Philander was one of the first Muslim background believers that we took into our home, after being abused by her ex-husband, a gang leader. We also attempted to disciple her husband for a short period, linking up with Pastor Eric Hofmeyer. However, he returned to his previous lifestyle. Subsequently the couple got divorced. Subsequently we took Shamiela into our Discipling House. After a few trial and error attempts with her in following the Lord, we had liberty to release her into service with the Salvation Army in the township Manenberg. This suburb has been ruled by gangsters for years. After her marriage to Deon January and some training with All Nations International, Shamiela would lead fruitful ministry in a prison in Porterville, a one and a half hour drive on Sundays for a season. One of the inmates to whom she ministered there was Sollie Staggie, at the rear end of his many years in prison. Transport constraints brought an end to that service, but Shamiela continued to serve female drug addicts in Manenberg faithfully. There she has been divinely used to lead a few ladies to the Lord and disciple them thereafter. In December 2020 she and her husband starting serving as the house parents of Moriah Discipling House where she had been discipled two decades ago. Restitution Made Practical In 1999 Dr. Robbie Cairncross assisted to organize a visit of Cape church leaders to Argentina to witness the work of restitution there. One of the participants was Pastor Martin Heuvel of the Fountain Christian Centre in Ravensmead. He was moved to apply the principal of restitution to the situation in South Africa. That the group took along Rashied Staggie to Argentina, the converted gang leader, might have been a good publicity stint, but for him it was not good. It boosted his ego out of proportion when he was basically still a spiritual baby who needed milk. The impact was significantly diminished when Rashied Staggie was treated as a trophy in Christian circles. In due course he would crash into notoriety when he became involved again with gang life. This caused a setback to further conversion of Muslims. Pastor Heuvel realized that there was a need to make restitution practical. He began by having shops run by Christian volunteers, where all kinds of second-hand clothing and other utensils could be purchased cheaply. This idea was further developed in different suburbs. Included in this demonstration of practical Christianity were various programmes related to skills training that had been running for some time to help the homeless and the unemployed, such as the initiative The Carpenter’s Shop in the Mother City. The most advanced venture in this regard was possibly the Living Hope Community Centre in Muizenberg, using the acronym H.O.P.E. - Helping Other People Earn. Apart from providing healthy meals and ablution facilities for homeless people, spiritual direction was also given, together with life skills training. At the various Living Way ministries medical, social, psychological and spiritual care continues to be given to those people who suffer from HIV and AIDS and other chronic diseases. An Initiative Towards Church-Led Restitution Over a period of more than two years, Pastor Heuvel attempted to get 'White' church leaders to go beyond mere oral confession for the evils of apartheid. Some of the personalities he approached had been involved with the prayer movement in the country for a long time. Ps. Heuvel also challenged Dr Charles Robertson, well known for his prayer initiatives. (Dr Robertson had been the catalyst of the monthly prayer concerts at the Cape since the 1980s.) Here Martin Heuvel found a prepared heart. This finally led to the establishment of the Foundation for Church-led Restitution, where believers from different races and church backgrounds started to meet occasionally. They discussed possibilities to nudge the Church towards meaningful restitution, and especially to attempt to address and rectify the wrongs of apartheid. This initiative of Dr Robertson surely was and continues to be a positive step in the direction of transformation. However, the implementation of real unity on biblical grounds in the spirit of the person and example of Jesus - without semantics and doctrinal bickering - seems however to be some way off. The Church universal still has to acknowledge collective guilt for the doctrinal bickering that led to the establishment and rise of Islam. The maltreatment of Jews by Christians down the centuries, falls in the same category. A Link to Community Transformation Pastor Eddie Edson of the Shekinah Full Gospel Tabernacle congregation of Mitchell's Plain organised two all-night citywide prayer events on 25 June and 15 October 1999. By this time ‘White’ pastors started to attend the monthly pastors' gathering more regularly, even at places like Die Hok in Manenberg, a former drug den and headquarters of the Hard Livings gang. Rev. Trevor Pearce, a minister from the Belhar township who later became the minister of the Anglican Church of Bergvliet, joined these prayer meetings. He was no stranger to the pain and hardship of discrimination and violence, yet his gentle disposition was often used by God to fulfil the role of peacemaker. Trevor Pearce attended a Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) retreat in the USA. It was at this conference that he was gripped in his heart and mind when he heard the miraculous story of God at work in the city of Cali, Columbia. Reports of changed lives and community transformation resonated so deeply in Trevor's heart that he felt broken, thinking of his home country. Was it possible that South Africa could ever experience this kind of transformation? He sat and listened intently to every word, not wanting to miss any detail of the incredible story. He could not wait to return home. Flying back to South Africa, Rev. Pearce guarded his most prized treasures - an audio copy of the retreat and a bound copy of the soon to be published book Informed Intercessions by George Otis (jr). Once at the Cape, Trevor Pearce wasted no time in getting to a pastors and wives’ event. As the group listened to the recorded voice of George Otis and watched the stories of transformation and redemption, they too felt a deep stirring in their hearts. There seemed to be so many similarities between the two countries. Drugs, death and despair had all been part of daily life for the residents of Cali, Columbia, until the Holy Spirit brought transformation through the praying church. What satan had intended for evil, God was using for good. The Transformation video was shown at the city-wide prayer event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow on 15 October 1999. 10. Seed Germination at the Turn of the Century Something very remarkable happened in 1999 in England when Peter Craig challenged young people in England to pray non-stop for thirty days, asking the Lord for this generation of young people to come back to God. It began as the vision of a local church in England, based on the model of Count Zinzendorf in Herrnhut in the 18th century. Bennie Mostert and Daniel Brink attended a conference led by Tom Hess in Jerusalem and brought the message back to South Africa. In September 1999 this new challenge for 24-hour prayer watches began in South Africa. Start of a 24-hour Prayer Room On 9 February 2000, Sooispit, the turning of the soil, took place in preparation for the building of a prayer room. At Kleinplaas, new premises of Dr Charles Robertson, the seasoned prayer and restitution stalwart, started near to Brackenfell, where they intended to include a 24-hour prayer room for intercessors from the entire continent. Daniel and Estelle Brink were called to lead the NUPSA initiative to get a 24-hour Prayer Watch off the ground. That this was spiritual warfare of a high degree became evident when Daniel Brink became critically ill shortly after commencing his new function. The Lord touched and healed him in answer to the prayers of many intercessors. In due course Daniel and Estelle would take the prayer movement at the Cape to great heights. Humanly speaking, here was a couple second to none to stimulate unity of the body of Christ at the Cape! The Body of Christ Made Visible At a mass half-night of prayer on 18 February 2000 on the Grand Parade, the unity of the Body of Christ became visible to some extent. The same weekend Pieter Bos and Cees Vork, representing the prayer movement in Holland, joined local Christians in confession and in praying against anti-Christian spiritual strongholds in the Cape Peninsula. (Pieter Bos was the founder of the Regiogebed in the Netherlands, of which we in Zeist-Driebergen had been the first branch in 1988.) The Grand Parade event was attended by more than four thousand Christians from a wide spectrum of denominations. The divisive denominationalism, materialism and other negatives of South African society, in which the Church had played a role in the past, were confessed. In a moving moment just before midnight, Pieter Bos and Cees Vork confessed the catastrophic contribution of their forefathers to the evils of Cape society. Through the prayer watches, a countrywide prayer network evolved. The electronic media, in the form of emails, played a big role. What a blessing it was to see how the ‘seeds’ that we had been sowing from 1992 at the Cape, seemed to have started to germinate. The event on the Grand Parade was followed during the next days by strategic ‘Closing the Gates’ prayer occasions. Other meetings like a combined church service on the Bellville Velodrome, left the impression that revival was in the air. The moving confession of Pieter Bos because of Dutch colonial guilt at the shrine of Sheikh Yusuf at Macassar, the pioneer of Cape Islam, moved Nim Rajagukguk,an Indonesian missionary deeply. Hereafter we also went to Vergelegen, the farm of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, a notorious 17th century Cape Dutch governor, to pray and repent. There our Indonesian colleague Nim Rajaguguk repented for their resentful attitude towards the Dutch, who had colonised and oppressed their people. Spiritual Conflict Continues The season of spiritual combat appeared to come to a head when conflict escalated between the notorious minibus ‘taxi’ drivers and the Golden Arrow Bus Company, both of which were transporting commuters from the townships. Nobody suspected that the shooting of a Golden Arrow bus driver would bring the 'Black' townships to the brink of anarchy once again. May 2000 seemed predestined to lead to the temporary pinnacle of spiritual combat, with the police force not only in disarray, but they were also frustrated by a judiciary that was perceived to be corrupt on municipal (magistrate) level. On Friday evening the 19th of May 2000 a citywide half-night of prayer, attended by 6,000 people, took place at the UWC Sports Grounds in Bellville. Here the unity of the Body of Christ was emphasised once again! In the spiritual realm it was a powerful moment when Pastor Martin Heuvel apologised on behalf of about 40 pastors present, for - among other things - their lording over their churches, for being dogmatic, and for the lack of a servant attitude. Most importantly, the proceedings were translated into Xhosa, thus demonstrating that the presence of Capetonian 'Blacks' was important to the organizers. (Mamela, the lady who translated the proceedings into Xhosa, was also God’s special instrument to bring Cape 'Blacks' into the prayer movement.) The proceedings were translated into Xhosa, thus demonstrating that the presence of 'Blacks' was important to the organizers There was ample evidence from different quarters that spiritual warfare was increasing once again. Satanist traits surfaced notably when the decapitated head of a mentally handicapped young man was abused to instil fear into people. The arrest of nineteen PAGAD members in Tafelsig, a violence-ridden part of Mitchell's Plain on 21 May 2000, after a shoot-out with police, was publicised as a major breakthrough. Only three gangsters were arrested, and that not even immediately. Hence the suspicion was strengthened that the police force was siding with criminals. The necessity for transformation through revival was thus highlighted once again. The Spiritual War Heats up in the City Bowl In June 2000 the battle in the spiritual realms was raging in the City Bowl as never before. A television report depicted how the Mother City drew gay tourists from around the world. Satanists were also staking their claims to impact the city. A bomb in a plastic bag was discovered by a homeless man While preparations were being finalized for a Jesus March on 10 June 2000, it almost seemed as if satan wanted to foil the event through a bomb, placed at the New York Bagles Restaurant in Sea Point, a few kilometers away from the City centre, a few days before the march. At the famous well-patronized eating place, the bomb, hidden in a plastic bag, was discovered by a homeless man. He was probably looking for food in the refuse bin. However, the bomb was defused before any damage was done. God clearly intervened at the internationally-initiated Jesus March. After a series of weather forecasts of rain, Pastor Lazarus Chetty used CCFM Radio to ask Christians to pray for dry conditions. In spite of the negative weather prediction, ten thousand Christians from across the religious landscape converged on the City business district. While the Jesus March crowd was praying in the historical Dutch Company Gardens, an elderly Muslim lady committed her life to Jesus at the famous Groote Schuur hospital a few kilometres away. Christian workers had ministered to her after she had confessed that she had a dream of the broad and narrow way, with Jesus standing at the top of the steep narrow way waiting for her. This dream had been plaguing her for 50 years. The first drops started falling well after the crowds had dispersed. A Vision Partly Fulfilled During our prayer walk in Bo-Kaap in October 2000 I was very much encouraged. We met a Congolese Bible School student, who was on the verge of returning to his home country as an evangelist, after being called by God to do so. He had been trained in Cape Town. One of our long-time visions had been to see foreigners holistically equipped in South Africa, hoping that they would then be a blessing to their country of origin on their return. (This vision had been birthed in me in Holland, where I had been blessed and impacted such a lot, returning to South Africa with the wish to be a blessing to my home country.) Alan Kay, the administrator of Cape Town Baptist Church, who had been studying Theology part-time, had great compassion for refugees. After graduating from the Baptist Seminary, he joined the Salvation Army, where he took a pastoral post. He also attended meetings of a newly formed congregation of the Calvary Chapel, that was led by Pastor Demitri Nikiforos. Alan Kay had been very much involved with the ministry to foreigners at Cape Town Baptist Church since its inception in 1996. Anaclet Mbayagu from Burundi was among a number of refugees impacted there. He left Cape Town Baptist Church in 2002, becoming one of the stalwarts of the Calvary Chapel fellowship. There foreigners were fully integrated. In due course there were more members from other countries than South Africans in that congregation. Emulation in Other Churches The example of the two Baptist churches with regard to refugees, the one in the City Centre and the other one in Bellville, was followed by other Baptist congregations, notably in Meadowridge and Fish Hoek. It was also done in spiritually-related ones like the Life Church (formerly Atlantic Christian Assembly) of Sea Point, the AGS (AFM) church in Vredehoek and the Jubilee Church in Observatory. Alongside these ‘mainline’ churches, many churches with a national flavour sprang up. Others started where foreigners could enjoy their home culture and where they could speak their own language or dialect. As a direct result of the xenophobic violence of mid-2008, many local Christians started appreciating foreigners and the contribution they were making. Local Christians started appreciating foreigners and their contribution However, the negative attitude towards 'Black' Africans continued almost unabatedly in Xhosa-speaking townships. A few ‘White’ churches were positively impacted through those difficult months when foreigners were accommodated in their church buildings and in homes. These formerly almost completely 'White' churches became an initial haven for many new African sojourners at the Cape. A few congregations consciously launched a programme of providing employment for the stranded foreigners. A Protracted Violent Conflict A bomb explosion at the car park of the Cape Town International Airport on 18th July 2000, created worldwide headlines. PAGAD was prematurely given the blame for it. Demonic Forces tried to create Havoc and Anarchy Around the same time, the protracted violent conflict between taxi drivers and the Golden Arrow Bus Company resulted in quite a number of people dead or wounded. Obviously, there were demonic forces at work trying to create havoc and anarchy! This was a reminder that a miracle was needed to turn the tide. The tension in the Middle East had a spin-off when big Islamic rallies were held. The one on 14 October 2000 at the old Green Point Stadium was counter-productive in respect of the Islamic faith. Supporters damaged cars and property. The crowd had been hyped up at the rally against Americans and Jews. The prayers of God’s people, that the tension between Muslims and Jews locally would not spiral out of control, were surely answered when a time bomb under the car of a Jewish man was discovered and defused before the device could cause any damage. However, a bomb explosion near to the offices of the Democratic Alliance in Kenilworth on 18 October 2000, kept the tension alive. (Tony Leon, the then leader of that party, was Jewish.) Muslim unity at the Cape seemed to be getting a boost in the wake of the Middle East conflict. A Special Dream of Graham Power During their annual holiday in Spain, the businessman Graham Power had a supernatural visitation through a dream, during which he was challenged to approach the Western Province Rugby Board for the use of their stadium at Newlands for a mass prayer event. Graham did not expect an easy ride to get permission for the prayer event, but what he did not envisage was strong opposition from Church leaders. Many a meeting was held, but the response was not encouraging. At a meeting in the ‘Black’ township of Langa where he went to share his vision, the response was overwhelmingly negative. The room got hotter, and for a moment Graham's mind wandered away from the debate until he was sharply brought back by a voice that broke through the questioning crowd. This is how it is recorded in his book Not by Might nor by Power: 'Slowly standing to her feet, a Xhosa woman called Mamela, spoke with conviction and authority. The room seemed to settle in an instant as her voice cried out, “What is this thing? When God gives a vision we are not to question, we are to come alongside and support.” That caused the breakthrough.' A Flourish of Prayer and Missionary Activity A flourish of prayer and missionary activity towards the end of 2000 looked set to influence the country as a whole. City Bowl ministers had been praying together on Thursday mornings since October 1995. A dispute kept the Cape 'Black' township dwellers in suspense for months. Everything pointed to the fact that the spiritual battle was raging again at a high pitch. Rev. Trevor Pearce was instrumental in bringing a delegation of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) to Cape Town. This group included George Otis, the initiator of the well-known Transformation videos. The delegation staged a three-day conference at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow with international speakers, from 3 November 2000. This was followed by a citywide prayer event at the UWC Athletics Stadium in Bellville on Sunday, 5 November. That meeting became quite strategic when Mamela, a powerful Xhosa believer, got involved with translation. The meetings in Parow and Bellville were preceded by prayer events that not only coincided with a round of spiritual warfare against the occult satanist Halloween celebrations, but they were also part of a country-wide 40-day offensive of prayer and fasting for the continent. Two potentially destructive Bombs were discovered and defused Bombs Defused PAGAD continued to destabilize Cape society with random bombing. And then the miracle happened. The breakthrough that the praying Christians had been waiting for, finally came. On Friday 3 November 2000 two potentially destructive bombs at a well-known shopping centre in Bellville were discovered and defused. The bombs could have caused massive loss of life, had they detonated at the intended time a few kilometres from the venue of the prayer conference in Parow. Later that very day the men who had planted the bomb, were arrested and put in custody. God had heard the cries of His people. Prayer was making a difference. It could hardly have been co-incidence that the arrest of the surmised culprits happened at the time of the conference and that the 18 bombs, which had exploded in the preceding months, did not result in any loss of life. Nor could it have been mere chance that pipe bombs were discovered under a snooker table at a house in Grassy Park on 6 November 2000, a day after the citywide prayer event in Bellville. Transformation of the Mother City of South Africa received a major push. On the local level, churches also seemed to be playing a role in bringing about peace. On Sunday 25 February 2001, it was reported on national television that local church leaders had brokered a peace accord between two Bonteheuwel gangs, the Cisko Yakkies and the Americans. After the Parow and Bellville events, the stage was soon set for a major occasion at the Newlands Rugby Stadium, where Mamela translated the proceedings into Xhosa once again. The Newlands Event of 21 March 2001 The Transformation programme was closely linked to intercession from the outset. It is no surprise that the 24-hour Prayer Watch was connected to a big prayer occasion scheduled for the Newlands Rugby Stadium on 21 March 2001. In the 21 days prior to the event, more than 200 congregations joined in a prayer effort for the stadium meeting on a 24-hour basis. A satellite connection and big screens allowed more people to participate The 21 March 2001 event was extraordinary in the extreme. Because Newlands was too small for all the people who wanted to attend, several local churches used a satellite connection and big screens to allow more people to participate. The Christian radio stations CCFM and Radio Tygerberg also broadcast the unprecedented occasion live. Because it was a public holiday, many followed the prayers at home via radio and TV. 11. Spin-offs of the Newlands Event The big event on 21 March 2001 at the Newlands Rugby Stadium and its repetition in the years thereafter, did very well in human terms. An article in the Cape Times, a local newspaper, gave wings to the prayer movement with the headline '50,000 Christians pack Newlands - Asmal slams Sectarian Rally.' Professor Asmal, the Minister of Education, reportedly said that the mass meeting constituted the gathering of a 'sectarian body' and that it was responsible for enhancing divisions in South Africa. While nothing could have been further from the truth, all the main TV stations and news broadcasters led with that story in the evening news. Concerted prayer, followed by action in the Helderberg region and in Manenberg (of gangster fame), subsequently changed the respective communities significantly for the better. God was thus using the media to spread the story. This event had received far more coverage than would have been given otherwise. What satan had intended for evil, God was turning to good. As the media debate continued, the Transformation Africa Committee received hundreds of calls of support, encouragement, and promises of prayer from churches and businessmen around the country. Stadium Prayers Into Southern Africa The Newlands event started to spread throughout the subcontinent in 2002: eight stadiums were involved with some 160,000 people attending. In 2003 and 2004, mass prayer services were held in over 100 venues throughout the African continent. An interesting dynamic started to get off the ground. Missionaries who had been working in other Southern African countries, started encouraging believers from the Cape Peninsula to become involved in evangelistic work. Locals like Georgina Kinsman from Mitchell’s Plain, who did not belong to the young generation, hardly needed any nudge to get involved in missionary work. In fact, she gave a major push to the Baptist Union in South Africa to become active in reaching out to the under-evangelised and forgotten peoples of Namibia and the Northern Cape. The Baptist Union in South Africa started to reach out to the under-evangelised and forgotten peoples of Namibia and the Northern Cape. Involving the Youth Frans Cronje, a member of the Transformation AFRICA committee who had been actively involved in mobilizing the youth to help with the logistics, firmly believed that the young people would play an important role in the growth of this movement. Frans headed up a youth sports ministry called Sport for Christ Action South Africa (SCAS). He was always on the lookout for meaningful mission opportunities for young sports people. In June 2001, just a few months after the Newlands Day of Prayer, Frans believed that God gave him a vision to mobilize Christians to run across the country, carrying a message of hope through salvation to be found in the person of Jesus Christ. The initiative would be called The Walk of Hope. Not only would this event encourage folk on the highways and byways of the country, but it would also serve to be an important tool in raising the awareness of this significant day. It was decided that as the city of Bloemfontein is located in the middle of the nation, teams would all depart from that city and then move towards the eight stadia of Southern Africa where a Transformation Africa Prayer Day would be held in 2002. Transformation Begins to Take Shape Two clergymen, Trevor Pearce and John Thomas, pastor of King of Kings Baptist Church, radiated the face of Cape Transformation in the first years of the new millennium, as they became involved on the practical level. As the pastor of the church that started CCFM radio, John Thomas utilised the medium fully in 1999 to challenge churches, especially those of the Fish Hoek Valley, to get involved in assistance to the poor and needy. With regard to schooling and HIV/AIDS, Trevor Pearce was an important catalyst in an attempt to get the church and the business world to partner, an effort that would change the former informal settlement at Westlake significantly for the better. The annual Transformation events in sports stadiums were followed by a ‘week of bounty’, where the more affluent churches were motivated and encouraged to share sacrificially with those on the other side of the economic divide. I reacted inappropriately to a manipulative phone call Rumblings at the Moriah Discipling House Toward the end of 2001, a period of spiritual conflict seemed to move towards a climax. I suffered a personal setback after I had reacted inappropriately to a manipulative phone call from our discipling house. There we have been discipling new followers of Jesus who had been persecuted and/or evicted because of that decision. That set off a negative chain reaction. During the next two and a half months the tension levels in our team remained extremely high. After travelling by bus all night from Durban and after having had very little sleep, I resumed with my work rather carelessly on Friday, March 15, 2002. This triggered a stress-related loss of memory the next day. After a day in hospital and further medical treatment, I was cleared with the instruction to return after a year. We realized that there were major spiritual forces involved. + Culture Among Youth in the City Bowl Our second eldest son Rafael returned from Germany at the end of 1999 where he had been evangelising with Youth for Christ in a mobile bus for the greater part of the year. After his return from overseas an interdenominational youth ministry called, ‘+ culture’ (cross culture), with the emphasis on the emblem of the Cross, started to flourish. With his musical talent, our son Danny was also quite pivotal in this movement. Unfortunate interference by one of the local pastors who had little vision for the unity of the Body of Christ, stifled the promising revivalist movement amongst the youth. The promising revivalist movement was stifled The Eagles Sports Ministry would have quite an big impact among City teenagers was started in 2000 as an outreach project to the community around the Cape Town Baptist Church by our sone Sammyand his German class mate Christopher Jahn and led by Elsabe Odendal, a sports teacher.  The ministry offered sport and play group activities to any child between the ages of 5 and 18 yrs old on a Saturday morning irrespective of their individual beliefs.  They used sport, mainly basketball and soccer as a tool to reach out with God’s love to the children living in our community.  Gospel seed was sown into many a young Muslim heart. The ministry ended in 2010 when the church leadership decided to not continue with the outreach after all three founding members left the church. The sports ministry was revived when Eric Hofmeyer became the youth pastor there. Some damages at the hall that had been such a blessing to young people, however caused the church leaders to convert the hall into a coffee and clothing shop, bringing a close to the ministry into the Bo-Kaap from that fellowship. This was sad because there was still a full complement of youth leadership trained by Elsabe Odendal, and nurtured by Eric Hofmeyer, yongsters who were very enthusiastic to continue with the ministry. The Going Gets Tough Rosemarie and I were blessed to take a holiday break at Carmel Christian Farm in July 2003. At this occasion she had been taking some photographs of beautiful waves at Sedgefield and Knysna. In that vicinity we found Psalm 93:4 engraved on a stone. That was exactly the Bible verse that Rosemarie received on the day of her confirmation in Germany as a teenager, way back in the 1960s. ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!' A Challenging Dream In October 2003, Rosemarie had a dream in which a young married couple, clad in Middle Eastern garb, was ready to go as missionaries to the Middle East. Suddenly the scene changed. As she narrated: ‘While the two of us were praying over the city from our dining room facing the Cape Town CBD, a massive wave came from the sea, rolling over Bo-Kaap. The next moment the water engulfed us, but we were still holding each other by the hand. There was something threatening about the wave, but somehow we also experienced a sense of thrill.’ Then Rosemarie woke up, very conscious that God seemed to say something to us through this dream. What was Abba trying to convey? The interpretation of the dream became clear quite soon. We had to prepare for a wave of opportunity – a tsunami, as tidal waves became widely known from the following year. Right from the start it had been part of our vision to see Muslims from the Cape becoming followers of Jesus and some of them ultimately sent to other parts of Africa and the Middle East as missionaries. A Wave of Opportunity We heard about a conference of Middle Eastern Muslim leaders in the newly built Convention Centre of Cape Town. We decided on short notice to have our Friday prayer meeting there nearby, instead of in the regular venue, the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk in Bree Street. Lillian James, one of our friends, was on hand to arrange a place for the prayer meeting near to the Convention Centre. The same Friday afternoon Rosemarie and our colleague Rochelle Malachowski went to the nearby Waterfront where they literally walked into a group of ladies in Middle Eastern dress. The outgoing Rochelle had no qualms to start chatting to one of them. Having resided among Palestinians in Israel, she knows some Arabic. Soon they were swarmed by other women who were of course very surprised to be addressed in their home language by a ‘White’ lady with an American accent. A cordial exchange of words followed. Rosemarie was reminded of her dream, sensing that God might be sending in a wave of people to Cape Town from Muslim countries. We understood that we should also get ready to send young missionaries to that area of the world when it opens itself up to the Gospel. Shortly hereafter we heard of various foreigners who had come to the Mother City, including a few Uyghur, a minority people group of China. Fast-forwarding another two decades, we can thankfully look back for the privilege the Father gave us to have become spiritual parents or catalysts to a few who would serve as missionaries in different countries. Prostate Gland Cancer Diagnosed After my stress-related temporary loss of memory in March 2002, a medical check-up was overdue. This led to a period that seemed to usher in the last lap of my 'race' on earth. After going to the doctor for the blood pressure check-up at the end of September 2003 - without having any complaint - he suggested a PSA blood test because of my age. Detecting a reading slightly above normal, the physician hereafter referred me to an urologist, who did a biopsy on 7 October 2003 – just to make sure! Perhaps the arch enemy tried to knock me out. I was so confident that the result of the biopsy would be negative because I had no physical discomfort up to that point in time. Both specialists pointed out that the PSA count was only minimally above normal. There could have been other causes for the abnormal count, for example infection. When a phone call came from the hospital on Thursday 9 October 2003, I was caught off-guard. I was told that I had contracted Prostate Gland cancer! Without any ado the urologist gave me the result of the biopsy: I had contracted prostate gland cancer in an early stage. Through an extra-ordinary set of circumstances, the Lord however prepared me for the diagnosis. The previous day, on 8 October 2003 to be exact, I was encouraged by the ‘Watchword’, as the Moravians have been traditionally calling the Old Testament Scripture for the day: ‘I will not die but live and proclaim what the LORD has done’ (Psalm 118:17). To be told that you have contracted prostate gland cancer, was like getting a death sentence. However, the Lord had encouraged me with Psalm 117:18. I saw that verse as an encouragement to ‘proclaim the works of the Lord.’ I immediately thought that I would not be able to attend the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) leadership conference in Paarl that was scheduled for the first November weekend of 2003. I approached the Moravian Church Board formally in October 2003, just after the rather traumatic diagnose, also meeting a few of their leaders shortly thereafter, with regard to the use of their church building in District Six that had been returned to the denomination. I sensed that the attitude of the leaders to me had softened. (I had not been invited to preach in any Moravian Church for a long time.) The request to use the Moravian Hill sanctuary was duly approved. We also received permission to have monthly meetings with Muslim background believers in their church building in District Six the following year. A 24-Hour Prayer Watch? The historic St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church complex was also considered for the purpose of a 24-hour prayer watch. Our dear intercessor friend Hendrina van der Merwe resided there at this time. The church hall was the venue of a half night of prayer on the 2003 Islamic Night of Power. At this occasion, Trevor Peters, who worked as the security guard of the parking lot there, played a prominent part. The Lord had humbled Trevor, a former gangster and drug lord. He later became a tour guide at the historical Groote Kerk. Increasingly, he became burdened to pray for the city. Subsequently God brought him into the main prayer force for the city when he became a stalwart in the praying initiative at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. A ‘Second Wind’ Looking back over my life, it seemed as if my (semi-)academic studies and anti-apartheid activism did not take me anywhere. The Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the prostate gland operation But the Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the prostate gland operation in December 2003. He also blessed Rosemarie and me to discern some of the pieces in the mosaic, the puzzle of our chequered lives that were fitting so perfectly into each other. It encouraged me to prod on, although the road ahead could not be discerned that clearly. Rosemarie challenged me with regard to my chaotic research and writing activity. I had so many unfinished manuscripts on my computer. 'What would happen if something happens to you? All that work would be in vain', was her wise counsel. Concretely, I took the word from Scripture as an invitation and summons, that I should attempt to finalise my autobiographical manuscripts. (These and a few other manuscripts can now be found on our internet blog, inter alia I was like Jonah and (In)voluntary Exile.) The testimonies of a few Cape Muslims had been on my computer already for about two years. We had printed some of them as tracts. The result of Rosemarie’s prodding was that Search for Truth 2 could be printed within a matter of weeks by my cousin, Patrick Cloete, a printer. For years, I had been striving towards achieving a more visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ, with very little success. Through my hospitalisation for the prostate gland operation, God over-ruled. I was challenged anew to look at the City Bowl 24-hour prayer watch as a matter of priority for the first half of 2004. The unity of the body of Christ, believers in the crucified and risen Saviour, had been very much on our hearts. I realized that the prayer watch could be a decisive vehicle to make this more visible. Africa Arise! In May 2003 prayer events were held in the fifty-eight nations and African countries with its adjoining islands of the continent, linked by satellite to the Newlands Rugby Stadium. With thousands of African Christians praying, it left a deep imprint on the continent. The theme for the afternoon was that the time had come for the ‘Dark Continent’ to become a light to the nations. Via an inspiring message, Argentine evangelist Ed Silvoso led millions of believers in stadiums across the continent through prayers of repentance, dedication and commitment. Two items that recurred again and again in the prayers were HIV/AIDS and poverty relief. In subsequent years many lives were saved with anti-retroviral medication as a result of a government turn around in the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. New ministries of compassion to the poor and needy had already arisen since the 2001 event at the Newlands Rugby Stadium and its annual repetition. One of the fruits was The Warehouse, which started at St John’s Anglican Church in Wynberg. This NGO would perform stalwart work during the 2008 xenophobia-related ministry at the Youngsfield Military Camp. Via food distribution in the wake of the Corona pandemic their service to the poor and needy became prominent once again and more recently in the networking with various churches in the course of the Hope through Unity activities that were facilitated by the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape from November 2022. Run-up to a Continental Prayer Convocation As part of a prayer convocation for the African continent at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) from December 1-5, 2003, it was fitting that a prelude to the gathering would also include a visit to Robben Island. This was a follow-up of the ‘Closing the Gates’ event of September 2001. Dr Henry Kirby, a well-known intercessor, ran into problems when he tried to obtain access to the famous island as part of the prayer convocation. Just at this time, a Muslim background believer contacted Radio CCFM. It was more than mere coincidence that I was on the spot at the Radio CCFM premises when her fax arrived there! When I invited the young lady to our home for a preparatory talk with regard to a radio interview, I learned that she had been working on Robben Island for many years. Through her intervention, the necessary arrangements could be made for the prayer warriors, some of them coming from various African countries, to go and intercede on the island. The Net Thrown Wider Soon God began to expand our ministry. We were serving (Uyghur) Chinese and Somalians in loving ways. The latter group in Mitchell's Plain stretched our patience. We ultimately had to stop teaching English to the Somalians after a few months in mid-2005. It became clear that they resented being taught by Christians. Teaching English to foreigners in premises on the corner of Dorp and Loop Street on Saturday afternoon in a small church where Gary Coetzee was the pastor, turned into a double blessing. There we could not only help a few new sojourners in our city to get settled, but we also soon found a link to the nearby Boston House on the corner of Bree and Church Streets. We supplied learners from the ranks of refugees and African traders in the city for their TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) students as guinea pigs. (Ps. Gary Coetzee was a visionary, who made and sold shofars when they were still unknown at the Cape. The increased use of vuvuzelas in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup of 2010 would usher in the wide use of shofars among Christians thereafter.) A Cameroonian trader was one of these students. With him we had on-going contact and he was one of those who became like an additional son or daughter to us. Discovery Bible Study Using English as a vehicle to serve Muslims from other countries, was another way to befriend foreigners. One of those we taught was the trader from Cameroon whom we subsequently invited for a meal. His home language is Hausa. This gave us a natural invitation to ask him to watch the DVD More than Dreams since Hausa is one of the original five languages of Muslims in the DVD. These Muslims saw Jesus in a dream. In this dream He appeared to them attired in a white robe. In the course of our outreaches in the city and at the Home Affairs Refugee office, we served the people there with some beverages. There we met a few foreigners who displayed openness to the Gospel. When we invited him to share a meal with us, we discovered that Hausa was his home language. This was the cue to watch one of the More than Dreams testimonies, a DVD with five stories of Muslims who had a dream of a man clad in a white robe. This evolved into a weekly Discovery Bible Study (DBS) with a few foreigners who were Muslims. One of them, a trader who had been a street child who never attended a school, ultimately verbalised in so many words: 'It seems as if everything in the Bible points to Jesus.' (Autodidactically he would teach himself French and English also in writing next to learning 9 African languages for communication purposes over the years. How special it was when we could become 'parents' to a couple who got married at the Home Affairs office in 2016. They were ready to serve in a country that is still firmly closed to the Gospel. The husband came to faith in Cape Town after being one of our DBS participants. He subsequently met his wife from another country at a Bible School. Impact of an Event Film When the movie The Passion of the Christ was released in March 2004, it was clear that this would be another event film. Hardly anybody suspected that its ripples would go around the world with so much speed. Objections by diverse individuals only gave more publicity to the controversial film. Believers in Jesus Christ, ordinary cinema visitors as well as people from different religions around the globe, were deeply moved as they witnessed the last twelve hours of Jesus Christ in the unusual movie. God used the film to communicate the Gospel as rarely before, also at the Cape. The very opposite spirit that had motivated Muslims to go and view the movie, that of the forgiving Jesus, came through. The message of loving your enemies, and Jesus praying to His Father to forgive his persecutors while still on the Cross, hit many a theatre-goer powerfully. Quite strikingly, after the movie, many Muslims seemed to start accepting the death and resurrection of Jesus, doctrines which are denied by orthodox Islam. That Jesus addressed God as his Father surely shook many of them. (In Muslim countries children learn in a nursery rhyme that God neither has a son, nor does he beget.) The effect of the film was one of the most spectacular visible and known answers to the ten years of prayer for the Muslim world. Subsequently thousands have been turning to faith in Jesus Christ in Southern Asia and the Middle East through dreams, visions and various other evangelistic agencies. Contact With Special Foreigners For Nursilen Rajagukguk, an Indonesian missionary colleague in our team who had previously served in Hong Kong, it was quite special to watch the video version of The Passion of the Christ in our home together with two Uyghur females from China. Nur had a special burden for the Uyghur, a Muslim tribe in the Northwest of the vast and populous country. For years she prayed for those people, without seeing any change. Now God had brought some of them to the Cape . Within months we had contact with other Uyghur folk who had come to the Cape Town. (The increased interaction with the Peoples' Republic of China brought many nationals from that country to Cape Town. With the Olympic Games of 2008 in Beijing looming, many students came to learn English in our city.) The conversion and baptism of two Uyghur Chinese in the first quarter of 2005 were very special, the result of divine intervention. One of the two converts needed a second dream to convince her that Jesus was indeed the one to follow. In the first dream she had asked God to reveal to her which one was the one to follow. She had discerned that it could be either Jesus or Muhammad. Her room was brightened up with a supernatural light early the next morning,which happened to be Christmas morning. Simultaneously she came under a strong conviction of sin. She knew that Jesus was there with her. His divinity was so natural that she prayed spontaneously: “Jesus, forgive me my sins!” The other Uyghur person, a male, had a similar dream of a person that radiated light, sensing a divine presence in his room. (A few months before this I could lead him to the Lord after the penny had dropped during private Bible Study.) The two compatriots were initially very fearful that the other Uyghur folk would get to know about their decision. A few months further however, we were blessed to baptise both of them at the same occasion. In due course a group of Asians was meeting once a month on Sunday afternoon for Bible Study. The couple from Indonesia would become the parents at our discipling house for people from another faith background. (During the xenophobic mob violence of 2008 we also took in believers from Zimbabwe to whom we had ministered at the time.) The 7-DAYS Initiative As a follow up strategy of Transformation Africa prayer in stadiums all over Africa in 2004, a ‘7-Days initiative’ was launched. Daniel Brink of the Jericho Walls Cape Office distributed the following communiqué: ‘...From Sunday May 9th thousands of Christians all over South Africa will take part in a national night and day prayer initiative called ’7 Days’. The goal was to see the whole country covered in continuous prayer for one year from 9 May 2004 to 15 May 2005. On relatively short notice, believers in communities, towns and cities in South Africa were challenged to pray twenty-four hours a day for one week apiece. The prayer initiative started with the Western Cape taking the first seven weeks. Daniel Brink invited believers of the Cape Peninsula to ‘proclaim your trust that, when we pray, God will respond. Declare your trust that if we put an end to oppression and give food to the hungry, the darkness will turn to brightness. Pray that houses of prayer will rise up all over Africa, as places where God’s goodness and mercy is celebrated in worship and prayer, even before the answer comes.’ Global Prayer Watch, the Western Cape arm of Jericho Walls, filled the first seven days with day and night prayer at the Moravian Church in District Six, starting at 9 o’clock in the evening on May 9, 2004. Every two hours, around the clock, a group of musicians would lead the ‘Harp and Bowl’ intercessory worship, whereby the group would pray over Scripture. In another part of the compound, intercessors could pray or paste prayer requests in the adjacent ‘boiler room’. What a joy it was for Hendrina van der Merwe, the fervent Afrikaner intercessor, to be present on that opening evening in the Moravian Chapel. However, she would neither experience a spiritual breakthrough towards new church planting in Bo-Kaap nor the start of a 24-hour Prayer Watch in the City Bowl. On the 31st of December 2004, with her Bible in her hand, she went to be with her Lord! From the 6th to the 15th of May, 2005, Jericho Walls challenged millions of believers all over the world ‘to seek the face of the Lord and ask him to fill the earth with his glory as the waters cover the seas’ (Habakkuk 2:14). Young people were encouraged to do a ‘30-second Kneel Down’ on Friday 13 May, and to have prayer, a ‘Whole night for the Whole World on Saturday 14 May 2005, just before the very first Global Day of Prayer.’ An Apology by an Apartheid Era Cabinet Minister Adriaan Vlok is the only former apartheid Cabinet minister (of Law and Order) to have testified before the Amnesty Committee of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Former President P.W. Botha had ‘intense interest’ in security. A central role had been given to the police to ‘sort out’ unrest. President Botha had been congratulating Mr Vlok for police operations, including the bombing of Khotso House in Johannesburg, where the South African Council of Churches has it headquarters. Mr Vlok received amnesty from prosecution for a series of bombings. An apartheid Cabinet minister apologised publicly to a prominent anti-apartheid activist In mid-2006, Vlok apologized for a number of acts that he had not disclosed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and for which he could therefore be prosecuted. In a very special gesture, the former apartheid era Minister of Law and Order apologized (initially privately) to Reverend Frank Chikane, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and a trusted adviser to President Thabo Mbeki. As secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches, Rev. Chikane had been targeted by the security establishment for assassination. 7 Subsequently, Mr Vlok extended his journey of repentance by washing the feet of nine widows and mothers of the 'Mamelodi 10', who were lured to their deaths by a police agent. Their bodies were burned and buried in a field in Winterveld, near Pretoria, where the remains of the bulk of them were found and identified by the National Prosecuting Agency. The gesture of former Minister Vlok had a blessed aftermath when he shared his testimony in many a church around the country. 12. Grabbed by the Scruff of the Neck Sometimes God has to take people ‘by the scruff of the neck’ to bring them into obedient submission, just as he once did with Jonah. This happened to Michael Share, who was challenged to leave his work in the police force to start Cops for Christ at the turn of the millennium. A cop was stranded in a shack with bullets flying past him After being involved in a raid, Michael Share was stranded in a shack with bullets flying past him. He experienced supernatural protection. Not a single bullet hit him. This was to him a wake-up call. Through the ministry of Cops for Christ Michael Share called on policemen throughout South Africa to bring spiritual life and encouragement into police stations, when anarchy was threatening once again. Fanie Scanlen was already a Superintendent of the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street in the Mother City when he was stabbed seven times, narrowly escaping death. This became a turning point in his life. Superintendent Fanie Scanlen became an important conduit of our effort to get more prayer into the Central Police Station. He became a significant divine tool of the preparations for the first Global Day of Prayer. Fanie Scanlen also organised a teaching course based on Christian principles at the police station, which allowed us to meet other Christians working there. Catalysts of a 24/7Prayer Room Towards the end of 2003, it was my turn to be taken by the ‘scruff of the neck.’ During the short post-operative period in Kingsbury Hospital after the removal of my cancerous prostate gland, I was challenged to stop looking for other people to get a 24-hour prayer watch going in the City Bowl. I sensed that I should get involved personally. The hospitalisation was God's instrument to challenge me. A Prayer Venue at the Civic Centre In due course Die Losie, a former freemason lodge at the police station, became our regular prayer venue. As preparation for the 2006 Global Day of Prayer, prayer drives were organised, during which participants prayed Scripture. The prayer drives converged at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. God used this event to touch at least one person in a special way. (Wim Ferreira, an intercessor, had been a transport engineer working with the City Council. He was challenged to to concentrate on prayer for the City. He was around that time invited to work with the Deputy Mayor of the metropolis.) When all the groups had arrived at the police station, they were taken to Die Losie. There Daniel Brink, the co-ordinator of the event, asked me to share in a few words about how God had changed things at the police station. Wim Ferreira was deeply touched at this occasion. He promptly requested a room for prayer in the metropolitan Civic Centre where he had started to work. This was another divinely orchestrated move. A few months further on, a regular Friday prayer time was functioning in the ACDP board room of the Civic Centre. Before long, a trickle of workers from all walks of life was coming to faith in Jesus as their Lord as a result of these prayers. On Wednesdays at lunch time, believers from different denominational backgrounds gathered there to pray and intercede for the city. The Lord also challenged Wim Ferreira to start a day long prayer meeting at the Civic Centre premises. Soon a prayer room near to the parking area on the ground floor was frequented by many people throughout the day. The foundation stone towards 24/7 prayer in the CBD of the metropolis was laid. The prayer room at the Civic Centre is still used. In April 2019 it served as the foundation stone for a World Prayer Tower, that was subsequently started in Observatory. The latter location would become the prayer hub for the African continent. Meetings With a Stamp of Revival Trevor Peters and I started building a good relationship with Captain Tania de Freitas. Beginning in 2006, Tania started to attend our Wednesday meetings faithfully. In due course she would become God’s instrument for the transforming of many lives in the course of her duties as she counselled traumatised staff members. Meetings organised on Fridays at the police station had the stamp of revival. People were healed and lives changed. The arch-enemy must have been very angry, because soon thereafter there was fierce opposition at the police station to these meetings. Captain de Freitas became a fearless stalwart prayer warrior at the station. Towards the end of 2009 she challenged the station leadership to uphold absolute ethical norms. She paid a price for this. Subsequently she was hassled and ostracised by many at the station because of her radical expression of her faith, but she did not give up. (She is still serving there as a spiritual pillar. Regular monthly prayer resumed at the police station on every first Thursday of the month from December 2017.) She also tried to bring prayer warriors of different churches together in far-away Kraaifontein where she lives with her family. Mysterious Ways of God We all know that God moves in mysterious ways. A young couple from Green Point, Andy and Lizelle Draai, started praying with us, both in the Koffiekamer and at our once a month prayer meeting in Bo-Kaap. We heard that His People Ministries started a new fellowship at the Waterfront. When we attended there once off as visitors, Tim Makamu, a Venda believer from Limpopo, whom I had helped moving when he was a CPUT student, was the preacher. Tim immediately spotted Rosemarie and me in the audience and promptly called me to the front. I used the occasion to challenge the congregation to get involved with outreach to the refugees at the near-by Home Affairs premises and to come and join us in praying for the Bo-Kaap. Our friend Bev Stratis came up with the idea of performing a 'Jericho walk' near to Bo-Kaap at this time. We got ready to pray up and down Buitengracht Street along the border of Bo-Kaap on six days and seven times on the seventh day. On one of these prayer walks we were joined by Andy and Lizelle Draai. Subsequently the couple became the pastoral leaders of the City Bowl Church when it became a congregation of the Every Nation denomination. Prayer Warriors Invade Chambers of Government Other interesting things had also been happening at the Cape. Around Pentecost 2007 I joined Wim Ferreira and a few other prayer warriors including Pastor Barry Isaacs in the ACDP board room at the Cape Metropolitan Civic Centre every Friday. Barry Isaacs had just become the new co-ordinator of Transformation Africa as successor of Graham Power. This enhanced his position as a widely respected Church leader country-wide. (Before this, he had already been on the executive of the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) and The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa (TEASA). The Lord put the unity of the Body of Christ on our prayer agenda once again Once again, the Lord put the unity of the Body of Christ on our prayer agenda. We continued to try to get Capetonian believers to pray together. We deemed this an important step towards the revival we were yearning for. Prayer meetings started in October 2007 at the Uni-City Council Chambers on the third Saturday morning of every month at 5.30h. (The starting time was later changed to 6 a.m. and to the last Saturday of each month.) There we experienced wonderful answers to prayer again and again. At one of these occasions, the lack of the availability of the Civic Centre Banqueting Hall for a combined prayer event on Ascension Day 20008 touched Advocate Peter Williams, the secretary of the Provincial Parliament. He promptly extended a provisional invitation to the group to come and pray there. On 31 May 2008 more than 100 believers gathered in the legislative chamber of the Western Cape for prayer at 6 a.m. Three days later there was a hush, and no mocking, when two Christians shared their biblical convictions at the same venue, as part of normal parliamentary procedure. Peter Williams saw this as a direct result of the united prayer there! A Farmer Became an International Celebrity The biographical film Faith like Potatoes depicted how Angus Buchan, a Natal farmer, experienced an amazing personal revival. Thereafter he began to impact the lives of many others. His Mighty Men Conferences and other revival events would change thousands of lives in subsequent years. Angus Buchan suggested that change in our country should not come out of the Houses of Parliament but from the kitchens. The daily household events should display the spirit of our Lord. Amazingly, over the weekend of 18 April 2008, 62 000 men attended the Mighty men’s conference with Pastor Angus Buchan. It surely was significant that so many men, hungry for the Lord, were content to stay in tents, after travelling for many hours. They came from all over the country and from as far away as Namibia! The Mighty Men’s Conference was more than merely a ‘flash in the pan.’ The first Mighty Men’s Conference was more than a flash in the pan. Real reconciliation between fathers and sons took place. Fathers and husbands returned home as changed men, and families were restored. This event divinely pre-empted a demonic onslaught on the country via xenophobic violence in May 2008. Pastor Angus Buchan would subsequently become known as an evangelist internationally. In the next chapter we highlight similar spiritual dynamics. We will be taking a few steps back in history to see how things had unfolded at the Cape in particular. 13. A ‘New Thing’ Sprouting Rosemarie and I were experiencing a very traumatic period as a couple due to the tension caused by our new mission leaders. We were personally encouraged by Isaiah 43:18, to forget the past and to expect a ‘new thing’ that had been sprouting. During the first term of 2006 a young Operation Mobilization (OM) missionary started to serve more closely with us. Occasionally he joined us in outreach in the township Parkwood. He also had a longing to minister to foreigners. In the course of looking for a neutral venue where we could assist the sojourners from other countries with English lessons, the young colleague suggested that we pop in at the home of Pastor Theo Dennis, one of the OM leaders in the Western Cape. I experienced a sense of homecoming once again. When Pastor Dennis shared about their ministry in the UK some years ago in Coventry and Bradford called Friends from Abroad, I experienced a sense of home-coming, especially when he mentioned that the group no longer operated in the UK under that name. (Theo Dennis and his family were confined to the UK after OM had decided that people with South African passports were too much of a liability on their ships.) Ever since our return from Holland in 1992, I had been hoping to be a blessing to foreigners coming from other countries as I had been positively impacted overseas. Both Rosemarie and I felt that this was the new thing that had been sprouting, a renewed challenge to get more intensely involved with foreigners. After some collaboration with Theo Dennis, we decided to approach a few City Bowl pastors regarding a common effort. Initial responses were positive when I asked them to pray about possible involvement. We were however wary of getting too excited prematurely. Haven’t we been disappointed more than once when we attempted to get churches of the City Bowl to do something together? Perhaps this was just God’s time. Could the plight of the destitute and exploited foreigners possibly be the trigger to bring about the revival we have been praying for so long? Next to Straatwerk, only one church sent two females for this venture. We formalised the ministry, starting a non-profit organisation that we gave the name Friends from Abroad. Our attempt to reach out lovingly to foreigners who had come to the Cape, brought matters to a head in WEC International. Our newly elected national mission leaders could not accept our vision of the combination of reaching out to Cape Muslims and stronger involvement with foreigners. Prayer at the University of Cape Town From 2006 young people from different churches, backgrounds and cultures in the Rondebosch area came together to ‘simply’ worship once a quarter. In mid-2006 a Simply Worship service was held in the Jameson Hall of the University of Cape Town (UCT). There our son Sam was challenged to go and pray at UCT. About ten people came to him afterwards, indicating their interest in joining him. They started meeting together to spend time in worship and intercession on a weekly basis, but they also spent much personal time with God in the prayer room at UCT. Eventually they organised an event. They decorated the prayer room and encouraged people to worship God, using their creative gifts. The students prayed continuously for 77 hours, leading to the next Simply Worship evening. Somalians Killed in Masiphumelele While we were in Holland in 2006, we could read about many Somalians who were being killed in the township of Masiphumelele near Fish Hoek. This was because of xenophobia towards them by the Xhosa-speaking original inhabitants, fanned by the traders. We heard how Alan Profitt, a SIM missionary colleague, and Sheralyn Thomas, an UCT student, the daughter of John and Avril Thomas whom I knew from my service with CCFM till 2004, were involved with negotiations between the two groups. We were hoping that could still function with our ‘new thing’, the new umbrella NPO Friends from Abroad, under the auspices of WEC International. We remained committed to operate in a positive frame of mind until the end of July 2007, while we prayed for clarity about what God had in store for us. We were sure that our ministry in Cape Town had not been completed yet. We sensed that God was possibly using the personal trauma to shake us towards flexibility for change. Empowering People from the Nations It was with great excitement that we heard the news that Floyd and Sally McClung were coming to the Cape with the vision to ‘establish a training and outreach community in Cape Town that impacts Africa from Cape Town to Cairo’ and also ‘for a multi-cultural community that exemplifies the kingdom of God.’ We also wanted to see countries outside of Africa impacted from Cape Town. Getting the vision across to local Christians and pastors, remained however a big challenge. Long before the official inauguration on 17 February 2007, one of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad (FFA) which Rosemarie and I had started before we left for Europe in 2006, was fortnightly sessions of fellowship, Bible Study and prayer. We did this with a few Uighur believers from China, as well as other Asians. The philosophy of FFA is to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, just as I had been impacted while I was in exile in Holland. A Supplement to our FFA Philosophy We resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. (In 1995 he initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten-Forty Outreach.) We thought that his ministry could be a valuable complement to our Friends from Abroad concept - to bless expatriate Christians and empower them to be a blessing in and for their own countries. Through Pastor Theo Dennis we got linked to Ds. Richard Verreyne, pastor of the Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk in Parow. Pastor Deon Malan and his wife Iona, a couple with mission experience in North Africa and our YWAM colleague Rochelle Smetherham-Malachowski became members of our core team of Friends from Abroad (FFA). Together we started free English lessons for refugees and other foreigners at the church in Parow. It was an added blessing that we had a short-term missionary from Germany to help us keep the children of the refugee ladies busy in a good way. This was a forerunner of a weekly children’s club at the same venue with refugee-related and local children. The FFA compassionate outreach to foreigners soon included a jewellery workshop for refugee ladies, the bulk of them Muslims. This helped them to have some income. Our daughter Tabitha not only assisted there with the children, but she also kept the ministry running all on her own - long after the German short termer had returned to her home country. A jewellery workshop for refugee ladies, to help them earn a few cents and teach English to quite a few of them, was part and parcel of the FFA compassionate outreach to foreigners. Our involvement at the Parow church opened the rather conservative Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk for subsequent fruitful ministry to foreigners, including regular French services. Back to the Land of the Living In 20??, Pastor Bruce van Eeden had to be taken from the wreck of a car after a collision in rural Rwanda the course of the TFO ministry (??) in Africa. It was a terminal situation, along with another person for whom there was medically speaking no hope. He noticed in his semi-conscious condition how female believers stood around them, praying. Thereafter he was put into a wheel chair. That was the last thing he remembered before he 'regained consciousness' amid a big commotion. In the meantime the news was relayed that a 'foreign missionary' was killed in a car accident. To all and sundry this could only have been an America When he in the rural hospital there was a. He had been 'dead' to all intents and purposes. Through the prayers that had been Later the same day he was 'discharged' from the rural hospital because they did not expect him to survive. He was taken to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, from where a decision about the body of the possibly 'deceased' missionary would have to be taken When the news arrived there, a high ranking police officer, a believer, indicated that if any care was needed for the foreign missionary, he would take responsibility for it at their home. Ps. Bruce recuperated there until he was strong enough to be flown to Cape Town. God obviously had more things for Ps. Bruce van Eeden and the Evangelical Mission Church to accomplish in His Kingdom ministry, notably with an annual TFO prayer event at Cape Agulhas towards the end of each year. Throwing the Net to the Other Side? Another word from Scripture came to the fore in the last quarter of 2006. We felt challenged to throw the net ‘to the other side’. But what would this imply? Ds. Richard Verreyne invited us to a meeting of the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in February 2007 with Floyd McClung as one of the speakers. At the meeting in the New Life Vineyard Church of Pinelands we set up an appointment with Floyd. This ultimately led to our joining All Nations International. A Pyrrhic Victory? The gay lobby showed exceptional efficiency during 2006, although the odds were stacked against them to get same sex marriages legalised. Almost all the major religious groups - the spokesman for the SACC as the lonely exception – as well as traditional leaders, came out against a proposed law that had no scriptural and popular backing. Very cleverly the gay lobby played their joker - the card of discrimination - which in South Africa found very eager and sensitive ears, because of the heritage of apartheid. They managed to get the ANC, which had a massive majority in Parliament, on their side probably with effective use of bribes. (Subsequently it became increasingly clear that interest groups would buy influence via bribes and support, e.g. through substantial gifts to help the ruling party at election time. The issue became quite a hot potato in the run-up to the 2009 elections when the Dalai Lama had been refused a visa as a result of the prior financial support of the Chinese government. Already under President Mbeki the government had moved ideologically very close to the People's Republic of China.) Our blessed ministry in a clothing factory was impacted through negatively because it was forced to close along with a few other related ones in the area because of the cheap imports from that country. Evangelical Christians had organised very well under the leadership of the Marriage Alliance, but they could never win without the backing of the ruling ANC. The law allowing same sex marriages took effect on 1 December 2006. The open question was whether the gay victory was Pyrrhic. On face value it was a rather worthless piece of legislation. Surprisingly, the lobby for alternative life-styles became increasingly influential subsequently. Crime and Violence Spiralled Again In Parliament Rev. Kenneth Meshoe, the leader of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), warned that the country was invoking God’s wrath through the passing of this law. This seemed to get a prophetic dimension when crime and violence spiralled in the first two months of 2007, despite the vitriolic assurance by State President Mbeki that crime was not out of control. On the flip side, this seemed to be God’s way of stirring thousands to prayer. God raised people to pray for the removal of an abomination It was good to hear soon thereafter that God had already raised individuals like Cedric Evertson, to pray for the removal of the gruwel, the abomination, as this prayer warrior dubbed the new law. When only Murray Bridgman was there alone with me on Signal Hill for our monthly prayer event of 2 December 2006, I was initially somewhat disappointed. We were in the clouds, but not in a pleasant way literally. It was cold and wet. Murray had so much wanted to introduce me to Cedric! A mobile phone call brought Cedric to join us for prayer, simply sitting in the car. How exciting it was to hear from Cedric how the Lord had been leading him. The Holy Spirit touched his heart to stand in the gap like a Moses on behalf of the nation. To this end he would go to Tygerberg - man alone - to pray there in the morning, three days a week. Two homosexual international leaders - one lesbian and the other 'gay' - turned their back on the movement in 2007 after becoming followers of Jesus Christ. The gay victory to get same-sex marriages legalized in December 2006, seemed to have become Pyrrhic indeed. Many years later, it had, however, become rather unlikely for the law to be repealed in a climate of political correctness. Divine intervention seems to have become necessary to get biblically untenable laws scrapped. It is much more difficult than the abohorrent apartheid laws that had at least been outlwed internationally. Starting to Feed Refugees After aprayer session at the Foreshore Home Affairs offices on Friday 13 April 2007, we decided to start feeding the refugees and other foreigners once a week, liaising with Straatwerk and local churches. This looked to me another wonderful opportunity to get local churches involved in a combined effort to express the unity of the Body of Christ. With Straatwerk we networked wonderfully, and from the churches’ side the German Stadtmission became involved with two volunteers. By July 2007 it had been confirmed for us that it was time to move on. We resigned from WEC International. 14. New Church Planting Experience Rosemarie and I had been encouraged by the arrival of Floyd and Sally McClung at the end of 2006, especially because we detected kindred spirits when we were reading about their reason for coming to the Cape. We endeavoured to see a church planting movement established among those foreigners who had been coming to the Mother City of our country. We longed intensely for the metropolis to become the Father's City. Disasters Shake Young Christians Towards the end of our stay in Germany in July 2007, where we had gone for the wedding of our eldest son Danny, we received an email from Sam, our son, who had returned from Germany earlier than us. The subject of the email was ‘Pray!’. Sam shared that Rüdiger (Rudi) Hauser, his close German friend who had gone to Austria to study, had been killed in a mountain cabin with some friends the day before, when a gas explosion collapsed the house. Rudi and another friend died on impact. The incident shook Sam very intensely. He had been leading the Bible group at the German High School with Rudi. Students were moved to contribute sacrificially towards a deposit for a children’s home. At a ‘Simply Worship’ event shortly hereafter, independently of each other, the Holy Spirit ministered to Sam and Brendan Studti, another student friend. A group of UCT students now started to come to our home quite regularly on Fridays hereafter, as they prayed and organised, hoping to establish a children’s home. They were moved to contribute sacrificially, to give savings towards a deposit for this cause. One student put a bequest given to him into the kitty. The dynamic Sheralyn Thomas was one of these students. We were nevertheless quite surprised when Sam blessed us with a gift on Christmas Eve of 2007- wrapped in newspaper and containing a picture of him and Sheralyn!! Joining the Church Planting Experience One thing led to the next until Rosemarie and I joined the Church Planting Experience (CPx) course at the beginning of 2008, with the intention of becoming members of the All Nations International family. (CPx teaches a new dimension of church - whereby simple non-denominational independent fellowships are planted. They attempted to come as closely as possible to the practice of the first generation of ‘New Testament’ followers of Jesus.) Along with our Friends from Abroad colleagues, we now started to partner with local fellowships, to get believers in home groups from the nations equipped, hoping and praying that they would ultimately minister in their countries of origin in a similar way in the future. The 'Ten Days for Jesus' concept had a special sequel when participants started not only to lead the event in the subsequent years, but that also got envisioned to take the concept in different formats to all sorts of places. In 2010 'One Day for Jesus' was held in Masiphumelele, but plans were also made to have 10 'Ten Days for Jesus' in Zambia and India. Fires Ignite Spiritual Renewal Our son Sam invited Floyd McClung to address UCT students. At the end of 2007 - from 10 to 20 December - some UCT students of the 24/7 prayer initiative, including Sammy, engaged in ‘ten days for Jesus’ with All Nations International in the Masiphumelele informal settlement. Young 'White' students assisted admirably to rebuild shacks Their effort had hardly started when a fire raged through the township. When the young people, most of whom were 'White,' assisted admirably to rebuild the shacks, it created a lot of goodwill. This proved the ideal preparation for an international group from McClung and Church Planting Experience (CPx) participants to move into the area at the end of January, 2008. After a lot of spadework by Timothy Dokyong, an All Nations colleague from Nigeria, a house church was started where the students assisted to rebuild shacks. At one of the house churches that was started there in 2008, the most notorious alcoholic of Masiphumelele, who got the nick name Black Label (a liquor brand), was totally changed a few weeks later. The February 2008 CPx All Nations International course had just started when fires destroyed homes in Scarborough and Red Hill, the southern-most communities of the Cape Peninsula. The whole CPx team - ably assisted by local municipalities and other interested parties - got involved in the rebuilding of shacks in the informal settlement of Red Hill. ü Georg Müller Emulated! Sam, Sheralyn, Brendan and their group of UCT students soon found a house for sale in the suburb Diep River that they deemed suitable as a children’s home. We were blessed to witness the purchasing of premises from close by. It could be regarded as an emulation of the 18th century Georg Müller of Bristol, who ran a children’s home without appealing for funds. Nobody outside the close circle of family and friends was allowed to share with others the financial need of just over two million Rand. The students trusted that God would provide the funds. The seller was a believer who supported the cause. He gave the students a new date a few times when the funds for the payments did not come in as the students had hoped. When the Resurrection commemoration of 2008 approached, this was also the final date, after which the students would have forfeited their deposit. Instead of fretting, the students staged a day of worship at the premises a week before the due date, getting it ready for occupation in faith. They trusted God to come through for them. On the Wednesday thereafter one of them received a phone call. Some student colleague who had heard about the children’s home had an uncle in Johannesburg who wanted to donate furniture. This was of course a blessing which the group gladly accepted. When the atheist lawyer arrived there the next day with the donation, he walked around the place. After listening to their plans, he said: 'Here is some special energy at this place, Brendan! I am curious however about how you intend paying for the property.' Brendan shared how they had used their savings plus some donations of Christians and how they were trusting God to see to the rest as well. 'How much do you still owe?', he asked. Jokingly, Brendan replied: ‘Well, we only owe 2.1 million Rand, which is actually due to be paid by Monday.’ The lawyer was in no mood for jokes. He was touched: ‘Listen, Brendan! Tomorrow is my birthday. Already as a child I wanted to contribute towards a children’s home. Please give me the bank details!’ The Tuesday after Resurrection Sunday the full amount owed was in the bank account of the seller of the house! Outreach in a Redhill Shebeen The compassionate outreach in a Redhill shebeen, an informal liquor outlet, led to regular Bible Studies. Matters accelerated even more when the group was joined by another CPx colleague Godfrey Mosobase, a Lesotho national. To Rose McKenna, who had attended a Jerusalem-Africa summit in June 2006, the Israeli offer of expertise - rather than funding - had made a big impact. When funds were not forthcoming, she enquired from a Community developer what would be needed for her to share the expertise which she had gained 50 years ago in the then Northern Rhodesia, now called Zambia. Moshe Ledermann, a Jewish expert, felt that a piece of ground the size of a rugby pitch would be a good start. Because fires had decimated the squatter camp, and because the Zimbabwean refugees were housed there, they immediately went to meet the CPx volunteers. Soon McKenna linked up with the Red Hill CPx team led by Alex and Joanna Campbell, a British couple. There Rose was blessed when she discovered that her friends from Zimbabwe had been allotted a piece of ground at their shacks, where she could help them grow vegetables. (For two years Rose and two of her Zimbabwean friends had been searching around the Peninsula for the required ground.) CPx volunteers lived in the shack of a prison inmate Together with three short term CPx volunteers, the American couple Nic and Paula Watts, and another American, Liana Bumstead, the group started a garden. As a witness of God’s love, the CPx volunteers lived in the shack of a Red Hill inhabitant who was in prison. Advocacy for Godly Family Values In a sequel to the 2006 preparation to the law to legalise same sex marriages, evangelical spokesperson and advocate for a biblical stance on Homosexuality, Pastor Errol Naidoo, left the pastorate at His People Church to launch the Family Policy Institute (FPI). On 15 May 2008 the agency took occupancy of its new headquarters at Parliament Chambers, 49 Parliament Street, Cape Town. This was as near to Parliament as one could wish, just outside the gates of Parliament. FPI set out to primarily serve the Body of Christ, to ensure it fulfils its Biblical mandate to be 'salt and light' in society. To this end, weekly newsletters and a TV programme 'Watchmen on the Wall' valiantly implemented this goal down the years, opposing the distortion and lies of the mainstream media. In 2009 the FPI newsletter exposed the blaspheming of the name of Jesus Christ in the despicable cartoons of the UCT rag magazine Sax Appeal and Ps. Naidoo and his FPI played a big role in defeating the attempt of Dstv and TopTV to launch 24 hour porn channels and leading the public campaign to decriminalize prostitution for the World Cup in 2010. A major milestone was FPI's submission on adult prostitution to the SA Law Reform Commission (SALRC). Ultimately the SALRC agreed with FPI's conclusions that prostitution must not be decriminalized in the country, making this recommendation to government. The vast expansion of the internet and availability of pornography on cell phones would in due course marginalize the effect of FPI, but Errol Naidoo and his team continued to fight valiantly for Godly families and biblical values. A Visible Expression of Christian Unity? The Lord put the need for a public demonstration of the unity of the Body of Christ quite strongly on my heart again in 2009. I hoped to see believers unite with the possible renaming of 'Devil's Peak', linking with Pastor Barry Isaacs and Murray Bridgman, a local advocate. Advocate Bridgman had been praying with us at different venues over a number of years. Taking supernatural activity as a premise, we suspected that satan would not let a revival take off without a good fight. 'Devil's Peak' – historically linked to the corrupt rule of Willem Adriaan van der Stel at the turn of the 18th century – has been ruling supremely over the Mother City. Jacob Zuma, a rather corrupt ANC politician, had become State President in 2009. That he had been avoiding to face criminal charges of corruption was widely known. The charges against him had been set aside irrationally, possibly through the aid of his special connections and bribes. That would haunt the country throughout his presidency. Wide-scale xenophobia, the fear of other African foreigners, had not only brought the country to the brink of wide-spread civil unrest in 2008, but the government seemed to be supporting it covertly, notably at the Department of Home Affairs with the maltreatment and discrimination of refugees from African countries. Widespread township violence kept simmering after slowing down intermittently. Farm murders was another issue which reared its head significantly. Prayer Outreach By 2010 we had been praying for Bo-Kaap for many years. Blair Carlson, the director of the Lausanne III Conference, got accommodation at Mesopotamia Place in Leeuwen Street for him and his family. They came to prepare the global event at the International Convention Centre a few months before the conference, and they were due to live there for a few months thereafter. Noting that the venue used by the Lausanne III Conference was more or less equidistant from Sea Point and Bo-Kaap, the respective Cape strongholds of Judaism and Islam, I had hoped that the conference could express some form of regret or even confession for the negative ways in which heretical Christianity had impacted Islam. We prayed that breakthroughs in Sea Point and/or Bo-Kaap might lead to simple house fellowships in these suburbs and lead ultimately also to reconciliation under the Cross. We perceived this as something that could send ripples to the rest of the continent, from Cape Town to Jerusalem. We even hoped that it would ultimately trigger a spiritual revival. Dreams and visions of various believers encouraged us to prod on. Our prayers in this regard were not visibly answered, but years later one could read diversely how God used that conference to influence matters elsewhere. (One of these effects is the impact on cities, as you can read in one of the appendices.) World Cup Outreach The football World Cup of 2010 afforded us a unique opportunity to touch the nations. The event was another vehicle to reach out to many juveniles who knew very little about the Gospel before that event. During a visit to our own children in the UK prior to that, we had been inspired by OM missionary colleagues who operated there with a literature table. Ahead of the global event we procured hundreds of tracts in different languages. We finally received permission to set up a literature table on Green Market Square. We also had many copies made of More than Dreams, a DVD that God had been using to speak to many Muslims around the world. This DVD contains the dramatized testimonies in five different languages with English subtitles. (Prior to the big event, copies of the More than Dreams DVD had been dubbed into French and Arabic.) One of the highlights of our World Cup outreach was the day when Algeria played in Cape Town. On the day that their national team played here, we distributed many DVD copies to the Algerian fans who were quite conspicuous in their green and white attire. What made this outreach very special was that our missionary colleague Rochelle Smetherham, on a visit during 'home assignment', bumped into a Syrian national in Washington D.C. in 2012. The person reacted excitedly when she saw a copy of the More than Dreams DVD. The Syrian wondered whether this was the same DVD about which Algerians were raving! Another evangelistic attempt targeted the North Koreans who also played in Cape Town. The hostess of our church home ministry group, Amanda Nkhosi, held a top position in the Cape Tourism industry. She had access to people who organised the accommodation of the various teams. Through Amanda Nkhosi we found out where the North Koreans were accommodated. At that time, we had a (South) Korean language student living with us. She had come to faith in the Lord here in Cape Town through the loving outreach of a Chinese-background short term missionary colleague from the US. The student was attending a Korean congregation where she was involved in ministry to children. We procured Korean Bibles through that fellowship. After a number of phone calls, we succeeded in getting the Bibles to the hotel in the suburb Newlands where the North Koreans were lodging. At the end of their stay we fetched the remainder of the Bibles. Using our Open Doors contacts, these Bibles were couriered to North Korea, an extremely closed communist country in respect of the Gospel. Is it too outrageous to hope that we might still hear some day how one or more of these Bibles impacted North Koreans? Dreams of a Man in White After the World Cup we continued with weekly outreach every Thursday at the Central Methodist Church on Green Market Square. We had been very much encouraged during the World Cup to use the More than Dreams DVD. We interacted with traders in the city and elsewhere, trying to find out whether any of them could possibly be open to the Gospel. It had become well known that many Muslims had become followers of Jesus, after having seen a man in white in a dream. It didn’t pan out for us in a similar way, but it did give us quite a lot of encouragement. (In one case Rosemarie bumped into the leader of an expatriate community in Cape Town who had three dreams of Jesus.) In another scenario, a young man with a dream of Jesus became part of a chain reaction that saw another African trader ultimately prepare for ministry in North Korea. (The latter trader had been impacted at the Cape via English lessons and subsequent attendance of our Discovery Bible Study group.) Treasure Hunting We had heard from different sources of a new method of evangelisation called Treasure Hunting. In August 2011, when a Dutch missionary occasionally joined our bead workshop with refugee ladies, we decided to get some teaching about it. After two training sessions, we started applying some of the teaching and began to do Treasure Hunting. We would have some exceptional experiences in the course of the next few months doing this. We were not at all surprised that we met folk from Bo-Kaap 'by chance' in the city from time to time, as some of our 'treasures'. Treasure Hunting gave us such fun as we evangelised. We used this especially when groups came to join us, such as those who came from overseas through the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) base in Muizenberg. A Cloud Over Ministry The intense involvement of Muslims in illicit drug peddling frequently had a connection to gangsterism. In 1992 we were involved in a fairly successful response to the gangster violence through Operation Hanover Park in a networking effort of local churches. All too often, the gang lords were Muslims. Many a businessman with collar and tie was a co-religionist who plied the same trade. The Cape Peace Initiative of the late 1990s possibly had the biggest impact of all peace accords with gang leaders. It became the divine instrument that ultimately marginalised PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs). Simultaneously this period catapulted Rashied Staggie, a drug lord, into prominence. The late Rashied Staggie became the proverbial ‘Achilles Heel’ of gangster conversions. So many gangsters returned to their previous lifestyle after their parole or discharge from prison. Staggie had become quite an embarrassment to Church folk after he had been paraded publicly – possibly prematurely – as a sort of trophy at the big Newlands Stadium event of March 2001. After he was finally set free from prison on parole, he displayed no remorse nor did he become positively involved with Christians, although Pastor Ivan Waldeck, a former gang leader from Hanover Park, assisted him with employment. The links to drug peddling continued to play a role in the background of many township pastors. When the locally produced drug called ‘Tik’ (crystal methamphetamine) swept across the Cape Peninsula, causing great devastation among the youth, we attempted to revive Operation Hanover Park. (The drug had been virtually unknown as late as 2003.) This attempt was seriously impeded when it became known that certain pastors were on the payroll of drug lords. The link between township pastors and drug-related activity, along with back slidden drug addicts, would remain a weak point. This hung like a cloud over wonderful ministry and victories in the outreach to gangsters and other criminals in prisons. The fanfare around the glamorous funeral of Rashied Staggie after his gang-related assassination in London Road, Salt River on 21 December could not patch up this sad situation. This was the same street where his twin brother was publicly executed, albeit that it was a dual Christian occasion at the nearby Jubilee Church in Observatory and on a sports field in Manenburg where Pastors Ivan Waldecck and Eric Hofmeyer officiated. At the latter venue a few thousand inhabitants came to pay the last respects to their controversial icon. The younger brother Sollie, who had also grown up in Manenberg, more than redeemed the family legacy with committed service after his release from prison in 2015 serving especially in the ministry of The World Needs a Father. Taxi Violence Addressed. Another challenge for the churches and the community was taxi violence. Pastor Bongani Mgayi of Glory Manifest Church organised a reconciliation and repentance prayer meeting in Philippi on 5 November 2011. The meeting was well attended by Christians, leaders and pastors from Crossroads and all over Cape Town and beyond. Adriaan Vlok, an apartheid era Minister of Law and Order, attended the meeting and addressed the elders and community of Crossroads. He asked for forgiveness for all the atrocities and hurt caused by the apartheid government. He then asked to wash the feet of the elders from the community and the taxi leaders. At the meeting, Mrs Meme, a retired school principal who had been forcibly moved to Old Crossroads in the 1970s by the apartheid regime, told her story after hearing Mr Vlok. She was relieved. She had always yearned in her heart to face the ‘White’ people who had caused her and her family so much pain. Afterwards, months of prayer services and meetings were held privately. A structure was set up by the two taxi associations, CATA and CODETA, to self-regulate the industry and to work towards unity and peace. In July 2021 the same two taxi associations aggravated a tense situation in the country after looting and burning of shops created mayhem in Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng. The Western Cape had been spared all this when the taxi dispute prevented thousands of commuters to have transport to and from their places of employment. 15. Christians Respond to Xenophobia During our outreach at the Foreshore Home Affairs offices, we soon heard from our contacts among the refugee foreigners whom we served with sandwiches and at our bead workshop at the Discipling House of the intense corruption there. The practices there would ultimately permeate almost every sector of the government. But we did make a serious effort to combat what was happening there. We terminated our 'feeding scheme' when the refugees were served at new Home Affairs premises in Nyanga. But the question was: When should we throw our nets out again? And what was ‘the other side’? We grappled with these questions, praying that clarity would soon come. Opposing Xenophobia and Corruption When Mr Mvuso Msimang became the new national Director of Home Affairs, a government department that was notorious for corruption, much was expected of him because he was known to have engineered wonders at the revenue sector, another government department. When it came to our attention that Mr Msimang humbly invited people on grassroots level via national TV to assist, I volunteered on behalf of Friends from Abroad. In a series of emails, I repeated our wish to meet him or a representative to give some suggestions on how we think matters could be improved. We gladly endorsed the vision to oppose xenophobia and to fight corruption We were subsequently invited to meet Ms. Martha Mxagashe, the new Acting Home Affairs Provincial Manager of the Western Cape. We gladly endorsed her vision to see the Western Cape take the lead countrywide to oppose xenophobia and fight corruption. Linking up with Braam Hanekom, who had started PASSOP (People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty) and other refugee stakeholders, we attempted to address the situation at the Home Affairs offices. At that time, the Department of Home Affairs processed only 20 asylum applications daily, while 600 to 2,000 refugees camped outside the department in a queue. We were initially quite frustrated by the reaction to our suggestions to bring down the backlog of asylum seekers - a situation caused by corruption and inefficiency. We were thankful when the national head office sent Mr. Dean Pillay to come and assist with this task. How we rejoiced when corruption at the expense of the refugees seemed to have been given a massive blow within a matter of months. A Zimbabwean Refugee Dying of Starvation In the Weekend Argus of November 3, 2007 it was reported that a Zimbabwean refugee died of starvation on the streets of the Cape Town CBD. The death of Adonis Musati ignited a flood of goodwill. Gahlia Brogneri, an Italian-background Christian, became God’s instrument to launch the Adonis Musati Project. Through this endeavour, she started to care for the refugees outside the Foreshore premises of the Department of Home Affairs’in a holistic way. (We had been feeding foreigners there in the preceding months once a week, attempting to get local churches involved. In our case, we had little success in getting other City fellowships interested.) Gahlia got many volunteers involved in the Adonis Musati Project, also assisting the refugees in finding accommodation and employment. They also helped to get people on training courses that included security and fishing. Corruption Flares Up Again The satisfaction to see corruption all but stamped out at the Cape Town Home Affairs offices was short-lived and replaced by sadness and anger. Dean Pillay had hardly turned his back, leaving Home Affairs to take up a vocational position outside of government, when corruption flared up once again. Within weeks it was worse than ever before. We battled in vain a few weeks later to try and assist someone to get refugee status. In that case it was the obvious result of corruption at the Nyanga Home Affairs Refugee Centre. I was so sad that things had deteriorated such a lot since March 2008 when we thought that the corruption and the duping of the destitute and hapless refugees at the Home Affairs offices had been stamped out. A Special Spiritual Victory But there were also spiritual victories. One of them happened when I was called in because a refugee lady from Burundi had collapsed at our bead workshop.( On two days a week Rosemarie and her volunteer helpers were running a small workshop to enable a few refugee ladies to put some food on the table of their families.A year prior to this occurrence the lady had been one of my English learners.) I took her to Somerset Hospital where she was admitted and treated for about a week. After her improvement and discharge she was taken to relatives to recuperate. When however some medical backlash occurred, the relative deemed it fit to involve a sangoma, a witchdoctor. Hereafter she became completely insane. She had to be taken to a mental clinic in Stikland in the extreme northern suburbs of the city. From the mental clinic she was transferred to the psychiatric ward at Tygerberg Hospital where she was soon regarded as terminal. Family members started with preparations to take her body to Burundi for the funeral there. We discerned that we now had an extreme case of spiritual warfare. After a day of prayer and fasting we took along Arsene Kamptoe, our All Nations colleague with us. There in in Tygerberg Hospital he led all of us in prayer for divine intervention in the name of Jesus. The terminal patient recovered dramatically as a trophy of God’s grace She not only recovered dramatically as a trophy of God’s grace, but she also returned to the workshop a few weeks later. Volunteers Attacked by Xenophobic South Africans With the 2008 winter approaching, the homeless people living near to the (former) Home Affairs premises on the Cape Town foreshore near to the International Convention Centre did not have adequate shelter. Lili Goldberg, a 16 year-old St Cyprian’s High School Jewish learner and her mother, brought bags full of clothes and shoes to the Home Affairs refugees on May 9, 2008. There the two volunteers of the Adonis Musati Project were suddenly attacked by xenophobic South Africans. Lili was in the back of their 4x4 vehicle, passing clothes and shoes, when a group of ten South African men approached her mother from behind, hitting her. Then they smashed the window, trying to drag Lili through it. She was very badly injured and was subsequently hospitalized for weeks. Mrs Goldberg remained determined however to continue with their humanitarian effort. Xenophobic Mob Violence Spreads Like Wildfire This Cape occurrence turned out to be yet another forerunner of countrywide xenophobic mob violence. Within a matter of days the mob violence had spread countrywide. On Wednesday 21 May, 2008 mayhem also broke out in the Western Cape. Greater carnage was possibly prevented because the police commissioner of the Province had beckoned all stakeholders and station commanders to the police Headquarters in Bishop Lavis Township the previous day, setting up contingency plans. Thousands of Black foreigners were displaced In spite of determined efforts by the police, it took days until the situation calmed down. However, by that time thousands of Black foreigners were displaced. Many of their shops were destroyed and looted by criminal elements and other poor folk who exploited the anarchic situation. We were very sad to hear and read of mob violence and xenophobic behaviour in Masiphumelele and Ocean View, where our All Nations colleagues had been serving. Philoxenia and Compassion Ushered in On Friday 23 May 2008, I wrote in an email to our prayer friends: ‘This is not only a matter for political activists. May I suggest that we … protest in the best sense of the Latin root word: pro testare - to make a positive statement. Let us replace xenophobia with xenophilia (The word should have been philoxenia, but still meaning love for strangers. This is the word that has usually been translated in the ‘New Testament’ with hospitality.) . At this time our CPx colleague Timothy Dokyong from Nigeria, who lived in Masiphumelele, was inundated with phone calls from concerned colleagues. He felt quite safe there as South African 'Blacks' from the neighbourhood rallied around him, promising to protect him. Soon he joined a number of Malawian and Zimbabwians from Masiphumelele in the team house in the nearby 'White' suburb of Capri. There they engaged in intensive intercession for ‘Masi’ and all the people living there. Churches Respond with Compassion Was all this the forerunner of the revival for which believers have been waiting for years? This seemed very much the case when the Lord gave Rosemarie a picture at our home church in our Discipling House on Saturday evening, May 24, 2008. (Some of the congregants were refugees from African countries). She saw a big clay jar with a handle that was being filled with the tears of the refugees. Adjacent to the jar there was dry arid earth with many cracks. Thereafter a big hand poured out the content of the jar on the dry earth. The moisture coming from the jar – the many tears that had been flowing all over our country, including those of the refugees among us, filled the cracks. Grass started sprouting all around the area. Churches and mosques opened their doors to displaced Africans Within a matter of hours the vision became alive when reports came in of South Africans donating food, clothing and blankets. Churches and mosques were opening their doors to displaced Africans. The government dropped their resistance to accommodate the refugees in mass quarters temporarily. Many of the displaced folk were taken to the Youngsfield military camp in Wynberg, to mass beach camps erected at Blue Waters (near to Strandfontein), at Silwerstroom (near to Atlantis) and to a camp apiece at Soetwater (near to Cape Point) and Harmony Park. Big marquees were erected at these sites to deal with the emergency. Personally all this was very special to us. In 2006 and 2007, when many tears were wetting our pillows, the Lord had been comforting us with Isaiah 43:18 and 19. Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will sprout … I will even make … rivers in the desert. There had been various prophecies for the continent over the years. (Prophecies might still sound strange to some people in our day and age. I include a few of these prophecies in the appendix.) The Country Brought to its Knees Satan may however have overstepped once again. The xenophobic mob violence brought the country to its knees. A call for prayer was issued, requesting all denominations and Christian organisations to pray on Sunday, 25 May, 2008 and in the weeks to follow, for the ethnic violence to stop. A suggestion was added to these prayers, intercession for the near-genocide situation in the neighbouring country of Zimbabwe. There was now a groundswell of goodwill towards displaced foreigners In the next few days we were elated to hear of compassionate action by Christians, churches and individuals, indicating that there was now a groundswell of goodwill towards the displaced foreigners all around the country. At a Consultation of Christian Churches planning meeting on 31 May 2008 in Parow, it was exciting to hear how various concerned pastors enquired how they could join in compassionate action on behalf of the displaced foreigners. Among those attending the meeting there was Anglican Catholic Bishop Alan Kenyon, who would play a special role in countering xenophobia in subsequent years. Stolen Goods Returned The township Masiphumelele was a big exception countrywide, not caught up in and affected by xenophobic mass hysteria. The spade work of Christian mediators and workers since August 2006, along with the prayers of believers in the All Nations International team house in Capri, was bearing fruit. When signs of trouble began there, many foreigners started leaving the township. Pastor Mzuvukile Nikelo, a physically small pastor, decided to tie a loudspeaker to his car. Driving up and down the streets he announced: ‘As leaders of the community we have made a clear decision. We are not attacking anyone... If you see people leaving, don’t make any bad remarks and don’t intimidate them. Let them go in peace.’ The situation in Masiphumelele became national news when stolen goods were returned to the owners. The Xhosa-speakers drafted a declaration, asking for forgiveness, inviting their fellow Africans to return to the township. Youth Day Celebrations address Xenophobia Every year on the 16th of June, which is a public holiday, South Africans celebrate what the youth of 1976 had done for the educational system of our country. The YWAM-related Beautiful Gate workers in Philippi and Lower Crossroads decided to have their celebrations in a church hall at Philippi, where they had drama, music and dance performances, along with poetry recitals. Their focus on that day was on issues that are faced by young people at schools and in their communities. Their skits addressed the violence at schools, as well as the widespread xenophobia. Another chance to be given to people such as ex-convicts They hoped to teach the community folk to give people such as ex-convicts who have changed, another chance. These ex-convicts would then be required to practise restitution in the communities. The aim was to get the youth talking about these issues and look for possible solutions, also educating them on the effects these matters have on the next generation. Young people from different communities (Philippi, Lower Crossroads, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and Crossroads) congregated, enjoying themselves, without the influence of alcohol and drugs. Parents and kids witnessed and appreciated the performances. The CCC Response Our relationship to Ds. Richard Verreyne, a FFA board member, gave us a close link to the CCC (Consultation of Christian Churches) executive. The CCC Leaders’ Forum released a statement to the press regarding the xenophobia and violence on behalf of the Church in the Western Cape. The Leaders Forum called on all Christians to pray for the situation in our city and country. All Christians were urged to pray for two minutes every day at noon for peace in the communities; that all people’s dignity might be respected and restored. Some believers put a reminder into their cellphones to this effect. A concrete result of the xenophobia issue was the formation of a think tank to work at a plan and set up structures by which the combined Church could assist the government. Tim Makamu, a leading pastor of His People Ministries and Barry Isaacs - who had just accepted taking over the coordination of the Transformation network from Graham Power - were the main pivots of this initiative. Along with our own interest and work with foreigners, it was natural that I got involved as well. We decided to investigate how the Church could supply capacity and integrity which the government lacked. A plan was devised to give a menu to communities where pastors and community workers would network in 18 areas where we felt that the Church could give valuable assistance. This was however subsequently only implemented in the Helderberg area. Modern Jihad Methods At an Islamic conference in Abuja, Nigeria, a new strategy was set out to bring Africa into the Islamic fold. Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa would be targeted as strategic countries in the West, East and South of the African continent. Somalians brought a new version of jihad into play in 2009. Pirates extorted millions of dollars as ransom from ships with valuable cargo on board that were sailing past their coastline. The revenue was partly used for Islamic expansion in Kenya, e.g. for the building of mosques in that country. In Nigeria churches were burned and strife was stirred up between Christians and Muslims. Around the centrally situated city Jos, retaliation of a few Christians played into the hands of Islamists, leading to the killing of hundreds of Christians. At the Cape Islam expanded quietly, e.g. through the use of petrodollars and the flexing of economic muscles. In the Gatesville-Rylands residential area the Muslims already boasted the biggest mosque at the Cape and a massive Islamic educational institution. The minute Christian presence took a big blow when the former manse of the Indian Reformed Church was bought up by Muslims. On another page, Somalians bought up shops, also penetrating into the CBD of the metropolis. Xenophobia Increasing Again On Wednesday 19 May 2010 Rosemarie came back from their bead jewellery workshop, sharing that her African ladies said almost in unison that xenophobia is increasing once again. They had even been harassed in trains and threatened. They would be attacked and killed after the Football World Cup. This was scary stuff. I was reminded how the bishop of Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu warned the government of the day in vain of the anger amongst the youth in 1976. The warning was not heeded at that time, leading subsequently to the tragic Soweto massacre of learners. I immediately took the message to the opening of the Global Day of Prayer Conference in the Cape Town Convention Centre on 19 May 2010, sharing it with Barry Isaacs. I was thankful to hear that a TV report mentioned that these threats were also uttered in other parts of the country. In answer to prayer and due to the alert and persistent actions of Anglican Catholic Bishop Alan Kenyon, the threat could be defused. He got the task force of President Zuma involved. Foreigners supplied the number plates of three cars that disseminated inciting pamphlets in the 'Black' townships. These cars could be tracked to addresses in Grassy Park. This was possibly another PAGAD-related attempt to destabilize the country towards preparing the soil for an Islamic jihad. New Outreach to Somalians The biggest ministry challenge for us was always the outreach to Somalians of whom the biggest concentration in our country is in the suburb Bellville. In 2010 there were an estimated 20,000 Somalians. The African Islamic Propagation Centre is also situated in Bellville near to the station in the same complex. Aware that a breakthrough among the Somalians in Bellville could make an international impact with a snowball effect, we were always careful not to rush things. To get the Christians in Bellville towards some semblance of unity proved to be quite a challenge, just as it remained a big problem to see something similar happening in the City Bowl. In 2009 Emeritus Professor Pieter Els held a seminar on Muslim Evangelism at the DRC Church of Bellville West where his son Johan was a minister, at which I was invited to share. This led in turn to a teaching series on Muslim Evangelism in conjunction with Metro Evangelical Services (MES), led by his daughter-in-law Ilse. We included practical outreach on the last Friday of every month into the area that had almost completely become Somalian residentially and in other ways. Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout of the local Wynstok congregation joined with a few congregants. This resulted in an outreach by the fellowship to the Somali community, using soccer as a tool to forge friendships and a closer relationship with the Wynstok fellowship. That congregation retained their love and interest in the Somalians ever since. In 2017 a link to new Operation Mobilization missionaries could be forged in a networking capacity. From 2019, Tertius and various church members started joining us for outreach on many a Thursday at the Methodist Church on Green Market Square, praying there with many a visitor. We had to terminate this outreach in 2020 when hundreds of refugees came they under false pretences, hoping that the UN would help to get them to a third country like Canada or Australia. A Church With a Love for Muslims Tertius Bezuidenhout was still a teenager in the 1980s when his uncle, Dr Kosie Booysen??, a medical doctor, returned from his missionary engagement in Zimbabwe. They started praying together for the Muslims in Northern Mozambique. Tertius went to Stellenbosch University for theological studies in 1992, where Johan Els, the son of Professor Pieter Els, was a student colleague. In the mid 1990s Tertius was a speaker at the same occasion where Johaar Viljoen, a converted imam, shared his testimony. They got befriended after which Viljoen impacted Tertius greatly. The cataclysmic event of September the eleventh, 2001 impacted this many people immensely for an interest in Muslims. This included many Afrikaners in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town. After finishing his studies, Tertius served with the Kenridge DRC congregation. Thereafter he started an independent Afrikaans congregation Die Wynstok in Bellville with other believers in 2002. Subsequently he became the pastor. Soon thereafter, a team from this church went to Afghanistan for the first of two prayerful outreaches, with Johaar Viljoen as a member of the team. Soon thereafter a team also went to Pakistan. Subsequently teams would go to Libya, Egypt and Algeria. Prayer was the pivot of all efforts, carried by the fellowship. One day in May 2008, Tertius was asked to lead prayer for the city. As he prepared and meditated the Holy Spirit imprinted the foreigners in our gates on his heart. The very next day a violent xenophobic outbreak erupted in the country against all foreigners. The fellowship understood that they also had to get involved locally, apart from praying for the Muslim world. (By this time there were already many shops in Bellville have been taken over by Somali's and Ethiopians. Die Wynstok congregation members went from shop to shop to offer their support and assistance. They also started organising soccer games against Somalians. Church members also started learning their language.) The African Propagation Centre near to the Bellville station hereafter offered stiff resistance to all their outreach efforts. A prayer room has also been operating for a number of years as one of the powerful tools. When the first new Somali believers needed a venue for their discipling, Die Wynstok afforded practical assistance to missionary workers. In recent years congregants starting giving English lessons to Somali women and children in loving outreach to share God's love. Contrition and Remorse At the moving opening ceremony of the Global Day of Prayer Conference on Wednesday 19 May, 2010 the South African flag was nailed to a big cross in a prophetic act. Prior to this, three leaders prayed in repentance and confession respectively on behalf of the Khoi, indigenous people of South Africa, the 'Black' tribes that arrived later in Southern Africa and for the Afrikaners and the other nations who arrived subsequently. The whole evening was bathed in an atmosphere of contrition and remorse. Seed was sown for the spiritual renewal of the African continent, that it might become a light to the nations. A second theme running through the drama on the stage was a fire - revival fire to be lit. Objection to the Presence of Foreigners In due course I took a leading role within the group of those working on behalf of the refugees - more or less by default - along with Braam Hanekom of PASSOP. When local traders objected to the number of foreigners at the new premises in Maitland, I took Ps. Barry Isaacs along, to speak to the main complainant. We managed to negotiate some temporary reprieve. Sadly, some of the agents who started assisting refugees, became corrupt themselves. Our presence was a thron in the flesh, distributing tracts and refreshments. Because we continued to monitor corruption at the Refugee Centre until 2011, we were ultimately prohibited to be on the premises to serve refugees with refreshments at the Home Affairs premises in Maitland. We should have fought that ruling. In no time corruption was back in force, soon worse than before. Devil's Peak to be Renamed? At the beginning of 2011 the possible renaming of 'Devil's Peak' came to the fore once again. With municipal elections due later that year, we did not want the issue to become embroiled in the run-up to the elections. On election day 2011 our small group, Pastor Barry Isaacs, Advocate Murray and I deliberated with Marcel Durler and Maditshaba Moloko who have been joining this group in the meantime. We asked Ps. Barry Isaacs to take the matter to the executive of the Religious Forum for their input. The provincial Heritage Council was initially quite favourable. (We had roped in an academic to provide more research. Dr Ashley Lillie, a historian with a “heritage” perspective, concurred that the peak had previous names like Windberg and Doves’ Peak.) The matter turned out to be quite an intricate issue when Table Mountain was declared one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We knew by then that satanists had vested interests in the retention of the name. The prayer and waiting continued for the renaming of the peak to become a reality. 16. Ministering to Muslims In this chapter we will briefly go back in history, highlighting a few things of what we have shared about ministry to Jews and Muslims at the end of the 20th century. In the mid-1980s, the German missionary Walter Gschwandtner organized believers who prayed in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap, a Muslim dominated suburb of Cape Town just below Signal Hill. The knowledge of these Bo-Kaap prayer meetings got almost lost when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya. Attempting to Turn the Clock Back At the Cape Town Baptist Church a few believers, including Hendrina van der Merwe, an Afrikaner intercessor, prayed at the church when outreach groups would go to the nearby Muslim areas of Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. Turning the clock back in those areas that had become Islamic was now the goal. They prayed that these communities would become vibrant ones for Christ, even more than before. (Nominal lukewarm Christianity was customary there! Prayer walks in Bo-Kaap resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in mid-1992 in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer from 73 Wale Street. The prayer meetings focused on reversing the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap. Picture of some of the Group around 1994: The ladies from left to right, Rosemarie, Cecilia Abrahams and her daughter Mercia, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids. Floyd Daniels and I standing at the back Hendrina van der Merwe suggested that we could start a home church in Bo-Kaap if we would have four males attending. This became a prayer target. From the beginning, Floyd Daniels had been attending faithfully, coming from Kenilworth by train. When Sybrand de Swardt, a member of the Cape Town Baptist Church joined us, we were almost there. But then Floyd was tragically injured seriously because of a cycling accident in the mountain, from which he never recovered. We also started a monthly prayer meeting for the Middle East in our home in Tamboerskloof. This evolved from the fortnightly event in Bo-Kaap. The vision grew to see Jews and Muslims reconciled around the person of Jesus Christ. It received fresh nourishment when we started praying on Signal Hill from September 1998 on every alternate Saturday morning at 6 a.m. (Signal Hill is situated just above three residential areas that are associated closely with the three Abrahamic religions. Tamboerskloof is a predominantly ‘Christian’ suburb, Bo-Kaap is still a vibrant Muslim bastion and the bulk of Jews in Cape Town live in Sea Point.) At one of these prayer meetings, Achmed Kariem suggested that we should pray on Fridays at lunch time when the Muslims have their main weekly event in their mosques. Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings In September 1992, we started with lunch time prayer every Friday in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street near Heritage Square. In addition to prayers for a spiritual breakthrough in the area, these lunch time prayer meetings would become a foundation and a catalyst of many blessed ministries in the following years, notably the hospital ministry for which it was a catalyst. A few years later when the building was sold, the weekly event switched to the Koffiekamer at 108 Bree Street. (That venue was used by Straatwerk for their ministry over the weekends to the homeless, street children, and to certain night clubs.) Prayer Groups Across the Peninsula? The vision to get prayer groups formed all over the Peninsula, so that the spiritual eyes of Muslims might be opened to Jesus as the Saviour of the World and as the Son of God, did not take off. Here and there a prayer group started, but petered out again. Two prayer groups, however, operated perseveringly in Plumstead and Muizenberg for a few years. The prayer group in the Abrahams' home in Bo-Kaap's Wale Street continued functioning over many years. This one later moved to the home of Daphne Davids, a faithful participant since the pristine beginnings. She lived diagonally across the road of the Abrahams' home. The Friday lunch hour prayer meetings persevered in the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk until July 2007, when it was relocated to our Discipling House in Mowbray and moved to another day of the week. At present they are held every Tuesday morning, continuing remotely during the lockdown of 2020, and resumed in 2022. Slaughtering of Sheep in Bo‑Kaap In our outreach to Cape Muslims it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. During our missionary orientation in Bulstrode in England we were required to read how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea until he found the peace child as a cultural 'key' to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines to get a 'key' to the hearts of Cape Muslims. Muslims around the world commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at their Eid-ul Adha celebration. This made me realize how near the three world religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - actually are to each other. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is central to all three faiths, albeit that Muslims and Jews generally have hardly discerned the Father heart of God who did not spare his Son, allowing Him to die like a criminal. One day our Bo-Kaap Muslim friends invited us as a family to the festivities around the Korban, the slaughtering of sheep. Attending initially with some trepidation and prejudice, the occasion became such a special blessing to my wife and me. The Lord gave us a key to the hearts of Cape Muslims Five sheep were slaughtered that Sunday afternoon. Vividly we saw how one sheep after the other went almost voluntarily to be killed. At the sight of the sheep being led to be slaughtered, Rosemarie and I looked at each other, immediately knowing that the Lord had answered our prayer. He had given us the key to the hearts of Cape Muslims. The ceremony brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learned by heart as a child. It points to the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world – Jesus! Proximity to Biblical Atonement A few minutes later the message was amplified when a little girl came into the kitchen where Rosemarie was talking to the ladies. (I was in the living room with the men, according to prevalent custom). The animal-loving child sought solace from her mother. ‘Why do the innocent sheep have to be slaughtered every year?’ The answer of the mother was special: “You know, my dear, it is either you or the sheep.” Noticing the washing movement as part of the Islamic ritual, we were amazed how the atonement concept was possibly unwittingly passed on in their religion. It was wonderful to discover somewhat later that, according to Jewish oral teaching tradition, Isaac was believed to have carried the firewood for the altar on his shoulder, just like someone would carry a cross. Hereafter I shared in many a church how resurrection faith was birthed in Abraham’s heart. Utilising the Bo-Kaap experience, we also shared the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus to many Muslims who listened eagerly, usually without any objection. (Officially Muslims are not supposed to believe that Jesus died on the Cross, let alone that He died for our sins!) A Breakthrough in the Spiritual Realm The contact I had made with Jan Hanekom of the Hofmeyr Centre and SAAWE in Stellenbosch was quite strategic. Through this unheralded spiritual giant I got linked to the countrywide prayer movement. (Jan Hanekom was preparing prayerfully for entry into Bhutan, a Buddhist stronghold that was completely unknown to believers at that time. He intended to go there as a tent-making missionary, to work there low-key in some secular occupation. Spiritually speaking, Jan Hanekom was honourably wounded in the battle, contracting a mysterious disease. He died tragically as a result – much too young from a human point of view!) A Focus on Muslim Background Believers While I collated testimonies for the booklet Op Soek na Waarheid, I discovered that many new Muslim background believers (MBBs) had reverted to Islam due to deficient discipling and follow-up. This had notably been the case at the campaign of Reinhard Bonnke in Valhalla Park in 1984. Rosemarie and I decided that the discipling of new Muslim background believers should be a focus of our ministry. It was furthermore our vision to attempt to initiate or start small groups of MBBs all over the Peninsula in conjunction with other missionary colleagues. Already after a few months at the Cape I was the chauffeur for a Muslim background group of believers in Southfield, networking with Alain and Nicole Ravelo-Hoërson of The Evangelism Alliance Mission (TEAM) once a month on a Friday evening. Around the same time we also started with a group around Alec Patel from the remnant of the Moravian Hill congregation of District Six and Azisa Engelbrecht from the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of Joy fellowship in Woodstock. Salama and Colin Temmers from the Calvinist Church soon joined us after they had been coming to our Friday lunch hour prayer times. A special addition was Ayesha Hunter, who had been miraculously healed. (We had originally met her in the course of our Groote Schuur Hospital outreach as a terminal cancer patient.) An Eye Opener We started the first cell group consisting of male Muslim background believers in Hanover Park in mid-1993 with Adiel Adams of nearby Crawford as a pivot. There we examined well-known biblical personalities that also figure in the Qur’an. This Bible Study with the Hanover Park group was an eye opener for me to the real nature of the Qur’an, notably when I discovered how pointers to the Cross were consistently omitted in the use of biblical figures, mentioned in the prime Islamic book. (The problematic origins of the Islamic sacred book, however, only became completely clear to me when I did an in-depth study of the angel Gabriel a few years later. I could have known or suspected that because the British author Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding under police protection because of his highlighting the nature of Jibril in the novel Satanic Verses. A fatwa by the Iranic despot Ayatollah Khomeini led to unsuccessful assassination attempts on Rushdie). Quite close to the vision of attempting to initiate cells with believers from Muslim background, was the hope to see a drug rehabilitation centre started. Towards this effort I was inspired by the highly successful Bet-el ministry of WEC International in Spain. The theft of our vehicle the same weekend when a con-man, masquerading as a new Muslim background believer, operated in some demonic conspiracy. This gave the ministry a double blow from which we took years to recover. Neither did the Hanover Park MBB cell group resume, nor could we start a rehab centre to impact Cape Islam thereafter. The Battle of the Airwaves Escalates In the meantime, Gill Knaggs, our co-worker from Muizenberg, offered her services to CCFM. Gill had previous experience in commercial scriptwriting. At a meeting on 7 January 1998 we decided to start with a regular programme on CCFM, and use two converts as presenters. On the same day the radio station Voice of the Cape published their intention in the Cape Argus to use a convert from Christianity as one of their presenters. Gill Knaggs was willing and ready to write the scripts for Ayesha Hunter and Salama Temmers, two followers of Jesus with an Islamic upbringing. We started with a weekly programme The Islamic precedent created space for CCFM radio to follow suit - with less fear of PAGAD reprisals for putting Muslim converts on the airwaves. With Ayesha and Salama we soon started with a weekly programme, beginning with the theme the woman of two faces. Gradually many women, some of them Muslims, started responding with phone calls, giving evidence that the radio programmes were making an impact. At a meeting on 7 January 1998 it was decided to start with a regular programme via CCFM, making use of the two converts. Fearless Women Ayesha and Salama were two fearless women in their own right. The Thursday morning Life Issues CCFM women’s programme with the two of them alternating, made a significant impact. (Independently from CCFM, the related station Radio Pulpit, which broadcasts countrywide, also started using a convert from Islam.) Elsa Raine, the CCFM worker responsible for the prayer ministry, faithfully passed on to us all Muslim-related phone calls for follow-up. The impact must have filtered through to PAGAD and other Islamists. Two arson attempts on the radio station bear witness to their fury. Life Issues, the women’s programme on CCFM on a Thursday morning with Muslim background Christians, went from strength to strength. (It was unfortunately discontinued in the second half of 2004 when CCFM restructured their programmes for 24-hour transmission.) In due course Salama Temmers and her husband Colin would become pastoral leaders in the Good Hope Christian Centre, that had become one of the mega churches of the metropolis. The Response to an Attack on Community Radio Stations On 20 August 1998 a white paper was rushed through Parliament which contained a veiled threat: to close down community radio stations. There had previously been an attempt to close down Radio Pulpit, a Christian radio station that broadcasts nationwide. The ill-fated government white paper on public broadcasting - whatever its original intention - triggered a mass march to the houses of Parliament on Wednesday, 2 September, 1998. The perception could not be denied that some atheistic inclined person(s) in government wanted to regulate the airwaves in such a way that the freedom of religious broadcasting would be severely curtailed. Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity for religious freedom Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity, fighting for religious freedom and that its expression would be retained. One of the banners proclaimed 'United we stand'. This was a wry reminder of PAGAD’s main slogan. Wisely, the government dropped their plans. Global Reverberation Gill Knaggs became one of the first students of Media Village that had been started by Graham and Diane Vermooten in Muizenberg, a ministry linked to Youth with a Mission. Her documentary on Robben Island was subsequently used on the ferries to and from the renowned island. The founders set out to train believers for media work and also to tell the stories of God around the Globe. In later years the Media Village DVD would carry the story of the Global Day of Prayer around the world. Impact of Christian Radio Stations The phone-in programmes of Radio CCFM and the sister Afrikaans station, Radio Tygerberg, proved very effective. A number of Muslims, as well as converts and secret believers, phoned. During March 1999 we heard of supernatural visitations. A Muslim woman phoned CCFM radio after she had various visions of Jesus. She had received instructions from the Lord to read portions of the Bible that very clearly related to her life. Soon thereafter, she accepted Christ as her Saviour. A very special result transpired when a young Muslim lady, who had phoned the station in 2003, could be ministered to. She subsequently became a follower of Jesus. Later, the new convert, Fazleen ??. also became one of our co-workers, responding to the calls of Muslim enquirers as Elsa Raine had done so faithfully until she died of cancer. Another special link to our ministry transpired in 2010 when an UWC student got our phone number from CCFM after she had been evicted from her home. We had little hesitation to take her into our home and subsequently into our Displing house. For many years Carol ?? had been phoning CCFM until she become an attendee of the MBB ladies Bible Study group and in 2022 also a resident of Moriah House. 17. Ministry to Jews During a lunchtime prayer meeting of City Bowl ministers in October 1996, I spoke to Messianic Jewish pastor Bruce Rudnick, pastor of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. Subsequently I got to know him better at church meetings on many a Friday evening. Fulfilment of Messianic Prophecies For many centuries the fulfilment of Messianic prophecies was not emphasized in sermons or church teaching. So-called ‘Replacement Theology’ remained in vogue, even in evangelical Christianity. The common belief was that the Church had replaced Israel. This opinion started to change gradually, notably at the Lausanne Consultation of Jewish Evangelism global event here in Cape Town in 2010. Isaiah 19:25 given a boost by the so-called 'Arab Spring' For a long time, Isaiah 19:25 was regarded by some believers as a prophecy of the widespread conversion to Jesus as the Saviour and Messiah in Egypt, (As)syria and Israel in that order. The general interpretation of the prophecy was understood by some believers as the run-up to the reign of our Lord as global ruler for a thousand years. The vision was given a boost by the so-called 'Arab Spring' in North Africa in January 2011, after which thousands of Muslims started to turn their back on Islam, and many a Jew – even among the Orthodox - came to recognise Jesus as Messiah. This also happened increasingly in Israel, notably among those who came from former communist Eastern Bloc countries. Towards Muslim/Jewish Dialogue and Reconciliation For many years our love for the Jews found very limited expression. This changed to some extent from 2004 when we increased our networking with missionary colleagues who ministered to Jews. During 2004 our messianic Jewish missionary colleague Edith Sher organised a prayer breakfast in Sea Point, during which a Cape Muslim background believer also gave his testimony. Lillian James is a long-standing contact and one of our prayer partners. She grew up bilingually in Woodstock among people of different cultures. After she had become a committed follower of Jesus, she got to love both Jews and Muslims. She had been one of the believers who attended our prayer meetings for the Middle East, where we prayed for both groups. Lillian introduced us to Leigh Telli whose husband comes from Muslim background in North Africa. Leigh has a special love for the Jews. This served to confirm our calling of ministering to foreigners and also linking our ministry to Messianic Jewry. Rosemarie and I were encouraged anew to attempt stimulating Jewish dialogue at the Cape. We were ready for another attempt towards facilitating reconciliation under the banner of Jesus, with the aid of Messianic Jews and other followers of Jesus – notably also those coming from Muslim background. More Reconciliation Moves The next step was a seminar on reconciliation on February 19, 2005. In our preparation for the seminar, we worked closely with Leigh Telli. In her contribution she shared about the role of the descendants of Isaac in the last days, and I did the same for those of Ishmael. (Our co-worker Rochelle Malachowski who had been working in Palestine, reported on the ministry of Musalaha in the Middle East.) Subsequently a manual of our two papers was printed, in which some of Leigh’s paintings also featured. Soon hereafter we conducted an open air service in Camps Bay called ‘Shalom Salam’, signifying our intention to reach out to both Jews and Muslims. These efforts became the start of a close friendship between Rosemarie and Leigh Telli, and a strengthening of the ties to Edith Sher. Edith Sher started a weekly radio programme on Sunday afternoon Edith Sher started a weekly radio programme hereafter on Sunday afternoon via CCFM under the auspices of Messiah’s People. (Edith became an important additional source of information for my manuscript Pointers to Jesus, in which I highlight how the Hebrew Scriptures that is commonly called the 'Old Testament', profoundly point to Jesus as the Messiah.) For quite a few years Esther Krüger, an Afrikaner, produced a programme for Jews on Radio Tygerberg called Israel Kaleidoscope, on which Leigh Telli featured frequently. Confrontation With the Holocaust Rosemarie and I had joined All Nations International, led by Floyd and Sally McClung. In one of the sessions Floyd challenged us to ‘tithe’ our ministry time. For years Rosemarie had been battling with the guilt of Germans in respect of Jews. She was deeply convicted, resolving to try and devote a tenth of her ministry time to loving outreach to Jews. This implied quite a challenge for her as a German in the light of the anti-Semitic Nazi history of her nation. Rosemarie was challenged to share the platform with a holocaust survivor. God was not slow in answering her prayer. Soon thereafter, our friend Leigh Telli invited Rosemarie to share the platform with a holocaust survivor. Our involvement with the All Nations International CPx course was a genuine reason for procrastinating the issue. Rosemarie however finally accepted the challenge. Rosemarie and a Polish Holocaust Survivor At a meeting in Durbanville on 31 May 2008, Rosemarie shared the story of her upbringing as a post-World War 11 child in Germany. David, a Polish holocaust survivor, was the other speaker at this occasion. Quite a few Jews present at that occasion were clearly touched. She highlighted the fact that she learned to appreciate Jesus as the scapegoat for our sins. Among other things she said in her talk: ‘… I also stand here this afternoon with great humility. After having listened to David and his enormous sufferings during these horrible years of the Holocaust (and what this caused most probably for the rest of his life) brings myself as a German descendant to a place of utter humility and shame. And yet I want to thank God that He has given me this opportunity to stand here today. For many years I was searching for a way to express my deep feelings of regret, sorrow and shame as a German in respect of what has happened, to Jewish people in general, but even more so towards those who have suffered so much themselves during the Holocaust and those who have lost family and friends in a senseless and cruel way…’ Rosemarie closed with the following remarks: …I also want to ask forgiveness for the Church, whose role should have been to stand up for the Jews in the times of horror, instead of being mainly silent. As for myself, it feels like being insulted myself when anybody says something negative about the Jews. I love them with all my heart and I am glad that I had the opportunity today to speak out what has been in my heart for a long time. God bless you all.’ Hope Springs Eternal  After this event, a Jewish lady asked Rosemarie to come and speak to her group in Sea Point. This took place at a follow up meeting in August 2008. There she, Leigh Telli and Cecilia Burger, a veteran Dutch Reformed church worker among the Jews, were warmly welcomed.      Rosemarie was thereafter invited to share her story at various meetings      Unexpectedly, Rosemarie was thereafter invited to share her story at various meetings with Jews, including one with another Holocaust survivor, to Jewish business people on the 20th of April 2009. The organiser of these events was energetic 85-year old Mirjam Lichtermann, herself a holocaust survivor.  Rosemarie received another invitation to a Jewish home in Claremont on 20 May 2009, and to a meeting in Sea Point the same day. On this occasion, Rosemarie was heavily attacked with depression in the days before these events. She prayed fervently as she felt so completely inadequate. The Lord encouraged her, not only with a word from Matthew 10, that she should not fret about what she should say. She deemed it a special privilege to encourage the Jews with Isaiah 40:1 Comfort ye my people.... For quite a while after these opportunities, things went quiet in respect of Jews. We continued to pray that God would bring natural Jewish contacts on our path. Isaac and Ishmael Reconciled? I was significantly touched at the beginning of 2010 when I was blessed, to comprehend on a deeper level, especially that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, had buried their father together (Genesis 25:9). The evident reconciliation between the two sons of Abraham was probably preceded by confession and remorse. Or was there some reconciling agent involved? (Subsequently I also discovered that Isaac ‘breathed his last and died at a ripe old age, joining his ancestors in death. And his sons, Esau and Jacob, buried him, Genesis 35:29). I started to pray more intensely that a representative body of Christians might express regret and perhaps offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians. Tears Rather Than Laughter? For years I had been examining the history of genuine revivals. I discerned that, as a rule there had been: (a) united prayer across barrier of church and race and (b) genuine remorse, accompanied by tears. These phenomena would help to indicate that a revival had not been hyped up artificially. The first Saturday of October 2010 I stated publicly on Signal Hill the need for tears of remorse, as a possible condition for genuine revival. I was praying that I might also genuinely experience this. (In different places we had been seeing ‘laughing in the Spirit’, notably in the 'Toronto Blessing' movement of the mid-1990s, but the deep remorseful crying to God as I had been reading about, was lacking.) Quite soon thereafter, my prayer in this regard would be answered, publicly and very embarrassingly! Jews First On 11 October, 2010 the Lord ministered to me from Romans 1:16 when we received the Quarterly Bulletin of the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism (LCJE). That edition of the LCJE Bulletin highlighted the legacy of Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus. In the paper that Rosen delivered as part of the Jewish Evangelism track at Lausanne II in Manila in 1989, he highlighted 'Jews first'. In the printed summary of his paper, Rosen proposed 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization as the bringing of the Gospel to the Jew first. The Jew first is God’s blueprint for worldwide evangelisation Using the example of Paul: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Romans 1:16), Moishe Rosen proposed that ‘by not following God’s programme for worldwide evangelisation – that is, beginning with Jerusalem (Israel and the Jews) – we not only develop a bad theology because of weak foundations, but we also develop poor missiological practices.’ I felt personally challenged to get involved with low-key loving outreach to Jews. The very next day, a long-time friend, Brett Viviers, visited me. He was a Messianic Jewish believer, and a former elder at Cape Town Baptist Church. His daughter's prayers for Muslims were instrumental in linking Rosemarie and me up with that fellowship in 1993. I agreed to start Ishmael Isaac Ministries with him, joined by Barauch Mayaan soon thereafter. On the Muslim side, Achmed Kariem joined in our early deliberations. Brett and I did many a prayer drive together in Sea Point. Years later, I would also join Amanda Hattingh and other prayer warriors on the occasional prayer walk in that suburb. Overawed by a Sense of Guilt On October 19, 2010, we received an email from our friend Liz Campbell, with whom we had started prayer meetings for the Middle East in the early 1990s. She shared 'that Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five amazing children are back in Cape Town from Israel.  A quick and sovereign move of God believe me, and worth coming and finding out why! … we have sent this out to not only those who know Baruch and Karen, but also to those we know will be greatly touched by Baruch's ministry.' The meeting with the Maayan family on Saturday afternoon, 23 October, at a private address in Milnerton was a defining moment. Baruch shared his conviction that he was sent to Cape Town a second time. He used the example of Jonah to challenge believers with the message of the Highway from the Cape to Jerusalem. I felt very much embarrassed I felt very much embarrassed there when I broke down in tears uncontrollably. I was completely overawed by a sense of guilt towards Jews, while I felt a deep urge to apologise on behalf of Christians for the fact that our forebears had been side-lining the Jews. My excessive weeping was an answer to my own prayers, but it was nevertheless very embarrassing, especially as many others present followed suit. The 'sea of tears' however knitted our hearts to the Maayan family. The Lord had called them back to be part of a movement to take the Gospel from Cape Town throughout the continent of Africa, and ultimately back to Jerusalem. Replacement Theology Still an Issue! It was very special for Rosemarie and me to attend an event that was linked to the international LCJE Conference on 15 October, 2010. For the first time this was held in Cape Town. People from all over the world who were somehow involved with outreach to Jews attended - including those delegates who specially came for Lausanne III. It was however very much of a shock to us to hear that a few lines in the draft document for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. (Christians have been haughtily suggesting down the centuries without scriptural backing that the Church has replaced Israel as God's special instrument, somehow omitting that we have been merely grafted into the true olive tree Israel (Romans 11:17) On Sunday evening 24 October I received an SMS from our friend Richard Mitchell whether he could come and stay with us for a few days. (We had been working together so closely in the mid and late 1990s in the prayer movement at the Cape and especially in the fight against the PAGAD onslaught and battle against the effort to Islamise the Western Cape, until his departure for the UK in 1999. Richard was also my presenter on the CCFM radio programme 'God changes Lives.') I knew that Richard had been attending Lausanne III, but somehow we could not find a moment to meet each other. Tuesday 26 October 2010 was quite eventful as I took Pastor Richard Mitchell along to Noordhoek where we had a wonderful post-Lausanne report back by Floyd McClung, our leader. He requested me to share as well, knowing that Rosemarie and I attended Connected 2010, the conference specially organized for all those who had not been invited to the main event at the International Convention Centre. Rather spontaneously I shared our concern that a few lines in the draft for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. Soon thereafter I was called to book in an email, a very painful experience indeed. I had taken for granted that our concern would be shared in evangelical circles. The email rattled me quite a lot when I had to discover how deep-seated the effects of Replacement Theology still is among evangelicals. This was even more so when we had to learn that also at the Convention Centre they needed a lot of further deliberation to draft wording which could be included in the final Cape Town Commitment document. The flaw was thankfully corrected in the final revision when it was published in the Cape Town Commitment. The flaw was thankfully corrected in the Cape Town Commitment. Start of the Highway Fellowship On Wednesday afternoon, 27 October 2010, I had a meeting to attempt Jewish-Muslim Reconciliation under the banner of the Lamb with Achmed Kariem and Brett Viviers. Soon thereafter, Baruch Maayan approached Brett Viviers and me. At a meeting in the Company Gardens, Baruch announced that he would start with weekly prayer on Monday evenings at the home of Gay French in Claremont. We agreed to invite a few followers of Jesus from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to a meeting on Saturday 30 November. The 30 November meeting in Sea Point would become the beginning of monthly Highway meetings, during which however the Ishmael element was unintentionally pushed aside. At the end of 2010 we made another attempt at Muslim/Jewish dialogue and reconciliation, an effort to link Messianic Jewish believers and Muslim background believers at the Cape. Soon it was decided to have ‘Highway meetings’ every last Saturday of the month at the Sea Point High School. Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, who had responded obediently to a divine call, to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer, was at this time fairly closely linked to the group. He had also started a fellowship in Parow, where Maditshaba Moloko became a prominent member. She would also become connected to the Maayan family and the Highway fellowship when the family moved to the centrally situated suburb Pinelands. Simple Local Churches on the Route to Jerusalem Obedient to Romans 1:16 and Matthew 28:19 and 20, we attempted to share the Gospel with Muslims and Jews. We prayed that some of these people who would be open to the gospel, might become followers of Jesus. As the new believers had to be discipled, we hoped that ultimately we would possibly still see the one or other enlisted in the planting of simple churches on the route to Jerusalem, the spiritual African Highway from the Cape to Jerusalem, and to the ends of the earth. Rosemarie and I hoped to take this as a focus for the last period of our ministry and service. This was however not easy at all to implement, because we were also leaders of Friends from Abroad, where there was no vision for Isaac/Ishmael reconciliation at that stage. Neither was this the case with our All Nations colleagues. (Things started changing in 2018 when an elderly couple, Bernhard and Erene Schwarz joined our team. The couple that also has a love for Israel. had been asked to leave Sudan by the authoritarian Bashiri regime.) Hope For More Evidence of Jewish- Muslims Reconciliation It was still our firm hope that clear evidence of reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape may send some powerful signals around the globe. In Cape Town we have the special situation where we have sizeable minorities of Muslims and Jews, next to the majority group of Christians. On top of that, we have a heritage and history where representatives of the three Abrahamic religions have lived harmoniously next to each other for decades in places like District Six, Bo-Kaap and Green Point until the 1950s. Of course, at that time no one even remotely thought of the possibility of movements like those that we now have in the Middle East called Lech Lecha and Musalaha, where both Jewish and Arab Christians meet from time to time. (Lech Lecha bring young people from both Jewish and Arab background together. Musalaha is a non-profit organization that works towards reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians based on the Biblical principles of peace, justice, and love. The name Musalaha comes from the Arabic word for 'reconciliation'. Musalaha was founded in 1990.) Run-up to the 2011 Jerusalem Prayer Convocation In mid-2011, Baruch Maayan challenged us at one of our Monday evening meetings to pray about becoming part of a group to attend the annual Jerusalem prayer convocation. On June 27 Baruch, his wife Karen and a few other believers in Claremont prayed fervently that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the Jerusalem convocation. Knowing that our children wanted to sponsor Rosemarie for her 60th birthday in July 2011, so that we could fulfil a secret wish of going to Israel together, I prayed now for confirmation for finances for myself. (Rosemarie had served in a children's home in 1973 after she had been black-listed for entry into South Africa.) The very next day I received a letter from Germany, which informed me that I would receive a small monthly pension, retrospectively from 1 January 2011. I sensed that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for all the funding necessary for the Jerusalem convocation. For Rosemarie it was very special that she could now be a part of the South African delegation. (When she served in a children's home as a volunteer in Israel for a few weeks in the European summer of 1973, their leader had taught from a Bible study during her visit to the Holy Land that nations would in future be going up to Jerusalem.) When we left for Israel for the annual International House of Prayer (IHOP) convocation in Jerusalem in October 2011, we had one special prayer: We did not want to be the same on our return to South Africa. The Lord would clearly answered our prayers in this regard. In the Holy Land At the convocation itself we took a firm decision to spread the word of the Highway of Holiness to our personal contacts. As a group of eleven South African Christians from diverse racial, and geographical backgrounds (Messianic Jewish, ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’, Afrikaner and English-speaking), that was attending the IHOP convocation in Jerusalem, we prayed separately for our country. At the first session we set out issues for praise and prayer. Even before we looked at praise points, the concern came up to pray in remorse and confession for divine forgiveness, because of the biased expressions of certain South African leaders in Church and State regarding Israel. We agreed to disseminate the following lines to our friends through personal emails: We derive from Scripture that since the two sons of Abraham buried their father together, we believe that loving both Muslims and Jews is the biblical position to take for followers of Jesus. We ask God for his favour upon our country and for a change in the official position of our government in favour of a negotiated settlement (not the unilateral one the Palestinians are striving after). An even better suggestion would be if our government could take an independent line, striving to encourage Arabs and Jews to live peacefully next to each other as the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. We praise God for divine intervention and the leadership in racial reconciliation that spared our country a civil war in the 1990s… We note with sadness and remorse that African theologians played such a big role in doctrinal bickering that set the pattern for the disunity of the Church. Concretely, we repent of the resultant side-lining of Jews and the perception and belief of many Christians that the Church is understood to have replaced Israel... In all humility they are enjoined to love Israel and provoke them to a jealousy that could bring them to discover their lost son who was pierced (Zechariah 12:10)... Arabs and Jews in Harmony At the prayer convocation we were blessed to listen to Israeli Arab and Jewish pastors who were meeting each other regularly. In every effort of reconciliation, a price has to be paid. This is the basis of Paul’s challenge to all followers of Jesus, to be reconciled to God and to accept his gift in faith, the death on the cross for our sins. The biggest price of all has already been paid by no less than God himself, who gave his one and only, his unique son to reconcile us to himself. What a surprise it was for Rosemarie and me to hear and see how Orthodox Jews and Arabs were actually living in close proximity in the controversial East Jerusalem. We were sad that many people were still clamouring for this portion of land to become the capital of a Palestinian State and thus perpetuating the strife, instead of praying that the day might be hastened when they would serve the Almighty together as descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. This would of course be the culmination of the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We were challenged concretely towards increased commitment to usher this in through the Highway of Holiness from the Cape to Jerusalem. A video presentation from Singapore mentioned something about a prayer room where intercessors could intercede around the clock. Rosemarie picked this up, sharing with me the vision of getting a prayer room facing Israel at our home. Is This Your Idea, Lord? Because of inclement weather conditions on the first Saturday of December 2011, the prayer warriors met at our home. (They would have gone to Signal Hill.) What an encouragement it was when Baruch Maayan climbed on to the roof above our dining room, where we hoped the prayer room facing Israel would be built. There he anointed the space. A big challenge was the funds for the project, but our faith had grown after so many experiences over the previous decades that God was faithful. We trusted Him to see us through if the prayer room was His confirmed will. Here and there a financial gift came in towards the project, but nothing substantial. We became somewhat unsure whether it was indeed the Lord's commission to have the prayer room built. Or was it just a nice idea? Confirmation of the Project In His faithfulness, the Lord confirmed this, when Rosemarie came out of our dining room door on a beautiful sunny January morning, surprised by a special phenomenon. This was no less than a modern-day variation of the fleece experience of Joshua in the Bible. Above the awning and the area adjacent to it, on the edge of the table on our north-facing balcony, there were rows of drops, whereas the rest of the balcony was completely dry. Because the awning was just below the place where the prayer room would be built, we gladly interpreted this as divine confirmation of the project. A few weeks later, just before the Passover weekend, we had a devout young German medical student visiting us. He worked in one of our townships as an intern. When he heard about the prayer room project, his down to earth question was how we expected to fund it. We did not hesitate to tell him that we expected God to do it. We were however very much surprised, dumb-founded, when the very next day we received an email from Holland. The Dutch HQ of WEC International had received a bequest for the missionary work of the Cloetes in South Africa in 2010, which had just been cleared. The Dutch WEC folk of the Netherlands were not compelled to pass this on to us since we were not WEC missionaries any more. The committee felt however that they should honour the wish of the deceased. We had no qualms to accept the bequest. We were blessed because it more or less covered the bulk of what we would still need for the building of the prayer room. How we rejoiced at this divine intervention and provision! Issues Around our Prayer Room Rosemarie and I did not expect to get the prayer room without some difficulty. That it would become a big nightmare was however not what we wished. We were initially very much blessed when Doug Smetherham, a structural engineer and the husband of our missionary colleague Rochelle, expressed willingness to donate his services towards the project. The preliminary steps would however keep us on edge for months. There were so many delays to get the plans ultimately approved at the city council. And then there was the actual building which ultimately led to an asthmatic condition of Rosemarie because of the dust emitted. The pinnacle of this challenge was a serious mistake made by the Christian builder to whom we had given the task, which was compounded by exceptionally unseasonal heavy rain in February 2013. Our daughter Tabitha and her husband Mike visited us just as Rosemarie and I were praising God while we attempted to address the flooding of our kitchen! We had learnt through experience that praising God in adversity is such a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare. The choice of another builder to complete the job would become another wonderful chapter of God's over-ruling. The testimony of Cecil John, a former gangster, whose Kingdom ministry was the use of his exceptional building skills to empower broken people, had all of us in tears - overawed by the divine work in and through sinful human beings like us! To be inserted: Picture of the Prayer Room In April 2019 Pastor Callie Liew from Singapore came to explore whether Cape Town should have one of seven world prayer towers. It seemed as if things were coming together via the vision in Jerusalem in 2011 which had impacted us. 17. A New Season of Spiritual Warfare At one of our Monday evening prayer times with Pastor Baruch Maayan in Claremont, we heard about the intention of the ANC to commit the country to the ancestors of their founders and past leaders at its centenary celebrations from 6 - 8 January 2012. This led to a season of intensive spiritual warfare in which Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, played a prominent role. He had responded obediently to a divine call to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer. In an email, it was suggested that we cherish and celebrate the Christ-like legacy of ANC founders like John Dube and Albert Luthuli, but in the same email it was also mentioned that we have to oppose the abomination of ancestor worship. The programme for a week of special prayer was prepared by Pastor Eze and a few other prayer leaders. Another Name Change Effort of a Mountain Peak The name change of Devil’s Peak was still high on our prayer agenda. Noting that racial prejudice, discrimination of all sorts, unwitting demonic activity through ancestor worship and freemasonry have been practised in traditional religious rituals, repentance and forgiveness were included in our prayers. Central in all of it was the uplifting of Jesus. 'Jesus, we enthrone you!' was our theme song throughout the week. We invited believers to join us. We prayed that the Unity of the Body of Christ might be visibly demonstrated in the prayer event. 8 Days of Prophetic Prayers Pastor Light Eze called 'the city watchers, gate keepers, prophetic intercessors, and leaders of His people … to seek His face and to take responsibility to prepare the way for an unprecedented outpouring of His grace, His spirit, and His Blessings upon the Cape in 2012.' In an email he listed various goals lie - Releasing Africa into her prophetic destiny in 2012; - Establishing the foundations and spiritual infrastructure to enhance Economic Empowerment among God’s people; - To take a corporate spiritual stand against the Top-TV plan to further destroy morals by launching a 24hr pornography in South Africa in 2012; - To open the gates and welcome our Lord and King into our City, Province and Nation from Cape Town (the tip of Africa, the rainbow city, the feet of Africa and the prophetic muzzle of the revival gun); - To raise an altar of unity unto the Lord to deal with the issue of racial discrimination in Cape Town and South Africa as a whole; - To seek God’s wisdom, strength, guidance and blessings for those in leadership positions in Cape Town, the Western Cape and SA. Pointers to Divine Approval Supernatural things seemed to point to divine approval, such as water coming from the ground next to St George's Cathedral where we were praying - as if it was coming from a well!. This could never have been manipulated. Similarly, water dripping from the lions' mouths at Rhodes Memorial, was very special. Deep remorse was evident at the evening at national parliament for some of the laws promulgated that encouraged sexual immorality. We prayed for a reversal of them. Our prayers at the Green Point Stadium addressed sexual immorality especially, but they included also thanks and praise to the Lord for the victory of 2010 when the Lord so wonderfully answered our prayers regarding human trafficking. (Hundreds of prostitutes had been ‘imported’ for the World Cup. They were hardly used because so many men who came to the event brought their wives or partners along.) The last evening definitely ‘took the cake.’ There on Signal Hill we have never had such a diverse crowd before – one of the best representations of the body of Christ that I had ever experienced in every respect. Very special was the extended session of praying for Israel and for the Jews. Pastor Chris Eden of Bridges for Peace showed us from Scripture where we have faltered as a nation and as the Church. The prayers included repentance for the replacement of Israel by the Church down the ages and for the side-lining of Jews. Pastor Light then invited all persons present with a special link to a nation, to pray and repent on behalf of his/her nation, in its dealing with Israel. Eighteen countries from all continents were represented. Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, a Tswana intercessor, led us in a prayer of blessing Israel. The congregation was then requested to stretch our hands to the north, so to speak in the direction of Israel. At that moment a rainbow was visible around the moon. What a confirmation this was of the divine unction on the ‘apple of His eye!’ A Picture of this Phenomenon? A Bull's Eye in Spiritual Warfare Spiritual warfare at Rhodes Memorial seemed to be a proverbial ‘Bulls Eye’. Our battle had as target the corruption that was associated with the Zuma administration. Advocate Murray Bridgman had been sharing how Devil’s Peak was said to have received its name. (Murray Bridgman had been putting some persevering stalwart research into that process.) We decided subsequently that we would use ‘word of mouth’ as our new strategy to achieve our goal. A Significant Backlash We must have angered the arch enemy at least to some extent. Some of the main Cape evangelical role players experienced the one or other form of attack at the beginning of 2012. It was touch and go or I was eliminated by a heart attack on the night of 30/31 January 2012. This happened a few days before a Transformation Africa mountain peak name change event that was set for Saturday 4 February at Rhodes Memorial. I would have been one of the speakers. Three severe artery blockages should have taken me out but God had fore-stalled this massive attack on my life. A few days prior to this, Beverley Stratis, a good friend and a faithful intercessor, received a vision while she was praying. She saw a dark cloud and a life-threatening vibe of death surrounding me in this vision. That was the cue for her to engage in intense intercession for me. About two weeks later Erika Schmeisser, an intercessor who attended our Saturday evening fellowship with Pastor Baruch Maayan regularly, came up to me to tell me about her special experience. She had heard that I had a heart attack. At that moment she woke up from a massive pain in her chest. Fearing that she was going to die, Erika immediately sensed that this was the experience of someone else who was having this severe pain. This circumstance highlighted Isaiah 53 to me in a special way. Initially it was suspected that I had contracted a ‘slight heart attack’. (The doctor who sent me to hospital for an EKG, was very perplexed that I had been driving there by myself, with the low pulse that I had.) At the angiogram performed on me two days later, it surfaced that I had a complete blockage of a main artery and two blockages on another one. Any one of the two occurrences could have caused death. At Vincent Palotti Hospital the nurses were very surprised that I had no need for tablets for pain in the chest region. Picture of the Angiogram The Gospel message became clear to me as never before, namely how Jesus could bear our sins, ailment and pain vicariously, in our stead. Three stents gave me a new lease of life. Unintentionally, the venue of our Rhodes Memorial prayer would trigger off a train of actions with ramifications on various university campuses as far afield as Oxford in England and Los Angeles in the US in 2015. Prayer Service on Human Rights Day A meeting was held on 15 February 2012 at the CODETA offices at Site C, in the taxi rank of the Cape township Khayelitsha. Mr Mtengwana from CODETA called this meeting 'a historic event that has never been seen at this office and taxi rank.' The occasion was attended by the taxi leaders and over 40 Christian members from CODETA and CATA, the two main Cape taxi operators. Later, the Western Cape taxi industry hosted a prayer service of forgiveness and peace in the taxi industry at the Philippi Stadium on 21 March 2012. The prayer followed a request from the two taxi organisations who asked the Church to host a day of prayer for the taxi industry. They had lodged this request at a reconciliation and repentance prayer meeting organised by Pastor Bongani Mgayi on 5 November 2011. The taxi leaders invited Mr Adriaan Vlok, former Minister of Law and Order under the apartheid government, to address the community. He accepted the invitation and paid for his own flight. He said in his address: 'apartheid was wrong. It was evil. Though I never created it, I fully supported it.' At the stadium, Vlok addressed the crowd: 'apartheid hurt you and I want to say sorry. I am asking for forgiveness.' After he washed the feet of the taxi leaders, various ‘Black’ leaders washed his feet and blessed him. Run-up to the Visit of Pastor Umar Mulinde In search of a Muslim background follower of Jesus and speaker with a love for Israel, Cecilia Burger, the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism coordinator at the Cape, surprisingly invited Umar Mulinde from Uganda, a Muslim background pastor. He was however still very sick indeed. In fact, he had a major operation only ten days before his arrival in Cape Town in August 2012. Pastor Umar Mulinde had miraculously survived an assassination attempt. On Christmas Eve 2011 after a church service, where many Muslims received Jesus as Lord and Saviour, Pastor Umar was on his way to his car when he heard someone calling, pretending to be a congregant, “Pastor, help me!” As he turned around, acid was thrown into his face. He ran back to the church and more acid was thrown onto his back. In unbearable pain, he was rushed to the hospital in Kampala. Due to inadequate medical facilities and further attempts to kill him, Pastor Mulinde was taken to India to receive medical treatment and from there through a spectacular divine sequence of events, Pastor Mulinde landed in the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel. There he received the best treatment he could have enjoyed anywhere in the world. The acid badly burnt the right side of his face and he lost the use of his right eye. Despite his brittle health condition, his schedule at the Cape was filled with many meetings. He was convinced that the Lord wanted him to visit South Africa. (By the time he came here, he had already undergone five major operations.) Grace to Forgive Pastor Mulinde received divine grace to forgive his assailants. His heart’s desire for the Muslims is that they should hear the Gospel and be saved. Coming from a person who had been persecuted for his faith, we were encouraged with the words of Paul to Timothy For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind ( 2 Timothy 1:7). Pastor Mulinde highlighted that believers often keep quiet because of fear, whereas people whose plans are evil, are bold. A silent believer is powerless. The Lord requires prayer and action. While the world is filled with hatred, we as believers must not keep quiet. 'We have to oppose the spirit of Islam, but love the Muslims!' He is Our Peace The South African Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJSA) conference theme with Pastor Umar was taken from Ephesians 2:14, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…” Christ Church in Kenilworth experienced the unique presence of a number of believers. Among the 150 people who attended the two-day conference, there were Messianic Jews and Christians from a Muslim background. The unity was also stressed when a Jewish believer and an ex-Muslim told their stories of how they came to faith in Messiah Jesus. A few days later, a very remarkable meeting took place in our home on Tuesday afternoon 28 August 2012, In the audience of over twenty people more than half of them were Jewish. Pastor Mulinde’s deep love for God’s chosen people and his concern for the safety of the land of Israel became apparent in the course of the afternoon. A Jewish woman with a background in radio broadcasting asked the million-dollar question: “So what led you to become a Christian?” Pastor Mulinde shared how he came to accept Yeshua as his Lord and Messiah. At the end of his message, one of the Christians, Jamie Campbell, felt prompted to pray for Pastor Mulinde. He concluded his prayer with the words “...in the Name of Jesus the Messiah”. What was especially striking to the people listening to the story of Pastor Mulinde at the different venues, was that this man who clearly bore the marks of someone who had suffered greatly for his faith, also stood with Israel and the Jewish people. Persevering Hope I continued to hope and pray perseveringly that Church leaders would get on board against our own government's anti-Israel stance. I wrote an email to pastoral colleagues with the following content after the visit by Pastor Umar Mulinde where he had shared how the Church in Uganda opposed efforts to introduce Sharia Law in their country: Dear Pastoral Colleagues, At the City Bowl ministers' fraternal this week, one of the colleagues brought up the concern that a Cabinet minister has recently presented a government view that is in all likelihood only supported by a small minority of the population. The tragedy is that the anti-Israel position our country has taken, may take us towards an economic precipice. It is probably no co-incidence that the view expressed on 14 August was followed by the Lonmin mine disaster two days later which brought the currency decline and the unprecedented rise in the price of petrol and a string of mine strikes in its train. (This is definitely not the first time that some form of divine wrath followed the 'cursing' of the apple of God's eye (Compare Genesis 12:3). The brother colleague expressed his concern at the ministers' fraternal that the Church is so quiet. In recent weeks Pastor Umar Mulinde of Uganda encouraged us with the example in their country when a minority of the population succeeded to get a proposal for Shariah Law onto their statute books. The Church stood up in united opposition to that move. The question is: Must we wait until similar moves also happen here? The point is that there are many a precedent in Africa where countries went into serious economic decline after turning against Israel in recent decades (DR Congo (Zaire), Malawi…) Other efforts to get the local churches of the Cape Town City Bowl to join in concerted action, also floundered. Although the Lord had already comforted me at the end of 2011 on this score that unless he builds the house, I would toil in vain, I was nevertheless disappointed when there still seemed to come no change in this regard. Now, well over eight years later, nothing has changed substantially, but we keep our eyes on the Lord. Isn't nothing impossible for Him? A New Version of Huguenots? In the early 1990s gangsters and prostitutes started making Woodstock and Salt River hotspots of crime. The influx of ‘Black’ African refugees into these suburbs turned the situation around to quite an extent. Because of other reasons however, these new residents were not valued. The flood of refugees, many of whom came to the Republic of South Africa because of economic reasons, caused xenophobia. South African ‘Blacks’ saw the refugees as a threat and competition to the already tight employment market. This unfortunately drove some of the expatriates to the lucrative drug trade. Criminals were soon on hand to take control. In contrast to that, the Cape Town Baptist Church became a model for other congregations. They not only took care of foreigners, but were also being blessed by them in what can be described as a 21st century version of the French Huguenots. The intensive Friday night prayer meetings, many of which turned into all night intercessions until Saturday, especially by those who came from the Congo region, was apt to bless the city with spiritual renewal. Sadly, competitive rivalry and materialism linked to prosperity theology, diminished much of this positive effect. A Biblical Paradigm A biblical paradigm could be the attitude of our Lord to Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-11). When everybody looked down upon the small man, in a double sense, Jesus looked up, showing respect and displaying the opposite spirit of his compatriots. He gave Zaccheus dignity, by enjoying a meal with the notorious traitor. Jesus not only allowed despised people to serve him, but he even allowed socially repugnant people like lepers and prostitutes to touch and anoint him! I took liberty to suggest that Church leaders everywhere, also to evangelicals after September 11, 2001, should use ISLAM as an acronym: I Shall Love All Muslims. Having experienced first-hand how powerfully the principle operated both in the wake of the St James Church massacre of July 1993 and the PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) scourge of August 1996 to November 2000, South Africa could show the way. Wherever I had the chance, I suggested that a significant expression of regret by Church leaders in respect of the omission and neglect towards Muslims and Jews regarding the Gospel could play a special role. Ongoing Xenophobia Rosemarie and her assistants continued interacting with the refugee ladies at the beadwork workshop, where FFA helped many of them to provide some semblance of a livelihood. During our outreach we ministered to many a trader. There we were often reminded, quite tragically, of the ongoing xenophobia. What made us very sad was that this also happened at government institutions, notably at the Department of Home Affairs. The hassling and rudeness that people were experiencing at the refugee department, were blatantly xenophobic. Even we as stakeholders had to bear the brunt of the sheer rudeness and bad manners of officials. During 2012 we witnessed how our hard work of the past was being eroded. The government seemed determined to close the facilities for asylum seekers and refugees in Cape Town. When stakeholder colleagues took the government to court successfully, the response was new hassling of the foreigners whom we tried to assist. After advocacy on their behalf, networking where possible with other role players, the closure date of the office was changed to three months and still later to six months. Then Home Affairs brought a new xenophobic stipulation. Those refugees who entered the country through other centres like Johannesburg or Durban, even though they had been in Cape Town for years, were required to go there every month for the extension of their permits. Many of them would hereafter rather risk illegality than going to such expense that they could ill afford. This only had the result that corruption could thrive even more. At a saga at the end of the decade hundreds of refugees came to the city even from places far away. Crooks misled them in 2020, creating the hope that the United Nations would assist them to get to a third country. Their extended sojourn in the Methodist Church on Green Market Square and its surrounds bedevilled much of the sympathy there had been left for their lot among South Africans. Spiritual Contributions of Laiety South Africa is no exception when it comes to doubtful Church practices that are far removed from biblical teaching. Thus hierarchy came into the Church, possibly via Judaism. (The high priest was at the top of the echelon.) The most notable emulation followed in the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope, Cardinals and Archbishops at the top of the ladder. However, although servant leadership was clearly taught and practised by our Lord, a hierarchical set-up is still very common, and not only in denominations which are structured this way. Small congregations that are not linked to a denomination, often have a (senior) pastor who leads proceedings all too often prescriptively and domineeringly. Where things are done more biblically, the notion that normal, so-called lay church members should also have substantial contributing input, is not widely found at all. In September 2012 Maditshaba Moloko, one of our friends, felt charged by the Lord during her time of devotion 'to gather His people so He can speak to them, to gather the five-fold Ministers in the City so that He can make known to them His plans for the Church and city, country, continent and Israel through some of His sons and daughters.' The result was a special conference organised on fairly short notice in the Good Hope Centre on 10 and 11 December. Another Attempt to impact Cape Judaism The visit of Pastor Mulinde in August 2012 opened up significant contact with Jews at the Cape. On Wednesday evening 31 October 2012, Camps Bay High School was the venue of yet another significant event, namely an attempt to counter the false information spread by the media about Israel. This event coincided with an announcement by the ANC leadership to support the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) programme directed at Israel. At a conference on racism in Durban in September 2001, at which Israel was vilified and side-lined, the BDS started as a movement to isolate Israel and the Jews. The dedication of the Western Cape to God on the Grand Parade at this time, led by Pastor Light Eze from Nigeria, was a united act of faith by the body of Christ in the province by which we expressed our total dependence on God. ‘By this act, we are bringing our land, the people, the resources and all elements of creation in the Western Cape and South Africa to the Lordship of Jesus Christ ... It’s a united declaration by the body of Christ that we will serve no other gods!’ On Signal Hill on 12 December 2012 at 12 noon seven of us interceded for Bo-Kaap and the Jewish communities of Cape Town. We also prayed for these communities. ... We asked the Lord to forgive us for the damage done in the past and …that Cape Town would truly be that Gateway of LIGHT AND LIFE, FROM THE CAPE TO JERUSALEM. We prayed for God's LOVE to be released and the power of God to be experienced. A Role for the Church in Corporate Restitution? A group of believers met in Goodwood for a follow-up and evaluation of a conference at the Drill Hall in December 2012 around the five R's (Repentance, Reconciliation, Restoration, Restitution, Revival) with restitution at its core. The intention was also to get some unified action started by the Body of Christ. In a response to notes by Hilary-Jane Solomons, the following lines were written after one of the meetings. (It was quite exciting to hear of biblical research around Sabah and Ramah as the possible ancestors of the first nation of South Africa, the Khoisan): Confession by the Body of Christ for the gradual increase in the first A.D. centuries of anti-Semitism of non-Jewish background Christian believers and … that the Church replaced Israel. General global confession is also needed for the subsequent side-lining of Israel and Jews (notably by the decrees of Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century) and for the general neglect of the Tenach ('OT') as second-rate in respect of the 'New Testament' by the Body of Christ at large. I believe that a possible subsequent return of the Body of Christ to the Torah in a non-legalist and loving way and/or giving prominence to it could be something which the Father will honour in a big way…. ​ The initiative petered out to some extent, although the movement for church-led restitution, started by Dr. Charles Robertson and Pastor Martin Heuvel, prodded on perseveringly. 18 . Correctives in Church Practice One of the necessary correctives of South African History is the role of the Church in the apartheid era. While it is true that the mainline churches were more often than not guilty through complacency, fear and indifference, there is a side that has generally been ignored. In Gateway News of 31 August 2012, Pastor Bongani Mgayi made an attempt to fill that void. He highlights the fact in that article that the accounts of history that we have in the Gospels are accounts by simple men who had no status. An Addition to Recorded History The academics, historians and authors of the time had no interest in keeping an accurate record of the Lord’s work or writing an account of the work of the Church. Pastor Mgayi concludes that 'We must preserve our own history and testimonies, lest we allow the world to write a distorted history for us.' Pastor Mgayi furthermore wrote as follows: My parents have a different account of history. They remember how they as Christians would pray and fast, holding night vigils and meeting illegally in back rooms to intercede in the townships. This happened while the politicians were in jail, in exile and on the streets murdering other ‘Black’ people through necklacing and humiliating old ladies by giving them OMO washing powder to drink as punishment for going to work. My mother remembers vividly how they were praying in a shack in Crossroads when a group of security police stormed in to arrest and beat them. But as they crashed inside, they found the women praying. They took off their hats and quietly slipped out… Pastor Nkomonde, an elder at the Assemblies of God, once told of an account how they as young men were working as assistants to Ps. Nicholas Bhengu. Bhengu would set up tent crusades in townships ... With the tent’s arrival there would be peace and criminals would return their loot, violent men would bring their weapons to the tent and there would be no stone-throwing or tyres burnt in the streets, a kind of peace the Stability Unit of the police could never achieve. Mrs Mene, a retired school principal from Old Crossroads, narrated how they were living in fear, while the ‘witdoeke’, a group led by Johnson Ngxobongwana, were burning down shacks and hacking other black people to death in the streets. She mentions that their only comfort was to meet at churches and pray... The Church was part and parcel of the struggle for freedom in South Africa and does not need to justify its existence to the world and onlookers. The Church must unapologetically assume its position as the bona fide agent of peace, justice and transformation in society. A Caribbean Journalist called to the Cape In April 2005 Wendy Ryan, who hails from the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean and former director of Communications for the Baptist World Alliance, visited Cape Town. During that time Wendy toured the different Living Hope facilities. She observed this work of mercy and heard testimonies of how God was changing lives because of it. She felt a powerful tug in her heart. Compassion filled her soul as she felt God calling her to come to the Cape. As complex and impossible as it seemed, God put all the plans together and,under the commission of Evangeline Ministries (EM), Wendy returned to Cape Town in January 2006. After listening to women in HIV support groups, the Holy Spirit impressed on Wendy that these ladies, mostly poor and under-educated, needed skills to help them earn a living for themselves and their families. With the introduction of anti-retroviral drugs (ARV’s) they were no longer consigned to death. With the blessing of Pastor John Thomas and his wife Avril, Wendy began a sewing programme. Evangeline Ministries (EM) determined that this would be given free of charge to the women from the Living Hope support groups. Once they began, Wendy was challenged to give to the women a skill and also a tool. EM decided to award each graduate from the sewing class a new sewing machine. Over the years EM has given hundreds of sewing machines to graduates. Teach One to Teach Many Each woman received a Bible in the Xhosa language and every class ends with Bible study and prayer. At graduation and at other times, special speakers come in to present the gospel message in the proper cultural context and invite them to accept Christ. Some of the participants are already believers, but others are steeped in traditional ways and EM believes God when He says, 'The entrance of thy word brings light' (Psalm 119:130). An additional focus is now to teach women who will in turn teach others in their communities. Women from another informal settlement, Sweet Home Farms, have already started to put their training to use, showing the women in their HIV and AIDS group and others how to sew. They have inspired Wendy, and the Holy Spirit has used their example to show EM the way forward. 'When we sow the seeds, God gives the harvest!' Prayer Mushrooms as a Key Helen Phillips, a Cape intercessor and radio presenter, had a vision in 2011 of a big ‘mushroom of prayer’ that would impact the country. In a newsletter she described it as follows: All of a sudden in my mind's eye I had an aerial view of Cape Town. I do not know if it was from Table Mountain or if I was just floating in the air but I saw everything so clearly, the buildings, streets, parking spaces and parks.  Then I saw little mushrooms coming up in the streets and in the buildings, little mushrooms coming up everywhere. I was puzzled as mushrooms do not grow in tarmac or concrete and I asked God what this was. He said clearly in my heart that these were the prayer groups in business and they were the true body of Christ as they were prepared to unite over denominational barriers ... He said I must find them, encourage and grow them and start more as they needed support and motivation. I said eagerly, that I would do it of course: 'Yes Lord!' Then the vision changed and I saw a huge mushroom cloud over the city, growing and growing like an atomic cloud, enormous and vibrating with light and sunset colours. I was filled with awe as I could feel the energy and power from this explosion but it was so beautiful. I asked God what this meant and He said this was the power that would come out of the prayer groups, saving our communities, cities and country. Isn't that exciting? We can have a part of the salvation of our world in these end times and it is our united prayers that will do it. There is great power in our united prayer. Cape Pioneers of the Church Planting Movement At the beginning of the new millennium the City Mission discerned that the emphasis on welfare projects and the good name they won through the various ministries, had not been without a cost: their earlier focus on church planting had fallen away and new leadership was not coming through. Charles, the son of the City Mission pioneer Fenner Kadalie, left the more traditional confines starting to work on farms in the Philippi area. His wife Val led a church planting initiative that grew out of their new focus as they searched for men and women of peace. (Defining a church planting movement as a church that has planted at least 100 new churches through three generations of reproduced new fellowships in two years, the movement New Generation and their covenant partners has seen many new fellowships started in various African countries throughout the continent.) In South Africa itself, through the sacrificial ministry of David Broodryk and from here throughout the continent, new multiplying 'simple churches' mushroomed. The term 'home church' became a misnomer in the movement, that was ably led by the dynamic David Watson. The groups met in all sorts of venues in the market place and on different days of the week. The strategy was to pray for a 'person of peace' who already had access to some group of unevangelized people in the community that could be reached, evangelised and later discipled. Young Zimbabwean Servants Munyaradzi Hove was a lone participant from Zimbabwe at the 2008 CPx of All Nations International. He was a member of the small team that Rosemarie and I led for the outreach phase of the CPx. The outreach at Green Market Square would have significant ramifications when a little 'simple church' could be started there. One of the participants, Valentine Chrume, also hailed from Zimbabwe.   Subsequently Valentine married an US national. At the memorial service of Floyd McClung they happened to be on home assignment. Valentine spoke on behalf of many Africans that had been impacted by the great man of God.) Munya personified the vision and philosophy of Friends from Abroad more than anybody else before or after him. After he returned to his home country, initially as a part of teams that he led, he and other All Nations young people led many people in Victoria Falls to faith in Christ. Thereafter, when he returned there permanently in 2010, he gathered the new disciples of our Lord in discipleship groups and simple churches. We were blessed to see also others impacted at the Cape who would return to their home countries or who went to other countries to share the Good News of Christ. Sustainability of new churches remains a big challenge, but a dent has definitely been made via the spreading of the Gospel into areas that had been unreached or unevangelized. CPx Impact on Bo-Kaap After we had finished the teaching section of the Church Planting Experience (CPx) in the first term of 2008, Rosemarie and I were appointed as leaders of a Bo-Kaap 'home church', along with two couples from Cameroon and Nigeria respectively, as well as Munyaradzi Hove from Zimbabwe. Munya became like a son to us. The five CPxers plus the son of the Nigerian couple lived at our Discipling House during this practical part of the course. (During the xenophobic mob violence of that year we gave shelter to a few young Zimbabweans and one from Rwanda in our Discipling House. Munya became our temporary house father.) The following year the Bo-Kaap 'home church' of CPx was accommodated at our home with Munya as the leader when we only had our youngest two children still living with us in Vredehoek. In 2010 Gerda and Lourens Scheepers led the CPx team. This stint there helped them to some extent to follow it up with service in Morocco. From where they were ultimately evicted by a government hostile to Christian missionaries. In Bo-Kaap Gerda blazed a trail with low-key loving service at the Islamic Schotsche Kloof Primary School, where Mignonne Schumann from Friends from Abroad (FFA) would serve learners from 2016 into the present. Diverse CPx Initiatives By the beginning of 2010 Masiphumelele had become a breeding ground for projects that started to impact the continent. Bethany O’Connor, a social worker from the USA, got deeply involved in these families’ lives. She also started a project with pregnant women who considered abandoning or aborting their babies. The Baby Safe Project took off with leaps and bounds. Thereafter care was developed within the context of an adoption programme. The project caught on to such an extent that Christians in Holland started sponsoring the devices that could be placed in different townships. In due course enquiries came from other African countries. The general training programme to teenagers opposed a perception amongst teenagers that the government was funding them to have babies. Teenage pregnancies dropped significantly in Masiphumelele in due course. Cape Town for Jesus Campaigns For decades Reinhard Bonnke was the only evangelist who could draw crowds that could fill a sports stadium. The only significant one at the Cape happened in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010 when Ps. Angus Buchan was invited in an event that would serve as a trial run. Dag Heward-Mills, a Ghanaian pastor based in Accra, approached church leaders in 2015 to have an evangelistic campaign here at the Cape, after one that was scheduled for Kwazulu Natal, had to be cancelled because of wide-spread xenophobic expansion there.  The success of the campaign that was organised in seven weeks, encouraged the 30-odd Cape pastors to attempt repeating the event annually. In 2016 the first Cape Town for Jesus campaign was held in Belhar with a resounding success. At the beginning of 2017, the Athlone Ministers’ Fraternal approached the steering committee of Cape Town for Jesus. From across the Peninsula and from places quite far away from the Athlone Stadium, many believers showed up for the three-day event. On the Sunday afternoon a Xhosa evangelist was the main speaker, with a choir from Khayelitsha in attendance. This was a conscious effort of the organizers to make the event inclusive. That ‘White’ Christians did not join and that some rain fell on two of the nights, did not dampen the spirits. Around 1000 people filled in the slips for a possible follow-up. 19. A Special MBB Impact A phone call from Dr Ernst van der Walt from his retirment abode towards the end of 2012 would thrust me soon into activist mode to organise meetings for Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, a former Muslim from Algeria. Visit of Pastor Youssef Ourahmane This visit would become a blessing to our own ministry after Ps. Tertius Bezuidenhout had told a fairly new Algerian believer at the Cape about a meeting with Pastor Youssef Ourahmane. At this meeting he was challenged to attend a Bible School, which he subsequently did. He graduated at the end of 2016. In due course John, the new name that he adopted, would be leading a home church of MBBs. In February 2013 we had Pastor Youssef Ourahmane sharing at various venues how there had been a revival in that country. Before 1980 the number of born-again followers in Algeria could be counted. In 2006 the Algerian government prohibited evangelism of any kind and ordered several churches to close down. The churches refused to obey the government. They said: 'Build more prisons because we are not going to do what you are ordering!' Since that time, because of the persecution of Christians, the church grew faster than before and the Algerian government came to understand that they would never be able to stamp out the church. (In 2013 there were already over 100, 000 believers in the country. He had personally seen imams, Islamic scholars and terrorists come to faith in Jesus.) Subsequently the Algerian government said to the church 'You must train your pastors!!!' Permission was given for a Bible School to be built. At the various events during the first days of March 2013 that they addressed at the Cape, Pastor Youssef and his wife did not only share these facts, but they also shared with us their ‘secret’, a prayer chain. We used the visit of the couple from Algeria to challenge a few Muslim background followers of our Lord to organise an evening in Mitchell's Plain. A Fasting and Prayer Chain Takes Shape We warmed to the idea of a prayer and fasting chain, deciding to pursue it. The response was fairly positive. On Friday 19 April a few people came to our home to pray and a few more showed interest to participate. An email from Pretoria announcing a National Day of Prayer for 19 May 2013, sparked a country-wide reaction. That was the background of my question to other Cape prayer warriors to join in some way. The reaction was quite swift. Within a few days the Drommedaris Hall of the Good Hope Centre in the City was booked and plans made for a meeting from 2-5 pm on the 19th of May. MBB’s and Messianic Jewish Believers Uniting? Jack Carstens, the leader of the David and Jonathan Foundation, that has been supporting Messianic congregations in Israel substantially for many years, organised a meeting for Messianic Jewish Believers in Brackenfell for 20 April 2013, along with our missionary colleague Cecilia Burger. This was the first time that such an event took place in Cape Town. About forty people attended, including a few MBBs. Two Muslim Foreigners of Bo-Kaap Changed Two Muslim foreigners, one man and a woman who had been living in Bo-Kaap, were significantly changed. Dianne Komani, a believer from Kenya who had been joining us on prayer walks in Bo-Kaap, told us about Alrasheed, who worked in a city restaurant. He was keen to learn English in order to study. A few miracles further on saw him graduating at CPUT with a Masters degree in IT. Ps. John Miller of the City branch of Every Nation, introduced us to the Zimbabwean woman of Bo-Kaap who was suffering from terrible abuse by her husband. Our high hopes that the breakthrough in Bo-Kaap was imminent, did not materialise however. We baptised the young man from Sudan in December 2013, along with another MBB from Senegal, a trader who had been attending our DBS and who also got linked to our All Nations colleagues. The woman, an Indian background Zimbabwean, who had been married to a Somalian, was baptised soon thereafter. (Their unique stories are recorded in the booklet Into the Light, and accessible on our internet blog.) During the next few months, we came into contact with a few other male MBBs, where accommodation for them became a matter to be addressed. At some stage we had three of them living in our home! Things remained fairly slow on the front of the visible interaction of Jewish and Muslim believers. The 2014 visit of Alon Grimberg, a German with Jewish ancestry, who is married to an Arab believer, kept the vision alive. As leader of the Lech Lecha ministry to Jewish and Arab young people in Israel, he was invited by Messianic Testimony to their annual conference. He also spoke at a few churches. Alpha Courses in Cape Town Alpha Courses started in Cape Town in 1993, soon impacting churches across a very broad denominational spectrum. The above-mentioned young man from Algeria was radically changed at the Holy Spirit week-end of one of the Alpha courses organised by the Edge Assemblies of God congregation of Edgemead in July 2004 Annalise Petersen, who is married to Marlon, became the Western Cape Alpha Coordinator in 2013. The couple introduced the Alpha Course in the Drakenstein prison near to the town of Paarl. (This is the prison where Nelson Mandela spent the final part of his imprisonment, before going down the long drive.) The challenge of all prison ministry remains the restorative part. The need for half way houses is massive. There is a dire need for families that are willing to walk a road full of risks with ex-prisoners. In 2019 Marlon Petersen and his family moved into a half-way house for ex-convicts, networking their Gilgal Ministries closely to that of Message Trust, that attempts to give convicted drug addicts and former gangsters a new chance in life. Prayer for Revival Gets a Fillip Some divine guidance seemed to have been happening in 2013, calling various believers into the prayer movement. Marlon Petersen, a Cape intercessor and pastor with roots in the Seventh Day Advent Church reported: 'I started a prayer group on Facebook February 2013 and it grew to over 30000 in the first 2 years. It now has 43100 members.' In mid-2020 these words were completely dwarfed by what God would do in the wake of the corona effect. It is nevertheless good to be reminded of what God has been been doing in the run-up to the longed for big revival, as Marlon narrated: 'It all started while our early morning devotions had challenges with attendance because of shifts ...' Because many wanted to attend but could not, a request was put to Marlon to start a prayer group on Facebook that would give everyone access at any time. Resonance of the big Welsh revival After reading in 2010 Rick Joyner’s book The Power to change the World about the Welsh revival of the early 20th century, Daniel Brink, Cape leader of Jericho Walls, was challenged to see something similar happen in the Cape. When I visited Daniel at his office in mid-2013, we were both rather discouraged about the lack of unity of the Body of Christ everywhere. (However, towards the end of 2011 the Lord had spoken to me anew through the words of Psalm 127. It was not my business to try and forge the unity of believers locally. God would build the house in his own time.) But then something started to happen with Daniel Brink. He noticed that his clock sometimes had ‘doubles’ like 09h09. He decided to make a deal with the Lord. He was willing to pray for revival daily if the Lord would confirm that, by letting him see more of these doubles. Soon after this prayer, he looked at the clock. There it was - 11h11! He decided to be obedient. Subsequently the Jericho Walls prayer movement got a dramatic boost. Also in our ministry there was a sudden push forward. After many years without any visible fruit, seven new believers that had been impacted through our ministry, were baptised in December 2013 and January 2014, all bar one coming from Muslim background. Sabbatical Snippets In the run-up to a three-month sabbatical in 2014, the bulk of which was spent in Europe, we heard about the conversion of male Muslims on a surprising scale at that time. Before our departure we had been involved in the discipling of a gang leader. His conversion, along with that of two other gang leaders, led to a substantial decrease of criminality in the Athlone area. Because email contact was very common by 2014, we were blessed with news snippets from the Cape, such as a prayer march in the Northern suburbs in which our colleagues Dennis and Denise Atkins, our Discipling House parents, were significantly involved. We also heard of an initiative at Pentecost, Durbanville for Jesus (D4J), where believers from different denominations came together for prayer. The few weeks we spent in Holland encouraged us to consider spending the middle months of every year there, to help support an outreach to the Moroccans living in that part of the country. Upon our return from overseas, our excitement was dampened when we heard that the presence of various Muslim background males, some of them new believers, had caused a crisis at our Discipling House. The need for a parallel institution, one for male Muslim background believers (MBBs), seemed to be urgent. Two of these new believers, one from the Ivory Coast and the other from Sudan, were residing at our home. We also heard that our friends in Holland started making plans to send us a container in which they intended sending various artefacts, as they had done at the beginning of the millennium. We were very much blessed when Andre van der Westhuizen, a member of the DRC Bergsig Church in Durbanville took a keen interest. Along with a few members of that congregation, he wanted to assist to bring a Discipling House for males into being. When Almo Bouwer, a member of that congregation, revealed that the Lord had challenged him to consider building something in District Six, the venture was also linked to the mountain peak name change operation that was still an ongoing prayer point. Our intention to try and purchase or build another building turned out to be very premature. While we took it in our stride that the new MBBs came from the drug culture, we knew that this would not be easy. A Forward Push of the Five-Fold Ministry Events to highlight the five-fold ministry kept the prayer for revival alive. (Referring to Ephesians 4:11, the four-fold or five-fold ministry became more prominent in charismatic and Evangelical Christian circles. Five facets of ministry are mentioned in the Word, namely those of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors (or "shepherds") and teachers.) A significant move in the spiritual realm occurred when Maditshaba Moloko, who had been ordained as pastor, was appointed as the co-ordinator for the annual Jerusalem prayer convocaion in 2014. The gifted intercessor and visionary moved with her business into office space on the 20th floor of the Thibault Square building in mid-2015. Soon thereafter, a monthly prayer meeting for Jerusalem started there. These premises would become the venue for many a strategic city-wide meeting, such as one ahead of a big event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow in July 2015. 20. Church Unity Addressed More Intentionally In 2001 Arthur and Michelle Coetzee started the Global Harvest 24/7 International Prayer Network after their involvement at the Sophiatown police station, Johannesburg,. From the 24/7 prayer room there, they started mobilizing prayer in relationship with the community police forum. Global Harvest was founded by this couple that is passionate about raising a canopy of day and night prayer over the nations. Going Global Arthur and Michelle Coetzee developed resources as they organised international prayer gatherings, also facilitating training for intercessors, to train and equip skilful intercessors that will pray effectively. In 2012 the Lord called them to Krugersdorp to mobilize prayer there. From 2004-2020 the couple mobilized 50 days of fasting and 24/7 Prayer in Correctional Centres. Propagating the 'war room' strategy with the seven mountains of prayer, they travelled around the country, mapping territory for spiritual responsibility from 2015 to the present. When the couple ministered in Kwazulu Natal in January 2017 they clearly understood: 'I am moving you to Bloemfontein. There is going to be a big prayer meeting.' In March 2017 they moved there in divine timing, soon thereafter organizing 24/7 Prayer and establishing a N=national altar of prayer. They were on the spot coordinate a 3 day fast there, ahead of the big 'It's Time' gathering with Pastor Angus Buchan on 22 April 2017. 'Divine co-incidence' occurred when they planned the inaugural use of a container in the township Beacon Valley, Mitchell's Plain, as part of the Resurrection Project there. This fell time-wise exactly when Pastor Callie Liew from Singapore visited Cape Town the first time to start a World Prayer Watch Tower in April 2019. I was intensely involved with the itinerary of Ps. Liew, amazed how God orchestrated even small details of meetings such as the prayer week of Jericho Walls that also fell in that period. Limited Church Unity The enthusiasm of the Highway event of November 2014 at the Lighthouse Christian Centre started dwindling after a few months. We were however blessed by an initiative of Elizabeth Jordaan of Jericho Walls in Durbanville in April/May 2015, which linked the Cape with believers in Malaysia and Holland. This showed some evidence of Church unity. Michelle and Arthur Coetzee, a couple from Krugersdorp that has a ministry in the prophetic realm, were invited to bring a message from God that they were led to share with the Church in Cape Town. On Sunday, 7 July 2015, the Body of Christ was called to come in unity for worship and prayer. The 'Uniting in Prayer and Worship' meeting on that occasion was a most inspiring and exciting event. As a symbol of unity and dying to self, the leaders knelt and cast their crowns, symbolic of their ministries, at the foot of the cross. Different people prayed for seven 'gates of influence' in society: Family, Belief systems(church), Government, governance and leadership, Economy Education, Science and Technology, Media, Arts and Culture. Another big prayer event labelled as a National Day of Repentance for South Africa. was called for the 13th of September the same year. The main event was in Bloemfontein where the ANC had dedicated the country to the ancestral spirits. In the Mother City an event was arranged on short notice to coincide with that one in St Mary's Catholic Cathedral just outside Parliament,. That we united for prayer with Roman Catholic believers was quite significant. Ignition of the #Mustfall Movement The statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the UCT campus triggered the Rhodes Must Fall movement. The first protest, and the action that started the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, occurred on 9 March 2015. A 'Black' student threw human faeces onto the statue. The student protest was initially about the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a symbol which the protesters felt, was oppressive. It was expanded to include institutional racism, the perceived lack of racial transformation at the university, access to tertiary education and student accommodation. Protesting students created a Facebook page entitled 'Rhodes Must Fall'. A train of ‘Must fall’ campaigns followed. That led to the Fees Must fall and Zuma Must Fall campaigns. The latter one became rather anarchic in due course. Students used occupation, civil disobedience and violence during their protests. Property and vehicles were damaged, buildings gutted. The Embassy Downgraded In October 2015 our ANC government gave red-carpet treatment to HAMAS leaders. This had an immediate backlash in the spiritual realm. It was the complete opposite of blessing Israel. Things seemed to go from bad to worse. The Muslim minority in the ANC, led by the vocal grandson of Nelson Mandela and Nellie Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, who is married to a Muslim, succeded in getting the Embassy in Tel Aviv downgraded. Also at the United Nations our envoy shifted the country's stance on Middle East matters from a neutral position towards a clear bias in favour of the Palestinians. The clear downward slide got the country reeling economically. An Escalation of Prayer The short-sighted actions of our government did however also spark an escalation of prayer. Intense spiritual warfare ensued. Via the friendship with parliamentarian Steve Swart of the ACDP we tried to address this matter. In the fortnightly prayer with him in Parliament, this matter came up from time to time. Five years later, the downgrading to consular status as some ANC politicians, driving by the Muslim lobby, still did not get their way. We continue(d) to pray that our country may be a conciliatory blessing in the Middle East conflict. A petition launched by the South African branch of the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem requesting Churches and citizens in general, to get the government to reconsider that decision, had only a luke-warm response. Divine wrath was hanging like a 'sword of Democles' over the country. A Capable Finance Minister Appointed On Wednesday 9 December 2015, President Zuma replaced a capable Finance Minister, Nhlanhla Nene. In a shocking move that caused the Rand currency to plummet, President Jacob Zuma appointed David ‘Des’ van Rooyen, a relatively unknown backbencher, who had been serving as a member of the finance committee in Parliament, to replace Mr Nene. (Nepotism was all too evident. Nene had been at loggerheads with an incompetent South African Airways chairperson Dudu Myeni. The latter also served as the chairperson of President Jacob Zuma’s Education Trust. South Africa On the Rise? Simultaneously, God raised up a Christian in East London, Pastor Robbie Black, to initiate prayers all around the country on the last Sunday of February. A movement was birthed called United Prayer for South Africa. At the beginning of 2016, various Christians felt challenged to oppose the negativity in South Africa. The argument of the South Africa must rise campaign, an initiative of Pastor Errol Naidoo, the well known leader of the Family Policy ministry, was that ‘If everything must fall - then eventually, the nation will fall’. The death of our revered (former) President Nelson Mandela in December 2013 inspired me to make our love story available in hard copy for our grandchildren. This led to the low-key publication of WHAT GOD JOINED TOGETHER in 2015. Our son Sam started‘#hopeforsa’ as a catch word in the South Africa must rise campaign using WHAT GOD JOINED TOGETHER in the campaign through Facebook. A groundswell of prayer came out of concern because of the student unrest and the seemingly never-ending corruption in government circles. The 'State Capture' report in which the actions of various government officials were exposed, brought some correction, but its effect was minimal. A Prophetic Word From Jerusalem A prophetic word was brought to Cape Town from Jerusalem by two couples linked to the Hallel Prayer Room there, just at the time when we had a Unite in Worship and Prayer Committee meeting. The group relayed the prophetic vision of a wave across Africa that would shake witchcraft and idolatry. An email of Rick Ridings, a Jerusalem prayer leader, triggered a prayer event at Cape Point. Cape Town intercessors, together with those who had come from Jerusalem, decided that Ps. Baruch Maayan should be the person to 'strike the waters' with his staff in a prophetic action. Later that day we heard that Baruch Maayan was planning to be in South Africa within the next two weeks! That fifty intercessors showed up on very short notice on Friday 11 December, 2015 at the venue, for which entry was quite expensive, was something akin to a miracle. Led by Ps. Baruch Maayan, a group of leaders and intercessors joined in a prophetic act at Cape Point. The impact and effect of the prayer was quite significant. That President Zuma heeded the advice given to him was a special miracle. (Subsequently he stubbornly held on to his position in spite of many calls to step down, including many from within the ranks of his party.) In a desperate act to salvage the economy of the country, Mr Zuma appointed Mr. Pravin Gordhan, a former Finance Minister, who had an excellent track record. The Rand recovered to a level almost to where it had been before the appointment of Mr. van Rooyen. Believers continued to pray a few more times around the possibility of economic collapse. (A repeat of this demonic attack with even more possible effect, would transpire in July 2021.) The divine reply in answer to prayer was in July even more pronounced. Stance for Freedom of Religion South Africa Freedom of Religion South Africa (FOR SA) was founded in 2014 after the Joshua Generation Church (a well-known evangelical church in the Western and Southern Cape) was targeted by an atheist couple for its Biblical teachings on parental discipline. The Church was investigated by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) who recommended that the Church no longer teach the 'offensive' Scriptures'. The Church was required to remove them from the teaching manuals. Andrew Selley, lead elder of Joshua Generation Church, decided to take a stand to defend the religious freedom rights granted by the South African Constitution. Section 15 of the Constitution in particular grant all South Africans the right to believe, to preach and teach (and by implication, to pass on to their children), and also to live out their religious convictions and beliefs. Teaming up with Adv. Nadene Badenhorst, they started a legal advocacy organisation endeavouring to protect and promote the constitutional right to religious freedom in South Africa. FOR SA engages with government on policies, making submissions to Parliament on draft legislation, that may negatively impact religious freedom. They also appear, as a 'friend of the court' or principal party, before government commissions and the Courts (including the Constitutional Court), in cases affecting religious freedom. Increasingly, laws were being proposed in our country that make the State rather than the Bible the highest authority on what Christians should believe, and how they should act according to those beliefs. Many of these laws subscribe to a secular liberalist world-view and as such, are in direct conflict with Christian and family values. This amounts to a serious threat to the constitutional rights of religious freedom, freedom of religious expression, freedom of association and the rights of religious communities. Our Constitutional Court has recognised that together these rights give churches a degree of autonomy to govern their own affairs. Drug Addicts Changed Two years before their retirement was due, Dennis and Denise Atkins were called back into field work. This was confirming a divine call because the Lord had spoken to them from Micah 2:13 The One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out. Their King will pass through before them, the LORD at their head. Hereafter they started Theos Community Network where they saw many young people, including drug addicts, touched and changed through the 'Ten Steps to Breakthrough' programme. Later the Theos Bible Academy was started to further train, shape and prepare young people for ministry. Here many young people were transformed from utter brokenness into powerful vessels of God and missionary diamonds serving God in their local churches or on the mission field. Friends from Abroad became the thankful recipients of this couple's service for a stint of two and a half years as the houseparents of Moriah Discipling House in Mowbray, while they continued running a pre-school for refugee children that they had started in Parow. For them and for us the relatively short stint there, ahead of their 'retyrement' to Betty's Bay, rates among the most impactful. (The diabetes-related health problems of Dennis, a brain tumour and surgery speeded up this process. Many a time Denise had to rush her husband to Groote Schuur Hospital, where it was sometimes touch and go or they could have lost him.) The proximity to Groote Schuur from Mowbray was a special blessing. In 2016 they started Kyrios Transformation Centre at Mooi Hawens Camp site in Betty's Bay, bringing the Breakthrough and Bible School programmes under one umbrella. It was always Dennis’s dream to build a mission home on a small holding in the Overstrand, but in 2018 he went to be with the Lord before realizing that dream. Instead, the decentralizing of the Bible School training brought about 4 new satellite sites in which Denise is still active. This was however not the end of ministry for Denise. In fact, an extensive ministry in primary schools in the Overstrand got off the ground in recent years, as well as her assisting Michelle and Arthur Coetzee, the leaders of the Global Harvest prayer ministry. Her ongoing service at the Kensington Treatment Centre with female drug addicts, contributed to quite a few of them being rehabilitated. 21. Time to Rise When I turned sixty-five in December 2010, I started looking more intensively at ‘re- tyring, ‘putting on new tyres’ as I called it - not merely re-treading old ones! We seriously considered relocating to the Middle East to share the Gospel in a low-key way there among Arab speakers, and also engaging in some itinerant teaching. During our sabbatical in 2014 when we were in Holland for two weeks, we were very much challenged by the fact that hardly anything was done by believers there in a loving outreach to the Moroccans, many of whom had been living there for generations. Crossing the Jordan! At the beginning of 2016 Rosemarie and I were challenged and blessed by the sermon of Wilna van der Merwe, the new pastor of First Century Vineyard Church that we were still attending. (Three years prior to that we looked at our attending this congregation as a transition.) She used Deuteronomy 11:11f as her point of departure: You are crossing the Jordan to take possession of a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven... Bo-Kaap was the 'Jordan' that we wanted to cross. We still hoped and prayed for simple churches to be started in Bo-Kaap and that we could perhaps assist with some monitoring. ‘Crossing the Jordan’ became our goal as we prayed more intensely for three leadership units to take over from us. The Discipling House and the overall outreach to foreigners who had come to the Cape, our friends from abroad, were the other two units that needed leaders. We were blessed when shortly thereafter, a couple contacted us that was serving as missionaries elsewhere. They intended to return from there soon because of the education of their two teenage children. God had challenged Theo and Mignonne Schumann on the island Ibo in Northern Mozambique, to serve Malay people when they heard about our ministry via a colleague. (A sector of the present-day Bo-Kaap was known in earlier days as the Malay Quarter.) In due course we could hand over the responsibility for Bo-Kaap to them, as we went to increase involvement in District Six from 2017. United Prayer For South Africa During a meeting in January 2016 with church leaders in the 20th Floor premises at Thibault Square of Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, it surfaced that nobody knew whether anything was happening in the Cape Peninsula regarding the United Prayer for South Africa initiative. I had picked up through Gateway News that Pastor Robbie Black of East London had the vision to get South Africans to pray on Sunday the 26th of February 2016 at 14:00h. He said: “It is time for us as Christian believers to rise, take a stand and unite in prayer for our nation. I pray that you as a fellow Christian will share in the excitement and join us in the United Prayer for South Africa … to have a prayer session at prayer points all across our country, mobilizing as many towns and cities as possible.” Just like 1994 when my inquiry brought the Marches for Jesus in the Western Cape into my lap, I hereafter found myself attempting to get United Prayer for South Africa off the ground in our part of the country. This time round it was however fairly easy with the technological advances of emails and whatsapp at our disposal. In due course I found Terence Phillips, with whom I had been praying at various occasions already, notably on Saturday mornings, willing to take over that responsibility. Sinister forces seemed to collude to bring the able Finance Minister Gordhan down. We were not buying the Saturday edition of the Cape Argus as regularly as we used to do, but we happened to buy a copy on Saturday the 25th of February 2016. There on the front page it was disclosed that President Zuma was about to remove Pravin Gordhan. It was only natural to mention that fact as a main prayer point at Rhodes Memorial the next day, along with prayer for Dove’s Peak, the attempt to change the name of the mountain peak that seems to rule supremely over our city. We were blessed that our prayer intervention clearly resulted in a special response. The secretive links of the President and his cronies to the Gupta family, that came to be known as ‘state capture’, were exposed in the weeks thereafter. It would however take another two years for President Zuma to be deposed. Surprising Input From Elsewhere From two different sources I heard that Rev. Peter Chapman, who had come to serve at the Gardens Presbyterian Church, had a heart for the unity of the body of Christ. After making an appointment with him, we lost little time to get a pastors’ weekly prayer time and interaction started there. Advertised as a private meeting with Dr Richard Harvey, a Messianic Jewish believer from the UK, we also had a few of our Muslim background believers from Algeria and the Ivory Coast present, along with Jewish friends. Our hope that this could be the start of a divine move to forge more visibility of the Body of Christ in the City Bowl was soon thoroughly dampened We could not get other pastors to join us for prayer on a one-off basis. Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu was the only other City Bowl pastor who was a regular. A Water Crisis Towards the end of 2016 a crisis started building up as the dams in the Western Cape were approaching critical levels. Parallel to this, fires had to be extinguished at different places. Many of the fires which caused extensive damage were probably arson-related, started by politically motivated people. There was unhappiness in ANC ranks that only the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance is ruling, thrives. Corruption within ANC ranks was rife and the towns and provinces where they ruled, service delivery was lacking. The arson-induced fires coincided with a serious shortage of water, notably in the Mother City, as well as in many parts other parts of the Eastern, Northern and Western Cape. Thousands of churches around the country prayed for rain on 22 January 2017. Indeed, what the arch enemy planned for evil, was sovereignly turned around, albeit that the prayer for rain remained unanswered for many more months. Monthly Combined Worship Started When we had to find a venue on short notice for a meeting with Omri Jaakobovic, a Messianic Jewish believer of Hosting of Israeli Travellers (HIT) on 1 April 2017, Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian congregation obliged immediately. The service took on a deeper significance when we decided to turn the event into the first of a three-part 10th anniversary celebration of Friends from Abroad. That occasion evolved into a monthly combined worship time on the last Sunday of every month. This had a positive spin-off when a Kingdom weekly prayer group for pastors started around Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian Church. When Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu left for Burundi and Rev. Peter Chapman for Kimberley soon after each other, only missionaries remained that were involved with outreach to Muslims and Jews. This gave a new lease life to the networking within Isaac Ishmael Ministries. After the departure of Baruch Maayan and his family and the sudden death of Brett Viviers in 2018, this aspect of ministry became quite dormant. A wonderful worship service in the Moravian Hill Chapel of District Six in 2019 with our Eritrean refugee brother as speaker was one of the last services of this kind before the Covid crisis the next year stopped them. They have not been resumed as yet, albeit that a very special worship event was held on 25 April 2021 in District Six. An event initiated by the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape was advertised as 'Come to the Table' at the Congregational Church in Kloof Street on Pentecost Sunday in 2022. This event was a catalyst to a City-wide expression of unity of the Body of Christ via the 24 hubs (sub-councils of the metropolis). However, the bulk of the 80 believers who attended this event, came from churches further away. Countering a Threat Around Jerusalem The real threat of a tense situation around Jerusalem and a ‘so-called’ Peace Conference in Paris on 15 January 2017, spawned a world-wide call for prayer. Followers of Jesus linked with Israel and other Jews, prayed that the enemies of God might be scattered and confused. God did this in no uncertain way. At this time the incoming new US President Donald Trump had put the moving of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem high on his list of priorities. The UK sent a low-profile delegation to Paris and clearly stated that they would not sign the final statement. Likewise, in New York on 17 January 2017, a divisive UN Security Council resolution was not passed. That would have given the right of way to the Palestinian Authority to divide Jerusalem unilaterally. A major escalation of the Middle East conflict was thwarted in this way. It is Time ...! Crime, corruption and a general wave of negativity was sweeping the nation during the first months of 2017. Pastor Angus Buchan announced ‘It is Time ...!’, calling intercessors to come to Bloemfontein for a day of prayer on 22 April. He expected a million intercessors to attend. However, there were only six weeks to prepare! This would have been impossible humanly speaking!... But God! From all around South Africa Christians came in their numbers in all kinds of vehicles. Modern technology enabled an event of a magnitude that would have taken ages to prepare a mere few years prior to that. Significant at the occasion was that Angus Buchan mentioned in his sermon cum prayer that we would be able to witness the result in Parliament. (This would happen on Friday, 24 November 2017 when 150 intercessors and believers from across South Africa gathered in the old parliament precincts. It was there where all the apartheid laws had been enacted.) Many intercessors prayed for the end of the corrupt regime of President Zuma. That was not to be, not even by an extended process. Parliamentarians were required to vote in a secret ballot on 8 August, 2017. This could theoretically have been a way, also for ANC members, to express no confidence in him. However, President Zuma survived not only that vote of no confidence, but also many exposures of corruption, that had become known as a part of 'state capture'. It seemed that a miracle was needed to unseat him before the elections of 2019. The Miracle of Khayelitsha Already around ten years earlier a miracle started to evolve in Khayelitsha, which had been started as a new home in the late 1970s to dump the 'Blacks', notably the informal settlers of Crossroads and Modderdam, whom the apartheid regime had problems with. Hansie Louw, an Afrikaner, who went to live there for 18 months with his family from ??, recorded what transpired there from around 2006. With a few other intercessors he went to what was called the Throne Room. where there were about 90 people from different nationalities praising God in their own language, praising and praying. Racial Tension Erupts In some clever electoral manipulation, the African National Congress (ANC) encouraged many Xhosa's from the Eastern Cape, one of their strongholds, to come to the Western Cape where the Democratic Alliance (DA) had been ruling for many years. A whole new township developed in this way on the outskirts of the rural town of Grabouw, significantly changing the political landscape, without however causing significant friction there. Fifty kilometres away, a crisis developed in Hermanus. The talk of land expropriation was interpreted by some folk as an opportunity to go and settle on vacant land. In Sequalo, a new informal settlement of Mitchell's Plain next to Vanguard Drive which was renamed to Jakes Gerwel Drive, racial tension rose to a critical level between the new Eastern Cape Xhosa settlers and 'Coloured' folk. Many of them had been waiting for years on housing via lists of the Cape Town City Council. The mediation of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC) proved invaluable in this situation. This included stalwart ministry of Bishop Mark Bloemstein and Rev. Annie Kirke, who subsequently became a coalition catalyst on behalf of the group More Than Peace. The CCWC involvement put the Church back on the map after both the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in the Western Cape and the Western Province Council of Churches had become silent. Run-Up to 40 Days of Worship After our return from Europe at the end of August 2016, we seriously contemplated another extended stint in Holland in 2017. Major problems during our absence at our Discipling House brought about second thoughts. We believe that our succession as leaders of Friends from Abroad should be properly in place, before attempting another extended stint abroad. We ultimately left for only six weeks. There we heard that a Brazilian couple, Francis and Mildred Lire, had a vision for 40 Days of Worship in South Africa that should start on 24 September 2017. The Lord opened a door for Francis and Mildred to come and live in the Mother City quite near to us in September 2017, just prior to the 40 Days of Worship. We changed the venue of our monthly combined worship time to Rhodes Memorial for that occasion. Next to worship, praying for rain was a common topic at various other venues all around the Western Cape. There we prayed of course also for the name change to Doves' Peak. A Catalyst for Revival The actual 40 Days of Worship were quite special. Apart from indoor events throughout the country there were also worship occasions on Cape heights and at Blaauwberg Beach. Shofars were being used increasingly. At the various venues praying for rain was part of the programme and fairly prominent. On Tuesday 26 September we invited Francis and Mildred Lira to our home. It was quite crowded in our prayer room but very blessed. Our friend Ernald Arends led us in worship. God’s presence was almost tangible. While we were praising the Lord, an unseasonal deluge suddenly poured down as confirmation that God was pleased with our adoration. Organised by our friends Selby and Phillip Shaw, intercessors started gathering at Rhodes Memorial every last Sunday afternoon of the month subsequently until Covid-19 had another victim albeit one meeting was held at the end of March 2021, networking with United Prayer for South Africa and Global Harvest. Towards the end of the 40-day period, we heard that there would be a prayer time in Parliament on 24 November with Pastor Angus Buchan. This felt like a continuation of the 40 Days of Worship although the intention of the event was completely different. White Friday ‘Black Friday,’ the day after the annual day of thanksgiving in the USA, also found its way to South Africa. 24 November 2017 was a day to remember, so much so that I dubbed it ‘White Friday’. Around two hundred and fifty church and prayer leaders from all over the country had been invited, with Pastor Angus Buchan as the special speaker. The venue was the old chamber of Parliament where Dr Verwoerd had been stabbed in 1966. The event was thus filled with nostalgic dynamite! It got very hot under the collar for me personally when one speaker after the other recalled laws that had affected me personally, such as the Group Areas Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. (As a result of the former law and the related practice of so-called ‘Slum Clearance’, almost all the buildings and places of memories of my childhood had been demolished. The racial marriage prohibition had been the cause of my exile of just over eighteen years. I was glad that I found a seat where I was more or less out of sight of the video cameras. I was crying quite a lot. I heard later that many other tears were flowing freely, tears of remorse and repentance!). Anneke Rabe, an Afrikaner intercessor, started the meeting with moving prayers of repentance on behalf of her people. The confession on behalf of ‘Blacks’, e.g. for the farm murders and other atrocities that had been inspired by hatred or resentment of 'Whites', were just as moving. Quite special it was that Rev. Michael Cassidy, the aged stalwart founder of Africa Enterprise and initiator of the unsuccessful battle against legal recognition of same sex marriages in 2006, also offered a prayer. (He had been the driving force with a few other believers, in the organizing of the Rustenberg Conference of November 1990, the event which divinely ushered in our democratic era out of the apartheid quagmire.) In his contribution Steve Swart, an ACDP Member of Parliament, confessed the anti-Semitism of the government during World War II when Jews that had fled the Holocaust in Germany, were not allowed to disembark in Cape Town. (The attitude of our present government towards Israel is of course something that we are not at all proud of as followers of the Jewish Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.) We continue to pray that the government may change its attitude and become more active towards reconciliation between opposing factions in Israel. We also pray for a change in the xenophobic practices that are so evident in the treatment of African expatriates at the Department of Home Affairs! Not surprisingly, ‘the cherry on top of the cake’ was the relatively short speech and the terse powerful prayer for rain of the unique Pastor Angus Buchan. A few times his typical AMEN! roared through the auditorium. Significant in his speech was a simple prophetic proclamation that the Cape dams would be full by the end of March. In due course his stance became the cause for various attacks on him. He was not always innocent with some of his quips. (This was notably the case two years later, when he formulated an invitation rather unfortunately to Afrikaners for an Its Time event on Loftus Versfeld Stadium, scheduled for 1 February 2020. Singling out Afrikaners, next to Jews, as the only people to have come into a covenant relationship with God, was a terrible mistake. Subsequently he displayed deep remorse, going to apologise personally to 'Black' pastors and cancelling the envisaged mass event.) A Response to the Murdering of Farmers 'One Settler, One Bullet’ was a rallying cry and slogan that originated in the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the Pan African Congress (PAC), during the struggle of the 1980s against apartheid in South Africa. The slogan parodied the African National Congress's slogan 'One Man, One Vote', which eventually became 'One Person, One Vote'. ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’ was the competing war cry of Peter Mokaba of the ANC at the April 1993 funeral of assassinated South African Communist party leader Chris Hani. (When the fight against apartheid was nearing its end, a settler was defined as a ‘White’ participating in the oppression of indigenous people. It thus did not include all ‘White’ South Africans. Those 'Whites' whose 'sole allegiance was to Africa' were considered part of the African nation. They were excluded from the settler category.) In 2015, the student activist group Rhodes Must Fall and other affiliated movements revived the slogan by chanting 'One Settler One Bullet' at rallies at the University of Cape Town and by statements on social media. A gradual increase of farmers being killed reached its peak in October 2017 when in different parts of the country ‘White’ farmers gathered for prayer, joined by other Christians. At the Cape quite a number of ‘Coloureds’ joined in these events. Hope in South Africa was fanned that the end of the Zuma era was nearing when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as president of the ANC at their annual congress in December 2017. Many were still hoping that Jacob Zuma would step down voluntarily, so that there would not be a leadership clash. This would however not be the case. By contrast, true to what had happened in the years prior to this, Zuma clung to his position fiercely. That Cyril Ramaphosa deemed it fit to participate publicly in ancestor worship, dampened the spirits of Christians who had been hoping for spiritual renewal within the government party. That was minimally redeemed when he led the singing of 'If you believe and I believe, the Africa will be saved'. It’s time Again! In mid-January 2018 Ps. Angus Buchan sent out a WhatsApp call for another It’s time occasion like the one in Bloemfontein of 22 April 2017. Buchan selected the venue as Mitchell's Plain after reading the testimony of Ashley Potts in a Scripture Union booklet. Someone abused his name to call intercessors to a time of prayer for rain on Wednesday 24 January at 13h. The hoax message, claiming to be from Ps Buchan, and written in his style - referring back to last year’s historic “It’s Time” prayer day in Bloemfontein - spread rapidly through Christian social media networks. South African believers, concerned about the water crisis in the Western Cape, took up the call all over the country, for an hour of prayer from 1pm to 2pm on Wednesday 24 January, sharing the message widely, promoting it in churches and at events, and planning ways to participate in the national prayer event in groups or alone. Swieg Nel, an influential member and co-ordinator of the ACDP party in its early days, played a special role in keeping this whatsapp group going. Jericho Walls posted a call to prayer on its website, saying: 'Several groups asked for Christians to unite in prayer on Wednesday 24 January 2018 to pray especially for the water crisis in Cape Town, but also for the drought that was plaguing nearly the whole country. Pray as individuals, but try to unite in prayer in groups anytime between 12:00 and 14:00 or in the evening.' A Great Response Although the effect might have been blunted when the message was corrected by Ps. Buchan as not from him just prior to the day, the response was tremendous. Denominational boundaries crumbled as people came to pray in diverse venues and in homes. At the meeting in the Mowbray Baptist Church I found myself attending this prayer meeting, taking along a few people, including a Hindu background follower of Christ and a MBB. The intercessors decided to make this a weekly event to pray for rain and revival. Here I got to know believers better who are linked to the Message Trust, an agency that had been operating at the Cape since 2014. Reporter for Gateway News? When Andre Viljoen asked me to write a report of the preparatory event with Angus Buchan at the Lighthouse Christian Centre on Wednesday, 7 February 2018, ahead of the ‘It’s time’ event scheduled for March 24, I had no hesitation because I would have gone anyway. What a special joy and privilege it was to write articles for Gateway News in the weeks prior to the event in Mitchell's Plain. A Divine Response On Tuesday 13 February, 2018 something happened in the spiritual realm which linked the praying for rain at the planned 'It's Time' event to the Zuma administration. There was a strange dark cloud hanging over the centre of Cape Town that evening. This was followed by an extended roar of lightning and thunder which is very rare for the Mother City. It almost felt as if God was speaking. And then the news came that President Jacob Zuma would resign! The nation had to wait, however, until the late hours of 14 February before Zuma finally resigned. He had been clinging to power just like Robert Mugabe had been doing in Zimbabwe a few months prior to this. Intercessors perceived this as a wonderful gift from our loving heavenly Father. Land Grabbing Legalized? President Ramaphosa indicated in his 2018 State of the Nation address that ‘expropriation without compensation’ would be implemented. However, that a resolution to this effect was passed in Parliament soon thereafter, took many of us by surprise. He had displayed pragmatic views before this, but taking over from the unprincipled Jacob Zuma he was possibly also pushed in this move by the extreme left wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF party). Emotions ran unusually high during our prayer time in the provincial parliament on Saturday, 10 March. Just prior to this, the Democratic Alliance gave open support to the Gay Parade on 24 February 2018. Same sex marriage and abortion were two issues, next to land grabbing, which appeared superficially to be tantamount to the legalizing of theft, that Christians felt should be addressed. The scary scenario of Zimbabwe at the beginning of the millennium, when 'White' farmers lost land big time, came to mind. (The country, that had been called the bread basket of Africa, was reduced to a poverty stricken region from which the citizens fled in their thousands to South Africa.) Expropriation to be Implemented The alarm caused by the February 2018 decision in the South African parliament to expropriate land without compensation, brought a few Christians together once again. The idea came up to provide biblical guidelines to the electorate in view of the 2019 elections. Using our Doves' Peak committee as nucleus, a few other Cape Christians representing different organizations, were asked to join this ‘think tank’. We were quite thankful that the government did not steam-roll the scary law through Parliament. Instead, public hearings around the matter were ordered. This differed to the previous steam-rolling of new legislation. The ANC could have abused their two-thirds majority with the aid of the EFF. We attempted to get 'into Parliament', to dialogue with different political parties. Via Steve Swart, the ACDP member of Parliament and a friend, it was fairly easy. On 20 April 2018 quite an array of pastors pitched up, including some however who had a score to settle with the Christian party. Our goal was therefore more or less still born. Steve Swart was subsequently a member of a government commission that went around the country to give rank and file folk the chance to verbalize their opinions about the sensitive issue that was dividing the nation along racial lines. Pro Testare I was reminded of my personal stance during the apartheid era, proposing that believers should interpret protest to these laws with its unethical and unbiblical tendency from its Latin root pro testare. I was ready to share at a public hearing at the Friends of God (AFM) Church in Goodwood that my two brothers and I were standing by the decision of our parents to forgive the government of the day for the unfair expropriation of our property when we received a pittance as compensation in Tiervlei/Ravensmead. In due course Patrick Kuwana, a learned Zimbabwean economist who lives in Pretoria, joined the think tank. Murray Bridgman and I went to Parliament in person to deliver a document that had been compiled by our think tank. We were quite thankful that the country-wide reaction to the government intention at least delayed a possible steam-rolling of legislation which could have converted our country into a second Zimbabwe. Run-Up to It’s Time Cape Town When Pastor Angus Buchan read the testimony of Ashley Potts, who got to personal faith after being addicted to drugs, he was deeply touched. Buchan referred to Ashley as his “Macedonian man”. Ps. Buchan hereafter felt that God wanted the It’s Time prayer event to be held at Mitchell's Plain. He did not know that the suburb was a bastion of satanism. He had merely acted in obedience to what he sensed was a divine calling. Preparations For It's Time at Mitchell's Plain Daniel Brink invited believers to come and pray at the actual venue, the Swartklip Sports Complex between Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha on the Wednesdays prior to the 24th of March. Every week a few more believers joined in a crescendo fashion towards Wednesday, 21 March, Human Rights Day. It being a public holiday, many more attended than otherwise would have been the case. After a few others led in prayer for various other issues. Pastor Barry Isaacs rose to the occasion in his introduction, calling us to pray for racial reconciliation. He noted that he had not experienced naked racism in his fifty years of ministry as he has been doing in the recent past. Indeed, it seems as if the government support for taking property without compensation had unleashed unparalleled racial hatred. Pastor Isaacs challenged the audience ‘not to wait till tomorrow’ for racial reconciliation. He invited the believers to pray with someone from a different culture! Daniel Brink requested Pastor Alfie Fabe, a ‘Coloured’ pastor, to stand opposite him. Daniel thereafter asked all Afrikaners present to stand with him. All people who had been affected by the forced removals, were asked to join Pastor Fabe. Daniel Brink prayed a moving, remorseful prayer of repentance on behalf of Afrikaners, his people, not only for their attitudes of racial pride, prejudice and arrogance, but also for the forced removals of so many people of colour. He expressed remorseful regret for the brutal practices that accompanied that, repenting for the implementation of other apartheid-related laws. While tears were flowing freely, Pastor Fabe extended forgiveness to the Afrikaners and also asked forgiveness from God for the anger, bitterness and rancour towards all 'White' people. This was followed by another moving confession of Pastor Theo Roman on behalf of ‘Coloureds,’ for the bitterness they have been experiencing due to a feeling of being side-lined, first by the ‘Whites’ in the previous era, and thereafter also by the present government. Exchange Your Gun For a Bible! Saturday 24 March 2018 was an extraordinary day. One of the biggest crowds ever seen at an event in Cape Town (with the exception of special funerals), gathered to pray at the Swartklip Sports Ground, Mitchell's Plain. The peace of God was tangible at the venue and in the surrounding streets which are notorious for gang violence. People had predicted that there would be trouble as there had been at other events at the same venue. And, in one of many signs of God’s goodness and favour on the day, soft rain began to fall just after the arrival of Angus in a police helicopter, to be followed by several more gentle showers in the drought-stricken region. An extraordinary scene unfolded when farmer Angus Buchan called on gang leaders present to come to the front to 'exchange your gun for a Bible'. Descending from the platform to stand with the gang leaders who responded, Buchan said he was going to do what God had showed him in a dream. He said the Lord had impressed on him that the men were leaders, they were just going in the wrong direction, that the Father wanted to use them in His kingdom. He told the men that he wanted to give to them some objects because he wanted to show them that they were loved by God, by those present at the It’s Time prayer event, and by South Africa. He then gave his trademark hat to one of the young men, saying: 'From today onwards you are going to be a leader for Jesus. I want you to have my hat! You are going to be a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ!', he said to another young man as he gave him his 'very special Bible, given to me by my family'. Angus Buchan also gave his jacket, checked shirt and boots to other gang leaders before returning to the platform to lead prayers for Cape Town, the Western Cape and South Africa in his jeans, white vest and socks. Pastor Buchan went on: 'Those men are a representation of many others, but I am believing that the Church will get around them and rehabilitate them!' A Police Report and the Follow-Up The police report was a testimony on its own. The South African Police Service (SAPS) had warned the organizers that there had been a meeting of ten thousand people on the same ground the previous week, with forty-eight stabbings and over one hundred robberies. For the 'Its Time' meeting there was not a single incident reported! One of the first members of the Church to rise to the challenge of following up the repentant gang leaders was Ashley Potts, who grew up in Mitchell's Plain. As the director of the Cape Town Drug Counselling Centre, Potts wasted no time after the event, visiting two of the young men who had responded to Buchan’s altar call. With the help of the community, he set about to track all the others down. Subsequently Ashley Potts become a valued member of the Executive Committee of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC). Abuses By Pastors Addressed The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (which got known as the CRL Rights Commission) was formed in 2002, drawing its mandate from the constitution. The necessity of this commission became clear in the second decade of the millennium, when all sorts of abuses by pastors went viral. In due course the strange practices of certain pastors, many of whom happened to be expatriates, would aggravate the tension between 'Blacks' and foreigners. South African folk using the title of pastor and even of bishop, were guilty of similar practices. The CRL Rights Commission produced a report in 2016 entitled 'The Commercialisation of Religion and Abuse of People’s Belief Systems'.  This report recommended that: - the CRL (as an institution of State) should be given the power to license (and thereby control) religious practitioners and places of worship. the CRL should be given the power to be the 'final arbiter of religion' with 'final decision powers'. CRL Rights Commission Recommendations Rejected After due democratic process and hearings before Parliament’s Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Portfolio Committee, COGTA rejected these recommendations. Instead, COGTA recommended that a national religious leaders conference take place to consider the issues/concerns raised by the CRL’s Report and to develop solutions by (and for) the religious community. They further recommended the development of a Code of Conduct as a benchmark and a standard of voluntary accountability for the religious community. Code of Conduct For Religions In April 2018, a meeting of 70 plus senior religious leaders mandated the South African Council for the Protection and Promotion of Religious Rights and Freedoms (SACRRF) to draft a code of conduct for religious practitioners. They were selected for this task because the SACRRF had previously authored the Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms. Emeritus professors of Johannesburg University and Stellenbosch University respectively, Rassie Malherbe and Pieter Coertzen constructed a very commendable document. (Prof. Pieter Coertzen is the chairperson of the SACRRF.) In the interim, Marxist-oriented groups in Rwanda and Angola had succeeded to get many churches closed. The Cultural Religious and Linguistic (CRL) Rights Commission, led by a Marxist chair lady, appeared now to try to achieve the same in South Africa by hook or by crook. The work of the two learned gentlemen to draft the above-mentioned document seemed to have been brushed aside as she attempted to regulate religion and even attack the Church. The CRL Rights Commission subsequently co-organised a Religious Leaders Summit, which took place at Rhema Church, Randburg, a suburb of Johannesburg, on 13 February 2019. This event was attended by around 800 senior religious leaders from across the faith spectrum. At the meeting, there was an overwhelming consensus that the religious community accepted the CRL Rights Commission's declaration that they were 'handing over the process' to the Summit and therefore no further input from the CRL Rights Commission on this matter was required. Importantly, it further resolved that a local, provincial and (ultimately) national consultative process would now take place to consider viable solutions to the abuses and malpractices in the religious sector. FOR SA played a major role in facilitating a participative, consultative process in many cities and regions across South Africa. The purported concerns became more or less redundant when the draft Code of Conduct was hereafter brought back into play and discussed in different forums. When the new CRL Rights Commission was formed, the vindictive lady was not re-elected. The attempt to regulate religion (i.e. more especially the Church) was put on the back burner. It returned in May 2021 via amendments to the Equality Law which appeared to be at least as vicious as the proposals of 2019. Run-Up to the 2019 Elections The first salvos for the 2019 elections started as could be expected already a year earlier. Quite significant was how Christians would be voting. Pastor Errol Naidoo, well-known for his biblical views for family values, joined the fray of the ACDP. To that end he intended to use state of the art equipment and software in an effort to get 30 seats for the party. Going around the country with a message of hope, that would have translated in a 1000% increase, a tsunami in the political landscape. That could have made that party the official opposition. The rising excitement was sadly blown away when Pastor Naidoo resigned from the party a few months later. An Alliance of Related Organisations In April 2017 the News Nations Movement (NNM) was started and mooted as an alliance of related organisations, institutions and persons. The primary value of the NNM could have been in relationships between diverse persons and entities, drawn from across the length and breadth of the nation. Three of its leaders met evangelical and community leaders in the Cape suburb Table View on 9 September 2018. It was advertised as a 'Kingdom movement'. At the meeting, attended by churchmen plus a few Khoisan political leaders, they were challenged to state clearly that Jesus would be the King of the movement. The attempt to be inclusive, and not offend Muslims and other faiths, would however be an albatross of a promising movement. It was stated subsequently all too clearly that it would not be Christian-based. On the other hand, perseverance by this group, to get individuals standing as independents, did ultimately result in a victory in the Constitutional Court with a landmark decision on 11 June 2020. The case concerned the right of independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections. The Order of the Constitutional Court would deem the Electoral Act unconstitutional because it requires adult citizens to be elected to the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures only through membership of political parties. In its majority judgment, the Court reasoned that the defect had the effect of unjustifiably infringing on certain rights. Parliament had twenty-four months from the date of the Order to remedy this defect in the Electoral Act. To their honour Parliament did not drag this issue. (The highlighting of corruption via the Zondo Commission of politicians who were not held accountable by their parties, would have helped the cause of the News Nations Movement.) Prayer Action Launched Nationally In January 2019 Janet Bran-Hollis, an Eastern Cape prophetess, started operating together with Dr Arthur Frost to launch a prayer action called the Kingdom Nation Movement. They worked closely with Dr Arno van Niekerk, a lecturer in Economy at the University of the Free State using whatsapp. Believers were praising the Lord for raising Nehemiahs like Dr. Arthur Frost and Dr Arno van Niekerk to get the nation praying as never before. The availability of whatsapp made it all so easy. The resulting Christian Consensus was poised to impact the elections positively in a massive way. Dr Arno van Niekerk brought Christians who were in leadership in different parties together for indabas around biblical values. This gave great hope and expectation among believers for divine intervention at the polls. This wave of prayer was definitely unprecedented, fuelled by factors like the ongoing electricity load shedding that had already impacted the economy of the country very adversely. The run-up to the elections of 8 May 2019 and the fear of an explosion of racial animosity was also a cause for serious intercession (Parties on both extremes gave reason for anxiety. To ‘Fight Back’, as an Afrikaner party had as slogan, was surely not in the spirit of our Lord.) The unity forged by the Christian Consensus got a massive blow however when the ACDP leader broke ranks via their leader. The DA leader, Musi Maimane, a pastor and a committed Christian, was in a fix as well. His party was known for liberal unbiblical views around abortion and same-sex unions. The broadly advertised consensus became a misnomer. New Expectations The launch of the Resurrection Project of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape at the Beacon Hill Secondary School on 24 March raised high hopes of new local church co-operation. As Friends from Abroad, we had vested interest in the success of this project. Dean Ramjoomia is a Muslim background pastor involved who had been coming through our ranks. (He has been leading the independent ministry Nehemiah Call, with open air evangelistic ministry and feeding needy families during the Covid-19 crisis.) The launch of the Resurrection Project took place a few kilometres from the field where Ps. Angus Buchan had his big prayer event on 24 March the previous year. We invited believers to pray that the project might become a model of wholistic networking and community involvement, led by the local churches. The occasion on 24 March 2019 was very special, fanning the hopes that the prophecy of Mitchell's Plain, to be the flower of Cape Town, would come to fruition. Across the Cape Peninsula believers prayed that the Resurrection Project of wonderful church networking would be emulated in due course in other communities that have also been affected by vice, gangsterism and drug abuse. High Expectations Dashed In the political arena expectations were fairly high after Cyril Ramaphosa's first State of the Nation Address as State President, only to be dashed when his Cabinet was announced. Apart from the good moves to bring Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene back and giving Pravin Gordhan a prominent post, Ramaphosa basically merely rearranged the chairs after the Gupta debacle under Jacob Zuma. He was thus clearly not heeding the sound advice of his erstwhile youth leader and friend Kenneth Meshoe. Disappointments The initial unity displayed by the Christian Consensus that had been engineered by Dr Arno van Niekerk, had apparently been frittered away. The arch enemy seemed to have won on 8 May, election day. The biggest gains were achieved by two parties on the extreme left and right! Racial politics seem to have returned to our country big time! New Hope Quite a unique expression of unity transpired on 29 February and 1 March 2020 when intercessors from all nine provinces came to pray on Table Mountain. We also organised a prayer event on Signal Hill for the special occasion. The editor of Gateway News asked me again to write something. What a blessing it was to reminisce at what God had been doing down the years respectively on Signal Hill and around the low-key name changing effort of the big mountain elevation of the city towards Dove's Peak. 21. Jerusalem …. a Cup of Trembling? Rosemarie and I were blessed by wonderful times of prayer, notably due to the presence of visitors. Geert and Martien van der Veen, a Dutch couple linked to the Corrie ten Boom Foundation were with us at the beginning of 2018.  (Corrie ten Boom was the ‘tramp for God’ who travelled the world in the 1970s and 1980s to share her experiences in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, especially with the message of forgiveness. Martien van der Veen’s grandfather constructed the hiding place in the Ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland. 800 Jews went through the Hiding Place during the Holocaust at the end of World War 2.) Geert and Martien had quite a few common contacts around Israel, and we supplied them with a few more at the Cape where they could go and minister. We just marvelled how the Lord used their Corrie ten Boom connections to give openings to the couple, where they could share their faith freely in many a Cape Jewish environment! 70th Anniversary of Israel's Independence At a meeting around the expropriation issue we also took note that nothing seemed to have been prepared to commemorate the pending 70th anniversary of Israel's independence on 14 May 2018. At this time there was no clear unity among various organisations positively supporting Israel. I subsequently emailed all the main role players, calling a meeting for Tuesday 15 May, a day after the actual 'birthday' of the Jewish State. What we could not anticipate was that President Donald Trump had planned to announce the transition of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on that day. At this meeting we took note that the government was supporting the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) programme directed at Israel. At a conference on racism in Durban in September 2001, at which Israel was vilified and side-lined, the BDS started as a movement to isolate Israel and the Jews. We started looking at going to Durban in September with a delegation in an effort to redeem what had happened on South African soil. that was cursing us as a nation. Serving in the CCWC Executive I was quite happy to hear that Pastor Anaclet Mbayagu from Burundi, who had been an executive member of Friends from Abroad, was serving on the Executive of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC). After initially declining nomination with what I perceived as the need to do less and not more, I agreed later to serve with religious minorities as my portfolio. For the first time Jews and Hindus were now also included, next to serving foreigners in the forum. I succeeded in getting Denise Atkins also co-opted to the CCWC executive. Not only did this add a female voice to bring a touch of balance, but we also had in her a strong voice in support of Israel and an intercessor of note. The debate around the downgrading of the RSA Embassy in Tel Aviv continued for months. As CCWC we wrote our own press statement at the end of August 2020. The impact was minimal, but we trust that at least into the spiritual realm something happened. Healing the Nation Campaign The Soweto Ministers Fraternal (SMF) played a significant role in changing the course of SA’s political liberation. In partnership with Vuka Africa Foundation (VAF), they started focusing on mobilising the Body of Christ and encouraging fellowship among Christian leaders. VAF’s mandate to bring hope, restoration and healing to the people of Africa and the African diaspora was birthed in prayer after founder Apostle Linda Gobodo encountered the brokenness of fellow Africans during visits to a number of African countries. A meeting on 29 November 2019 at the UAFC Hope Church in Dube Village, Soweto, flowed out of VAF’s 'Healing of the Nation' campaign. Chief Justice Moegoeng Moegoeng was the keynote speaker on the Prophetic Voice of Healing in South Africa and Africa conference. Since 2017 the Chief Justice had become a powerful uniting force across all population groups. Working closely with Apostle Linda Gobodo, a 50-day endeavour transpired from Resurrection Day 2020 until Pentecost 2020. 'Pills' were 'prescribed' in the form of three Bible verses each in the morning and the evening under the headings of hope, healing and restoration. Chief Justice Moegoeng Moegoeng Moegoeng tackled many illnesses in SA society, dispensing 'medicine' for the sick Church and society, stressing the unity of the Church. There was however little evidence that the sick patient was willing to take the medication. All Sorts of Virtual Events Due to the corona virus situation Graham Power, the well known Capetonian instrument that God used towards the annual Global Day of Prayer, adapted a prayer which folk could use on 22 March. This was of course no visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ, but unprecedented as a global one. It went around the globe between 12h and 13h on that day. Zoom soon became the name of the game. All sorts of virtual events took place in the wake of the Covid-19 Lockdown in many nations around the world. A two-hour meeting on Freedom Day (27 April) with 300 church leaders across the country was followed by a Global three-hour global prayer event from 14-17h (SA time). A weekly prayer event in Jerusalem plus the ogre of new elections brought Israel increasingly into the centre of world-wide prayer attention. Intercessors were changing the world as miracles were happening almost on a daily basis, disseminatad by the electronic media. Prophetic Words in Quick Succession Prophetic words followed each other in quick succession, repeating that a big revival was pending. An encouraging prophetic word from Naomi Sheneberger in Zambia that Africa is waiting for the revival to start from South Africa, was followed by a prophetic message from Malawi, published in Gateway News on Friday, 24 April: 'I have come to bring hope, healing and restoration. I am healing South Africa. I am healing the continent of Africa that you may be a blessing to the nations'. Some prophecies had political repercussions. A warning of one of these, dated June 2014, when Cyril Ramaphosa was still Deputy President, was rehashed. In level 4 of the Covid 19 lockdown people were allowed to walk or jog from 6-9 a.m. Not able to congregate in their churches, Christians in Mitchell's Plain took to the streets in big numbers on Sunday, 9 May. This was in the middle of Ramadan. I wrote in Seeds sown for Revival, of which the first version was published in 2009: 'What could be signs of the beginnings of a genuine revival in the Cape Peninsula, which would usher in a massive movement of God on the African continent? I believe that a significant move of the Holy Spirit among Jews and Muslims at the Cape would be a sure sign that the fervently awaited spiritual renewal has arrived, that a divine visitation is a reality and not a manipulated or hyped-up revival. This would be a miracle of such magnitude that no human being could have brought it into being.' This expectation, which I repeated in an email on Sunday 26 April 2020, has almost become obsolete. Nick Hall of the 'Bible Quarantine' series hosted several virtual events, saw thousands of people across the world profess their faith within a matter of weeks. He said in a statement: 'The doors to our church buildings may have been closed, but the church has not closed. We are living through a Great Quarantine Revival, and I think God is just getting started.' Epilogue The visible expression of the Unity of the Body of Christ, locally and city-wide, has been on our heart for many years. God seemed to use various tools to cut away the edges of disunity, rivalry and whatever has been hampering the trigger for revival to be pulled. We have been blessed to see more of this coming to fruition via our weekly outreach and in the prayer movement. It bugged me that three mission agencies were doing outreach in the city with a similar target group every Thursday. The suggestion of having a once-off occasion on 13 February 2020, to start with prayer at the venue of Operation Mobilization in the city centre, developed into one where up to five different agencies would join, plus the one or other member of a church in Bellville, 25 km away. Subsequently weekly outreach started at the Harbour of Hope, the facility linked to our FFA ministry in the city until the Covid-19 lockdown forced us into remote prayer meetings. A Bumper Season of Prayer The end of the month of May 2020 would become a season of increased prayer. The availability of zoom would lead to many an international prayer meeting. Thus there was a connection to Israel every Thursday after Passover 2020, linked to the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and Callie Liew had many a session with her Prayer Watch tower folk in the some period. On Monday 25 May, on Africa Day, Chief Justice Moegoeng led the second of two international prayer occasions. When the State President announced that church services could resume with the commencement of level 3 of the lockdown on Tuesday 28 May, it was linked to the announcement of a national Day of Prayer on Pentecost Sunday. Many a prophecy in this bumper season of prayer created a great expectation of revival. At this time Covid-19 infection started to spiral, with Cape Town being the epicentre. Sixty per cent of the cases of our country were in the Western Cape. If there were to be another divine manifestation that the big revival has really arrived, a massive reversal of the increase or better still, a stop of further infection, would have been a sign. On 14 June the first Satanist 'Church' building of South Africa opened its doors at Century City. That Cape Town simultaneously had around 60% of Covid-19 infections country-wide brought many believers to suspect a sinister demonic connection. How would the Church react to this? A debate on the whatsapp group of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape looked at possible causes from a biblical perspective. Clear consensus that one of the major reasons could be the disobedience of the Church in respect of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19,20). There were very few churches that were still evangelising. Whereas many mission agencies still had national or regional offices in the mother city 20 years ago, almost none of them still functioned as a recruiting agency for new missionaries. Our Chief Justice Attacked Mike Swain, Director of ForSA, wrote an excellent article in Gateway News. Quite wisely, he left South Africa's role in the conflict out of the discussion. The article did mention, however, a group called Africa4Palestine, the new name for the BDS, the anti-Israel movement which uses the Palestinian issue as a smokescreen for its real objective, the destruction of Israel. On Tuesday 23 June the Chief Justice of South Africam Moegoeng Moegoeng appeared in a widely advertised zoom webinar with the Chief Rabbi of the country, organised by the Jerusalem Post. That the Chief Justice quoted Genesis 12:3, with a possible deduction that our country could have incurred a curse on our country because of the government's biased attitude. This unleashed a massive attack on him from the ANC. That he also said that South Africa could play a positive role in bringing about peace and that we as South Africans 'are denying ourselves a wonderful opportunity of being a game-changer in the Israeli-Palestinian situation', was conveniently ignored by those who wanted him at least censured. He also went on to say that the people of South Africa could be an asset that could be used around the world to 'bring peace, when there is no peace and to mediate effectively, based on rich experience'. But this was likewise completely absent. Instead, Africa4Palestine went on to lay a formal complaint at the Constitutional Court. Ultimately the Chief Justice was charged for operating outside of his non-political ambits. Months later, his apology was sufficient to put the matter to rest. We continue to pray that the Church of South Africa at large would also come out more strongly in a conciliatory role of our country also in international affairs. The Song Jerusalema a Global Hit The song Jerusalema became a global hit during the time that the Hope, Healing and Restoration campaign was praying for the peace of Jerusalem every week, together with many other SA believers who were praying likewise, Chief Justice Mogoeng came under fire for saying that he prays for the peace of Jerusalem. Believers saw the sudden fame of the song as an answer to prayer; South Africans were now making Jerusalem to be a praise in all the earth! Many were hoping that it could be a sign of South Africa turning to Israel. With gloom all around at the time because of the Covic pandemic, they saw it as a sign of hope from a nation whose government had unfortunately adopted a biased position against the Jewish state. The first music video of a version of a Gospel song made in South Africa by producer, DJ and artist Master KG, featuring singer Nomcebo, recorded over 46 million views on Youtube in seven months and a remix, featuring Nigerian musician Burna Boy and Nomcebo, had more than 2.3 million views in a month. Christians Prayed Outside Hospitals Christians across Cape Town turned out in numbers to pray outside hospitals for revival and for the healing of Covid-19 victims. Part of the citywide hospital prayer surge appears to be a resumption of initiatives which were started in an earlier lockdown phase last year but at about eight facilities in the Mitchell’s Plain and surrounding areas it is believed that the prayer activity was sparked by a pastor from Vryburg in North West province who came to Cape Town on December 31 to pray for his son-in-law who was a Covid patient at the hospital. The Assemblies of God pastor, Peter Lottering, told Gateway News this week that sadly his son-in-law, Francois Erasmus, passed away but he and fellow prayer warriors were continuing to pray outside the Melomed Mitchell's Plain private hospital every evening and he also prayed for Covid patients in private homes when he was asked to. He said they started praying outside the hospital with just six people and after video clips of their mission were posted on social media the group grew and new groups were started at other hospitals. Rozanne Visagie, who coordinated outdoor worship and prayer events around Cape Town and who maintained a Facebook page called Revival Prayer said in a post: “Revival prayers and prayers for the sick, the care givers and hospital staff are happening all over Cape Town at various hospitals. Praise Jesus! I have received so many videos from different places. It is really amazing to see how God is stirring the people and how this End-Time revival flame is being fanned.” While the hospital prayer surge in Cape Town was commended by many people on social media, a hospital chaplain, Pastor Neville Ontong, warned in a social media comment, that some well-meaning but overzealous church groups have been disturbing patients and hospital staff by using loudhailers to pray and preach messages. Moves Towards Unity in the Body of Christ At the beginning of February 2021 the leaders of Tygerberg Radio had a 'dinkskrum', (brain storming) to which Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout was invited to share from the Word the next time. . At this occasion he highlighted the fact that the radio reaches the extremes of Cape society including the affluent Klara Anna Fontein, the compound near to Durbanville which one cannot enter without ado. On the other hand, they as church have been serving in Da Nini, an informal part of Khayelitsha via Pastor Peter Makote and his fellowship. At that time churches were only allowed 50 people attending on Sundays because of Covid regulations. Pastor Tertius challenged Cape believers via the radio with '50/50 prayer outreach', to have prayer at 50 locations across the Cape Peninsula. The first one was at Da Nini, where a Xhosa lady who was born during the Spanish Flu of 1918, accepted Christ as her Saviour. Prayer at the townships of Delft and Belhar brought them in touch with believers who would link up with him in special prayer evdeavours later in the year. To go and pray as 'Whites' at the ganster-notorious Leonsvale of Eleventh Avenue in Elsies River got some eye- brows raised, but Die Wynstok believers trusted the prayerful leadership of their pastor, who had also been going to dangerous parts of the world like Afghanistan and Iraq for prayer ministry. In the beginning of March the Holy Spirit inspired Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout to also come and pray in Bo-Kaap and District Six. A huge occult mural in District Six played some role in this regard: On Tuesday 17 August there were prayers at 50 locations across the Cape Peninsula Tertius furthermore got on his heart to invite intercessors to come and pray especially in Bo-Kaap, the Islamic cradle of the country. On Wednesday 8 September 30 of them came to the Harbour of Hope in Bree Street, the ministry workshop from which Theo and Mignonne Schumann had been operating. In a short devotion from Scripture, Theo used the story of David and Goliath where he compared the giant to the religion of Islam. After a period of silent prayer, Tertius Bezuidenhout invited the intercessors to pray for the area one day per week over a forty day period. Dialogue or Debate? It so happened that an Islamic Propagation Centre had been started at the historic Auwal Mosque of Bo-Kaap in 2020, the first mosque of the country. From the beginning of 2021 Hunter McComb, originally a missionary of Frontline Fellowship, who was seconded to OM in 2020, started to go there for interfaith-dialogue every Friday, amicably interacting with Imam (??) Ibrahim ?? from ?? With some expectation for interesting dialogue, a public meeting was scheduled at that venue for Thursday, October 2021. On short notice it was postponed to a week later. An invitation went out to 'please be praying for Hunter and his team as they will be having a discussion with a Muslim apologist in a mosque this Thursday, answering the questions: "Why Christianity" and "Why Islam?" We are praying it will be an opportunity to develop more relationships with Muslims and to share the Gospel with many Muslims who have not yet heard the truth of Jesus.' For the day prior to that Ps.Tertius Bezuidenhout had been inviting intercessors to come and pray for Bo-Kaap at the Noon Gun, thus just over half-way through the 40 days of prayer. When 40 intercessors came there, the bulk of them from further way. Also Pastor Peter Makote and his family attended. This augured well towards a breakthrough. The event turned out to be an anti-climax, which angered me terribly. Just over a week later Hunter sent to me the lines of what he had sent to the Islamic speaker: Appendices Appendix 1 Fasts in Cape Town Led to a Movement for the World’s Cities One morning in 2010, Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, sat down for breakfast with Bob Doll, a highly respected investment manager. On that October morning in Cape Town they were both participants in the Lausanne Movement’s Third Congress on World Evangelization. A few hours later, Keller and Doll sat down for their second breakfast of the day, this time with Mac Pier, long time friend of Keller and the founder of The New York City Leadership Center (NYCLC, now known as Movement.org). As the three spoke that morning, something ignited between them, and over the course of the congress, that spark grew steadily into a roaring fire. Their unique callings as pastor, marketplace leader, and non-profit expert came together to form an unconventional ‘three-legged stool’ that they believed was the key to realizing a vision they all yearned for: the acceleration of the gospel in New York City. Movement Day, which serves as the Lausanne Movement’s network on cities, was accelerated into a global movement. ‘Movement Day is an ecosystem gathering,’ says Pier. Keller, Doll, and Pier—three different but influential members of the New York ecosystem—had no ambition for anything larger than New York when they joined forces over toast and coffee in Cape Town. But God was setting the stage to do immeasurably more in the cities of the world. Appendix 2 Prophetic Words for South Africa The Violent Shaking of South Africa will Birth New Life By Kirsten Rossiter I’ve been feeling such a burden for South Africa, and in particular for our people. There is great pressure, great suffering, and a violent shaking happening right now. Many are feeling unsettled, insecure and worried about the future, and highly stressed from the mounting pressures in our nation and in their personal lives. I would like to share some of the things the Lord has been showing me, as He wants to unveil His Workings, so we can clearly see His Hand in the midst of the shaking, knowing that He is God, and He is in control of our nation even when we feel out of control. The Lord would say, ‘South Africa, South Africa, you are Mine. Have I not declared it, have I not said it? Am I a God who speaks lies and falsities? For this is your finest hour, this is your time of birthing. When I bring about the ‘new’, I first cause the ‘old’ to die. Have I not declared that in this time there will be a shaking of everything that can be shaken so that only that which is holy and pure will remain? I am shaking this nation to its core, dismantling and destroying the high places given to the enemy, and breaking her pride. I am bringing this nation to her knees, where she will cry out to Me, alone, for help. When this government finds itself in the dust, humble and prostrate, looking to Me, and locking arms with one another, that’s when I will birth this New Nation. Be not afraid when you feel the shaking. Let not your heart tremble, but trust in Me. Know that I am God, and no man can stop My Workings. There will be a twin-birth in this nation, made visible in the spiritual and natural realm. Know that the seed has to die for new life to come forth. The South Africa you’ve known will never be the same again. It’s in the death of the ‘old’ that My Promise of the ‘new’ will be fulfilled. Have I not said this is an Apostolic nation? For I am shooting out arrows, even now. Arrows of righteousness who have been purged in My Fire. My Fire has been burning on this land in the lives of many, and I have prepared them to ignite the nations, gathering in the harvest across the earth. Do I not create the right climate to bring forth My Purposes? Look beyond the veil and see what I am revealing to My sons and daughters. I am here and I am working on your behalf, South Africa, My Beloved land. Be not afraid when you see neighbours leaving, for I am sending out many in this hour, returning to their roots to build My Kingdom upon the earth. There will be a remnant who will rebuild the walls of this nation, with the help of other nations. I will send you aid, I will send you help. Your borders will open to new nations, inviting new skills. New people will join you, building a nation that will represent the nations of the earth, creating a new tapestry of colours, dimensions, textures, and shapes not yet seen. There is a strong Apostolic anointing and gifting upon the Afrikaner Farmers to build, establish, encourage, and enable. The enemy is strategically targetting them, trying to alienate them, for they have a pivotal role in the rebuilding of this nation. Where before they built for themselves, they will now build for all, and with all generously and humbly. I will use their ability to create something out of nothing, helping build this nation from its ashes. South Africa, let My shaking have its full purpose. Let it bring you to your knees where you cry out to Me! Let this government know that I am is on the Throne, ruling over this nation! Your humility will bring forth the unity that’s needed to birth this New Nation for My Glory.’ Appendix 3 The Trigger for the Revival? God had spoken to a group of Germans to pray daily for 40 days for Nigeria until October 1. I got another call from the US: a group had been praying for Nigeria for over seven years, now there was a leading for a 24-hour prayer cover which, fortunately, is an ongoing effort in Nigeria. Another pastor in the UK had been talking with me: God had prompted him to initiate 40 days of prayer and fasting for Nigeria until September 30th. We had been working at the logistics, mobilising intercessors towards the effort. That has been on, with impressive responses. I had got another call: a group of young student Nigerians in the United States was doing 60 days of quiet intercession three times daily until October 1. I have been in touch with them. The Catholic Bishops of Nigeria have proclaimed a 40-day prayer schedule that started since August 22, until Independence eve on September 30. The following day, Independence Day, shall be a day of common prayers. Their concern is the killings in Nigeria and the threatened destiny of the nation. The list is long of praying people, many of whom we would never know, groups and individuals in noiseless upper rooms who have seen a sign or heard a sound, to petition the heavens in this season for the birthing of a New by October, from the passing away of an OLD wine skin. At the end of one of our daily online prayer meetings in August, initiated at short notice in response to His Voice, a sister brought up her persuasion that thirty nations should be enlisted to pray a day each for Nigeria through September. That also has been on: 30 nations praying 30 days. The countries include Canada, Ghana, the United States, Uganda, China, Cameroon, Mali, the UK, South Africa, Panama, Turkey, Haiti, Qatar, etc. To what summon in the spirit are these all responding simultaneously, without plan? What sign is this? At least this also says to me that God is gathering eagles, and if any should be too proud or too busy, there are many replacements already out there. I do not wish to be replaced, not in this season nor ever. God is stirring the waters of Nigeria. Amen. At the beginning of this month, I got a message from a dear brother, a pastor over a prominent church with headquarters in Nigeria and branches outside, a missionary and an intercessor. The message stressed the point more strongly about the season and its signs. It said, "Welcome to the Month of Sept. This is the month that will end the year 2020 and begin the new year, according to the Jewish Calendar. The Jewish new year and the Feast of Trumpet is on Sept. 17th & 18th. The Day of Atonement & National repentance is on Sept 27th & 28th. I am calling all of us to a season of 21 to 30 days fasting and prayer, this month." The prayer call is for “Personal and Corporate Revival,” for “a great awakening in the Church and in the Nation,” for God to “raise and manifest the JOSEPH and the DANIEL COMPANY all over NIGERIA and the Continent of AFRICA.” It’s a “Daniel fast” during which participants might take only “vegetables and fruits” or break the fast in the evening. I was concluding this epistle when I got a call from a praying mother from the leadership of a global women’s prayer movement in Nigeria. She said she was calling to encourage me. They had just returned from a prayer mission to one of the states in eastern Nigeria. Our prayers in this season have not been in vain. Testimonies abound to the many answers to the season’s intense prayers, for which the enemy has been most desperately fierce. Sadly, we seem to have been hearing and fearing about the enemy’s calendar more than we would hear the Lord’s. What is God about to do in this season? Why all the ‘mobilizations’ to prayer? A ‘happy new year’ call in a very auspicious season according to God’s calendar coincidental again with Nigeria’s calendar? October 1 is another Independence celebration for Nigeria. For Pharaoh’s forces desperate to kill all Jews, may God prepare a Red Sea after a Night that shall not be passed over. Amen. Happy New Year, O land; Happy New Year. Amen. Look what the Lord has done for Sean. A month and half a go, he was a street person, staying on the streets, without a job. Today he looks have a job. God willing in the next view months he will be a captain of the boat. Is our God not awesome.  being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; Philippians 1:6 Morning. How are you doing ? Amanda, my captain just confirmed that i will start my courses in oct and also to do my skippers license next year, so i wont be visiting in oct. Thank the lord, this is the chance i need, tried for 6 years and now its on. Amazing. Keep smiling. Sean fOur God is awesome. All glory to God Answers to September 26 Prayer Breakthrough Against CSE – Major Doors Open At United Nations! (Ps Errol Naidoo in JOY News) Great news! The values-based sexuality education curriculum, “Smart Choices” is finalised. So are the supplementary educational programs, “No Apologies, “Not Guilty” and “Tomorrow’s Leaders in Training.” We have also finalised the ‘Online Brochure’ that outlines the benefits of these programs You can preview what these educational programs offer parents and educators Here. I have submitted the Smart Choices programs to certain educators, educational institutions and senior Church leaders for evaluation and consideration. Once we receive their response, the Smart Choices curriculum and the supplementary programs, which are safe, credible and agenda-free alternatives to the dangerous “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” (CSE) program, will be launched nationwide via a digital marketing campaign. Instructed and funded by United Nations agencies like UNESCO, the DBE have appointed “Brand Ambassadors” to sell the poisonous ideology of CSE to the public. However, DBE Minister, Angie Motshekga confirmed CSE is not compulsory. Parents, educators and religious institutions are therefore free to adopt alternative programs that align with their values and principles. Smart Choices and the age-appropriate supplementary programs adopts a sexual health and character-building approach to sexuality education based on traditional and common sense values. It is a safe and credible alternative to the abortion and LGBTQ propaganda Trojan Horse that is CSE. Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Smart Choices will make CSE obsolete not only because it’s a better model, but because it’s created by South African educators who understand the unique challenges faced by South African children. Arrest of Many ANC Leaders with Charges of Corruption The long-awaited arrests and prosecutions of public officials implicated in corruption appeared to be gathering momentum. Several senior ANC officials were arrested for fraud and corruption this past week and some appeared in court for bail hearings. The arrests of former Free State officials implicated in the R255-million asbestos audit scam dominated the headlines. The Asset Forfeiture Unit attached R300-million in assets belonging to kingpin, Edwin Sodi. The noose started tightening around ANC Secretary General, Ace Magashule’s neck. Most of the corruption, fraud and theft committed in the Free State, including the appalling Vrede Dairy Farm atrocity, transpired on the former Free State premier’s watch. Magashule was ultimately side-lined, but a clear follow up of the arrest clearly lacked. Into the second of of 2023 the country was still waiting on the return of the stolen money by politicians. Farmers and EFF supporters faced off in a tense confrontation in Senekal on Friday as two suspects appeared for the murder of 21-year-old farm manager Brendin Horner. Farm Murders Flare Up Farm murders flared up again in early October 2020. On 8 October Pastor Angus Buchan went viral via a video clip, imploring 'White' farmers not to retaliate when after hundreds of farmers turned up in front of the Senekal Magistrate’s Court where two suspects in the brutal murder of Brendin Horner appeared for the first time. Horner’s body was found last Friday and tensions have been high ever since, culminating in farmers storming the court house and overturning and setting a police vehicle alight. Appendix ? A Farmer’s Encounter at a Free State Spaza Shop A story about a farmer’s encounter at a spaza shop in Paul Roux, Free State, lifted spirits around the nation. The farmer, Gareth Going, shared his incredible experience on Facebook. “I’ve just got back from our quaint little village of Paul Roux after doing the usual mundane tasks of going to the co-op, getting feed for the animals and other odds and ends. Almost routinely stopping on my way out at our local Spaza for a cool drink for today and a box of cigarettes. “When I walked in it was rather crowded but funnily quiet with a few hushed whispers every now and again. All with masks on which has now become the norm and doesn’t make one feel uncomfortable any more. “An old man shuffled towards me and smiled at me and we had the good old greeting and normal pleasantries towards me. He then asked me, sir were you one of the guys in Senekal yesterday? The Spaza went quiet. I said yes that I was. an explosion of emotions from young and old. What happened next still has me feeling overwhelmed. There was an explosion of emotions from young and old. The ladies started singing and dancing. The men all came forward to shake my hand where I realized my African handshake needs some work! But I can say that after today it’s mastered.” One extremely well dressed young man approached Gareth, shook his hand, and said “thank you sir”, before continuing, in perfect English, to say something that really touched Gareth, and apparently all in the Spaza Shop agreed with him. The young man said: 'Sir, yesterday when all the boere drove past us, it became quiet. We all knew that today is the day that change will come. We have been waiting for the farmers to stand up and decide it’s enough! We are all scared at night and nobody is safe, we know having worked on farms where our food comes from. We know that it’s not the farmers fault for job losses. We are tired!' But that wasn’t all. What really bowled Gareth over was what the young man said next: 'Will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you!' Sir, we know that next week the court date is coming up. What we ask is, will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you. We need to all come together! Sir, we know that next week the court date is coming up. What we ask is, will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you. We need to all come together!' Gareth says: “A lot more was said and many a cheer and smile was made. Driving back, a load of feed and my mind racing with all my thoughts. I now realize that the time has come, we lost another young man with his entire life ahead of him. But his life has started a movement. One that I don’t believe we have any idea of how powerful it is. I have hope again, South Africa will come right. We must just stand together and make ourselves heard! I have hope again, South Africa will come right. “God bless you all and stay safe. Keep the fire going in your hearts!” Since sharing his post, it has gone viral with many people copying and pasting it without crediting Gareth so that some thought it may just be an urban legend. But South African people caught up with Gareth and he confirmed this amazing scene happened. He was blown away by the response. “My experience was wonderful, but the response that it’s had is incredible. So happy to give some people a form of hope again…” ‌A Time for Action! The crisis caused by the killing of 'White' farmers was clearly demonically inspired, bringing the country once again to the crossroads. The ogre of racial civil war suddenly became a possibility once again. Christian leaders, leaders of farming organisations and representatives of troubled communities came together in an extraordinary 5-hour emergency online meeting on Tuesday 13 October called by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to seek solutions for problems that are threatening to escalate already-high levels of violence in South Africa. The zoom meeting was 'attended' virtually with 200 leaders country-wide. The decision to allow so many voices to be heard proved to be profound, as speakers expressed how they were deeply humbled by the experience and aware of God’s presence in the meeting. Commercial farming organisation spokesmen were listened to as they shared a heart cry from 'White' farmers to be valued and recognised as Africans. As testimonies were shared everyone registered that farmers of all races were soft targets of brutal attacks which were often compounded by dysfunctional policing or courts. The link between a sharp rise in violence in Orange Farm and the cessation of regular prayer collaboration between the Church, police and clinics was highlighted. There were calls for restoration of the family structure, godly governance, poverty alleviation, an “agricultural Codesa”, a national conference on healing and a national safeguarding strategy. After everyone had spoken Mogoeng addressed the gathering, responding to topics and suggestions that had been voiced. “Let us see today as a beginning of something great that is going to turn this country around in a positive direction,” he said. He said that a summary of proposals arising from the meeting would be sent to participants for their input and for further discussion. It was agreed subsequently to have another meeting in Pretoria on 20 October to work at a nationally integrated safeguarding strategy. “I promise to engage with you again as we pursue unity and reconciliation, as we allow love to be the driving force behind what we do. Let us go out there and quell any volatility in our neighbourhoods and communities and rest assured that the best is around the corner,” he said before closing the meeting in prayer. 'Like never before, we need to stand together as one body. The devil has a habit of dividing and ruling. We will not allow that to happen. We will implement Psalm 133. When we stand together in unity, God will command a blessing.' An attempt was made to dedicate the nation to ancestral spirits on Saturday May 8, 2021. Christians were invited to join in prayer for the Nation on Friday 7 May, 2021 for one hour from 10h00-11h00 and dedicate the nation to its Creator, Jehovah Shammah. Ps Arthur Frost invited intercessors to pray for five minutes every hour from 9h on Saturday, 8 May the same day. Significant teachings were also disseminated via electronic media on the biblical message about ancestral worship, e.g. by Pearl Kupe and Patrick Kuwana. For so many Christians this was an eye opener. Another wave of united prayer was unleashed that was unprecedented. Feedback on an Attempt to Inaugurate a National Ancestor Day. Messages from different parts of the country came that the attempt to dedicate the nation to ancestral spirits on Saturday, May 8, 2021 flopped. This basically means that the so-called day of the ancestors did not take root at all or received much attention. One example came from the larger Bushbuckridge area where 6 million people live and where there had been great expectation by the organizers! The following was sent via a whatsapp message: Actually life went on as usual! People played football, went to town etc like any Saturday! There was a small group gathered at the royal palace where the main ceremony would take place! Even the local radio station and newspapers paid little attention to it! And all the leaders of all the parts of Bushbuckridge agree that we have not experienced any victory for the enemy in spirit! On Sunday, the Christian churches praised the Lord with more passion than before! A Prophetic Revival Scroll Released A prophetic revival scroll was released in Cape Town on Pentecost Sunday — May 23 — in a coordinated event that included teams on both the top and a lower level of Table Mountain, as well as ministry partners around the world. The scroll, which was brought to the Cape from Bloemfontein by walker for Jesus Edward Pozyn and a backup driver and mission partner, Anthony Fish, carrying a message about revival and the return of Jesus linked to Malachi 4:5,6. On top of the mountain apostolic, prophetic and governmental leaders and Revival Fire planning team members united in personal, corporate and national prayers of repentance on behalf of the nation before introducing Andre Venter of the House of Bread in Bloemfontein, who received the prophetic word conveyed on the scroll and the men who carried it to the Cape. Tears of remorseful repentance flowed freely as intercessors also repented for the role of the Church in many actions including the emphasis on peripheral matters like buildings and not supporting missionaries that had been sent to foreign countries. Lower on the mountain, at the level of the cable station road, dancers, worshippers and shofar blowers also participated in repentance prayers followed by a time of worship and dancing. Apostles Arthur and Michelle Coetzee release the scroll on top of the mountain — and it is received digitally by partners in Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Israel, Europe, America, Asia, Australia and the Fiji Islands. Both groups took communion before participating in shofar declarations followed by blowing the shofar to release a “sound of from Cape to Cairo to Israel and the nations”. Glossary Afrikaners:'Whites' of primarily Dutch descent, whose home language is Afrikaans. Apartheid: A formal system of racial segregation. Forcefully implemented by the National Party after it came to power in 1948, it entrenched 'White' domination in virtually all sectors of South African life. bakkie - a pick up vehicle, sometimes fitted with a canopy for the transport of passengers boer(e) – farmer(s) Bo-Kaap: The geographical area of the Cape Town City Bowl which borders the lower slopes of Signal Hill. It is sometimes also erroneous referred to by parts of the area, viz the Malay Quarter or Schotse Kloof. Ds.: The abbreviation of dominee, the pastor of an Afrikaans-speaking Reformed congregation. It is derived from dominus, which means means. master; sir; a title of respect formerly applied to a knight or clergyman, and sometimes to the lord of a manor. Heimat: German word for homeland, rather Fatherland, with a strong emphasis on home. Translation as Fatherland misses the aspect of 'home sweet home'. Kramats: the graves of Islamic saints of the faith evolved into shrines. Khoe (formerly known as hottentotten or khoi) and San (formerly called Bushmen: the indigenous first nation people of Southern Africa Two Demonic Attacks Rosemarie and I suffered attacks which had clear serious physical manifestations. On Wednesday 16 June 2021 Rosemarie told Deon January, our Moriah Discipling House sibling of her pending visit the next day to a back-slidden believer who had been baptised many years ago, with hardly any visible spiritual growth thereafter. Her continued dabbling in the occult including practising yoga was a clearly discernable link. Deon felt divinely led to advise Rosemarie not to go alone. She tried in vain to get someone to join her the next day. At the visit she sensed some heavy spiritual resistance, but at the end she could pray with the believer. She left with a sense of peace. On Friday 18 June Rosemarie went to the nearby Mediclinic for the removal of a cataract on her left eye. This is a procedure that is generally regarded as straight forward. In her case however, she came out of the operation with a complication that left her almost blind on that eye. The experienced eye specialist was very surprised, but we discerned a demonic link after the visit to the believer the previous day. Many believers prayed in the days and weeks thereafter. How we rejoiced when she got a special present on the 7th of July, her 70th birthday: a clear improvement of her sight on the left eye! How we praised the Lord, along with the other intercessors, family and friends who had been praying! Four weeks later we went to Blauwberg where I had a ministry-related talk with our brother John from Algeria who had been leading our home church for Muslim background believers, while Rosemarie and Bev Stratis, our dear intercessor friend who resides in our home went for a walk. Sitting on a bench over-looking the sea, I caught a cold that left me without voice the next day. I was due to preach at our fellowship the following Sunday, 18 July. I interacted with our dear brother John from Algeria, sitting on a bench, but where I sensed something happening with my voice. On Monday 12 July not only my voice was gone. News went around the country about looting and devastation that this country has not seen before. Even though it happened in far away Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng, the provinces in which big cities like Johannesburg and Durban are located, the fear soon spread like wild fire. Fires in the Free State literally wiped away the livelihood of many in the Free State. With so many South Africans we struggled with some measure of bewilderment. While an unprecedented wave of prayer swept the nation via zoom and in small groups. Electronic media sent many messages, some of them alarmist and not a few fake. Reports of looting exacerbated feelings of despondency, albeit my faith, and prayers Personal Reflections My bewilderment in the downward diving movement of the roller coaster ride had a personal touch to it when by Wednesday evening I still hardly had any voice. Automatically I was wondering what would happen when I would have to record my video message by Saturday. The ogre of Andrew Murray who had no voice for months was quite real, in addition to feelings of guilt that were triggered by the looting. On Thursday morning the tide turned significantly, albeit that my voice was far from normal as yet, definitely not sufficiently to preach. How blessed I felt to be able to pray with folk on many a platform and at home. On Sunday 18 July my voice was back. I could testify to God's healing touch in answer to prayer via my sermon. The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban from August 31 to Sep 8 2001.  The very conference which was intended to counter racism and foster tolerance quickly turned into a hate fest against Israel and against Jews.  It also became apparent that before the event a plan was put in place to hijack the conference, using a number of pro-Palestinian NGOs to spearhead an agenda to reawaken the narrative that Zionism equates to racism. (A 1975 UN resolution to that effect was revoked in 1991.) The conference included a NGO forum and a governmental conference which met independently. Members of the Jewish and Christian communities attended and were horrified at what they encountered. This was scheduled to be the first human rights conference of the 21st century and was to take place in Durban, South Africa, the birthplace of apartheid, where we could have commemorated the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. But what happened at Durban was truly Orwellian instead. “A conference that was supposed to be against racism and discrimination turned into a conference of hatred and racism against Israel and the Jewish people. A conference that was supposed to be engaged in the promotion and protection of human rights singled out one state and one people, Israel and the Jewish people for selective indictment and indeed characterised Israel and the Jewish people as the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil. And a conference that was to celebrate the ending of SA apartheid began with the calling for the dismantling of Israeli ;apartheid’.” He recalled that after landing back home on the eve of 9/11, one of his collegues commented to him “that if 9/11 was the Kristalnacht of terror, Durban was the Mein Kampf”. In a word, Durban, was the tipping point for new antisemitism. Felice Gaer, a director of the American Jewish Committee’s who was also at the Durban event in 2001 told the Jewish Report webinar that the secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan had called Durban 1 as the low point in UN -Jewish relations. (He had been the first secretary general to use the term Holocaust as the Soviet Union had prevented the term from being used in the UN.) Gaer said: “The expectation had been that the [Durban] conference would address human rights issues across the world, as it happened after the Rwanda and Bosnia atrocities. It was, however, not to be, as it soon became apparent that the Durban conference had been hijacked by a political group promoting solidarity with the Palestinians. A number of articles had been written by different organisations saying as much. They then proceeded to promote division, disruption and distortion and after it was all over they went into denial. Denial that any of it had happened. Denial that it was anti-Semitic. It was clearly all deliberate and all planned.” Posters outside the conference venue in Durban openly stated: “Too bad Hitler had not finished the job” and copies of the fraudulent anti-Semitic publication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were distributed. Four regional conferences were held in the run up to the Durban conference. The last of these was in Teheran, Iran and it was closed to Israel and Jewish NGOs. Israel was openly called a racist, criminal Nazi state at the Teheran event and the fact that there was no outrage cleared the way for those with an agenda to hijack the Durban conference. Previous UN-hosted conferences against racism in 1978 and 1983 had largely focussed on SA and apartheid issues and the expectation was that at the Durban conference various states would release reports on their own human rights issues during the NGO forum. The forum was however totally hijacked by a number of largely SA NGOs and a document was compiled with a section from the Palestinian and Arab caucus accusing Israel of genocide and various hate crimes. It was ironic, as Jewish delegates who had lobbied for policies against antisemitism, now experienced it first-hand at the very conference that was supposed to counter it. Shocking anti-Semitism was on open display and no one stood up to it — exacerbating the trauma for Jewish delegates. Nations that were guilty of human rights abuses were left totally unscathed. The USA had made it clear that they would not participate in the Durban conference if the “Zionism is racism” allegation was raised. They went on to boycott the conference, along with Israel and a number of other nations including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Poland. In the midst of the conference, as the horror story was unfolding, Solly Kessler, a past chair of the Zionist Council called Chris Eden from Bridges for Peace and asked him a question: “If you call yourselves our friends, now is the time, we need you to show us this friendship”. A newspaper campaign was quickly configured, emphasising three main concepts around Israel which countered the narrative being promoted at the conference. Within hours R41 000 was raised from various Christian Zionist organisations with the major donors being Bridges for Peace, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Christian Action for Israel and Christian Friends of Israel. The “adverts” went into all the major daily newspapers controlled at that stage by Independent Newspapers and The Star under the banner of the “The Alliance of Christian Zionist Organisations”. About 50 calls were logged, with some being very abusive, especially in response to the statement of Iranian oil being the lubricant that kept apartheid SA’s wheels turning. The Jewish community was very encouraged by the Christian support and expressed much gratitude towards the Alliance. The project was a big step forward in Christian/Jewish relations in SA. 2001 newspaper advertisement Back to the conference: Mary Robbins, the secretary general of the conference, raised objections to the language used in the document compiled by the NGO forum and said she would not present it to the governmental conference. A steering committee was appointed to “fix” the text of the document and members were physically assaulted while trying to change the wording. [See the final Durbanhttps://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf Declaration:  ] The last speaker at the NGO forum was Fidal Castro and when Mary Robbins asked him about his own nation’s human rights issues she was booed by the audience. Although the declaration that “Zionism is racism” was not formally adopted by the governmental conference and the need for countering antisemitism was mentioned in the declaration, the Durban 1 conference still led to Israel being labelled an apartheid state and the BDS (Boycott, disinvestment and sanctions) campaign was launched thereafter in an effort to dismantle the Jewish state. Immediate aftermath: The Jews were blamed for 9/11 which took place immediately after the conference.  A conference took place at the University of Michigan, launching the BDS movement with a resolution calling for the dismantling of Israel as a racist apartheid state. The UN Commission for Human Rights met soon afterwards and the majority of resolutions singled out Israel, while the real human rights abuser nations got off scot-free. Professor Irwin Cotler sums it up well when he states: “On a personal level Durban has been indelibly imprinted on my memory and on my being. Those of us who were at Durban were in one form or another transformed by that experience. The legacy of Durban is not only the legacy of hate, which would be bad enough. The legacy of Durban is that it became a tipping point for the laundering of antisemitism under the cover of human rights and anti-racism which we are still witnessing today. “The laundering of antisemitism under the protective cover of the UN, under the authority of international law, under the culture of human rights, and under the very struggle against racism itself and I think that legacy is still with us.”  The commemoration of the Durban 1 Conference is planned for September 22 at the UN headquarters in New York and has already been boycotted by 13 nations because of its antisemitic agenda. The countries staying away are Israel, the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK, Hungary, Austria, Netherlands, the Czech Republic, France and Italy. ‘Redeeming’ SA Tomas Sandell, the leader of the European Coalition for Israel, which mobilises Christians to oppose antisemitism, had a burden to see South Africa redeemed in terms of what transpired on our soil 20 years ago in Durban. He arranged a Global Celebrate Israel Marathon — an online event to counter the Durban narrative and bid Israel “shana tova” (happy new year). Six hours of video footage, including 15 minutes from Cape Town and Durban, was broadcast online from various nations across the world on Sunday September 5 on the eve of Rosh Hashana.  A spectacular rendition of the Jerusalema dance from Durban and messages from African Christian Democratic Party MPs Rev Kenneth Meshoe and Steve Swart speaking outside Parliament in Cape Town were part of the SA contribution to the online marathon. The SA clip also includes an assurance from Christian leaders in Durban that from now on the name Durban will be associated with love and support for Israel. Video from DurbanVideo from Cape Town The marathon issued a Geneva Declaration cherishing the presence of Jewish communities worldwide as well as the State of Israel. The Declaration quotes German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in stating that “Jews have been instrumental in writing and shaping our history and in illuminating our culture.” The declaration was presented and read out in celebrations across all continents during the online marathon, thus contrasting the Durban Declaration from 2001 which had accused Israel of racism. *Survival to Revival*  8 - 14 November 2021 This Sunday evening at mignight, 16 nations in *Africa & South Asia* will be praying, *night-and-day*, for 7 days - trusting God for *spiritual awakening and social transformation* in each nation. The following nations will be participating this coming week, each having their own 24/7 WhatsApp Prayer Group. Janet Brann Hollis of SA Back to God which called the time of prayer and fasting. She said she would continue to pray on Wednesday mornings with watchman of the nation “until we witness the changing of the guard in SA politics”. She said that God’s favour and blessing on the prayer and fasting assignment had been tangible. “God wants SA for himself, and He will have it — through faithful prayer and the many spheres of Kingdom governance working together,” she said. “South Africa is covered by a blanket of prayer.” This was the declaration of a Christian leader that recently returned from an extended trip abroad. I agree – not only because of the countless prayer initiatives that inspire citizens from all walks of life to intercede for the nation – but because there is growing evidence God is sovereignly answering these prayers.   The shocking and historic results of the recent Municipal Elections can be attributed to other factors. But I believe God is at work in our politics. For the first time in our democracy, the ANC lost its dominance and struggle to form governing coalitions with opposition parties. The three largest political parties, the ANC, DA and EFF all strived to extend their power-base in municipalities across the country but failed to establish common-ground with smaller parties. The balance of power started shifting to the smaller (less arrogant) parties. Corruption, fraud and money laundering got exposed almost. The governing party is racked with in-fighting. Evidence of tender fraud, gross maladministration and theft of tax-payer money has exposed the ANC for what it really is – an organized crime network. Significantly, Eskom, the beleaguered energy utility at the epicenter of the ANC facilitated looting frenzy provided compelling evidence of internal sabotage. Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter is uncovering (and halting) massive fraud by the politically connected. (Energy expert Mark Swilling, a professor at Stellenbosch University, told the Sunday Times of claims from various sources that sabotage is taking place. He added that the culprits were likely low-level managers and that the consistent pattern of breakdowns is unlikely to be maintenance-related. Please continue to pray for De Ruyter and his team. There is an orchestrated campaign to remove them because of their remarkable success at exposing corruption and theft. Errol Naidoo, in a Family Policy newsletter, which was also published in Joy News, wrote: 'My strong encouragement to believers is to intensify prayers for our political, civil and Church leaders. The winds of change are blowing but you and I must not lose the momentum or the faith and intensity to co-labor to ensure the Lord’s will is established for South Africa.' Swimming Agaianst the Stream And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Dear Mr President My name is Dr Naseeba Kathrada. 11 months ago I wrote a letter to you pleading to give hope back to the people and trust back to the doctors. On the eve of a suspiciously accurately predicted 4th wave, I am once again asking you Mr President…give hope back to the people and trust back to us frontline doctors. In February 2021 you, Mr President, assured your fellow South Africans that “Nobody will be forced to take this vaccine.” Not only did you repeat this statement, you went on to say “Nobody will be forbidden from travelling to wherever they want to travel to, including from enrolling at school or from taking part in any public activity if they have not been vaccinated.” You made this promise to us Mr President… and a mere 6 months later I am inundated with distress calls and pleas for help from South Africans being coerced and “forced” to take “this vaccine”. These same South Africans, like me, trusted you and your promises are now feeling betrayed and helpless. Mr Ramaphosa, if you take a step back and look at status of the world currently, you will see that Africa is the continent least affected by the covid pandemic. In fact , although Africa houses 17.6% of the worlds population, it accounts for less than 3% of the world’s covid deaths. This means that Africa is doing something remarkable and something right. Of note - less than 10% of the continent is vaccinated with ‘this vaccine’. The same vaccine that you assured South Africans will not be forced on any citizen. A learned, Belgian scientist recently told me ‘Africa will save the world’. I am sure that when you look at the continental figures Mr President, you will agree with him like I do. The Seychelles has the highest number of vaccinations per population in Africa and has the highest number of breakthrough infections. South Africa has the highest covid mortality in all of Africa - we take our lead from the west and follow guidelines from the WHO and CDC. We need to turn to Africa and learn lessons from this forgotten continent. Yes, I agree that testing for covid is probably not on par with the rest of the world but this means 2 things, we treat sick people not test results and all cause mortality has not increased which means that covid deaths are all accounted for. The average age in Africa is 18. This could account for the low mortality rate because young people have a 99%+ survival rate from Covid - yet in South Africa our universities and technical colleges are mandating vaccines and schools are allowing kids as young as 12 to be vaccinated without parental consent. The high rate of malaria and its treatment with hydroxychloroquin , or the widespread use of ivermectin could be another reason for the continents low covid mortality rate. Or it could just be that most of Africa has bigger problems than a flu like virus with a less than 2% mortality rate. Mr President - the answers are so apparent yet our government seems to be perpetuating the uncertainty. If all the measures the government is taking is indeed to ‘save lives and livelihoods’ like you have mentioned many times, why is there so much emphasis on vaccinating the nation in the middle of a pandemic? Why are we so focused on advertising and pushing the vaccines but not telling the people with the same fervour where and how to report side effects ? Or even allowing them their basic human right of informed consent by advertising and reporting everything we know about ‘this vaccine’. Instead, the government is perpetuating fear and driving people to take the jab without doing due diligence. At a worst survival rate of 98%, what is the hurry to vaccinate everyone. Especially since we now know that vaccinated people spread Covid just the same as unvaccinated and some studies are showing that there’s potential of vaccinated to have higher viral loads when infected post jab - and yes - vaccinated can get covid, and die from Covid , post jab. In your last address to the people of South Africa , Mr President, you spoke about the travel bans and how unjust it is to segregate a country , is it not even more unjust to segregate people within a country ? If vaccines are now proven only effective in protecting one’s self, why the need to continue spreading the misinformation that we are all only safe when everyone is vaccinated ? It is very encouraging that you have appointed advisory committees to get the best advise during these unprecedented and uncertain times. However, the appointment of these committee members needs to be a transparent, democratic process. Right now, the doctors on the frontline see the picture first and the clearest. We are the ones who speak to the patients and families first hand. Our experiences are not ‘anecdotal’ they are factual. I, like many colleagues that I know will gladly be part of the new advisory committee you have just set up - you need just ask us and we will be happy to serve our fellow South Africans. Why do we have to look to other countries for advice ? Let’s innovate and not imitate the west. Our slow vaccine roll out can be a blessing in disguise because it has given us a chance to see the devastation that the vaccine has caused worldwide. Not only are the people in America, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America protesting because of the adverse events being under reported in their countries, they are also rising up because their freedom is being violated. South Africans more than any other nation in the world know the all too well importance of liberty and freedom - We, as a nation, will not give up this freedom (again) easily. I implore you .. Mr President - reconsider your stance at mandating vaccines. We as a country and a nation will not survive further division - especially if it’s being enforced. Our unemployment rate has already doubled - pandemic fatigue is rife in all sectors of the community, we will not survive forced mandates. Trust us doctors, to give the best advice to our patients, trust us to uphold the oath we took - to ‘First… do no harm’ and give hope back to the people of South Africa. Hope that our President and our country will not follow the narrative. Hope that your promise to never be forced to take this vaccine will be upheld. In these uncertain times - let us agree to disagree with respect and dignity. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika Dr Naseeba Kathrada Westville, Durban South Africa 4 December 2021 “Mandatory Vaccinations” On Monday 6 December the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape published a statement for which I had written the draft in the wake of a wave of serious strife as Christians attacked each other for either being vaccinated or the converse. As Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape we take note - with great sadness and regret - of the grave disunity and strife that the (possible mandatory) vaccinations have caused among believers and even within families. The source of this strife is quite easy to trace as the father of lies and deception of whom one of the names is diabolos, the separator. The divine nature of the triune God is the complete opposite, restoring, reconciling, healing and uniting. Because there is no clear-cut biblical teaching in the matter of taking vaccination or refraining from it, we propose an adaptation of the Pauline teaching of Romans 14:4 as a guideline: Let not the one who takes the vaccination despise the one who abstains from taking it and vice versa. We have great liberty to encourage believers across the board to oppose the spirit of division 'with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace' (Ephesians 4:2,3). We would furthermore exhort pastors to set an example in their teaching and preaching to calm the storm and not fan the flame, so that the biblical values of tolerance, love and mutual respect would remain the testimony of the Church as we seek to give guidance in these troubled times. The prayer that has been attributed to Francis from Assisi is in our view quite helpful in this regard:, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Amen. From the CCWC executive A News Snippet With General Relief On Tuesday 7 December the following news snippet brought general relief: The National Assembly fails to pass the constitutional amendment Bill. The vote has just taken place. 204 votes for 145 votes against. The constitutional amendment is not carried as it did not obtain the required two-thirds majority. With the country already teetering on the threshold of economic disaster because of the Covid-19 effect, one needed little imagination to discern what a constitutional amendment to allow expropriation without compensation could have triggered via a withdrawal of foreign investment followed by a possible brain drain. Appendix One of them, a trader who had been a street child who never attended a school, ultimately verbalised in so many words: 'It seems as if everything in the Bible points to Jesus.' (Auto-didactically he would teach himself French and English also in writing, next to learning 9 African languages for communication purposes over the years.) It was quite special when we could become 'parents' to him and his wife who got married at the Home Affairs office in 2016. They were ready to serve in a country that is still firmly closed to the Gospel. The husband had come to faith in Cape Town after being one of our DBS participants. He subsequently met his wife from another country at a Bible School in Kimberley. Revival Seeds Germinate Part 3 Contents 1. Special Housing Provision 2. Diverse Ministry Challenges 3. Back to (Bible) School 4. Taking Back Lost Territory 5. Can an Angel Bring a Flawed Message? 6. A Season of Increased Spiritual Warfare 7. On the Receiving End of Attacks 8. Diverse Prayer and Compassion Initiatives 9. Drug Lords in the News 10. Seed Germination at the Turn of the Century 11. Spin-Offs of the Newlands Event 12. Grabbed by the Scruff of the Neck 13. A ‘New Thing’ Sprouting 14. New Church Planting Experience 15. Christians Respond to Xenophobia 16. Ministering to Jews and Muslims 17. A New Season of Spiritual Warfare 18. Correctives in Church Practice 19. A Special MBB Impact 20. Church Unity Addressed More Intentionally 21. Time to Rise 22. Jerusalem …. a Cup of Trembling? Epilogue Main Abbreviations ANC - African National Congress CCM - Christian Concern for Muslims CCFM - Cape Community FM (radio) CEBI - Cape Evangelical Bible Institute CSV - Christelike Studentevereniging DRC - Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk) Ds. – Dominee (equivalent of Reverend) DTS - Disciple Training School IDASA - Institute for Democracy in South Africa OM - Operation Mobilization PAGAD - People against Gangsterism and Drugs SACC -South African Council of Churches UDF - United Democratic Front UNISA - University of South Africa UCT - University of Cape Town UWC - University of the Western Cape WCC - World Council of Churches WEC -Worldwide Evangelization for Christ YWAM - Youth with a Mission YMCA – Young Men's Christian Association YWCA - Young Women's Christian Association Introduction The teaching of His higher ways (Isaiah 55:8) had become all too clear by January 1992, when I was blessed so much, able to return to my homeland with my wife and five children. The Father somehow used my flawed activist Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger for Justice) nevertheless – next to the actions of many other people - to enable that return. I still had to learn though, that united prayer, rather than activist actions, made the essential difference. In Holland we were able to assist significantly in the formation of the Regiogebed in 1988, of which the roots can be found in Dave Bryant's Concerts of Prayer. At a Regiogebed event in Zeist on 4 October 1989 we prayed in a divinely orchestrated move for South Africa, not knowing that the new State President had an important meeting lined up with two Church leaders, Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak, the following week. By the beginning of 1992 official apartheid was dying fast... The world-wide prayer army had been bringing down the Communist Iron Curtain. Before leaving for our missionary candidate's orientation at Bulstrode near London in 1991, I had been able to arrange for the covert Albania role player Gesina Blaauw to come and speak at a Regiogebed meeting. The dynamic physically small believer would play a big role behind the scenes - to bring down the last European Communist bastion. The back of atheist Communism was broken by then, albeit that fierce repression of all faith expression was still present in China and North Korea. A personal challenge to tackle the Wall of Islam came through only faintly when I studied at the Moravian Theological Seminary in the early 1970s. The institution was temporarily located in District Six at a time when the former slum area was becoming increasingly Islamic. All the more, the challenge became forceful during a visit to West Africa in the beginning of 1990 as part of my preparation and possible orientation for service there; to serve as a teacher in a school for the children of missionaries in the Ivory Coast. That trip to West Africa would bring divine correction. It also included a significant part of the run-up to engage in prayer ministry in the battle against the Islamic ideology. The Yoke of Ritual Bondage We discerned that many Muslims were wrestling under the yoke of ritual bondage. The question became even more pressing: How will all those millions of people ever get rid of the thick veil over their eyes, spiritually speaking? As my wife and I read 2 Corinthians 3 once again, we were reminded that Martin Luther only got into the freedom of Christ when he discovered that he needed a Saviour. This only occurred when he developed a deep sense of urgency about his own sin. We realized anew that the removing of such a spiritual veil is something that only God can accomplish. God doesn’t need us, but we can be instruments in His hands to change the world, especially through prayer. Three weeks in West Africa were sufficient to excite me about possibilities to share the Gospel in West Africa. The discussions at the WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ ) International school in Vavoua, Ivory Coast, were promising. I regarded that as a chapter and prelude to get involved in other missionary activity in that country after a few years. Quite unexpectedly, the 'door' to that country closed, but the one to South Africa opened almost simultaneously, ushering in our coming in January 1992. Prayer walks in Bo-Kaap, stints at kramats (Islamic shrines) along with weekly, fortnightly and monthly prayer events at different venues were very much a part of my personal journey in the 1990s as a missionary of WEC International.1 Targeted intercession for missionaries and countries belonged to the fare. A post graduate course at a Bible School in 1992 wetted my appetite for more Church historical and Isaac Ishmael-related research. Many a manuscript followed – many of them still incomplete. The prospect of decease via prostate gland cancer pushed me, however, into bringing quite a few of them to some state of completion, accessible now on the blog www. Isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. Engagement with Judaism played a very peripheral role initially. My 'discovery' in 1979, via Colossians 2:11,12 that Reformed Protestantism had replaced the revered circumcision of Judaism with the christening of babies. This brought a significant shift in my own thinking. The phrase 'circumcision of the heart' ushered in my ultimate resignation as pastor of the Moravian Church. That the Church at large was regarded by rank and file Christianity, as having replaced Israel, was an issue that became known as Replacement Theology. Only much later would I start opposing that notion stronger. Praying for the Middle East, and interceding for both Jews and Muslims, came to the fore in mid-1992. We started a prayer group where Elizabeth Robertson who had almost been married to an Orthodox Jew in Israel and Achmed Kariem, a Cape Muslim background believer, were regulars. The vision to add outreach to Muslim foreigners to our service as leaders of the Cape WEC International Evangelism team ushered in a traumatic time. It ultimately resulted in the starting of an umbrella NPO called Friends from Abroad. Friendship with Brett Viviers, a Messianic Jew, led to the start of Isaac Ishmael Ministries in 2010. This transpired after Baruch Maayan, a Messianic Jewish pastor had returned from Israel with his family with a vision to work towards the establishing of a spiritual highway' from the Cape to Jerusalem. We hoped that the bringing together of believers from Messianic Jewish and Muslim backgrounds occasionally, could make some contribution towards special reconciliation between the two religious groups at the Cape. The conscious misspelling of retirement as 're-tyrement' had been on our hearts since December 2010, when I turned 65. Rosemarie and I started praying for any new 'tyres' of ministry, considering even relocation to Europe, to serve there among refugees from the Middle East. After I had turned 70, we prayed more concretely for three couples to take the baton from us in certain areas of ministry. Down the years we had been praying in District Six, the slum-like residential area of my childhood. Already on 1 November 1997 we had been interceding there with other intercessors when District Six was still lying forlorn and desolate in the wake of the apartheid-related forced removals of the 1970s and 1980s. (When we were accepted as missionaries of Worldwide Evangelization for Christ in 1991, ahead of our coming to South Africa, one of the challenges given to us by the Dutch leader, was a challenge to be repairer of broken walls, Isaiah 58:12). Actual personal involvement in District Six would still remain outside of our radar for many years. We had been restricting the vision of the repairing of broken walls to ministry in Bo-Kaap, unintentionally overlooking that Bo-Kaap and District Six had been an economic and cultural entity before the apartheid calamity. At the beginning of 2019 District Six came to our prayerful attention again. The Lord reminded us of the Isaiah 58 word before we came to the Cape. In the courser of that that year we continued to pray more intentionally for clarity as to what our involvement there should look like. As I start working at the preparation of the E-book version of Part 3 of this trilogy, involvement there had started to take shape. Throughout this book, I speak about 'Coloured' people. In a country like ours where racial classifications has caused such damage, I am aware that the designation 'Coloured' has given offence to the group into which I have been classified. For this reason, I wrote ‘Coloured’ between inverted commas and with a capital C when I refer to the racial group. To the other races I refer as 'Black' and 'White' respectively, with a capital B and W, to denote that it is not normal colours that are being described. For bibliographical detail and the origins of quotations the reader is referred to unpublished manuscripts such as Spiritual Dynamics at the Cape, Mysterious Ways of God and The Mother of the Nation. Along with other titles, this material is accessible at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. Ashley Cloete, Cape Town, ?? 2023 1.`Special Housing Provision After my return to Holland from West Africa in February 1990, various 'doors' for missionary service seemed to have been opening. The 'door' to Ivory Coast closed soon thereafter. On the other hand, the 'Macedonian call' of our friend Pietie Orange was very much of a challenge. The invitation to come and help at the Cape touched a sensitive chord! One hurdle after the other was cleared until an orientation trip at the end of that year with two of our children was part of the run-up to the two-phased missionary Orientation Course WEC International. The six months in Bulstrode (London) and at Emmeloord in the Netherlands turned out to be a precious period of preparation for our move to the Cape in January 1992. When we came from Holland we didn’t have any accommodation sorted out. We were already considering approaching my faithful friend and teacher colleague Ritchie Arendse, as in 1981, for the use of his caravan again, when just before our departure to South Africa we heard that we could be housed in a Bible School in Athlone during the month of January. There was a big difference this time. Now we had five big children and not two small ones as the previous time. The Cape Evangelical Bible Institute - it was later renamed Cornerstone Christian College - started originally as an evening Bible School in a home in the slum-like suburb of Elsies River in 1970. The institution was regarded as a parallel for ‘Coloureds’ to the renowned Bible Institute of South Africa in the 'White' suburb of Kalk Bay. At that time only 'Whites' had been allowed to study there because of apartheid restrictions. Two Priorities Our number one priority after arrival at the Cape was to get our accommodation settled. We were shocked how rents had increased since our sojourn in 1981, when we had been sharing a cottage in Crawford with four other people for R200 per month. Our sending church in Holland pledged to support us monthly with the equivalent of R1500. Rosemarie and I decided to use the monthly pledge of the church as the basis for our rent. We would trust the Lord for provision for all other daily needs like food, transport and funds for the education of the children. That the government had published its intention to scrap the Group Areas Act, made matters a lot easier, giving us more options to find accommodation. At one of the houses we looked at, there was a swimming pool. When we prayed as a family subsequently for the right accommodation, our seven year-old Magdalena saw no problem to include this in her prayer request a house at a devotional exercise. Just under two years later we moved into a house with a big swimming pool! How many people from many nations have been baptised there subsequently. Priority number two was to sort out the schooling of the children. Already during the occasion of our spying the land in December 1990, we thought that our two eldest children should attend the German school. We ultimately enrolled all five of them there. Also Tabitha, our youngest sprout, was accepted for the first grade, although she was only five years old. Strategic Contacts The Bible School period was quite strategic in terms of contacts. A few months before we came to South Africa, we had met Johan van der Wal and his wife Maaike in our home church in Holland. Through them we got to know interesting people. Thus we met Alan de Cerff and his American wife Jennifer, who operated at UCT under the flag of Campus Crusade. The De Cerff couple took us to the Community Bible Fellowship at the Baker House in Crawford. On the last Sunday of January we shared our housing predicament with the latter fellowship. They promised to pray for us in their all-night event the coming Friday. In Dire Straits Finding suitable accommodation that would be more or less affordable was almost like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Whenever the home owners heard that we have five children, they were not interested any more. Thus we soon made a point of mentioning this fact right at the outset whenever we enquired. That spared us unnecessary waste of time, petrol and further disappointments. We were quite frustrated when all our attempts at getting a house seemed to have brought us nowhere. We were in quite dire straits because we had to get out of the Bible School before the end of the month. Sleeping On the Street? This was still the position on the 30th of January. The wife of the house owner not very far from the German school took for granted that her husband would agree to have us because he was a German-speaking Swiss. The timing seemed to be perfect, because it was almost the end of the month and we could move in straight away. We were really in the clouds when the phone call confirmed that he agreed initially. We were already praising the Lord at the table at suppertime, when the phone rang once again. This time it was the husband himself. He had just heard from his wife that we have five children; this was a major problem to him. They would not rent their house to us. When I returned to the supper table with the shattering news, all of us were devastated. Little Tabitha vented her fears spontaneously as she cried uncontrollably: ‘Will we now have to sleep on the street?’ How thankful Rosemarie and I were when Rafael attempted to console her: ‘No, the Lord will see to it that we need not go and sleep on the street.’ I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like and yet also mature faith into which our children had started to grow. Rosemarie had of course similar emotions. I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like and yet also mature faith into which our son had started to grow. As a family we had been experiencing so many special answers to prayer. And we did not even share with the children the financial challenges we had been experiencing! Something Happening in the Heavenlies On Friday the 31st of January 1992 we packed all our belongings together, without knowing where we would be going the next day. On Sunday the arrival of Bible School students was expected. We were now clinging to our last hope. Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, was going to ask her landlord whether we could move into her two-bedroom flat in Diep River temporarily. She would then go to a friend. When we phoned Shirley the Saturday morning, this last hope was all but dashed … We were not aware how many people were praying for us. Of one group we knew. They were Christians from the Community Bible Fellowship in Crawford that we had attended the previous Sunday. They said that they would pray right through the night from Friday to Saturday, and also for us! In the heavenlies something had obviously been happening, because somewhere in the suburb of Kenilworth – a few kilometres from Crawford - a Greek lady could not sleep. Ireni Stephanis never had problems with sleeplessness, not even when her husband died, but that night she constantly had to think about the family from Holland about which she had heard from Shirley Charlton. Ireni was curious whether the family of seven had found accommodation in the meantime. After hearing of our predicament, Ireni offered to share her big house. Her daughter had just married and left the home. Ireni’s two adult sons were overseas. They would not be around for some time. When we learnt this story from Shirley Charlton, we stood there in awe! We could only marvel at the timely intervention of the Lord! It looked to be the most practical thing to sleep at the Bible School for the last time on Saturday. Even in this little detail we could see the hand of the Lord. At this time we also met someone who offered to assist us with the clearance of our container, once it would land in the Cape Town Docks. 2. Diverse Ministry Challenges The first morning after our arrival at the Bible School, we were awakened by a deafening roar at half past four. The cause was the prayer call from the seven mosques within a radius of two kilometres of the The loud roar was the first indication that the Lord might be calling us to interact with the Cape Muslims. Another clear confirmation along these lines could have been when we were able to rent a house in Tamboerskloof, almost a stone’s throw from Bo-Kaap, the cradle of Islam in South Africa. God had evidently started fitting things together in his perfect mosaic. Prayer Walking in Bo-Kaap Soon after our move to Tamboerskloof Rosemarie and I decided to do prayer walking in the adjacent Bo-Kaap, asking the Lord to lead us to those people in whose hearts the Holy Spirit had already have done preparatory work. But we sensed very soon that we should not be alone in this venture. We discovered that we needed the prayer backing of other Christians. As a family we had started to attend the city branch of the denomination that became known as the Jubilee Church/ Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders of the fellowship at the Cape Town High School, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims, although the new denomination was not supportive of such outreach. Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings More prayer walks in Bo-Kaap resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in mid-1992 in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer in 73 Wale Street. We hoped to reverse the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap, praying that the suburb would become more than merely the nominally Christian residential area it had been in earlier days in spiritual terms. Two regular attendees of the city Vineyard Church fellowship were Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background believer and Elizabeth Robertson, who had a special love for the Jews. At the prayer meetings Liz and Achmed were regulars from the beginning. Our prayer meetings thus had an Isaac-Israel component because these two believers love both Jews and Muslims, just like us. We had as an ultimate goal the planting at least one simple church in the most extreme Islamic stronghold of the Cape Peninsula. We were yearning to see our vision implemented to be part again of a congregation that has the unity of the Body of Christ as a priority, where mutual close fellowship and outreach on more than only one day of the week is a reality. (This was partially realized during our time in Zeist, Holland, where we had real fellowship with local believers from different denominational backgrounds as we ministered together with the Goed Nieuws Karavaan initiative from 1982-1991). At one of these meetings, Achmed Kariem suggested that we start a lunchtime prayer meeting on Fridays, it is at the same time that Muslims attend their mosque services. Such prayer events started in September 1992 in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street. A Special Impact on (Cape) Jewry When the Bo-Kaap prayer meeting in the Abrahams’ home in Wale Street was changed to a monthly meeting, it made room for a prayer event where intercession for the Middle East was the focus. The new monthly meeting at our home in Tamboerskloof, and later in the suburb of Vredehoek from 1994, also included prayer for the Jews, those in Israel as well as for those in Sea Point, the hub of Cape Jewry. The goal of these prayers was that Jews may recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. The catalyst for the Jewish part of the prayer meeting was Elizabeth Robertson, whom God had used to stir the Jews of Sea Point in 1990. (She had been confronted at that time with a very difficult choice when she was about to convert to Judaism, in preparation for her marriage to an Israeli national.) The unexpected choice of Elizabeth Robertson shook Cape Jewry. Surprisingly, she was encouraged by Jews to publish her special story. Her autobiography, The Choice, made quite an impact on South African Jewry when it was published in 2003. Elizabeth wrote about the predicament into which the rabbi put her in the final interview of the procedure before she was about to convert to Judaism. She described the turmoil with the following words: I cleared my throat to speak, when unexpectedly an anointing fell upon me, and I found myself asking if I might go on my knees. A holy boldness overtook me and in a loud, firm voice, with an authority that shocked even me, I heard myself saying: “To me Jesus Christ is the Son of God! He is the one who died for me,” then, pointing at the rabbis one by one, “and for you and for you and for you. He is the Messiah. He was born of a virgin, and His blood cleanses all of our sins. This is who I believe Jesus Christ is!” I then collapsed onto the floor in a sobbing heap. Attempts at Correction Our mission agency WEC International expected Rosemarie and me to put a strong emphasis on missionary recruitment. Soon after our arrival, the Lord guided us clearly towards an involvement with the Cape Muslims. One of our aims at that time – the first months of 1992 - was a correction of the competitive spirit, which we discerned among the local missionaries. This was partly achieved by working together at a children’s club inter alia with Marika Pretorius, and helping TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission) missionaries with convert care, by providing transport for the meetings at their home in the Cape Flats suburb of Southfield. The networking became especially practical through the initiative to join forces in the training of prospective missionaries to Muslim countries at the Bible Institute of South Africa. This started as an initiative to bring teaching on Muslim Evangelism at the Bible Colleges at the Cape, a project during which Manfred Jung and I joined forces. Representation Work The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which our WEC colleague Shirley Charlton took me soon after our arrival at the Cape in January 1992, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. Here I met strategic people from the Cape mission scene like Jan Hanekom, Martin Heuvel and Bruce van Eeden. Rosemarie and I prayed for guidance where we should start with ministry. By June 1992 our ministry was not focused at all. When I spoke during a phone call to Val Kadalie, the matron of the G.H Starke old age home in Hanover Park, I sensed confirmation that this township, where I had been teaching in 1981, was the place where we should get involved with ministry. Soon I linked up with a former gangster cum drug addict, a convert from Islam. He was leading a vibrant prayer group at the G.H Starke home on Saturday afternoon. Via our Worldwide Evangelization for Christ (WEC) colleague, Shirley Charlton, we were approached to assist with the training of Xhosa young people in children’s work at Camp Joy, a campsite in Strandfontein during the June holidays. The week turned out to be quite strategic. There we met the gifted Melvin Maxegwana, who was translating the teaching of Ammie Coetzee of the Child Evangelical Fellowship into Xhosa. For the rest, our ministry still had no clear direction. Trying to achieve unity among the churches of the Mother City turned out to be a daunting challenge. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be when I started with tentative steps. During our first year we would often go to churches where Shirley Charlton had arranged the meetings. Occasionally also our children were involved. In one instance we dramatized the story of Jonah at a church in the ‘Coloured’ suburb of Kensington. Special Operations from Cape Townships Bless the Nations conferences influenced the Church at the Cape quite significantly. Bruce van Eeden, a pastor from Mitchell's Plain who was powerfully touched by God in 1990, started Great Commission Conferences in ‘Coloured’ residential areas. After ministering at one of these conferences in 1992, Rosemarie and I started to assist with children’s ministry at the Newfields Clinic near the township of Hanover Park. There Bruce van Eeden was the pastor at an Evangelical Bible Church congregation. Law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality At this time, I participated in the establishment of Operation Hanover Park. The stimulus for the latter operation was given by Everett Crowe, a police officer, who approached the local churches in a last-ditch effort to secure peace in the Hanover Park township that seemed to be ruled by gangsters. The law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality in the area any more. Operation Hanover Park was led by Pastor Jonathan Matthews of the Blomvlei Baptist Church, the main driving force behind the initiative. A Saturday afternoon prayer meeting of the City Mission fellowship became the precursor to a monthly event of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. Believers of diverse church backgrounds who came together to pray once a month on a Saturday afternoon in different buildings was the mainstay of this Operation. Dean Ramjoomia, a Muslim background believer who grew up in a gangster-related environment, was eager to serve among the gangsters as the local evangelist on behalf of the churches. A tract that he wrote and designed, made quite an impact. Blomvlei Baptist Church offered the Ramjoomia family accommodation on the church premises and a few other churches pledged financial contributions. Things looked quite promising. Furthermore, it seemed as if our vision - to get local churches networking in missions and evangelism - was coming to fruition. At least, this was how it appeared! At the same time, this would also give an example to believers in other parts of the Cape Peninsula and possibly elsewhere as well. This was a model to combat criminality and violence – through united prayer and action! Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993. That was however not to be. A leadership tussle stifled the promising movement. Ministries to the Homeless Down the decades many a fruitful ministry to the homeless was started. The compassionate Henry Davids, one of very few 'Coloureds' at the Cape Town Baptist Church in the early 1990s, linked up with a few others like Bev Stratis in this ministry. Every Sunday afternoon a meal was served to a whole group of vagrants after ministry from the Word. For decades hereafter Henry would serve the homeless, also planting a church in Woodstock. Later we got very close to Bev and Pasques from the same congregation. A Bergie Becomes a Pastor Pastor Willie Martheze, a qualified welder from Mitchell's Plain, was still a so-called bergie, a vagrant, when he was initially ministered to. Jesus found me first! Humorously he would recollect how he had been such a good-for-nothing alcoholic that his own mother sent the police and the gangsters after him. ‘But Jesus found me first’, he proclaimed. Willie Martheze was radically delivered by the Gospel after attending an evangelistic service on the Grand Parade in February 1974, where the Scottish missionary Pastor Gay preached. Soon hereafter, the latter got a job for Martheze at the Arthur’s Seat Hotel in Sea Point. The prayerful ministry of Pastor Gay in District Six caused him to attend an evening training course at the Bethel Bible School in Crawford. Obedient to God’s voice after seeing a very destitute vagrant, Martheze followed a call to work with homeless people, with the intention of ministering healing to them. One of the aims was to empower the homeless, and to enable them to return to the homes they had left. In the spiritual realm it was significant that Pastor Martheze was allowed to use facilities at the Azaad Youth Centre, one of the few buildings that remained intact from the old District Six. (This complex was the former Preparatory School in Upper Ashley Street.) He and his wife were blessed to see quite a few of the homeless changed dramatically for the better, and some of them returned to their families. A Cross-Cultural Choir In 1992 the racial divide was still a major challenge in our country. From the outset of our service at the Cape Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, took me to various Bible schools in the Cape Peninsula, sharing the challenge of missionary outreach. At one of the events to which Shirley took me, I heard Joyce Scott reporting. She was a missionary of AIM who used her gift of music in ministry, while lecturing at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute. This was the catalyst for us to start a choir with singers coming from different cultures, a vision that I had brought along from Holland. (In Zeist I had attended a performance of a culturally mixed group from New Zealand.) At occasions to which I was invited as speaker, I took along the cross-cultural choir that we had formed. Apart from Grace Chan, our WEC Creole colleague from Mauritius, we also had people from different races in the choir. We recruited the choir members predominantly from Capetonian Bible Colleges. How special it was that I got into contact with two Xhosa speakers and a Zulu within the first three months. Two of them became members of our choir, one a Zulu Bible School student and the other a Salvation Army officer from Langa. That I bumped into Elijah Klaasen, a pastor from Gugulethu on the Grand Parade soon after our arrival, was definitely providential. (He had been the bold young pastor of 1981 who translated for us when Celeste Santos and the late Nomangezi Mbobosi fought for the women who had been transported back from the Transkei. Celeste and Nomangezi were two of the generals and pivots of the valiant fight in the Battle of Nyanga!) Rosemarie and I realized that we needed to get the backing, moral and prayer support of other Christians. At the same time we prayed, asking the Lord where we should start to serve him. By June 1992 our ministry was still not focused at all. We had not discerned properly that we should focus on Cape Muslims. Outreach to Jews was almost completely of our radar, albeit that we had once a month prayer meetings soon hereafter, interceding for both Sea Point and Bo-Kaap, for both Jews and Muslims. It would take many years before the biblical challenge of 'Jews first' (Romans 1:16) came through to us. Centre for Missions at BI When our renowned British missionary colleague Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa in 1994, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started, conducting services on Sunday evenings. At that occasion Dr Roger Palmer, the leader of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) branch at UCT and a board member of the Bible Institute of South Afri ca (BI) in Kalk Bay, shared his vision with me to have a centre for missions at BI. I had already been in discussion with Manfred Jung of SIM to bring the teaching of Muslim Evangelism to different Bible Schools. In fact, I had already approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about Islam at these institutions, remembering the lack we had in our own curriculum at the Moravian Theological Seminary. This research resulted in the start of annual intensive two-week courses in Muslim Evangelism at BI from January 1996, which led in turn to a teaching session of Rosemarie and me at the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) base in Muizenberg. Prayer Undergirding Evangelism From oral reports of Life Challenge workers like Neville Truter, who later became a SIM associate missionary, I heard that the Muslim evangelistic work was accompanied from the start by an emphasis on prayer. For many years Muslim outreach at the Cape and SIM Life Challenge were almost synonymous. The mission continued with an annual prayer initiative during Ramadan when they usually stopped their door-to door weekly outreach for that month. Under the leadership of the German missionary Gerhard Nehls, his team had people interceding while co-workers would be visiting Muslim homes. In other cases, groups prayed before they would go on outreach. In the mid-1980s, Nehls’s German missionary colleague Walter Gschwandtner got believers praying in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap. The Muslim head of the home came to faith in Jesus as his Lord just before he died in 1983. The knowledge of the Bo-Kaap prayer meetings got almost lost when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya in the early 1990s. At the Cape Town Baptist Church a few believers, including Hendrina van der Merwe, prayed at the church when outreach groups would go to nearby Muslim areas like Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. That congregation was well-known for its pioneering work in various places including District Six, Roggebaai and Woodstock. The fellowship however never succeeded to bridge the cultural gap to the Muslims. Gerhard Nehls, the old pioneer, did not sit still after his retirement from active mission work in 1997. In conjunction with Trans World Radio, he became the master mind behind a video series, using important Islamic apologists of the day. The result was The Battle for the Hearts. In due course the video series (later also available as DVD in different languages) went around the globe making a significant impact wherever it was used. Already in his early seventies, Nehls also delved into the modern electronic technology, starting with a data base of all materials for Muslim evangelism. In the age of the internet many Muslims would be impacted in the new millennium through this medium. Breaking New Ground My first major attempt at uniting churches of the city area was trying to get them to pray for Muslims. We organized for converts from Islam and various missionaries to speak in different churches on the Sundays during Ramadan 1993. When I observed that this merely resulted in entertainment - with no subsequent commitment - I aborted the practice. Hereafter I would challenge churches towards loving outreach to Muslims whenever they invited me to come and preach. We found that the WEC International prayer group that met in our Tamboerskloof home, was so much more committed and interested. Margaret Curry, a member of this monthly group of a few elderly ladies, introduced us to the matron of St Monica’s Maternity Home in Bo-Kaap. (Margaret Curry had been a missionary with the Hospital Christian Fellowship). In Hanover Park we started the first cell group with male Muslim background believers. In Hanover Park we started the first cell group consisting of male Muslim background believers. There we studied biblical personalities that also figure in the Qur’an. (This cell group ceased in September 1993 after our old VW Microbus was stolen and we had been conned – all in one week-end! Personally we went through a very difficult patch at this time, the result of an obvious demonic attack.) In this research and studies I was very fascinated and humbled to see how biblical figures that are mentioned in the Qur’an, foreshadow Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures and Talmudic sources. I also discovered that many pointers to the Cross and Jesus’ crucifixion had been omitted in the Qur’an.2 Fruitful Networking In the course of my representation work of our first year, I met Martin Heuvel, a pastor from Ravensmead. It was only natural that I would visit him when I helped prepare the October 1992 visit of Patrick Johnstone, the author of Operation World, a book that had already influenced prayers for missions like possibly no other with the exception of the Bible. A touch of nostalgia was hardly to be prevented when I visited the premises of the Fountain Family Church complex in Ravensmead. (The property had been there from where our family had to move.) Until 1994 Pastor Martin Heuvel was the principal of the Cape School of Missions. He was succeeded in 1995 by Rev. James Selfridge, an Irish missionary of the Metropolitan Church, who led the teaching and proceedings there until the school was disbanded and merged with the Bethel Bible School in 2004. Interesting ramifications would ensue after a short occasional lecturing there in 1992-1994, when I got befriended to Jeff Swartz, a student and a member of the Ravensmead Calvinist Protestant Church. Subsequently he would introduce me to Tim Makamu, a talented Venda student from the Cape Peninsula Technical University (CPUT). In the new millennium Tim would become the senior pastor of the mega church His People, albeit only for a short period. When Shirley Charlton organised for me to preach at the Docks Mission Church in the Mitchell's Plain township Lentegeur, another meaningful contact ensued. Pastor Walter Ackermann had a heart for missions second to very few in the Western Cape. I was soon preaching there regularly until Pastor Ackermann left the church at retirement age. Having ministered to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, he was keen to introduce me to the prominent politician when he became the State President. Pastor Ackermann was rather concerned with the way the Mandela government accepted financial assistance from the oil-rich Arab states. However, I could not quite see how a single meeting with the President could influence matters. That I declined that opportunity was something which I still regret. It was false humility. I should at least have asked God to either enable such a meeting or close the door. The Goodwill of Promising Beginnings Evaporate Much of the goodwill of the promising beginnings in our country after the 1992 referendum seemed to evaporate during the transition to democratic government. In Kwazulu, civil war conditions had been simmering for years. The tension between African National Congress (ANC) followers and those of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) was simmering. That could get out of control quite easily. The apparent, if perhaps not intentional simultaneous side-lining of Dr Mangusuthu Buthelezi and his IFP in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) talks, spelled danger. Over the Resurrection commemorative weekend of 1993, the country seemed to have been pushed over the precipice of major racial conflict. On 10 April 1993, the news reverberated throughout the country that Chris Hani, an outspoken Communist who had been mooted for a top position in a possible ANC-led government, had been assassinated. A ‘White’ woman provided information leading to the prompt arrest of the alleged perpetrators, two right-wing activists. This fact helped to lower the political temperature momentarily, but the situation remained extremely tense. The death of an American exchange student and other terrorist-related incidents made clear that matters were very serious. But satan overplayed his hand in July 1993. So-called freedom fighters stormed into the evening service at the St James Church in the Cape suburb of Kenilworth, killing and maiming several people. This massacre turned out to be a divine instrument par excellence, ushering in prayer unprecedentedly. Simultaneously, a movement towards racial reconciliation in the country received a boost. Those family members who lost dear ones were given divine grace to forgive the brutal terrorists. The killing of innocent people during a church service sparked off an unprecedented urgency for prayer all around the country. 3. Back to (Bible) School During the course of interaction with Cape Muslims as I joined missionary outreach with colleagues, I discovered my own inadequacy in respect of knowledge of Islam. Soon I was driving every Monday evening to Kalk Bay, doing a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) with a special focus on Islam. Post-Graduate Studies Things were auguring well for the future. Our friend Jutty Bredenkamp, who had visited us in Zeist a few times, had become professor of History at the University of the Western Cape in the meantime. He assisted me in my research on the establishment and spread of Islam at the Cape for an assignment. When I shared with him some of my 'discoveries', especially with regard to the misrepresentation of missions in the available literature - notably in the writings of Professor Robert Shell and Dr Achmat Davids - he encouraged me to publish my findings. Dr Davids proved to be a real gentleman, even putting some of his unpublished research at my disposal. The last interview with him occurred a day before his death in 1998. One of my assignments about Jesus in the Qur’an – in conjunction with Bible Studies with monthly male Muslim background believers - would bring me to another special 'discovery', namely how the Cross of Calvary has been consistently omitted in the Qur’an. Other Types of Revival Seed Various types of ‘revival seed’ were sowed during the 1990s. Some of the most notable ones transpired through the various prayer networks, for example the Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA) and its successor Jericho Walls. (The leader, Ds. Bennie Mostert, collaborated closely with the AD2000 & Beyond Movement.) Operation Desert Storm was the successful U.S.-allied response in 1991 to the attempt of Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, to crush neighbouring Kuwait. That US-led operation had a significant impact. Many Christian soldiers distributed Arabic Bibles when the Allied troops moved around the Middle East. Coming fairly soon after the fall of the Soviet Empire and their successful seven year prayer campaign, Open Doors launched a new campaign, ten years of prayer for the Muslim world. Floyd McClung and other Youth with a Mission (YWAM) leaders retreated to a secluded place in Egypt in 1991. There the Lord gave them the vision for prayer mobilization during Ramadan - the Muslim Prayer Focus - to be printed as booklets that would cause unprecedented changes in the Muslim world. The 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed and distributed around the Globe with information on different issues relating to Islam. This was repeated for many years until the internet option made its actual printing more or less redundant. CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) in South Africa printed their own version of the Ramadan Muslim Prayer Focus for 1998 and since then every year till 2017, after which it moved into electronic mode. In 1993 the first teams started praying through information gained from serious research. From 1993 South Africa also participated in the Praying through the Window initiative that was launched internationally by the AD 2000 Prayer Track. I discerned furthermore that the Master was teaching me many new lessons. A student from the Baptist Theological Seminary, the Zambian Kalolo Mulenga, would become God’s instrument to lead me to the small Woodstock Baptist Church. There I started discovering many a lesson that Jesus had been teaching via his conversation with the Samaritan woman of John 4. At that congregation which had no full time pastor in 1992/3, I preached three sermons on that Bible chapter. I expanded on that in a repetition at the Cape Town sister fellowship which we joined in 1993. However, I collided with some of the missionary practices at the Cape when I went overboard in my application of one lesson. Some expatriate missionary colleagues especially found it rightfully unpalatable when I suggested much too radically that God could use the immoral lady better among her own people than Jesus. It was surely theologically flawed to suggest that a sinful woman was, so to speak, better than our sinless divine Lord. I rubbed some of the colleagues up the wrong way My conviction that Muslim background believers could similarly witness much better to their peers and family than we as missionaries, was however perfectly in order. But this rubbed some of the colleagues up the wrong way. Being the only ‘Cape Coloured’ among many expatriate colleagues at that time, this was not very charitable and very unwise, understandably interpreted by some as arrogant. Thankfully, hardly any visible damage resulted from my haughty attitude. Nevertheless, I landed in some corner once again, ostracised by other colleagues. This was not the first time that my radical views threw me into hot water! An Ideal Opening for Satanism Crime at the Cape increased and drug trafficking spiralled! The warfare from the enemy of souls was conducted in the Cape Flats townships mainly through drug addiction, gangsterism and prostitution. These vices proved the ideal opening for satanism. In the mid-1990s the drug- and gang war kept the Mother City of South Africa in suspense for months. drug addiction, gangsterism and prostitution grew rapidly. (These triplets of vice still remain unsolved problems of the City and the country as a whole.) A situation developed by the end of the 20th century that could only be countered with spiritual warfare on a national scale. A Dynamic Church Evolves A Christian surfing club was started at the Cape Town Baptist Church in 1991 as an attempt to reach unchurched surfers. Mike Geldenhuys, a young believer who went on to study Theology at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary, invited Roy Harley, a devout surfer from Durban, to come and challenge the youngsters at a camp. Nathan, the son of Graham Gernetsky, the pastor, invited his friend Terran Williams. Demitri Nikiforos and Nathan Gernetsky were two other teenagers who, like Terran Williams, later went into full-time pastoral ministry. Nikiforos became the pioneering pastor of Calvary Chapel in the Mother City and Terran Williams became the leader of the Common Ground denomination in 2017. Heidi Pasques and Carol Günther, an American volunteer, pioneered with the teaching of English to foreign students. With predominantly Asians attending these lessons, the church started to become quite cosmopolitan. Another ministry, to serve people with homosexual tendencies or who had been damaged in that regard, brought healing and help to many. These people received assistance at the Cape Town Baptist Church when the issue was still muzzled in other churches. Sadly, country-wide a situation in gender politics evolved negatively later from a biblical point of view. that it became politically incorrect to see marriage as a union between a male and a female. Due to clever manipulation and the use of bribes, the ANC majority in parliament legalized same sex marriages in 2006. (Corruption in the party would spiral in due course.) An Impact Via Bo-Kaap Minaret Calls The Lord himself seemed to confirm our link to Cape Town Baptist Church, using the eight-year-old daughter of one of the elders of the church. The girl had been terribly troubled by the calls from the minarets in the nearby mosques of Bo-Kaap. Her father, Brett Viviers, a Messanic Jewish believer, suggested that she should start praying for the Muslims. That Heidi Pasques and her husband Louis displayed interest to become missionaries to a Muslim country. This became the factor that ultimately nudged me to join the congregation formally with our family. Furthermore, two members of our Bo-Kaap prayer meeting, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids, already belonged to the congregation. Yet, Rosemarie was not quite convinced that this was where we should link up church-wise. Its proximity to Bo-Kaap, where we wanted a spiritual breakthrough, clinched the matter for me. There is where we wanted to plant a simple home church. Rather hesitantly she agreed to join the congregation. For many years this would cause some strain in our relationship, notably when we became increasingly unhappy there. We had apparently not yet learned the lesson well enough, that we should not proceed with major decisions like this without complete unity as a couple. God could subsequently nevertheless use us at that congregation in many a way for the longest stretch to date in a single congregation. Carol Günther was part of our home ministry group that met on Wednesday evening in our home initially, and later in that of Alan Kay, a Telkom employee. He later became the administrator of the church. A later addition to the group was Gershin Philander, a young man who was raised in the tradition of the Plymouth Brethren. He had a phenomenal knowledge of the Scriptures. 4. Taking Back Lost Territory The indifference of churches to evangelistic outreach has always been a problem in around the Cape Peninsula. In this regard, the suburbs Woodstock and Salt River were no exception. People with low income have been living in these two suburbs, which had become predominantly Islamic within a few years in the early 1990s. Christians were fleeing Woodstock as gangsterism and prostitution took the area by storm. Prayer Warfare in Woodstock In March 1994 a group of theological students of the Cape Town Baptist Theological Seminary served also in Woodstock for a local missions' week. Pastor Graham Gernetsky, the senior pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church, invited me to share teaching with him, along-side Bobby Maynard, a church member who had in depth insight in missions and related topics. Pastor Gernetsky reacted positively to my suggestion to engage in prayer warfare with the students not only in Bo-Kaap, but also in nearby Woodstock. This would amount to an attempt to take back some territory that satan had stolen through drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism. During a prayer walk with the students as part of the missions' week, a local Woodstock resident mentioned Pastor William Tait and his fellowship. He had started his ministry there in 1989 as a local Assemblies of God congregation. The 1994 missions' week became the start of closer co-operation between the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God fellowship and the small local Baptist Church that had no minister at the time. By 1990 Woodstock had become the drug hub of the metropolis. The Face of Woodstock Changing Towards the end of the millennium, Woodstock slowly changed its religious complexion. The centre of drug-peddling and prostitution moved to more lucrative areas in the democratic dispensation. Pastor Tait and his church were ably assisted by the small local Baptist Church under an inspiring pioneering new minister. Pastor Edgar Davids was in poor health, a kidney patient, when he finished his studies at the seminary. The fellowship met in a house in Mountain Street, Woodstock where the congregation also met for all their meetings. Edgar Davids, a visionary pastor, challenged the few members to buy the former Aberdeen Street Dutch Reformed Church. The building had been ransacked by homeless people, some of them Angolan refugees. It ultimately had become a ruin more or less. Inspired by their sickly pastor, the members began to restore the premises with financial and practical aid from North Carolina believers in the USA. A kidney transplant and dialysis treatment however merely extended Pastor Davids's suffering. Sadly, in March 1998, Pastor Edgar Davids passed on to eternal glory. The Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God initially rented a dilapidated building from the Woodstock Presbyterian Church which found it difficult to survive in the fast deteriorating suburb. Starting in 1994, the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God had begun to conduct prayer meetings every morning on weekdays at five o’clock. God started using the two fellowships of Woodstock to gradually change the face of the suburb. Before our eyes we could see this happening. The restored churches, respectively in Clyde and Aberdeen Streets, that once had been the shame of local Christianity, became a visible testimony to God’s renewing power in that suburb. We continued praying that something similar would also happen in the spiritual realm. Taking Bo-Kaap Back for the Lord? When Pastor Angelo Scheepers and a few Cape Baptist big names came to approach Rosemarie and me to pioneer Muslim outreach in Michells Plain on behalf of the Baptist denomination, we sensed no calling at all in this regard. Likewise, their suggestion to get the former Baptist building in Bo-Kaap's Jarvis Street back on behalf of the denomination, found no resonance in my heart. (Due to Group Areas legislation it had become a photographic studio.) I was ready to co-operate if it would be a cross-denominational venture, but this idea was possibly too radical for the brethren. Looking back just under thirty years later, my resistance to the move, preferring to get some non-denominational fellowship going there, may not have been the best one to achieve a breakthrough in the Muslim stronghold. Preparation For New Initiatives One of the events organised in the first term of 1993 by the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop at the Cape Town Baptist Church with John Robb of World Vision. I used the list of participants at this event to organize Jesus Marches the following year. In this way, I updated my contacts for further mission endeavour in the Western Cape. There I met Trefor Morris and Freddie van Dyk, two City Council workers. Trefor was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor became a regular at our Friday lunch time prayer meeting while he was assisting with work on the OM missionary ship the Doulos in the City dockyard. He was also the link for Rosemarie and me to be invited to the radio station to give some advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends.’ These were the people who had to advise Muslims who phoned CCFM (Cape Community FM) for telephonic counselling. Trefor became my Fish Hoek link for the 1994 Marches for Jesus and a hopeful recruit for the envisaged prayer network in the Cape Peninsula. (The seed of the vision of a prayer network germinated in the new millennium when the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in the Western Cape, in conjunction with Jericho Walls, attempted to stimulate the formation of houses of prayer across denominational barriers.) Freddie van Dyk’, a member of the Logos Baptist Church of Brackenfell, became a regular attendee at our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting. He would lead us to a very strategic hospital outreach every Saturday morning. Danie Heyns was another member of his congregation who would become a pivotal link as a contact for the organisation of Jesus Marches in June 1994 The David and Jonathan Foundation Jack Carstens served in Israel as Trade Attaché of South Africa for 4 years from 1976 to 1980. Living there with his wife Annalee and their children, they met Messianic Jewish believers in the land. At that time only a handful of small fellowships met secretly because of persecution especially from Orthodox Jews. The Messianic believers often endured hardship from family, who rejected them for putting their faith in Jesus. After their return to South Africa, Jack and Annalee kept contact with some of these believers. The couple founded David and Jonathan Foundation in 1996. The main thrust of the organisation is to get support from South African churches and Christians for the believers in Israel. David and Jonathan Foundation encourages individuals and congregations to pray for Messianic congregations in Israel and to give them financial support. Funds are spread amongst several congregations with whom the foundation has built sound relations. The money is used to assist these congregations to spread the Good News to their fellow countrymen in Israel. Aware that the Jewish people’s eyes have been partially blinded to allow the Gentiles to come to faith ( Romans 11:26), God has always ensured that a remnant of Jews have entered into faith so that they can witness to His people. God is lifting this veil and many Jewish people have been coming to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah! As a result, faith in Messiah Jesus has grown and there is now more than 100 Messianic congregations established in Israel. To God be the glory! Cape Catalysts Into the Ten Forty Window The first Love Southern Africa Conference was held in Wellington in 1993, with the Nigerian Panja Baba and Operation Mobilization (OM)’s international leader George Verwer as the main speakers. This coincided with the renovation of the OM ship the Doulos in the Cape Town Docks. The ship's young people from many countries were hosted privately all over the Cape Peninsula, spreading blessings wherever they served. Pastor Raymond Lombard of the Lewende Woord congregation in the suburb Parow was moved by the Holy Spirit in September 1995 to initiate a project that would ultimately reach many a home, tribe, clan, family, and village throughout Africa with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This outreach that surged through 44 countries, became known as 'Wheels for God’s Word'. By August 2021 4000 plus bicycles ('rural Mercedes' as these have been called in Africa), have been given to pastors and evangelists and many motorcycles. To date 22 000 pastors, evangelists and church leaders have been trained with the “Heart of Man” charts in hundreds of churches. Wherever a bicycle was given to a preacher of the gospel, large and pocket-size “Heart of Man” charts, along with accompanying booklets, were distributed. Pastor Bruce van Eeden passionately attempted to get South Africans involved in missionary work. The Lord laid India and China on his heart. In 1995 he started a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. With his daughter serving as an employee of South African Airways enabling Pastor van Eeden to go to India for three months a year to minister, he partnered with Indian believers, taking volunteers from South Africa with him. In due course many Indian national evangelists and pastors became linked to the mission agency. From the outset Pastor van Eeden made it clear to the Christians in India that they should not expect funding from outside their own country. He did not want to see the dependency syndrome repeated as it happened in so many African countries. (Many a Western missionary, along with their church leaders, spawned or developed cripple Christians, who kept looking for financial support from rich countries, in stead of seeing God as their main source.) Two Special Incidents At a time when foreign visitors were still a rare site in China, Pastor Bruce and Brother ( ??, not his real name or now with the Lord?) was travelling in a bus with two boxes of Bibles to the Northern part of China for messianic Jewish believers there when the travellers on the bus were scrutinized. The two of them were sitting at the back of the bus. The travellers had to leave the bus one by one while there luggage were investigated and the passengers interrogated (??. The two of them could do nothing else but pray and getting ready for a possible lengthy term in prison. But just before it was their turn to be questioned, the order came that all those outside could return to their seats. They were not interrogated or their luggage scrutinized at all. The second incident happened in rural China (India??) where Pastor Bruce had been invited as speaker for a three day Gospel Campaign. To this end he had to travel for 38 hours in a train in which not a single person could speak English. Soon after his arrival there he was told that the authorities had made a clear that the foreignerwas not allowed to speak at the campaign for which he had to endure this tortuous journey sacrificially. When Ps. Bruce prayed about the matter, the only word he heard was that he should be the speaker. Three battalions of armed guards, thus around 300 of them, were sent to make sure that the government ruling would be adhered to at the campaign, with 8000 people present every time. The organizers had a brilliant solution to enable Ps. Bruce to speak and yet respect the ruling. He would be sitting near to the podium on the stage but he would not have a microphone. Only his interpreter had the microphone in his hand,'preaching' to the crowd from at the podium, translating what Ps. Bruce was quietly passing on from his seat. And thus also the guards could hear the gospel in their mother tongue! Prayer Inspired by the Fear of Civil War At the beginning of 1994, the concrete fear of civil war continued to inspire prayer across racial divides. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Methodist Bishop Stanley Mogoba convened a meeting between Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, trying to resolve the deadlock posed by the threat from the Inkatha Freedom Party to boycott the elections. Africa Enterprise, led by Rev Michael Cassidy, enlisted prayer assistance from all over the world. Believers from Kenya and Nigeria participated vigorously in this international prayer effort. In February 1994, in response to a special leading of the Holy Spirit, Pastor Willy Oyegun from Nigeria, along with a group of prayer warriors, came to South Africa to intercede on behalf of the country and especially that God would avert civil war. Soon thereafter, on 16 March 1994, General Constand Viljoen of the national Defence Force, severed the close links he had with Dr Buthelezi through the Freedom Alliance. General Viljoen formed his own political party, the Freedom Front. He agreed to participate in the elections, scheduled for 27 April, 1994. This was surely the result of the many prayers offered in various places at this time, making the feared civil war less ominous - for that moment at least. The country was still very close to a civil war. The country came close to civil war. God also called a police officer, Colonel Johan Botha, to recruit prayer warriors. The press took up his story, reporting how Colonel Botha shared that God supernaturally came to him in a vision. An angel stood before him on 23 March, 1994 with the message: “I want South Africa on its knees in prayer”. Subsequently, a national prayer day was announced for 6 April, 1994. This was a public holiday called Founder’s Day. Reputable International Negotiators Engaged To help with the negotiations, two reputable international negotiators came to work with Professor Washington Okumu, who was less known internationally. Lord Carrington was a former British Foreign Minister, who had brokered an accord for Zimbabwe at Lancaster House in London in 1980. The second prominent negotiator was Dr. Henry Kissinger, a former US Secretary of State, who through his shuttle diplomacy, headed off a major crisis in the Middle East in the 1970s. The distinguished group of three negotiators had great difficulty however in their attempt to get Dr Buthelezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) to participate in the elections. A Calamitous Civil War Loomed After both President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela refused to postpone the elections, and because of other difficulties during the negotiations, a mere two weeks before elections were due, Carrington and Kissinger left the country on 13 April1994, acknowledging their failure to achieve a settlement. The scene was set for the outbreak of civil war of massive proportions. Journalists flew in from all over the world to witness and record the carnage that was expected to follow the elections. God Intervenes Spectacularly Professor Okumu heeded the request of Michael Cassidy to stay behind when his prominent Western colleagues left. The request to Professor Okumu coincided with a special prayer event, organised on short notice at Durban’s King’s Park Stadium for Sunday 17 April. Under the spiritual leadership of Rev. Michael Cassidy, thousands would come to pray for peace. With godly wisdom and insight Cassidy and other Christian leaders pursued peaceful elections with great community support. On Friday 15 April, Professor Okumu rushed to meet Buthulezi by taxi at the Lanseria Airport to explain a new proposal to be presented to the Zulu King. But he was too late. Professor Okumu could only see the aeroplane taking off. Divine intervention occurred! Divine intervention occurred when it was announced that the aircraft was returning. Some strange navigational reading caused the pilot to return to the small airport. Afterwards no fault could be detected with the machine. God intervened supernaturally to bring the aeroplane, in which Dr Buthelezi was sitting, to return unexpectedly to the airport for a divine appointment with Professor Okumu. Media teams from every major network around the world were waiting to report the expected violent revolution, a bloodbath. The general journalistic practice was – and still is - to concentrate on calamities and catastrophes. The Church of Kwazulu and Natal took the opportunity to pray in all urgency. In spite of warnings and the risk of bombs exploding, 30,000 Christians gathered on Kings Park Stadium. Prof. Okumu’s proposal was passed to leaders of the IFP, the ANC and Danie Schutte of the Nationalist Party at the big Kings Park event. In the course of frantic negotiations - almost around the clock - the IFP agreed finally to participate in the elections. The photo of Dr Buthulezi was added to the millions of ballot papers in a gigantic last minute operation! To God Be the Glory! A few days later millions of people stood in long lines waiting to cast the first vote of their lives. What would follow was in fact a miraculous story. Media teams were called home. There was no story to report of calamitous revolution. The peaceful elections were a resounding success! This was God answering the cries of His children. This was a miracle happening in our generation! Many Kenyans had been praying for South Africa in its moment of crisis. It was so fitting that God used Professor Okumu to broker the accord with the IFP and Dr Buthulezi. It was a move that literally steered the country away from the precipice just before midnight. Believers in different parts of the world, including Kenyans and thousands of South Africans, gave God the honour for divinely guiding the country to an unprecedented four days of peaceful revolution, as the election process was dubbed. In answer to the prayers of millions, God brought about the miracle elections that might have gone awry if satan had his way. It was clear that it was neither military actions nor boycotts which toppled apartheid. It was sovereign divine work. Indeed, to God be the Glory! Prayer Warriors Respond A fourth national forty day fast was organised in conjunction with an international initiative called A Day to Change the World. A divine response followed when individual prayer warriors from different communities signed up. Thousands of people participated, culminating in Marches for Jesus all over the country on 25 June, 1994. The country lapsed back into its traditional racial and denominational divisions Although much of the mutual distrust was temporarily overcome, the country lapsed back into its traditional racial and denominational divisions. The recipe of Pete Grigg, an internationally known prayer leader, was very appropriate: ‘If there is not significant unity, the first step is to bring together the believers in prayer or in renewal and teaching until there is reconciliation and brokenness.’ Jesus Marches and Their Aftermath Jesus Marches were planned for 24 June, 1994 all over the world. In a letter from our friend and WEC missionary colleague Chris Scott from Sheffield (England), he wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. Inquiries on this side of the ocean brought the co-ordination of the whole effort in Cape Town into my lap. We had high expectations when I got involved in the co-ordination of about 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula and liaising closely with Danie Heyns and Chris Achenbach with regard to the northern suburbs of the city and the immediate ‘platteland’ (country side). I hoped that this venture would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest that our second attempt with our updated audio visual had stimulated in various areas, petered out. I deduced that it was not yet God’s timing and that we should do a lot more to stimulate the unity of the body of believers. In the run-up to the Jesus Marches I shared for the first time publicly what I had researched about the influence of the Kramats, the Islamic shrines on the heights of the Cape Peninsula. A strategic contact of this latter initiative was Trefor Morris, who was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor occasionally visited our Friday prayer meeting. He became a link to the radio station when we were invited to give advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends’ of the station, who had to speak to those Muslims who phoned in at Radio Fish Hoek. His radio series on old churches was valuable to me as an inspiration for further research. Another important contact of the Friday prayer was Freddie van Dyk, who linked us to the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell. Muslim Prayer Focus In 1992 mission leaders had decided to call the Christians worldwide to pray for the Muslim world during Ramadan. This was a natural follow-up of the call of Open Doors for 10 years of prayer for the Muslim world in 1990. Everybody was still vividly remembering the spectacular result of the 7 years of prayer for the Soviet Union. A little booklet called the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus was printed with information on different issues relating to Islam. South Africa was soon in the thick of things when Bennie Mostert of OM initiated the printing of the booklet in South Africa. Hereafter it became an annual event. 5. Can an Angel Bring a Flawed Message? My teaching at the missions' week with Baptist Seminary students ‘backfired’ in a special way. It became one big personal lesson in spiritual warfare to us. We included early prayer times with the students, starting at 5 a.m. One morning my wife Rosemarie shared what she had ‘discovered’ in Galatians 1:8,9 – that even an angel could bring a flawed message, if that would deviate from the original Gospel revealed in the Bible. This amplified to us the origins of the Qur’an. We had been learning that the revered Islamic prophet Muhammad believed – after thinking initially that it was God himself – that an angel had brought to him the Surah (chapter) that starts with the notion that man was made out of clotted blood. We were filled with more compassion towards Muslims, as we realized that they have been severely deceived collectively in this way. This became to me the pristine beginnings of an in-depth comparative study of the Angel Gabriel in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud and the Ahadith. Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s words and deeds are regarded as equal in authority to the Qur’an. The consistent omission of the Cross in the Qur’an could not be coincidence I furthermore discovered how deceptive the arch-enemy was, that he had indeed been masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Thus the consistent omission in the Qur’an of everything alluding to the Cross of Calvary could not be coincidence. The latter discovery came to the fore as I prepared myself for teaching Muslim background believers. (The updated version of these studies can be found as Pointers to Jesus - a comparison of biblical personalities in the Qur’an and Talmud at www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. There was surely some supernatural element at work because a book with similar content, The Great Deception, was published in Austria in 1995) . Discovering Resentment In My Heart One of the lessons of the missions week was quite painful. As I taught the theological students about the history of Islam in the Western Cape, I broke down in tears after I had to discern how deeply there was still resentment in my heart towards the Dutch Reformed Church. I suppose that it had expanded significantly when I had been reading how the denomination opposed the government when Mr P.W. Botha and his Cabinet were ready to repeal the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. (This was the law that had been keeping me in exile for almost two decades.) The increasing number of expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own people. 'Black' People Seen as Future Missionaries Two of the student participants at the mission week were Kalolo Mulenga and Orlando Suarez, respectively from Zambia and Mozambique. (During an orientation visit to the Ivory Coast in 1990 the seed had already been sown in my heart, to see Africans as future missionaries. We had hoped to go there as a WEC International missionary family.) Now the increasing number of African expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own folk, just like the Samaritan woman of John 4 in the ‘New Testament’. Orlando Suarez would become one of the first of those foreign Africans to return to his home country, albeit that in his case it was not completely voluntarily. The lessons in cross-cultural outreach that the Master Teacher passed on to us through chapter 4 from John’s Gospel, would guide us during the next few years. I not only used the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a woman from another culture as a prime example for the outreach to Cape Muslims, but by now we were concentrating our work on the local converts from Islam. (We noticed how much more effectively they were reaching out to their own people. Salama Temmers and Ayesha Hunter would be among those who came through the ranks of the ministry. Subsequently quite a few of them would be used powerfully elsewhere.) Two missionaries from the Cape who left for Malawi helped prepare the way for an attitudinal change of many a Cape Christian. Bobby Maynard attended the Cape Town Baptist Church before he left the Mother City for Malawi, touching the young (future) Baptist ministers during the missions’ week in March 1994, just before he left. Braam Willemse, another Cape missionary, ministered to the predominantly Muslim Yao tribe when he died at a fairly young age. The reality of spiritual warfare and casualties would come very close to us in our ministry with juveniles from Hanover Park An Extra-Ordinary Weekend Camp The preparation for a weekend camp with juveniles from Hanover Park developed into a major strain on our nerves. Two days before the camp was scheduled to start, I was the only one of the leaders left with reasonable health. Cheryl Moskos, our Hanover Park co-worker, was down with a heavy flu that more or less ruled her out and Rosemarie was out of contention due to a slipped disk. We approached Nasra Stemmet, a MBB from Woodstock, to assist. She had started attending our Friday prayer meeting after she got in touch with us through an American pastor in the Dutch capital Amsterdam. But Nasra had very limited prior practical driving experience, after she had passed the test for her driver’s license. God confirmed clearly that we should proceed with this camp, so that we had no hesitation to suspect that Rosemarie's condition was yet another onslaught from the arch enemy. The Wednesday evening Rosemarie stayed at home because of the slipped disc. It was just as well, because now she was at home to take a crucial phone call from our SIM missionary colleague Horst Pietzsch. He had been approached by Anthony Duncan, a young missionary from Frontline Fellowship who wanted to get involved with local mission work before his next stint to more dangerous operational areas. That phone call swung things around. We decided to go ahead with the camp. At that stage cancellation seemed to be the only logical conclusion. God used a chiro practitioner to whom we went the next day. Rosemarie was back in action even before the weekend. To God be the glory! What a blessing the camp became to those children, the majority of whom had hardly been out of the township Hanover Park where they were born and bred. Death is Nothing Special to Some People! All the more the shock was great when the news reached us a few weeks later that Anthony Duncan was killed in a motorbike accident on his way from Angola. We were surprised how little reaction the youths showed when we broke the news to them. We realized that death had become so normal to the children and young people from Hanover Park, nothing special at all. Very sadly, gun killings and other forms of unnatural causes of life termination belong to their everyday life. My presence at a meeting of the Alpha Centre, the venue of our weekly children’s clubs, led to our being approached by Shehaam, the mother of a few of our children’s club. Their youngest child had just been declared terminally ill because of an unknown virus. This got the ball rolling for many sessions of counselling and prayer when Rosemarie and I visited her. At one of these visits she shared a very special dream she had of a man with a long stick walking on grass that was very green. When I turned my Bible to Psalm 23, she got so excited!! 'That's exactly what I saw in my dream!' she exclaimed. She was like a ripe apple, ready to be picked. She was the first Cape Muslim we were blessed to lead to the Lord and to disciple. The latter was a major challenge of course. Collating Stories of Muslim-Background Believers In June 1992, Majiet Pophlonker and Zane Abrahams, two Muslim-background believers, visited our home with their families. After hearing Majiet’s moving story, seed was sown into my heart to write down the testimonies of converts from Islam. At one of the discussions with Manfred Jung, a SIM missionary colleague, the idea was mooted to publish the testimonies of local Muslim-background believers as a networking effort. I enjoyed collating the stories from some of these believers, sometimes making notes. Two of these special stories came from Salama Temmers and Esme Orrie, who would become special co-workers, presenters of a radio programme. The result was Op soek na waarheid, a booklet that we planned to launch at prayer seminar in January 1995. Assisted by Attie Kotze, a secondary school class mate who had become an Afrikaans teacher and a pastor of the Rhenish Church in Ravensmead, eleven of the stories were finally selected and prepared for publication. Once I took a cassette tape recorder to a house, where the believer from Muslim background shared how she came to faith at a mass evangelistic meeting with Reinhard Bonnke in 1984, along with many other Muslims. This struck a chord in my heart. I wondered what had happened to all the other Muslims who made a public profession of their faith as an indication of their intention to follow Jesus. This amounted to a wake-up call to Rosemarie and me. We decided to rather focus on the discipling of a few Muslim background believers. This proved to be very strategic! An Evangelistic Seminar in a Muslim Stronghold The New Year 1995 started quite well. We received a substantial sum of money from Rosemarie’s godmother, a retired dentist. We saw this as God’s provision to enable us to book air tickets for our four-month home assignment in Holland and Germany. (Our home church is in the former country; Rosemarie’s family and other supporting friends are in the latter one). But we still needed funds for the printing of Op Soek na Waarheid. Just after the summer school holidays we staged a Muslim seminar in Rylands Estate, a predominantly Indian residential area. Rainer Gulsow and his wife Runa, friends from the nearby German Stadtmission, introduced us to Gerda Leithgöb from Pretoria, who was still fairly unknown to Cape believers. Their recommendation was quite influential, nudging me to invite Gerda to come and teach at our seminar in Rylands Estate. ‘Spiritual Mapping’ Used ‘Spiritual Mapping’ is a term that has been used subsequently for research into spiritual influences, especially those of a demonic or anti-Christian nature. In respect of Islam, Gerda Leithgöb introduced Spiritual Mapping at the Cape at the prayer seminar. Ds. Pypers had originally been the scheduled keynote speaker in the Reformed fellowship where he had done pioneering work. Gerda would have been just an ancillary speaker. For the majority of the audience, the subject matter was completely unknown. With Ds. Pypers absent – the result of my failure to confirm the speaking appointment - she suddenly had much more time for teaching. Nevertheless, her talk changed the outlook of many a co-worker when they discovered the value of strategic prayer. That we could stage the evangelistic seminar in a Hindu-Muslim stronghold was quite significant. The bulk of the 'White' participants had never been to a suburb classified in race terms other than 'White'. For the rest however, the seminar was not a resounding success. Our time schedule for the publication of the testimony booklet had been much too tight. But this was only the start of many disappointments and attacks. It was nevertheless clear that the testimonies were strategic in our spiritual fight against the arch enemy’s hold on people. Prior to the prayer seminar I had given to Gerda Leithgöb some of my research results on the establishment and spread of Cape Islam. Among other things I pointed to the apparent effect of the shrines on the heights. We prayed that a network of prayer throughout the Cape Peninsula might be established, which could cause a breakthrough in the hearts of Cape Muslims. A Messianic Prophecy Divinely Used When I mentioned the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 as part of a devotional in our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting, the Lord used that to start calling Gill Knaggs into the mission to the Muslim World. She had been attending our prayer meeting on a one-off basis. This brought her into motion to pray about getting involved in full-time missionary work. Soon Gill was used by God to nudge the Muizenberg base of YWAM (Youth with a Mission) to get more interested in the Muslims. At her home she started a prayer group for Muslims that met every week for many years. Concretely, an interest developed there for Egypt where they started to network with the Coptic Church via links through Mike Burnard, the Western Cape leader of Open Doors. It was strategic to get befriended to him. (Subsequently he would start Incontext Ministries.) When we started with a radio programme in 1998, Gill was on hand for the writing of the scripts, something that she continued to do for many years, also after her marriage to John Wrench, who hereafter pursued theological studies with her at George Whitfield College in Muizenberg. Thrust Into the Front Line We still had little clue of the spiritual forces unleashed during the Islamic month of Ramadan. We had to learn that because we have been thrust into the front line of the spiritual battle at the Cape, we needed a lot of prayer covering. The battle heated up during Ramadan. In two cases we escaped serious car accidents on the highway by a whisk. In one of the instances it was very near to a miracle that Rosemarie was not killed. Some strange things also happened to our 1981 model Mazda that we bought after our minibus had been stolen. Twice I had to be towed to Warren Abels, a pastor who worked as a mechanic in Fairways. On both occasions he could not find anything amiss with the vehicle and also thereafter we had no problems with the car. It was evident that there were demonic powers at work. Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation did not arrive. It had left the bank in Holland all right, but inexplicably it never arrived at the bank of our headquarters in Durban. In the meantime we were forced to start using the money that was scheduled for the air tickets for our home assignment in Holland and Germany. Disappointments At about the same time two believers - one of our co-workers and one of our prayer warriors - became involved in moral failure. The brother was a convert from Islam, from whom we had really expected great things. Both he and his wife sensed some calling to missionary involvement. The effect on him was such that he became suicidal. He was really at the end of his tether. In the other instance, one of our prayer partners became pregnant from a Muslim young man. She was firm though that she would not marry him and become a Muslim. She knew enough of the bondage under which other women had come after landing in a similar situation. A Lesson from a Special Plant The Lord encouraged us after someone had tried to steal a special plant from our garden. The plant had one beautiful flower on it. Rosemarie had been awakened in the early morning hours by sounds outside the house. When we switched on the light, the damage was already done. The thief ran away, but this turned out to become God’s way to teach us an important lesson. The plant looked completely ragged and ruined after it had been uprooted. Carol Günther, a member from our home ministry group, gave us the advice to put the plant back into the soil and tie a stick to it. Already after a few days we noticed how the plant started recovering. In her quiet time, the Lord ministered to Rosemarie: we had to be such a stick to the spiritual casualties. Unlike other Christians who would only judge and condemn our battered brothers and sisters, we had to support them. The object lesson turned out to be a special blessing to the suicidal Muslim background believer when we told him about the plant. He had really thought that there was no purpose in life left for him. Now he could see how the plant had recovered. It still took a few years, however, until he got back onto the road spiritually. At some stage I started to attend a prayer meeting of young Baptist ministers in Woodstock. The visionary Edgar Davids - who still was a final year seminary student, was the initiator. I was excited, asking myself whether pastors would at last start to pray together for revival in the islamised residential area. Was God answering our prayer walking in and for the area with some of Edgar’s student colleagues the previous year? Turmoil and Stress It was a very special blessing for Rosemarie and me to witness how Shehaam, the mother of five children, four of which were attending our children’s club - came through to a living faith in Jesus. As we discipled her, we didn’t even dare to mention baptism. In fact, when we shared the Gospel with her, we spelt out the possible consequences quite clearly. The responsibility of having to find accommodation for Shehaam with her five children, if her husband would evict her, was a fact we had to face squarely. We were not ready for that eventuality. It was nevertheless a joy for us to lead her to the Lord - after she had phoned us - but we did not encourage her to share her new faith with her husband. We suggested that he should see the difference in her life first. This experience was valuable seed sown in our hearts for the need of a discipling house where we could disciple new believers. The run-up to our home assignment in Germany and Holland, scheduled to start at the end of March 1995, was one big turmoil and stress. Apart from the money issue - which was resolved just in time - there was a major problem to get seats on a flight. One international airline had a special offer for which we had provisionally booked. Some tense weeks followed when the airline with whom we had booked (but not paid), cancelled our seats without consulting us. Cape Town was fast becoming a favourite destination for tourists. The tension in the family in respect of getting seats became quite bad as the uncertainty took its toll. By this time also the other airlines had no cheap seats available for a family of seven. The best that we could manage, was to get wait-listed on different flights. Because of the uncertainty of securing seats, everybody in the family - also the children - had forgotten that it was our 20th wedding anniversary on the 22nd of March. I furthermore was involved in a minor car accident the previous day. My nerves were all but wrecked! A Red-Letter Day Our wedding anniversary - twenty years after the special ceremony in the Moravian Church of the Black Forest village Königsfeld - nevertheless turned into a red-letter day. On that memorable Wednesday morning we baptized five converts who came from Islam, including Shehaam Achmat, from Hanover Park and Nasra Stemmet from Woodstock. On the evening of 22 March the home ministry group of our Cape Town Baptist fellowship sprang a big surprise on us. We had no clue what they were up to when the group came to our home for a special farewell. Everybody in the family had forgotten that it was our wedding anniversary, but Carol Günther did not. She arranged with the participants to bring along some eats to make it a very special celebration. The day became perfect when the gentleman of Club Travel, who had been working overtime, phoned at approximately 21h that he could secure seats for all of us. This was thus only a few days before our intended departure! The three older children could fly on a youth fare of Lufthansa, with the rest of us flying Air France. MBBs Serving in Cape Townships Shehaam Achmat was one of five Muslim background believers that were baptised on the same day, on 22 March 1995. Shehaam remained a secret believer for about 20 years. She continued to shine for the Lord covertly. Among other things, while keeping contact with us, she ultimately impacted Lameez Ras, a young woman who got into a romantic relationship with one of Shehaam's two sons. ( Lameez would subsequently become an ardent disciple of our Lord, divinely used to see all three of her sisters in the Beacon Valley drug and vice infected township of Mitchell's Plain becoming following of Jesus in due course.) Prayer With Other Ministers Just before our departure for Europe, I was praying with a few students of the Baptist College in Mountain Road, Woodstock where the Baptist Church had a property – actually a residence. What a blessing it was when we heard that Edgar Davids accepted the call to be their pastor from the following year. This augured well for a close link to the Cape Town Baptist Church only a few kilometres away, where Louis Pasques was now the interim pastor. Edgar Davids proved to be a real visionary and a man of God, along with his devout wife Sandra. Edgar Davids introduced me to a group of pastors at Rondebosch Dutch Reformed Church with Dr. Ernst van der Walt, Pastors Fenner Kadalie from the City Mission and Theo Bowers from the Full Gospel Church as regulars. Walmer Estate and Salt River Personal involvement in the adjacent suburbs of Walmer Estate and Salt River started with prayer walking. In the latter instance it became the prelude to a children’s club that we began with Marika Pretorius, a SIM Life Challenge missionary colleague, after our return from ‘home assignment’ in Europe in 1995. (Marika had been used by God to introduce us to families in Bo-Kaap, and as a link to the Alpha Centre in Hanover Park, where we also conducted children’s clubs from 1993 to 1995). In our absence she did further spadework with a holiday club in Salt River in the Burns Road Community Centre. At some stage Marika brought along her room mate and co-worker from their Dutch Reformed congregation in Panorama, Jenny van den Berg. When Marika left for Germany to work among Turkish people, not only did Jenny become our valued co-worker in Salt River, but in due course she would also become one of the lecturers at the annual Muslim Evangelism course at the Bible Institute of South Africa that we started in 1996 under the umbrella of Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM). After we had handed the children’s work in Salt River to Eric Hofmeyer, Jenny van den Berg pioneered a similar ministry in Woodstock, based at the local Baptist Church, where she ministered until 2009. Spiritual Complexion of Residential Areas Changed An influx of exploited Africans sometimes shared their accommodation with other refugees who work at night.. (Not able to pay the inappropriate rents - along with meagre incomes - those who work at night, sleeping in the same beds during the day time.) This helped to change the spiritual complexion of the suburbs in Woodstock and Salt River, which had become fairly Islamic in the early 1990s. Small churches with especially French speakers sprang up all over from Woodstock to Maitland and Observatory. These refugee believers brought into the area the practice of all-night prayer from Friday to Saturday, a phenomenon that had become common in Central Africa. The sad side of this feature is that the seed of Prosperity Theology that entered the country in the 1980s, manifested itself amongst the new small churches in the most wicked and evil ways. Eloquent ‘pastors’, who were merely seeking a convenient life-style, abusing the national or language affinity of their refugee compatriots, sprang up like mushrooms. This made their days of fasting and all night prayer meetings quite hypocritical, the sort of thing that God hates (Isaiah 58). The Universal Church, a denomination that originated in Brazil, had already perfected the art of abusing Prosperity Theology to get money from the poor, and building big buildings. As the Francophone and Portuguese-speaking Africans moved into these residential areas, racist ‘Coloureds’ started moving out. Seed for a new South Africa was nevertheless sown. Tolerance towards our African brothers and sisters germinated there. During the mob violence of 2008 there was not a single xenophobic incident of note in these suburbs. The Foreigner in Our Gates We had to relocate our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting from the Shepherd's Watch in Shortmarket Street when the premises were sold. We moved to the Koffiekamer below the St Stephen’s Dutch Reformed Church at 108 Bree Street, that was linked to the compassionate ministry of Straatwerk. This prayer meeting soon became the cradle of yet another venture. A believer from the suburb Eerste River on the northern outskirts of the city, who had been a regular in the beginning of our prayer meetings, popped in again one day. He challenged us, mentioning the many French-speaking Muslim street traders from West Africa, who had been moving into the city: ‘Have you ever considered bringing the Gospel to them?’ When we started praying about possible ministry to foreigners at our Friday lunch-hour meeting, God used these occasions to prepare the heart of Louis Pasques. He had just become the senior pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church. When the destitute Congolese refugee teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka showed up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of Surgildas. One weekend Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a visit. They asked Alan Kay, an elder and the administrator of Cape Town Baptist Church, to provide accommodation to him. Gildas crept into Alan’s heart. This was the start of an extended and unusual adoption process. One thing led to the other until Alan Kay not only finally adopted Gildas, but he also became deeply involved in compassionate care of other refugees. Soon the Cape Town Baptist Church became a home to refugees from many African countries. Gildas and our son Rafael became quite close friends and basketball buddies. A Positive Change Towards Refugees The attitude of ‘Whites’ in the Cape Town Baptist Church gradually changed towards refugees in a more favourable manner. Before long, quite a few refugee-background Africans started attending the church services, especially after special ones in French were arranged monthly and later twice a month. This was an effort to help equip the Francophone believers for loving outreach to the Muslim French-speakers from our continent. That goal was not achieved, but the word spread quite well, so that in due course also other churches started opening their doors to refugees. The need for refugees to get employment was the cause for the English language classes at the church to be revitalized. This inspired the offer of 'free' English lessons to many of these refugees. Officially they had to pay a small nominal fee to preserve their dignity, with the understanding that there would be no big deal if they could not pay that. Nobody ever abused this. The simultaneous need for a discipling house for Muslim converts and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. Allain Ravelo-Hoërson of The Evangelism Alliance Mission (TEAM), who had been praying with us every Friday during lunch time in the early 1990s, played a big part in establishing the ministry among Francophone Africans at the church. Other missionaries who had been working in countries where French is the national language, were also part of this effort. Allain was ably supported by Ruth Craill, a SIM missionary, who had ministered in West Africa with her husband Edgar. Maria van Maarseveen, a member of our home church in Holland, came to do her Bible school internship from the Africa School of Missions with us. During this period Maria sensed a call to come and join us in ministry after completing her Bible School training. She had served in Haiti before and was therefore fluent in French, as were Doris and Freddy Kammies, WEC International colleagues, whom we had met in Germany during 'home assignment' in 1995. The example of Cape Town Baptist Church found emulation not only in sister congregations in Mowbray and Bellville, but also other ones with which we had close connections like the Atlantic Christian Assembly in Sea Point and the Jubilee Church in Observatory. When Jennifer Burgess, a 'Coloured' WEC International missionary from Natal was ordained at the Apostoliese Geloof Sending (AGS) as co-pastor of Vredehoek, a transformation of the former Afrikaner 'White' congregation started. Johan Klopper, the leading pastor, was a visionary who also launched a ‘seven-eleven’ tent campaign in Walmer Estate for (7-11) October 1998, supported by local churches under the auspices. a residential area, which had been completely islamised in the wake of apartheid legislation. It was quite special when the church continued the effort as an open-air campaign after the tent had collapsed due to the strong South Easter on the first evening. Angolan Refugees Find Their Niche In 1999 five Angolan refugees left Upington for Cape Town where they had no friends or family. At the City office of the Department of Home Affairs, the group slept outside the first night. They were then taken to the township Langa where all their belongings were however stolen. Back in the city, they ended up at the Catholic Welfare that helped them with food and accommodation for a few days. There they met another Angolan, Simao, who had met Adrian Khon, a friendly gentleman who had assisted him. Simao took them to Master Keys where Adrian was the boss. The latter gave them R20 each and told the young men to come back later, as he wanted to speak to his brother Colin. The end result was that Adrian Khon took three young men to work in the city and Colin took another three Angolans to the Woodstock branch of their company where they were taught to cut keys. They were also given accommodation in Brooklyn at the Head Office in a house that Master Keys was also using for storage. The compassionate Beverley Stratis, our friend and powerful intercessor at Cape Town Baptist Church, somehow got to hear about the Angolans. Because she was receiving an abundance of bread from a German bakery, she decided to pay the group a visit. She was met by six wide-eyed scared young men. When the Angolan refugees saw the bread, they were over the moon When they saw the bread, they were over the moon. Bev Stratis thereafter dropped a large black bag of bread at their home every second day or so. Luis Xiribimbi (Xiri) and Julio Fransisco continued working for Master Keys. Xiri went on to run the stamp making section in Cape Town. In 2007 Julio was able to take over the Rondebosch branch of Master Keys. Follow-Up of the Six Angolans Both Xiri and Julio definitely met the Lord here at the Cape. Bev Stratis also had a lot of fellowship with the young men at her big flat in Vredehoek. Xiri joined Cape Town Baptist Church and Julio started attending Mowbray Baptist Church, along with many other refugees. The six young men lived in Brooklyn for five months, whereafter they found themselves another house in Maitland. The Angolans attended Bible Study every Wednesday evening at 'Loaves and Fishes', an interdenominational ministry in Observatory where they also learned the basics of the English language. The six were also taken to the Portuguese Baptist Church in Goodwood where Pastor Mendez and his wife Nessie ministered. The Brazilian couple became like a Mom and Dad to many Angolans subsequently. Lima Zamba fled to South Africa from Angola in 1994. He became a follower of Jesus a few years later and married a South African. Recognizing his leadership potential and spiritual gifting, Bellville Baptist Church supported Lima through the four years that he spent as a student at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary. After completing his studies in 2006, Lima served as pastoral assistant at the Parow Portuguese Baptist Church. He had a strong call to serve as a missionary in his home country Angola. At the end of 2007 he left to serve there as a missionary. Transformation in City Bowl Churches The radical transformation in the City Bowl churches continued when Jean Baptiste, a Congolese pastor, joined the Vredehoek AFM church as the leader of the French speakers there. Florent Ndomwey, an OM Congolese missionary, joined the Cape Town Baptist Church to lead similar ministry for French speakers in ?? while Pedro Quinvardas served there simultaneously in this capacity for Portuguese-speaking refugees from Angola and Mozambique. Almost Unbearable Conditions in Manenberg From 1995 living conditions in the township of Manenberg became almost unbearable for the local people, and things seemed completely out of control. Rev. Chris Clohessy, the local Roman Catholic priest, had earned the trust of many people there, moving fearlessly in gangster territory. PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs), initiated by a group of Muslims in 1996, strived to create a gangster-free and drug-free society. Rev. Chris Clohessy joined the group but in the ensuing inter-faith venture Muslims soon dominated proceedings. PAGAD developed anti-government and anti-Western sentiments. The organisation believed that the South African government posed a threat to Islamic values. It also aimed to get better political representation for South African Muslims, although they were already proportionately over-represented in Parliament. Imam Achmat Cassiem, a prominent personality, performed a palace coup. As the leader of Qibla, Achmat Cassiem subtly changed the anti-drug, anti-crime movement into an organization that sought to bring Islamic rule into the Western Cape by any means. Counterproductive Islamic Moves The relative success of evangelistic efforts in the second half of the 1990s has to be attributed in part to ‘own goals’ by the Muslims. The general Christian indifference to the spread of Islam was temporarily checked through the report of an Islamic World Conference in Tripoli in October 1995. That conference resolved that Muslims would try to utilize South Africa’s excellent infrastructure to islamize the continent from the South. The assistance of Libya’s President Muhammad Khaddafi and other oil states was made practical through the provision of Islamic literature in African languages. Strategic property was bought up with the aid of oil revenue and funds from Muslim countries, notably from Libya and mosques were built in the 'Black' townships. New areas in different parts of the country were quietly islamized. (In other Southern African countries like Malawi it was happening even more pronounced). Initially the Tripoli announcement was not regarded as a real threat to the Gospel in Southern Africa. The prospect only hit home a few months later when Louis Farrakhan, a prominent Afro-American Muslim, visited the country. Fairly soon after his successful mass march to Washington D.C. with his Nation of Islam in October 1995, Farrakhan came to our country amid a lot of fanfare and prominent media coverage. The appeal to the 'Black' masses was evident as he appeared on television together with President Nelson Mandela. The confident prediction from Tripoli in October 1995 did not sound so preposterous any more by February 1996. That all this happened during Ramadan was just the spur for Cape Christians to pray as rarely before. Although Ramadan was almost over by this time, there was suddenly a big demand for the 30-Day Ramadan Prayer Focus booklets. Whereas the Church had been fairly indifferent about its outreach to Muslims until that time, things changed almost overnight. Unfortunately the initial interest was not sustained. PAGAD radicals saw the attempt to Islamise the African continent from the South merely as part of the plan to implement a decision in the Libyan capital Tripoli of October 1995. Soon Rev. Clohessy and other Christians had no liberty to continue working with them. 6. A Season of Increased Spiritual Warfare Spiritual strongholds became the focus of prayer drives. Pastor Edson from Mitchell's Plain initiated prayer drives. A few of them started at the Sowers of the Word Church in Lansdowne, where Pastor Andy Lamb was the pastor. This was not long after Ps Lamb, who grew up in Woodstock, had returned to the Cape after serving for many years in Durban. There he had been God's instrument to start a big multi-racial Full Gospel-related church more or less from scratch with only 15 believers. They formed a convoy of vehicles, taking along intercessors from different churches as passengers. on the last Friday of each month. The prayer drive of July 1996 started at the strategic Gatesville mosque - the same venue from where a fateful PAGAD car procession would start out a week later. (On Sunday 4 August 1996 an Islamic procession left for Salt River where Rashaad Staggie, a well known drug lord, was 'executed' by PAGAD publicly. In December 2019, just before Christmas, his twin brother Rashied was shot and killed in London Street, Salt River) Limited Spiritual Transformation The Christian prayer drives only had a short lifespan. Another initiative of Pastor Edson lasted much longer. This was the monthly pastors’ and pastors’ wives prayer meetings. Yet, it remained a venture of 'Coloured' pastors and their wives. It would take took years before the racial divide was bridged. Nevertheless, they prepared the soil for the start of limited spiritual transformation of the city. Sandwiched between the two processions that left the Gatesville mosque, a church service in the Moravian Church of Elsies River in the northern suburbs where Chris Wessels was a pastor. His wife Nabs was a Muslim background believer, whose story was also included in Op Soek Na Waarheid.) That service to which I took along a Muslim background academic from Egypt, would have world-wide ramifications. At a combined youth service at the same venue in on Sunday evening, 28 July 1996, the Egyptian Muslim background believer gave his testimony. (He had to flee after his father had attempted to shoot him after the discovery that his son had become a follower of Jesus.) This added a new dimension to the Cape Muslim outreach effort, notably when this ultimately led to the publication of a book in the US in 2002. That book became a major factor in the exposure of the violent side of Islam. Rashaad Staggie was burnt alive in full view of television cameras When the influential gang leader and drug lord, Rashaad Staggie, was burnt alive in full view of television cameras on 4 August 1996, PAGAD became known publicly. The crisis that followed the PAGAD eruption afforded the churches with a challenge and opportunity to impact the problem areas of the Cape townships. An Arson Attempt On a Church The preparation of a 10-week teaching course ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour,’ in which we worked closely with Renate Isert, a German missionary, emphasised prayer as integral to ‘spiritual warfare’. Just before the course was scheduled to start, there was an arson attempt on the intended venue, the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne. A Lebanon-type scenario with Christians and Muslims fighting each other loomed. When Muslims offered to assist with the repair of the damage, the suspicion was confirmed that satanists were not really behind the arson attack as had been suggested by a Cape Argus reporter. A Lebanon type scenario of the early 1980s loomed. Christians and Muslims were fighting each other in that country. (We did not know at that time that Lansdowne was a PAGAD stronghold.) We decided to relocate and postpone our ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour’ training course. We used the St James Church in Kenilworth as our 'fleece', as Gideon in the Bible had done. We wanted to make sure that we were in God’s will. (That congregation had experienced a vicious attack three years earlier in July 1993. God however used that to get South Africans to pray as never before.) It was duly confirmed that we could do the ‘Love your Muslim Neighbour’ course at St James in Kenilworth from 3 September to 5 November 1996. I used my devotional teaching on John 4, the interaction of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, for the first time as a ten-part series. June Lehmensich and Debbie Zaayman were two participants of this training with whom we would have ongoing contact and friendship for decades. Many people at the Cape feared that the gangsters might hit back with a vengeance. A meeting for church leaders and missionaries was organised at the Scripture Union buildings in Rondebosch on short notice. A wave of prayer by evangelical Christians was simultaneously ignited. Christ-centred drug rehabilitation was also suggested at that occasion. However, when the crisis subsided, pastors went back to business as usual. The idea of drug rehabilitation was picked up by the Muslims. It resulted in facilities specifically created to this end in the farming area of Schaapkraal as well as in Hanover Park at the former Alpha Centre, where we had been conducting a children's club in the early 1990s. The Koffiekamer as a Channel of Blessing The Koffiekamer in Bree street under St Stephen's Dutch Reformed Church became a major channel of blessing when an Alpha Course was started there. A special role in the effort towards transformation in the city was accorded to it when many a homeless person was transformed there by the power of the Gospel. Prayer meetings for the city started at that venue on the last Wednesday of every month. There I got in closer contact with Vlok Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner believer linked to the Gardens Presbyterian Church. In due course he became one of our faithful intercessors at the Cape Town Central Police Station. Many a homeless person was transformed by the power of the Gospel Diverse Churches Joining Hands It was truly significant for the Cape Town Metropolis in April 1997 when churches across the city and from many denominations joined hands for an evangelistic campaign at the Newlands Cricket Stadium with the evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of the renowned Billy Graham. Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur and Pastor Elijah Klaassen from a Pentecostal church in Gugulethu worked tirelessly to enlist people from the Cape Flats and ‘Black’ churches for this event. Transport from the townships was provided free of charge. In the Western Cape, Eben Swart became the coordinator for Herald Ministries. He worked closely with the Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa (NUPSA), which had appointed Pastor Willy Oyegun, a Nigerian national, as their Western Cape coordinator. Together they did valuable work in research and spiritual mapping, along with Amanda Buys who counselled Christians with psychiatric and psychological problems.) A Series of Divine Interventions In a series of divine interventions, our ministry touched the gangster scene in 1999. In the context of our hospital outreach, where we focused on the cancer ward of Groote Schuur Hospital, God healed Ayesha Hunter miraculously in 1997. She would subsequently become one of our presenters on CCFM radio while ministering to children linked to the Hard Living Gang that was led by the Staggie brothers. Ayesha Hunter, as one of our co-workers, shared her testimony at churches here and there. At one of these, Shamiela Philander came to faith. Ayesha took her under her wing. Subsequently she requested us to take Shamiela Philander into our home after the teenager had been terriby abused by her gangster husband. She was one of various women that we had been taking into our home within the space of a few months. Three of them were Muslim background believers, one of whom had two children. This was the immediate run-up to the urgency of having a facility to disciple new believers from another faith. Impact of Radio CCFM At the Global Consultation of World Evangelisation (GCOWE) conference in Pretoria in July 1997 Avril Thomas, the Director of Radio CCFM, a Cape Christian radio station, was challenged to use their facility to reach out to Cape Muslims, the main unreached people group of the region in respect of the Gospel. She offered airtime for a regular programme to this end. We had to warn Avril of the unsuccessful arson attempt on the Lansdowne church building where we wanted to stage a Love your Muslim Neighbour course the previous year. She and the CCFM Board were however prepared to take the risk for the sake of the Gospel. During comparative studies that I had done with male Muslim background believers in the township Hanover Park around biblical figures in the Qur’an and the Talmud, I was struck by the consistent denial of the Cross in the sacred book of the Muslims. It was more than compelling, too subtle to be humanly inspired. The question arose how I could share this potentially devastating information in a loving way. The fact that I would possibly be addressing Christians and Muslims via the radio simultaneously, complicated matters. During a prayer walk in Bo-Kaap I got the idea to have the text of a radio series presented by someone else. This was duly implemented, broadcast towards the end of 1997 and repeated in 1999. After a gradual increase of occasional programmes geared to address the Cape Muslim population, we felt challenged to start utilising the CCFM offer to use the medium on a regular basis. A Dutch TV testimony programme, God verandert mensen, was my inspiration to start a similar programme on a weekly basis. Once a month I started using a Muslim background believer with his/her testimony via God changes Lives. In this way Cape Islam got used to the idea of Muslims coming to faith in Jesus. An Anointed Ministry with a Big Impact Andre Beeton, the owner of Metadent, a small company of dental technicians in the northern suburbs of Cape Town, started Shiloh Ministries in 1993 as a service to the poor and needy. This includes building schools in informal settlements and serving children with meals. In due course they would build their tenth school, one in the 'Black' township Langa. Shiloh Ministries endeavour to serve the poor communities holistically, thus also making sure that the Gospel reaches them. A very special link came about when they met Pastor Nanda Govender, who had no formal theological training. Born and raised as a Hindu, Pastor Nanda stresses that his only teaching comes from God through His Spirit. His testimony is filled with examples of supernatural intervention from the day he left prison just under fifty years ago until the present. Below: A photo of the Franklin Graham Campaign at Newlands April 1997 7. On the Receiving End of Attacks The month of October in 1996 was one in which Rosemarie and I were tested severely. I had started to journal events. It went as follows one day: ‘the attack starts not only very early in the month. Neither Rosemarie nor I was able to sleep properly. For Rosemarie it was the second sleepless night in a row. She shares her concern that we were getting nowhere with our ministry: “For almost five years we have toiled here in Cape Town. And what have we achieved? Almost nothing! We might as well go back to Holland.” I had to concede that I also felt completely depressed. A Difficult Month Rosemarie and I were prayer walking through Bo-Kaap in October 1996 after nobody else had joined us for the Friday lunchtime prayer. (This was the only time when this happened.) We had also noticed how the churches around the Muslim stronghold had been ransacked in the period before that. We were blessed to discern how the Lord brought restoration, but we still did not see it as our duty to get more involved in any attempt at unifying the body of Christ in the city. This only started to happen slowly at the end of 2003. But we made very little progress. (The most successful attempt in this regard was years later in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010, but thereafter it petered out again.) The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when the arch enemy tried to attack us via our children. This seemed for Rosemarie to be the signal for us to stop with our ministry. She argued that the price was too high for her to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. Reminding her of the false alternatives, that I had to face years ago when someone suggested that I should choose between my love for her and that for my country, I encouraged her. This definitely paid off. Other Attacks on Spiritual Strongholds That God works in mysterious ways was of course known to us. A special version of it happened when we conducted a ten week teaching course in Muslim Evangelism at the Logos Baptist Church​ in Brackenfell. There appeared to be no immediate success in the recruitment of co-workers. Yet, a few of the participants were deeply impacted. Among the participants there were for instance Johan Groenewald and his wife Christine. The Groenewald couple took the message to the rural village of Eendekuil where Johan found a willing ear in Chris Saayman, the Dutch Reformed minister. Subsequently a group from that church would come and join our monthly prayer walks in Bokaap. The evident attack via one of our children in October 1996 was not an isolated experience. Other attacks were not so stark, but nevertheless very real. However, every time we experienced the Lord bringing us through supernaturally. We are so thankful for intercessors in different parts of the world who were praying for us. We would otherwise hardly have been able to survive all the onslaughts mentally and spiritually. A stranger put a briefcase in a somewhat hidden place of our house next to my office. A car passed our house slowly to and fro, with the passengers looking at our house. This was rather scary. We phoned our friend June Lehmensich who alerted the emergency service of the city. The slow reaction of the bomb squad, with a sniffing dog and all, an hour later, was quite a revelation. It fortunately turned out to be a fake. When the briefcase was destroyed by a detonating device, it merely contained music notes. If it had been a time bomb or the like and remotely detonated, at least much of our house would have been destroyed. Ramadan Attacks In previous years we were on the receiving end of major spiritual attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In 1994 I twice had the experience that our car had to be towed away but no fault found afterwards. The year thereafter Rosemarie was almost killed in a car accident and during the same period we were together in a car that skidded on the high way and miraculously we came out of the incident unscathed. In 1997 we experienced it almost as a satanic taunt when Rosemarie had symptoms of being pregnant just after Ramadan. That would have ruled her out for much of our ministry. Prior to this, we were quite happy when a daughter of a befriended Bo-Kaap family brought Rosemarie in touch with a home-craft club in the area. A pregnancy would have meant an abrupt end to her involvement with the new friendships. A subsequent scan did not show any foetus. A month or two later, when she was admitted to hospital for a suspected miscarriage, there was no trace of any pregnancy when the gynaecologist scraped the womb. What was this all about? It was too strange to be mere chance. Assisting a Pregnant Young Woman The request to help Nadia,3 a pregnant young woman who was expecting a child from a nominal Christian, seemed to be a pretty straightforward case. We fairly promptly visited the eloquent Muslim young mother of two other children. After hearing that she had already been divorced twice, we could never advise a marriage. The recipe for disaster was there for the taking. Rosemarie and I were almost on our way leaving the house where she was renting a room, when the conversation took another turn. A religious topic was mentioned and we were able to share the Gospel in some way. We combined the next visit to her with the collecting of a MBB Egyptian friend from the airport. The original idea was merely to pop in, but soon Rosemarie and Nadia were deeply involved in a discussion. We decided that I would go and pick up the Egyptian friend at the airport in the meantime, while they would conclude the conversation. When we returned, Rosemarie and Nadia were still very much in the middle of their conversation. Utilising the story of the adulterous woman of John 8 intelligently, our MBB friend was divinely used to bring Nadia under evident conviction. Crises in the Ministry I had to learn the hard way through this experience once more that we should not give satan too much honour. Soon we discovered that the deceiver was actually attacking our marriage relationship once again. A tension developed as Rosemarie could not accept the validity of my office ministry, including research and writing. Indeed, I was far too much on the phone, organising teaching courses and the like. This was happening at the expense of person-to-person contact. Communication between us was completely insufficient. The Lord used the crisis to help me regain sight of the priority of personal outreach to the lost and the needy. More Knocks, but Not Knocked Out Just prior to the Resurrection weekend Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) conference we got a phone call from my brother that our Dad had been admitted to the hospital in Bredasdorp. Preparations had been made for him and our Mom to be admitted to an old age home in Grabouw, where my brother Windsor and his family stayed. A second phone call notified us that Daddy had taken a turn for the worse and that his passing away was anticipated. Rosemarie and I drove straight to Bredasdorp. When we arrived there, he had already passed on to eternal glory. A few days later, we buried Daddy on the Elim mission station. We were still recovering from this shock when Rosemarie had some premonition as she was doing a chore in the kitchen that her mother was passing away. She was not surprised when her sister phoned hours later that this was indeed the case. Rosemarie flew to Germany for the funeral of her mother. Another Ramadan Backlash Another 1997 version of the Ramadan backlash appeared not as obvious. The trauma was nevertheless very real when the sale of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute to a Muslim buyer came up during a prayer conference with our friend Gerda Leithgöb of Herald Ministries. This was the very same building complex at which we had been called into Cape Muslim Outreach in January 1992. While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia telephonically. She manipulated cleverly, so that I soon felt compelled to arrange with Rosemarie on the phone that we would take Nadia into our home after her return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to accommodate Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. As arranged, Nadia soon moved in with them. That was a big mistake. Nadia would subsequently be so abusive that Rosemarie got burnt out a few months later on the day when we returned from Wellington from the funeral of Jakes, my best friend. We had to learn the hard way that we should not take decisions like this as a couple, without having prayed together sufficiently. A Base for New Initiatives? We were however on the receiving end of special blessings. In September 1996 we unexpectedly received access to St Paul’s Primary School, Bo-Kaap, through a teacher, Berenice Lawrence. (Her husband Elroy had been at our home in Holland in 1978, while he was attending Spes Bona High School.4 Knowing that we ministered to people from other countries, Berenice came with the idea to bring people from different countries to their school. I jumped at this idea to broaden the minds of the Bo-Kaap children, to open them up to the Gospel in a loving and non-threatening way. The first one of these people was our Egyptian friend, an academic who fled his home country after his father had tried to shoot him because of his faith in Jesus. I was overwhelmed by the thought that the Lord might want to use use our church to minister to Africans from other parts of the continent On Sunday October 6, 1996, I preached at the Cape Town Baptist Church. Towards the end of the sermon my emotions got the better of me and I could not finish my sermon. I broke down in tears when I was overwhelmed by the thought that the Lord might want to use our fellowship to minister to Africans from other parts of the continent. Seed was sown. (Within a few years there were more people of colour – the bulk of them foreigners - attending the church than 'Whites'.) A few days later, during our lunchtime prayer meeting with City Bowl ministers, Bruce Rudnick - a Messianic Jew - joined us. Bruce was the leader of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. (I had been attending Beth Ariel meetings on Friday evenings occasionally). In the prayer time with Louis Pasques and Bruce Rudnick, I felt quite strongly that Messianic Jews should play a bigger role in the leadership of the world missionary movement and ideally, that this should also start happening in Cape Town. 8. Diverse Prayer and Compassion Initiatives Personally I had to be reminded again and again that a revival in the Mother City of South Africa would be God’s sovereign work. We are mere instruments. Our own experiences highlighted the need for more prayer. The necessity for the unity of the Body of Christ had become even more clear to us in October 1996. Attempts Made to Rename Devil’s Peak As part of the effort to stimulate revival, attempts were made to rename Devil’s Peak, one of the city’s famous landmarks. The unofficial renaming attempt of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ in 1994 was led by Pastor Johan Klopper of the Vredehoek Apostolic Faith Mission Church. This, along with regular prayers at Rhodes Memorial with Hindu background Pastor Richard Mitchell and other believers, fitted into the pattern of high-powered spiritual warfare. These venues had been strongholds of satanists. Next to the battle against the lie and deception of Islam, the attempt to rename ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ would turn out to be a very high hurdle. Regret Expressed for Christian Folly? Christians overseas started organising a Reconciliation Walk in 1996, following the path of the Crusades. Bennie Mostert of Jericho Walls faxed the lengthy confession of the organisers through to our Western Cape CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) Forum on the very day that we had one of our meetings. It looked to me as if God had his hand in it. But it was not easy. The lengthy confession was rejected In our Western Cape Forum CCM meeting the lengthy confession was rejected because it was regarded as not relevant for us in South Africa. I managed to salvage the idea, suggesting that we could write our own confession. I reminded my colleagues how the Rustenburg confession ushered in our democracy in 1990. At our Resurrection weekend CCM Conference of 1997 at Wellington I had to remind the missionary leader colleagues about the confession. They were clearly not keen to comply, promptly giving me the homework to write a draft and then pass it on to all the colleagues, in preparation for our leaders’ meeting in October. It was obvious that they were just procrastinating, but I did not want to let them off the hook so easily. To me the matter was much too important. Whether that was wise, is another matter. Confession without remorse is possibly not worth much, if anything at all. Hopes and Dreams Dashed During the course of the year 1997 I had to see many of our hopes and dreams dashed. All our efforts failed to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity. We especially thought of it as the possible building for our new national WEC headquarters (A decision had been taken to relocate to either Johannesburg or Cape Town at a national conference), but it had also been my dream and vision to see the building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries to all parts of the world. How wonderful was the prayer seminar with Gerda Leithgöb at the former Cape Evangelical Bible Institute! This was still in April 1997. The news of the proposed sale of the former CEBI to Muslims coincided with the prayer seminar. What a sense of unity we experienced in spite of the sword of Damocles hanging over all of us. (The late Pastor Danny Pearson led the believers of the fellowship that was making use of the premises from there on many a prayer walk in the area.) At some stage Gerda Leithgöb approached me to become the co-ordinator for the Western Cape of Herald Ministries, but I had no peace to accept. I saw the need for strategic prayer, but nowhere did I sense a call for leading intercession events. Eben Swart turned out to be a much more capable person for that function. In May 1997 our WEC intercessor Sally Kirkwood was approached to organise prayer for the visit of Cindy Jacobs, a prominent intercession leader from the USA. She contacted people and also organised a prayer and fasting chain. She felt a nudge to 'establish a presence' at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. Taking a 'White' intercessor along at a time when it was quite dangerous to go and pray at the venue as 'White' people, the Lord used the two intercessors to open the way for others to follow. … But Also Divinely Used The visit by Cindy Jacobs from the USA brought a significant number of ‘Coloured’ and 'White' intercessors together at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. She confirmed the need for confession with regard to the blight of District Six. Lea Barends from Ravensmead and Sheila Garvey from Durbanville were faithful quiet intercessors. Sheila had been praying faithfully for District Six for many years in its hey-day. Diminutive Sally Kirkwood played a pivotal role, taking a huge burden on her shoulders in praying for District Six. When she approached me in October 1997 about the matter, I had already started with preparations for a visit of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng), scheduled to come to the city the last week of that month. (This was included in the two-yearly initiative, called Praying Through the Window). Intercession for breakthroughs in the so-called 10-40 window was the intentional agenda. Praying Through the Window At the sending of prayer teams to different spiritual strongholds in 1997 as part of the Praying through the Window initiatives, a team from the Dutch Reformed congregation Suikerbosrand in Heidelberg (Gauteng) followed the nudge of Bennie Mostert's NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa), to come and pray in the Mother City. This was quite significant in the spiritual realm because Heidelberg had once been the cradle of the racist and right-wing Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). That the AWB town was sending a team in November 1997 to pray for Bo-Kaap, might have hit the headlines had it been publicized! But all this had to be covert stuff. This was transpiring at a time when PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still terrorizing the Cape Peninsula. Bo-Kaap was not geographically situated in the 10/40 window, but NUPSA leader Bennie Mostert discerned accurately that it was the case ideologically. (It had become a Muslim bastion in the wake of apartheid legislation.) Moravian Hill Hosts a Strategic Meeting As part of the special mission from Heidelberg (Gauteng), a prayer meeting of confession was organized for 1 November 1997, in front of the (former) Moravian Church in District Six. Our intercessory co-worker Sally Kirkwood had a vision for the suburb District Six that had become so desolate, to be revived through prayer. She also informed Pastor Richard Mitchell, a Hindu background Full Gospel pastor, and Mike Winfield, an Anglican member of the congregation in Bergvliet, about the event. The Cape prayer movement received a major lift. I asked Eben Swart to lead the occasion. That turned out to be quite strategic as well. Swart’s position as Western Cape Prayer Coordinator of Herald Ministries was cemented. Through this event he got linked to the pastors and wives’ prayer occasions that were led by Ps. Eddie Edson of the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. The confession ceremony in District Six on November 1 closed with the demolition of an altar that satanists or other occultists had probably erected there. With Eben Swart as a member of the strategic Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow, this became a pivotal link for subsequent city-wide prayer events. The Moravian Hill prayer meeting attempted to break the spirit of death and forlornness over the area, so that it would be inhabited again. However, it would take another seven years before that dream started to materialise (and abused for election purposes in 2004). More than twenty years after 1997 new inhabitants started to move into District Six. A watershed transpired for many a participant The first of November 1997 became a watershed for quite a few participants. Gill Knaggs, Trish and Dave Whitecross were challenged to go and serve in the Middle East. Sally Kirkwood became a special Cape intercessory leader. Richard Mitchell, Eben Swart and Mike Winfield linked up more closely in a relationship that would have a significant mutual effect on the prayer ministry at the Cape in the next few years, and on transformation in the city at large. With Trevor Pearce as their new pastor, the Anglican parish in Bergvliet of Mike Winfield became prominently involved in the transformation attempts in the Mother City and in the run-up to the mass prayer rallies at Newlands Rugby Stadium in the first years of the new millennium. (After his retirement from the ministry in the Anglican Church in ??, Rev. Trevor went to serve with Alpha, which had been linked to that denomination, of course, already for decades.) The former slum area with its rich history was becoming increasingly Islamic. The process grounded to a halt in 2019 when the building company embezzled the funds for Phase 3, the project of erecting flats near to the Moravian Church. The group of people that determined who would be allotted accommodation there, manipulated the list in such a way that Muslims would be the bulk of the beneficiaries of new-built housing. Citywide Prayer Events 1998 brought significant steps in the attempt to bring about more unity in the body of Christ city-wide through the initiatives of NUPSA and Herald Ministries. There were regular prayer meetings at the Mowbray Baptist Church and believers came from different parts of the Peninsula and from diverse racial and church backgrounds. These meetings carried a strong message of unity. The Mowbray exercise brought together two racial groups for prayer, and became the forerunner of citywide events. A prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat A well-publicized prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat. Prior to this, churches across the Peninsula had initially been requested to cancel their evening services on Sunday, 19 April 1998 and join this service. In sheer zeal, a Christian businessman had thousands of pamphlets printed and distributed. Unwisely, he did not consult with the organizing committee about its content. The flyer and poster that invited believers to a mass prayer meeting against drug abuse, homosexuality and other moral concerns, unfortunately also referred to Islam in a context that was not respectful enough for some radical Muslims. It was however also sad that certain City Bowl churches had not been prepared to close their doors even on a one-off basis for this event. A PAGAD member apparently regarded the flyer as an invitation to disrupt the meeting, passing on a threat to that effect. The event was subsequently announced as cancelled, but a few courageous believers showed up nevertheless. These included the late Pastor Danny Pearson, who had been deeply involved with the preparation of the prayer occasion. He believed that we should not give in to the intimidation, and that, if need be, Christians should be willing to die there for the cause of the Gospel. The meeting proceeded on a much smaller scale than originally planned. The service included confession for the sins of omission to the Cape Muslims and to the Jews. And there was no PAGAD disruption of the meeting! A Fight for Freedom in Religious Expression On 2 September 1998 twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity in the fight for freedom of religious expression in reaction to a move by the atheist attempt to regulate radio stations. This would have had a big effect on Christian and other religious media. One of the banners of a marcher proclaimed 'United we stand'. (This was a wry reminder of PAGAD’s main slogan.) Thankfully, the government dropped its plans. (Behind the scenes God had used an ANC Member of Parliament, a believer, to share the relevant information with Rev. John Thomas of CCFM. In this way, amendments could be affected to the Bill that allowed the government not to lose face on the issue.) The mass march to Parliament, in response to the perceived government attack on community radio stations was followed by a big prayer event on Table Mountain a few weeks later. At a prayer rally on 26 September 1998, hundreds of Christians prayed along the contour road of Table Mountain for the effort to rename the adjacent reviled peak ‘God’s Mountain.’ New Prayer Initiatives The event inspired a new initiative, during which a few believers from diverse backgrounds began to pray at 6.a.m. on Signal Hill on Saturdays every alternate week. After we had started with these early morning prayer meetings on Signal Hill, we got into a close relationship with Pastor Richard Mitchell and his family. When a door opened for a regular testimony programme on Friday evening on Radio CCFM, Richard Mitchell was an automatic choice to be the presenter. The programme ‘God Changes Lives’ was used to advertise the citywide prayer events. Tygerberg Radio cooperated with CCFM in all bigger Christian events. During the course of my historical research I had discovered that Duivenkop had been an earlier name of Devil’s Peak. Around the turn of the millennium I got to know Murray Bridgman, a Cape Christian advocate. He had previously also researched the history of Devil’s Peak, even in more detail. At that time Murray felt God’s leading to perform a prophetic act in District Six, pouring water on the steps of the Moravian Chapel, signifyimg the showers of blessings to emanate from that building. Along with Eben Swart, another church historical researcher of note, Dr. Henry Kirby was encouraged to lobby Parliament, to change the name to Dove’s Peak. (Dr. Kirby and his wife had been serving as YWAM missionaries in Mozambique.) Dr Kirby’s role as the prayer co-ordinator of the African Christian Democratic Party resulted in a motion tabled in the City Council in June 2002. The motion was however unsuccessful, probably because satanists had been influencing the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) and the . In 2009 the issue was tackled again. In due course, it was decided to disseminate the notion by word of mouth. Is it mere wishful thinking that it will be ultimately given the name Dove’s Peak? It is probably much more than mere co-incidence that Jacob Zuma became State President at that time. Murray Bridgman, who approached me and Ps. Barry Isaacs in an effort to affect the name change to Dove’s Peak, saw quite early the similarity to the corrupt rule of Willen Adriaan van der Stel and the farm Vergelegen, whom he acquired with unust way. Only many years later President Zuma abused tax payers' money to build the Nkandla estate. Ministries to Drug Addicts The Lord brought new role-players to the city reaching out lovingly to drug addicts. One of these was The Ark, a ministry that started in Durban. When a few committed believers came to the Cape in the early 1990s, their ministry focused on the homeless, but drug addicts soon found their way there. Some of them came to faith in Christ. Another ministry that started serving drug addicts from the mid-1990s is Teen Challenge, that had been founded by David Wilkerson, through a special outreach to gang members in the USA. Teen Challenge started ministry in the northern parts of the metropolis at Eerste River. The drug rehabilitation ministry with arguably the greatest impact at the Cape is Victory Outreach, founded by Nicky Cruz. (He was one of the first converts of David Wilkerson's Teen Challenge. His story is told in the Billy Graham sponsored movie The Cross and the Switchblade). Victory Outreach came to the Cape with a small team in 2006. Within a matter of months the ministry blossomed and expanded. Through it, many young people have been delivered from drug addiction in Jesus’ name. How powerful a loving environment can be, has been amply demonstrated at the Agape Centre in the rural town of Grabouw, that was founded by Gerrit and Ammie Coetzee. Drug addicts or youngsters just released from prison became part of the youth ‘year of your life’ programme there. From the 2007 group a former prisoner who was incarcerated for five years for murder went to Bible school. Another participant went to university and a few of them entered Eagle’s Rising, a transformation cum prayer farm near to Somerset West. Ministry to AIDS/HIV patients At a time when AIDS was still being mentioned covertly, there was almost no ministry to people who suffered from HIV and AIDS. A ministry with close links to the Cape Town City Mission started when Val Kadalie, a trained nurse, had a deep concern for young people who contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). She was invited to speak in many churches and schools - to warn young people about the dangers of promiscuity and encourage them to abstain from pre-marital sex. After Val Kadalie had become the matron of the G.H. Starke Centre in Hanover Park, the institution also started functioning as a hospice for terminal patients. She warned her staff in the late 1980s that they might soon have to treat AIDS patients. Her colleagues were thus ready for that, trained to care for people with HIV and AIDS long before they received their first request. The acid test came when she and her husband, Charles Kadalie, were approached to take care of a four-year old boy, Jason, who was HIV positive. One day, when Charles put the phone down at the electric power plant in Athlone where he was working,5 he sensed that God was challenging them as a couple to practise what they preached. Jason was the first of four children they cared for in succession, until all but one died from AIDS. Val Kadalie became a pioneer fighter for AIDS awareness In the process Val Kadalie became a pioneer fighter for AIDS awareness throughout the country, responding to calls from churches and groups of the most diverse backgrounds. Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic institution in the City Bowl, performed the same work during this period. The occurrence of HIV-positive babies started to increase. At the building in Vredehoek where the Roman Catholic Church had already started caring for orphaned children and destitute elderly since 1888, they pioneered with the care of HIV-positive/AIDS babies in 1992, possibly the first ministry of this nature in South Africa. Toby and Aukje Brouwer, a Dutch YWAM (Youth with a Mission) missionary couple, soon took on the care of AIDS babies after their successful pioneering ministry amongst street children called Beautiful Gate. In 1999 they started to care for HIV-positive and AIDS-infected little ones with government aid in Crossroads, a 'Black' township. Since then, their ministry has expanded to neighbouring countries. On 8 December 2004 a new centre was opened in Lower Crossroads. Broken lives were restored and in the case of at least one young man, a desire was born to enter missionary work. In the southern suburbs of the metropolis, Pastor John Thomas and his wife Avril were moved in 1999 to start with HIV and AIDS-related ministry. They soon built a hospice to care for people with HIV and AIDS, beginning a ministry of prevention and support which today reaches thousands of people. In due course Living Hope, with various related ministries, became a significant agent of loving service to the community. An Achilles heel of this service to the disadvantaged communities was that it remained very dependent on aid from overseas. Protests For the Life of the Unborn Reminiscent of the protests of the Black Sash with their actions to mourn the rape of the constitution in the apartheid era, when people of colour were removed from the voters’ roll, Africa Christian Action has hosted a March for Life every year on 1 February, followed by a prayer rally outside parliament. For the emulation of a funeral procession, participants dress in black. A short memorial service and wreath laying ceremony is usually held outside the Parliament buildings in memory of babies killed by abortion in South Africa since 1997. Special Healings Special cases of divine healing occurred here and there. One such healing took place at the Agape Centre in Grabouw in the life of Jessica. As a baby, she was diagnosed with hydro cephalous and cerebral palsy. The doctors told Gerrit and Ammie Coetzee, the founder-leaders, that Jessica had little brain function; she would be a 'vegetable', unable to walk or talk. Today Jessica is an active teenager who knows exactly what she wants, a clear result of divine healing. To God be all the glory! Samuel came to the Coetzee couple in 2006 when he was three months old, diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and Bulbar Palsy (the nerves in his brain stem were damaged so that he could not swallow.) He arrived with a feeding tube where food goes directly into the stomach. The doctors gave him little chance of survival. So many times, when they rushed Samuel to hospital in an ambulance, prayer was all they held on to as they trusted the Lord for a miracle. God heard and answered the prayers for Samuel. In due course Samuel was running around, climbing on everything, a real outdoor boy. Now he is a teenager. Prayer Efforts in the City Bowl A local visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ remained elusive. A semblance did occur however in the City Bowl at the end of the millennium. Two members of Cape Town Baptist Church, the intercessors Hendrina van der Merwe Hendrina van der Merwe and Beverley Stratis, did some precious spade work to forge more visible expression of the body of Christ locally, visiting various City Bowl churches. Believers across the country participated in a forty-day period of prayer and fasting from Resurrection Sunday to Ascension Day 1998. Rev. Louis Pasques of the Cape Town Baptist Church led the City Bowl effort. After the 40 days, a weekly meeting of pastors with a prayer emphasis slowly gained ground. Later that year, combined evening services were held once a month, rotating among the participating churches. A corresponding Jericho Walls initiated period of prayer and fasting in 1999 - this time for 120 days - was concluded in the Western Cape in the traditional Groote Kerk celebration of the Lord’s Supper when pastors from different denominations officiated. At that Ascension Day event, Dr Robbie Cairncross was divinely brought into the equation. He came to the Mother City with a vision to see a network of prayer developing in the Peninsula. His prayer for an office for his Christian Coalition/Family Alliance near to Parliament was answered in a special way. He could move into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce (SACB), a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. In due course, Achmed Kariem, a MBB, and Pastor Eric Hofmeyer would serve there with him. In due course the City Bowl weekly pastors' prayer meeting was changed to 8 a.m, for a year apiece at a different venue. Special initiatives that grew out of this change were combined events. At Christmas there were combined Carol services and on Resurrection Sunday a sunrise service was held at the noon gun. A monthly combined prayer meeting on a Friday evening at the Cape Town Baptist Church, with missionary input, was furthermore quite unique. This sadly ground to a sudden halt as a result of an over-zealous insensitive Pentecostal intercessor. Her vociferous extended speaking in tongues drove main-line denominational prayer warriors away. Combined City Bowl Church Events In due course monthly combined evening services rotated at various venues. This however stopped after less than a year when two of the churches refused to 'close the door' of their own building on the one Sunday evening of the month. Towards the end of 2000 a few City Bowl ministers who had been praying together on Thursday mornings, approached the office of Mr Mark Wiley,6 the minister responsible for law enforcement in the Western Cape. They offered to pray for him, promising not to take more than ten minutes of his time. Wiley responded positively, whereupon a delegation of the pastors went to pray with him. A few months later however, Wiley resigned due to his inability to resolve the protracted dispute between taxi operators and the Golden Arrow Bus Company. This dispute had kept the Cape 'Black' township dwellers in suspense for months. Everything pointed to the fact that the spiritual battle was again raging at a high pitch. On 27 October 2000 the Ministers’ Fraternal of the Atlantic Seaboard organised a half-night of prayer. Wiley’s successor was Hennie Bester, who had been a school friend of Eben Swart, the Western Cape co-ordinator of Herald Ministries. The new provincial Cabinet minister’s request - prayer from Christians - was a catalyst to send intercessors into action. In answer to prayer, the perpetrators responsible for the bombs that had been plaguing the region, were apprehended soon thereafter. Multiple Blows to the Body Spiritual Warfare raged fiercely at the turn of the century. This became visible when internal wrangling and moral failure hit not only two of the City Bowl churches that were in the forefront of evangelistic outreach, but also two mega churches. Looking back over the last two decades, these can be compared to much more than merely blows to the Body of Christ. The arch enemy achieved gains at that time from which the City-wide Church has yet to recover. Discussions in different churches around same sex marriages that had become legal in 2006, created the need for the Church to speak out. Ds. Johan Botes of the Groote Kerk drafted a beautiful document for discussion that highlighted that the Bible regards marriage as a union of one male and one female. It is nevertheless still incumbent on believers to be loving and caring towards believers who display homosexual orientation tendencies. The ministers of City churches who were part of the fraternal agreed to read the document on Pentecost Sunday in 2009. Diverse compromises would however militate against this decision. One church refrained from reading the document because this could have offended one of the affluent members who was gay. In another one it surfaced that the pastor himself had been secretly involved in a compromising relationship with another male, who leaked it to the press. The meaningful document was only read in the Cape Town Baptist Church. Quite a unique service took place in the Groote Kerk on Pentecost Sunday the same afternoon in 2009 when pastors prayed for Alderman Dan Plato, the mayor. A choir from a Francophone refugee-background congregation brought joy to a rather poorly attended service. A visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ locally would become the exception in the City Bowl to this day. Exceptions were events in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup of 2010. 9. Drug Lords in the News Through the late 1990s, twenty-two bombs exploded, killing and maiming hundreds of men, women and children who happened to be in the path of this nameless cruelty. Ordinary citizens became fearful, numerous lives were lost. As chaos ruled the streets, the Church continued to pray more earnestly once again. PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was taken to be behind the terrorism. Eddie Edson, a pastor in a poor community of Beacon Valley in Mitchell's Plain, had first-hand experience of conditions. He lived in the heart of the troubled areas. He had not only been gathering pastors to pray every month, but he also started to disciple gangsters. Believers interceded with a new fervour and determination, attempting to access the powers of heaven for the transformation of South Africa. A Cape Drug Lord on the Front Page In March and April 1999 dramatic things happened in quick succession. Rashied Staggie, the twin brother of the executed gang leader, had become a famous Cape drug lord by this time. He was shot and hospitalised by PAGAD perpetrators. Staggie made the news headlines from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus Christ. After his discharge from hospital, he went to a secret hiding place in Kwazulu Natal. A Drug Lord Shot and Killed On Resurrection Sunday 1999 Ayesha Hunter, one of our co-workers, phoned to inform us that Glen Khan, a drug lord and gang leader, had been shot and killed. The Mitchell's Plain man, whose wife had been a secret Christian believer for some months, was assassinated only a few days after he had committed his life to Jesus as his Lord. The next morning Rosemarie and I rushed to Mitchell's Plain to assist with the funeral arrangements because a crisis had arisen. The Muslim family was claiming to have the corpse for an Islamic funeral that would have happened within twenty-four hours! The young widow, still a secret follower of Jesus, insisted that her husband should have a funeral from the Shekinah Tabernacle where he made that commitment under the ministry of Pastor Eddie Edson. The new babe in Christ gave a powerful message to the packed church When ‘Brother Rashied’ was called upon to give a tribute at the funeral service, it caused quite a stir because the media had possibly been tipped off that the changed drug lord would be present, having come from his hide-out. Almost overnight he had become a celebrity of a different sort. The new ‘babe in Christ’ gave a powerful message to the packed church. Many were listening outside to the service, that was relayed via the public address system. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of Hard Living gangsters. Rashied Staggie, who had been avidly reading the Bible in the preceding weeks, challenged those gangster followers present. He cited from Scripture that the Lord was the only one to take revenge: ‘My kom die wraak toe!’. He emphasised: 'We are not going to retaliate!' Coming from someone who had virtually escaped death after an assassination attempt not long before that, the message could hardly miss the mark. Renewed Interest in the Lives of Gangsters Glen Khan’s assassination was divinely used to bring many a church in the city together, not only for prayer. To some extent the Church was challenged to reach out to Muslims in love. Following Khan’s death, some churches showed renewed interest in the lives of gangsters. Pastor Eddie Edson saw the need to disciple them, starting a programme of special care for gangsters who wanted to change their life-styles. The gang war triggered a significant increase in evangelistic ministry, notably at Pollsmoor prison. In the wake of the assassination of Glen Khan and Rashied Staggie’s powerful testimony at the funeral, a trickle of Cape Muslims started turning to Christ. A direct result was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI), where church leaders mediated between PAGAD and gang leaders. The contribution of Errol Naidoo, a young journalist and pastor at His People Ministries, was significant, as was that of Hindu background Ps. Richard Mitchell, his mentor, who had originally led Errol Naidoo to the Lord. PAGAD Marginalized Suddenly PAGAD felt themselves cornered. At a consultation in the Pinelands Civic Centre on 22 April 1999, God intervened powerfully. PAGAD was suddenly ready to speak to the government together with the church leaders - unarmed! This was an answer to the prayers of the warriors around the country,with Sally Kirkwood playing a pivotal role. Intercessors had been interceding for the proceedings. To all intents and purposes PAGAD was marginalized. In due course, the element of fear of possible Muslim reprisals was steadily eroded, even the fear of being ostracised by the Muslim Umma (community) if they would become followers of Jesus. In due course many MBBs could be found in 'Coloured' townships, notably in Mitchell's Plain and Manenberg. Steady inroads among gangsters and drug addicts continued nevertheless, even though many of the new converts did not persevere in their new faith. A Localised Gangster Impact The intense involvement of Muslims with illicit drug peddling had a long-standing connection to gangsterism. In 1992 a fairly successful response to the gangster violence transpired through Operation Hanover Park in a networking effort of local churches. All too often, the gang lords were Muslims and many a businessman with collar and tie was a co-religionist, who was plying the same trade. When the locally produced drug called ‘Tik’ (crystal methamphetamine) swept across the Cape Peninsula, causing great devastation among the youth, we attempted to revive Operation Hanover Park. (The drug had been virtually unknown as late as 2003.) This attempt was seriously impeded when it became known that certain pastors were on the payroll of drug lords. The link between township pastors and drug-related activity - along with back slidden drug addicts, would remain a weak point. This was hanging like a dark cloud over wonderful ministry and victories in the outreach to gangsters and other criminals in prisons. From the view of drug lords and gang leaders, this appeared to be more effective than the requirement of 'protection money' which the gang leaders used in the heyday of the PAGAD scare. Peace Deals Between Gangs The Cape Peace Initiative of the late 1990s, the role of which has been recorded fairly extensively in Seeds Sown for Revival, possibly had the biggest impact of all gangster-related peace accords to date. It became the divine instrument that ultimately marginalised PAGAD (People against angsterism and Drugs). Simultaneously this period catapulted Rashied Staggie, a drug lord, into prominence. Rashied Staggie became however the proverbial ‘Achilles Heel’ of gangster conversions. He became quite an embarrassment to Church folk after he had been paraded publicly – possibly prematurely – as a sort of trophy at the big Newlands Stadium event of March 2001. So many gangsters returned to their previous lifestyle of criminality after their getting parole or discharged from prison. Rashied Staggie also went into this league when he participated in gang raping a state witness. He was subsequently jailed again for many years. When he was finally set free from prison, he displayed no remorse, nor did he become positively involved with Christians. Pastor Ivan Waldeck, a former gang leader from Hanover Park, assisted him with employment. A gang-related assassination brought his life to an end in December 2019. His funeral with pastors was conducted at the Jubilee Church in Observatory. Before the procession went to a cemetery in Durbanville, thousands flocked to a sports field in Manenberg where the former gang leader was celebrated as a philanthropist who had been putting food on the table of many poor families and who had been assisting them to pay school fees. Prison Ministry Snippets Volumes could be filled with narratives of prison ministry. A former prisoner at Pollsmoor Prison, Jonathan Clayton, developed a special concern for prisoners. His conversion was the fruit of the prayers of his family and friends, including his (future) wife Jenny (Adams), an Africa Evangelical Fellowship missionary. Clayton attended the Cape Town Baptist Seminary after his release. While he was still a theological student, he started to minister in Pollsmoor Prison on Saturday mornings. Members of the Strandfontein Baptist Church, the home congregation of his wife, assisted him. In 1999 Clayton became a prison chaplain. A special ministry started with Pastor Emmanuel Danchimah, a Nigerian national. He networked with Marius Boden to beam Gospel messages with a car radio at Pollsmoor. This developed into fully fledged in-house radio and television transmissions, which impacted many inmates as some of them discovered their giftings in the process. Shona Allie, a Seventh Day Adventist from Muslim background, has been powerfully and divinely used in prisons. Shona Allie angered many Muslims when she honestly stated her conviction - in a mosque of all places - that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, and that he died on the cross for our sins. Throughout the country, prisons have been influenced by her ministry. The challenge of all prison ministry remains the restorative sector. The need for half way houses is massive. There is a dire need for families that are willing to walk a road full of risks with ex-prisoners. In 2019 Marlon Petersen and his family moved into a half-way house for ex-convicts in the ministry linked closely with Message Trust. Incarnational Ministry Pastor Alastair Buchanan, an old stalwart and friend since our short stint at the beginnings of the Jubilee Church in the early 1990s, has been the pivot of Message Trust, with Anja Morkel as his very able assistant. The present leader is Tim ??, a British missionary. Down the years, the lives of many homeless and struggling people have been touched and changed through this blessed incarnational ministry. Message Trust gives convicted drug addicts and former gangsters a new chance in life at the Cape. Anja married MK (??) Letsati, one of the colleagues of Message Trust, who has been involved with impactful service with soccer in Nyanga. The Community Hubs of Message Trust seek to empower youth to share their faith in their daily lives. We also facilitate opportunities at schools and through community outreaches, for young people to serve their community alongside our team. Former Gangsters in Divine Service Ministry to gangster and drug addicted people belonged to the most difficult, but also among the most fruitful. Many of those who became followers of Jesus all too often got back slidden. But quite a few of them became powerful ministers of the Word, still serving in that capacity after many years. In part 2 we gave a summary of how Neville Petersen was so to speak catapulted into evangelism from death row, after he had been imprisoned innocently as a teenager. In the big Pollsmoor prison Neville he became the leader of the 26 gang syndicate after two years, receiving the nick name geweld (violence). Eric Hofmeyer, who became a believer with a gangster background, went on record saying already in the 1990s, that he 'had been a disaster who became a pastor, now serving the Master'. He would ultimately become an important leader in sports ministry and in the discipling of inmates at Pollsmoor Prison. One of the inspirational stories is his discipling of Sollie Staggie, who had been raised as Suleiman, the brother of the well-known Rashied. Sollie would become a community worker with the Evangelical Mission Church in Newfields, where he served especially among learners of three high schools. (Sollie led a failed attempt to assassinate Eric Hofmeyer after he had left the gang. Shamiela Philander was one of the first Muslim background believers that we took into our home, after being abused by her ex-husband, a gang leader. We also attempted to disciple her husband for a short period, linking up with Pastor Eric Hofmeyer. However, he returned to his previous lifestyle. Subsequently the couple got divorced. Subsequently we took Shamiela into our Discipling House. After a few trial and error attempts with her in following the Lord, we had liberty to release her into service with the Salvation Army in the township Manenberg. This suburb has been ruled by gangsters for years. After her marriage to Deon January and some training with All Nations International, Shamiela would lead fruitful ministry in a prison in Porterville, a one and a half hour drive on Sundays for a season. One of the inmates to whom she ministered there was Sollie Staggie, at the rear end of his many years in prison. Transport constraints brought an end to that service, but Shamiela continued to serve female drug addicts in Manenberg faithfully. There she has been divinely used to lead a few ladies to the Lord and disciple them thereafter. In December 2020 she and her husband starting serving as the house parents of Moriah Discipling House where she had been discipled two decades ago. Restitution Made Practical In 1999 Dr. Robbie Cairncross assisted to organize a visit of Cape church leaders to Argentina to witness the work of restitution there. One of the participants was Pastor Martin Heuvel of the Fountain Christian Centre in Ravensmead. He was moved to apply the principal of restitution to the situation in South Africa. That the group took along Rashied Staggie to Argentina, the converted gang leader, might have been a good publicity stint, but for him it was not good. It boosted his ego out of proportion when he was basically still a spiritual baby who needed milk. The impact was significantly diminished when Rashied Staggie was treated as a trophy in Christian circles. In due course he would crash into notoriety when he became involved again with gang life. This caused a setback to further conversion of Muslims. Pastor Heuvel realized that there was a need to make restitution practical. He began by having shops run by Christian volunteers, where all kinds of second-hand clothing and other utensils could be purchased cheaply. This idea was further developed in different suburbs. Included in this demonstration of practical Christianity were various programmes related to skills training that had been running for some time to help the homeless and the unemployed, such as the initiative The Carpenter’s Shop in the Mother City. The most advanced venture in this regard was possibly the Living Hope Community Centre in Muizenberg, using the acronym H.O.P.E. - Helping Other People Earn. Apart from providing healthy meals and ablution facilities for homeless people, spiritual direction was also given, together with life skills training. At the various Living Way ministries medical, social, psychological and spiritual care continues to be given to those people who suffer from HIV and AIDS and other chronic diseases. An Initiative Towards Church-Led Restitution Over a period of more than two years, Pastor Heuvel attempted to get 'White' church leaders to go beyond mere oral confession for the evils of apartheid. Some of the personalities he approached had been involved with the prayer movement in the country for a long time. Ps. Heuvel also challenged Dr Charles Robertson, well known for his prayer initiatives. (Dr Robertson had been the catalyst of the monthly prayer concerts at the Cape since the 1980s.) Here Martin Heuvel found a prepared heart. This finally led to the establishment of the Foundation for Church-led Restitution, where believers from different races and church backgrounds started to meet occasionally. They discussed possibilities to nudge the Church towards meaningful restitution, and especially to attempt to address and rectify the wrongs of apartheid. This initiative of Dr Robertson surely was and continues to be a positive step in the direction of transformation. However, the implementation of real unity on biblical grounds in the spirit of the person and example of Jesus - without semantics and doctrinal bickering - seems however to be some way off. The Church universal still has to acknowledge collective guilt for the doctrinal bickering that led to the establishment and rise of Islam. The maltreatment of Jews by Christians down the centuries, falls in the same category. A Link to Community Transformation Pastor Eddie Edson of the Shekinah Full Gospel Tabernacle congregation of Mitchell's Plain organised two all-night citywide prayer events on 25 June and 15 October 1999. By this time ‘White’ pastors started to attend the monthly pastors' gathering more regularly, even at places like Die Hok in Manenberg, a former drug den and headquarters of the Hard Livings gang. Rev. Trevor Pearce, a minister from the Belhar township who later became the minister of the Anglican Church of Bergvliet, joined these prayer meetings. He was no stranger to the pain and hardship of discrimination and violence, yet his gentle disposition was often used by God to fulfil the role of peacemaker. Trevor Pearce attended a Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) retreat in the USA. It was at this conference that he was gripped in his heart and mind when he heard the miraculous story of God at work in the city of Cali, Columbia. Reports of changed lives and community transformation resonated so deeply in Trevor's heart that he felt broken, thinking of his home country. Was it possible that South Africa could ever experience this kind of transformation? He sat and listened intently to every word, not wanting to miss any detail of the incredible story. He could not wait to return home. Flying back to South Africa, Rev. Pearce guarded his most prized treasures - an audio copy of the retreat and a bound copy of the soon to be published book Informed Intercessions by George Otis (jr). Once at the Cape, Trevor Pearce wasted no time in getting to a pastors and wives’ event. As the group listened to the recorded voice of George Otis and watched the stories of transformation and redemption, they too felt a deep stirring in their hearts. There seemed to be so many similarities between the two countries. Drugs, death and despair had all been part of daily life for the residents of Cali, Columbia, until the Holy Spirit brought transformation through the praying church. What satan had intended for evil, God was using for good. The Transformation video was shown at the city-wide prayer event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow on 15 October 1999. 10. Seed Germination at the Turn of the Century Something very remarkable happened in 1999 in England when Peter Craig challenged young people in England to pray non-stop for thirty days, asking the Lord for this generation of young people to come back to God. It began as the vision of a local church in England, based on the model of Count Zinzendorf in Herrnhut in the 18th century. Bennie Mostert and Daniel Brink attended a conference led by Tom Hess in Jerusalem and brought the message back to South Africa. In September 1999 this new challenge for 24-hour prayer watches began in South Africa. Start of a 24-hour Prayer Room On 9 February 2000, Sooispit, the turning of the soil, took place in preparation for the building of a prayer room. At Kleinplaas, new premises of Dr Charles Robertson, the seasoned prayer and restitution stalwart, started near to Brackenfell, where they intended to include a 24-hour prayer room for intercessors from the entire continent. Daniel and Estelle Brink were called to lead the NUPSA initiative to get a 24-hour Prayer Watch off the ground. That this was spiritual warfare of a high degree became evident when Daniel Brink became critically ill shortly after commencing his new function. The Lord touched and healed him in answer to the prayers of many intercessors. In due course Daniel and Estelle would take the prayer movement at the Cape to great heights. Humanly speaking, here was a couple second to none to stimulate unity of the body of Christ at the Cape! The Body of Christ Made Visible At a mass half-night of prayer on 18 February 2000 on the Grand Parade, the unity of the Body of Christ became visible to some extent. The same weekend Pieter Bos and Cees Vork, representing the prayer movement in Holland, joined local Christians in confession and in praying against anti-Christian spiritual strongholds in the Cape Peninsula. (Pieter Bos was the founder of the Regiogebed in the Netherlands, of which we in Zeist-Driebergen had been the first branch in 1988.) The Grand Parade event was attended by more than four thousand Christians from a wide spectrum of denominations. The divisive denominationalism, materialism and other negatives of South African society, in which the Church had played a role in the past, were confessed. In a moving moment just before midnight, Pieter Bos and Cees Vork confessed the catastrophic contribution of their forefathers to the evils of Cape society. Through the prayer watches, a countrywide prayer network evolved. The electronic media, in the form of emails, played a big role. What a blessing it was to see how the ‘seeds’ that we had been sowing from 1992 at the Cape, seemed to have started to germinate. The event on the Grand Parade was followed during the next days by strategic ‘Closing the Gates’ prayer occasions. Other meetings like a combined church service on the Bellville Velodrome, left the impression that revival was in the air. The moving confession of Pieter Bos because of Dutch colonial guilt at the shrine of Sheikh Yusuf at Macassar, the pioneer of Cape Islam, moved Nim Rajagukguk,an Indonesian missionary deeply. Hereafter we also went to Vergelegen, the farm of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, a notorious 17th century Cape Dutch governor, to pray and repent. There our Indonesian colleague Nim Rajaguguk repented for their resentful attitude towards the Dutch, who had colonised and oppressed their people. Spiritual Conflict Continues The season of spiritual combat appeared to come to a head when conflict escalated between the notorious minibus ‘taxi’ drivers and the Golden Arrow Bus Company, both of which were transporting commuters from the townships. Nobody suspected that the shooting of a Golden Arrow bus driver would bring the 'Black' townships to the brink of anarchy once again. May 2000 seemed predestined to lead to the temporary pinnacle of spiritual combat, with the police force not only in disarray, but they were also frustrated by a judiciary that was perceived to be corrupt on municipal (magistrate) level. On Friday evening the 19th of May 2000 a citywide half-night of prayer, attended by 6,000 people, took place at the UWC Sports Grounds in Bellville. Here the unity of the Body of Christ was emphasised once again! In the spiritual realm it was a powerful moment when Pastor Martin Heuvel apologised on behalf of about 40 pastors present, for - among other things - their lording over their churches, for being dogmatic, and for the lack of a servant attitude. Most importantly, the proceedings were translated into Xhosa, thus demonstrating that the presence of Capetonian 'Blacks' was important to the organizers. (Mamela, the lady who translated the proceedings into Xhosa, was also God’s special instrument to bring Cape 'Blacks' into the prayer movement.) The proceedings were translated into Xhosa, thus demonstrating that the presence of 'Blacks' was important to the organizers There was ample evidence from different quarters that spiritual warfare was increasing once again. Satanist traits surfaced notably when the decapitated head of a mentally handicapped young man was abused to instil fear into people. The arrest of nineteen PAGAD members in Tafelsig, a violence-ridden part of Mitchell's Plain on 21 May 2000, after a shoot-out with police, was publicised as a major breakthrough. Only three gangsters were arrested, and that not even immediately. Hence the suspicion was strengthened that the police force was siding with criminals. The necessity for transformation through revival was thus highlighted once again. The Spiritual War Heats up in the City Bowl In June 2000 the battle in the spiritual realms was raging in the City Bowl as never before. A television report depicted how the Mother City drew gay tourists from around the world. Satanists were also staking their claims to impact the city. A bomb in a plastic bag was discovered by a homeless man While preparations were being finalized for a Jesus March on 10 June 2000, it almost seemed as if satan wanted to foil the event through a bomb, placed at the New York Bagles Restaurant in Sea Point, a few kilometers away from the City centre, a few days before the march. At the famous well-patronized eating place, the bomb, hidden in a plastic bag, was discovered by a homeless man. He was probably looking for food in the refuse bin. However, the bomb was defused before any damage was done. God clearly intervened at the internationally-initiated Jesus March. After a series of weather forecasts of rain, Pastor Lazarus Chetty used CCFM Radio to ask Christians to pray for dry conditions. In spite of the negative weather prediction, ten thousand Christians from across the religious landscape converged on the City business district. While the Jesus March crowd was praying in the historical Dutch Company Gardens, an elderly Muslim lady committed her life to Jesus at the famous Groote Schuur hospital a few kilometres away. Christian workers had ministered to her after she had confessed that she had a dream of the broad and narrow way, with Jesus standing at the top of the steep narrow way waiting for her. This dream had been plaguing her for 50 years. The first drops started falling well after the crowds had dispersed. A Vision Partly Fulfilled During our prayer walk in Bo-Kaap in October 2000 I was very much encouraged. We met a Congolese Bible School student, who was on the verge of returning to his home country as an evangelist, after being called by God to do so. He had been trained in Cape Town. One of our long-time visions had been to see foreigners holistically equipped in South Africa, hoping that they would then be a blessing to their country of origin on their return. (This vision had been birthed in me in Holland, where I had been blessed and impacted such a lot, returning to South Africa with the wish to be a blessing to my home country.) Alan Kay, the administrator of Cape Town Baptist Church, who had been studying Theology part-time, had great compassion for refugees. After graduating from the Baptist Seminary, he joined the Salvation Army, where he took a pastoral post. He also attended meetings of a newly formed congregation of the Calvary Chapel, that was led by Pastor Demitri Nikiforos. Alan Kay had been very much involved with the ministry to foreigners at Cape Town Baptist Church since its inception in 1996. Anaclet Mbayagu from Burundi was among a number of refugees impacted there. He left Cape Town Baptist Church in 2002, becoming one of the stalwarts of the Calvary Chapel fellowship. There foreigners were fully integrated. In due course there were more members from other countries than South Africans in that congregation. Emulation in Other Churches The example of the two Baptist churches with regard to refugees, the one in the City Centre and the other one in Bellville, was followed by other Baptist congregations, notably in Meadowridge and Fish Hoek. It was also done in spiritually-related ones like the Life Church (formerly Atlantic Christian Assembly) of Sea Point, the AGS (AFM) church in Vredehoek and the Jubilee Church in Observatory. Alongside these ‘mainline’ churches, many churches with a national flavour sprang up. Others started where foreigners could enjoy their home culture and where they could speak their own language or dialect. As a direct result of the xenophobic violence of mid-2008, many local Christians started appreciating foreigners and the contribution they were making. Local Christians started appreciating foreigners and their contribution However, the negative attitude towards 'Black' Africans continued almost unabatedly in Xhosa-speaking townships. A few ‘White’ churches were positively impacted through those difficult months when foreigners were accommodated in their church buildings and in homes. These formerly almost completely 'White' churches became an initial haven for many new African sojourners at the Cape. A few congregations consciously launched a programme of providing employment for the stranded foreigners. A Protracted Violent Conflict A bomb explosion at the car park of the Cape Town International Airport on 18th July 2000, created worldwide headlines. PAGAD was prematurely given the blame for it. Demonic Forces tried to create Havoc and Anarchy Around the same time, the protracted violent conflict between taxi drivers and the Golden Arrow Bus Company resulted in quite a number of people dead or wounded. Obviously, there were demonic forces at work trying to create havoc and anarchy! This was a reminder that a miracle was needed to turn the tide. The tension in the Middle East had a spin-off when big Islamic rallies were held. The one on 14 October 2000 at the old Green Point Stadium was counter-productive in respect of the Islamic faith. Supporters damaged cars and property. The crowd had been hyped up at the rally against Americans and Jews. The prayers of God’s people, that the tension between Muslims and Jews locally would not spiral out of control, were surely answered when a time bomb under the car of a Jewish man was discovered and defused before the device could cause any damage. However, a bomb explosion near to the offices of the Democratic Alliance in Kenilworth on 18 October 2000, kept the tension alive. (Tony Leon, the then leader of that party, was Jewish.) Muslim unity at the Cape seemed to be getting a boost in the wake of the Middle East conflict. A Special Dream of Graham Power During their annual holiday in Spain, the businessman Graham Power had a supernatural visitation through a dream, during which he was challenged to approach the Western Province Rugby Board for the use of their stadium at Newlands for a mass prayer event. Graham did not expect an easy ride to get permission for the prayer event, but what he did not envisage was strong opposition from Church leaders. Many a meeting was held, but the response was not encouraging. At a meeting in the ‘Black’ township of Langa where he went to share his vision, the response was overwhelmingly negative. The room got hotter, and for a moment Graham's mind wandered away from the debate until he was sharply brought back by a voice that broke through the questioning crowd. This is how it is recorded in his book Not by Might nor by Power: 'Slowly standing to her feet, a Xhosa woman called Mamela, spoke with conviction and authority. The room seemed to settle in an instant as her voice cried out, “What is this thing? When God gives a vision we are not to question, we are to come alongside and support.” That caused the breakthrough.' A Flourish of Prayer and Missionary Activity A flourish of prayer and missionary activity towards the end of 2000 looked set to influence the country as a whole. City Bowl ministers had been praying together on Thursday mornings since October 1995. A dispute kept the Cape 'Black' township dwellers in suspense for months. Everything pointed to the fact that the spiritual battle was raging again at a high pitch. Rev. Trevor Pearce was instrumental in bringing a delegation of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) to Cape Town. This group included George Otis, the initiator of the well-known Transformation videos. The delegation staged a three-day conference at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow with international speakers, from 3 November 2000. This was followed by a citywide prayer event at the UWC Athletics Stadium in Bellville on Sunday, 5 November. That meeting became quite strategic when Mamela, a powerful Xhosa believer, got involved with translation. The meetings in Parow and Bellville were preceded by prayer events that not only coincided with a round of spiritual warfare against the occult satanist Halloween celebrations, but they were also part of a country-wide 40-day offensive of prayer and fasting for the continent. Two potentially destructive Bombs were discovered and defused Bombs Defused PAGAD continued to destabilize Cape society with random bombing. And then the miracle happened. The breakthrough that the praying Christians had been waiting for, finally came. On Friday 3 November 2000 two potentially destructive bombs at a well-known shopping centre in Bellville were discovered and defused. The bombs could have caused massive loss of life, had they detonated at the intended time a few kilometres from the venue of the prayer conference in Parow. Later that very day the men who had planted the bomb, were arrested and put in custody. God had heard the cries of His people. Prayer was making a difference. It could hardly have been co-incidence that the arrest of the surmised culprits happened at the time of the conference and that the 18 bombs, which had exploded in the preceding months, did not result in any loss of life. Nor could it have been mere chance that pipe bombs were discovered under a snooker table at a house in Grassy Park on 6 November 2000, a day after the citywide prayer event in Bellville. Transformation of the Mother City of South Africa received a major push. On the local level, churches also seemed to be playing a role in bringing about peace. On Sunday 25 February 2001, it was reported on national television that local church leaders had brokered a peace accord between two Bonteheuwel gangs, the Cisko Yakkies and the Americans. After the Parow and Bellville events, the stage was soon set for a major occasion at the Newlands Rugby Stadium, where Mamela translated the proceedings into Xhosa once again. The Newlands Event of 21 March 2001 The Transformation programme was closely linked to intercession from the outset. It is no surprise that the 24-hour Prayer Watch was connected to a big prayer occasion scheduled for the Newlands Rugby Stadium on 21 March 2001. In the 21 days prior to the event, more than 200 congregations joined in a prayer effort for the stadium meeting on a 24-hour basis. A satellite connection and big screens allowed more people to participate The 21 March 2001 event was extraordinary in the extreme. Because Newlands was too small for all the people who wanted to attend, several local churches used a satellite connection and big screens to allow more people to participate. The Christian radio stations CCFM and Radio Tygerberg also broadcast the unprecedented occasion live. Because it was a public holiday, many followed the prayers at home via radio and TV. 11. Spin-offs of the Newlands Event The big event on 21 March 2001 at the Newlands Rugby Stadium and its repetition in the years thereafter, did very well in human terms. An article in the Cape Times, a local newspaper, gave wings to the prayer movement with the headline '50,000 Christians pack Newlands - Asmal slams Sectarian Rally.' Professor Asmal, the Minister of Education, reportedly said that the mass meeting constituted the gathering of a 'sectarian body' and that it was responsible for enhancing divisions in South Africa. While nothing could have been further from the truth, all the main TV stations and news broadcasters led with that story in the evening news. Concerted prayer, followed by action in the Helderberg region and in Manenberg (of gangster fame), subsequently changed the respective communities significantly for the better. God was thus using the media to spread the story. This event had received far more coverage than would have been given otherwise. What satan had intended for evil, God was turning to good. As the media debate continued, the Transformation Africa Committee received hundreds of calls of support, encouragement, and promises of prayer from churches and businessmen around the country. Stadium Prayers Into Southern Africa The Newlands event started to spread throughout the subcontinent in 2002: eight stadiums were involved with some 160,000 people attending. In 2003 and 2004, mass prayer services were held in over 100 venues throughout the African continent. An interesting dynamic started to get off the ground. Missionaries who had been working in other Southern African countries, started encouraging believers from the Cape Peninsula to become involved in evangelistic work. Locals like Georgina Kinsman from Mitchell’s Plain, who did not belong to the young generation, hardly needed any nudge to get involved in missionary work. In fact, she gave a major push to the Baptist Union in South Africa to become active in reaching out to the under-evangelised and forgotten peoples of Namibia and the Northern Cape. The Baptist Union in South Africa started to reach out to the under-evangelised and forgotten peoples of Namibia and the Northern Cape. Involving the Youth Frans Cronje, a member of the Transformation AFRICA committee who had been actively involved in mobilizing the youth to help with the logistics, firmly believed that the young people would play an important role in the growth of this movement. Frans headed up a youth sports ministry called Sport for Christ Action South Africa (SCAS). He was always on the lookout for meaningful mission opportunities for young sports people. In June 2001, just a few months after the Newlands Day of Prayer, Frans believed that God gave him a vision to mobilize Christians to run across the country, carrying a message of hope through salvation to be found in the person of Jesus Christ. The initiative would be called The Walk of Hope. Not only would this event encourage folk on the highways and byways of the country, but it would also serve to be an important tool in raising the awareness of this significant day. It was decided that as the city of Bloemfontein is located in the middle of the nation, teams would all depart from that city and then move towards the eight stadia of Southern Africa where a Transformation Africa Prayer Day would be held in 2002. Transformation Begins to Take Shape Two clergymen, Trevor Pearce and John Thomas, pastor of King of Kings Baptist Church, radiated the face of Cape Transformation in the first years of the new millennium, as they became involved on the practical level. As the pastor of the church that started CCFM radio, John Thomas utilised the medium fully in 1999 to challenge churches, especially those of the Fish Hoek Valley, to get involved in assistance to the poor and needy. With regard to schooling and HIV/AIDS, Trevor Pearce was an important catalyst in an attempt to get the church and the business world to partner, an effort that would change the former informal settlement at Westlake significantly for the better. The annual Transformation events in sports stadiums were followed by a ‘week of bounty’, where the more affluent churches were motivated and encouraged to share sacrificially with those on the other side of the economic divide. I reacted inappropriately to a manipulative phone call Rumblings at the Moriah Discipling House Toward the end of 2001, a period of spiritual conflict seemed to move towards a climax. I suffered a personal setback after I had reacted inappropriately to a manipulative phone call from our discipling house. There we have been discipling new followers of Jesus who had been persecuted and/or evicted because of that decision. That set off a negative chain reaction. During the next two and a half months the tension levels in our team remained extremely high. After travelling by bus all night from Durban and after having had very little sleep, I resumed with my work rather carelessly on Friday, March 15, 2002. This triggered a stress-related loss of memory the next day. After a day in hospital and further medical treatment, I was cleared with the instruction to return after a year. We realized that there were major spiritual forces involved. + Culture Among Youth in the City Bowl Our second eldest son Rafael returned from Germany at the end of 1999 where he had been evangelising with Youth for Christ in a mobile bus for the greater part of the year. After his return from overseas an interdenominational youth ministry called, ‘+ culture’ (cross culture), with the emphasis on the emblem of the Cross, started to flourish. With his musical talent, our son Danny was also quite pivotal in this movement. Unfortunate interference by one of the local pastors who had little vision for the unity of the Body of Christ, stifled the promising revivalist movement amongst the youth. The promising revivalist movement was stifled The Eagles Sports Ministry would have quite an big impact among City teenagers was started in 2000 as an outreach project to the community around the Cape Town Baptist Church by our sone Sammyand his German class mate Christopher Jahn and led by Elsabe Odendal, a sports teacher.  The ministry offered sport and play group activities to any child between the ages of 5 and 18 yrs old on a Saturday morning irrespective of their individual beliefs.  They used sport, mainly basketball and soccer as a tool to reach out with God’s love to the children living in our community.  Gospel seed was sown into many a young Muslim heart. The ministry ended in 2010 when the church leadership decided to not continue with the outreach after all three founding members left the church. The sports ministry was revived when Eric Hofmeyer became the youth pastor there. Some damages at the hall that had been such a blessing to young people, however caused the church leaders to convert the hall into a coffee and clothing shop, bringing a close to the ministry into the Bo-Kaap from that fellowship. This was sad because there was still a full complement of youth leadership trained by Elsabe Odendal, and nurtured by Eric Hofmeyer, yongsters who were very enthusiastic to continue with the ministry. The Going Gets Tough Rosemarie and I were blessed to take a holiday break at Carmel Christian Farm in July 2003. At this occasion she had been taking some photographs of beautiful waves at Sedgefield and Knysna. In that vicinity we found Psalm 93:4 engraved on a stone. That was exactly the Bible verse that Rosemarie received on the day of her confirmation in Germany as a teenager, way back in the 1960s. ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!' A Challenging Dream In October 2003, Rosemarie had a dream in which a young married couple, clad in Middle Eastern garb, was ready to go as missionaries to the Middle East. Suddenly the scene changed. As she narrated: ‘While the two of us were praying over the city from our dining room facing the Cape Town CBD, a massive wave came from the sea, rolling over Bo-Kaap. The next moment the water engulfed us, but we were still holding each other by the hand. There was something threatening about the wave, but somehow we also experienced a sense of thrill.’ Then Rosemarie woke up, very conscious that God seemed to say something to us through this dream. What was Abba trying to convey? The interpretation of the dream became clear quite soon. We had to prepare for a wave of opportunity – a tsunami, as tidal waves became widely known from the following year. Right from the start it had been part of our vision to see Muslims from the Cape becoming followers of Jesus and some of them ultimately sent to other parts of Africa and the Middle East as missionaries. A Wave of Opportunity We heard about a conference of Middle Eastern Muslim leaders in the newly built Convention Centre of Cape Town. We decided on short notice to have our Friday prayer meeting there nearby, instead of in the regular venue, the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk in Bree Street. Lillian James, one of our friends, was on hand to arrange a place for the prayer meeting near to the Convention Centre. The same Friday afternoon Rosemarie and our colleague Rochelle Malachowski went to the nearby Waterfront where they literally walked into a group of ladies in Middle Eastern dress. The outgoing Rochelle had no qualms to start chatting to one of them. Having resided among Palestinians in Israel, she knows some Arabic. Soon they were swarmed by other women who were of course very surprised to be addressed in their home language by a ‘White’ lady with an American accent. A cordial exchange of words followed. Rosemarie was reminded of her dream, sensing that God might be sending in a wave of people to Cape Town from Muslim countries. We understood that we should also get ready to send young missionaries to that area of the world when it opens itself up to the Gospel. Shortly hereafter we heard of various foreigners who had come to the Mother City, including a few Uyghur, a minority people group of China. Fast-forwarding another two decades, we can thankfully look back for the privilege the Father gave us to have become spiritual parents or catalysts to a few who would serve as missionaries in different countries. Prostate Gland Cancer Diagnosed After my stress-related temporary loss of memory in March 2002, a medical check-up was overdue. This led to a period that seemed to usher in the last lap of my 'race' on earth. After going to the doctor for the blood pressure check-up at the end of September 2003 - without having any complaint - he suggested a PSA blood test because of my age. Detecting a reading slightly above normal, the physician hereafter referred me to an urologist, who did a biopsy on 7 October 2003 – just to make sure! Perhaps the arch enemy tried to knock me out. I was so confident that the result of the biopsy would be negative because I had no physical discomfort up to that point in time. Both specialists pointed out that the PSA count was only minimally above normal. There could have been other causes for the abnormal count, for example infection. When a phone call came from the hospital on Thursday 9 October 2003, I was caught off-guard. I was told that I had contracted Prostate Gland cancer! Without any ado the urologist gave me the result of the biopsy: I had contracted prostate gland cancer in an early stage. Through an extra-ordinary set of circumstances, the Lord however prepared me for the diagnosis. The previous day, on 8 October 2003 to be exact, I was encouraged by the ‘Watchword’, as the Moravians have been traditionally calling the Old Testament Scripture for the day: ‘I will not die but live and proclaim what the LORD has done’ (Psalm 118:17). To be told that you have contracted prostate gland cancer, was like getting a death sentence. However, the Lord had encouraged me with Psalm 117:18. I saw that verse as an encouragement to ‘proclaim the works of the Lord.’ I immediately thought that I would not be able to attend the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) leadership conference in Paarl that was scheduled for the first November weekend of 2003. I approached the Moravian Church Board formally in October 2003, just after the rather traumatic diagnose, also meeting a few of their leaders shortly thereafter, with regard to the use of their church building in District Six that had been returned to the denomination. I sensed that the attitude of the leaders to me had softened. (I had not been invited to preach in any Moravian Church for a long time.) The request to use the Moravian Hill sanctuary was duly approved. We also received permission to have monthly meetings with Muslim background believers in their church building in District Six the following year. A 24-Hour Prayer Watch? The historic St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church complex was also considered for the purpose of a 24-hour prayer watch. Our dear intercessor friend Hendrina van der Merwe resided there at this time. The church hall was the venue of a half night of prayer on the 2003 Islamic Night of Power. At this occasion, Trevor Peters, who worked as the security guard of the parking lot there, played a prominent part. The Lord had humbled Trevor, a former gangster and drug lord. He later became a tour guide at the historical Groote Kerk. Increasingly, he became burdened to pray for the city. Subsequently God brought him into the main prayer force for the city when he became a stalwart in the praying initiative at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. A ‘Second Wind’ Looking back over my life, it seemed as if my (semi-)academic studies and anti-apartheid activism did not take me anywhere. The Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the prostate gland operation But the Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the prostate gland operation in December 2003. He also blessed Rosemarie and me to discern some of the pieces in the mosaic, the puzzle of our chequered lives that were fitting so perfectly into each other. It encouraged me to prod on, although the road ahead could not be discerned that clearly. Rosemarie challenged me with regard to my chaotic research and writing activity. I had so many unfinished manuscripts on my computer. 'What would happen if something happens to you? All that work would be in vain', was her wise counsel. Concretely, I took the word from Scripture as an invitation and summons, that I should attempt to finalise my autobiographical manuscripts. (These and a few other manuscripts can now be found on our internet blog, inter alia I was like Jonah and (In)voluntary Exile.) The testimonies of a few Cape Muslims had been on my computer already for about two years. We had printed some of them as tracts. The result of Rosemarie’s prodding was that Search for Truth 2 could be printed within a matter of weeks by my cousin, Patrick Cloete, a printer. For years, I had been striving towards achieving a more visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ, with very little success. Through my hospitalisation for the prostate gland operation, God over-ruled. I was challenged anew to look at the City Bowl 24-hour prayer watch as a matter of priority for the first half of 2004. The unity of the body of Christ, believers in the crucified and risen Saviour, had been very much on our hearts. I realized that the prayer watch could be a decisive vehicle to make this more visible. Africa Arise! In May 2003 prayer events were held in the fifty-eight nations and African countries with its adjoining islands of the continent, linked by satellite to the Newlands Rugby Stadium. With thousands of African Christians praying, it left a deep imprint on the continent. The theme for the afternoon was that the time had come for the ‘Dark Continent’ to become a light to the nations. Via an inspiring message, Argentine evangelist Ed Silvoso led millions of believers in stadiums across the continent through prayers of repentance, dedication and commitment. Two items that recurred again and again in the prayers were HIV/AIDS and poverty relief. In subsequent years many lives were saved with anti-retroviral medication as a result of a government turn around in the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. New ministries of compassion to the poor and needy had already arisen since the 2001 event at the Newlands Rugby Stadium and its annual repetition. One of the fruits was The Warehouse, which started at St John’s Anglican Church in Wynberg. This NGO would perform stalwart work during the 2008 xenophobia-related ministry at the Youngsfield Military Camp. Via food distribution in the wake of the Corona pandemic their service to the poor and needy became prominent once again and more recently in the networking with various churches in the course of the Hope through Unity activities that were facilitated by the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape from November 2022. Run-up to a Continental Prayer Convocation As part of a prayer convocation for the African continent at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) from December 1-5, 2003, it was fitting that a prelude to the gathering would also include a visit to Robben Island. This was a follow-up of the ‘Closing the Gates’ event of September 2001. Dr Henry Kirby, a well-known intercessor, ran into problems when he tried to obtain access to the famous island as part of the prayer convocation. Just at this time, a Muslim background believer contacted Radio CCFM. It was more than mere coincidence that I was on the spot at the Radio CCFM premises when her fax arrived there! When I invited the young lady to our home for a preparatory talk with regard to a radio interview, I learned that she had been working on Robben Island for many years. Through her intervention, the necessary arrangements could be made for the prayer warriors, some of them coming from various African countries, to go and intercede on the island. The Net Thrown Wider Soon God began to expand our ministry. We were serving (Uyghur) Chinese and Somalians in loving ways. The latter group in Mitchell's Plain stretched our patience. We ultimately had to stop teaching English to the Somalians after a few months in mid-2005. It became clear that they resented being taught by Christians. Teaching English to foreigners in premises on the corner of Dorp and Loop Street on Saturday afternoon in a small church where Gary Coetzee was the pastor, turned into a double blessing. There we could not only help a few new sojourners in our city to get settled, but we also soon found a link to the nearby Boston House on the corner of Bree and Church Streets. We supplied learners from the ranks of refugees and African traders in the city for their TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) students as guinea pigs. (Ps. Gary Coetzee was a visionary, who made and sold shofars when they were still unknown at the Cape. The increased use of vuvuzelas in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup of 2010 would usher in the wide use of shofars among Christians thereafter.) A Cameroonian trader was one of these students. With him we had on-going contact and he was one of those who became like an additional son or daughter to us. Discovery Bible Study Using English as a vehicle to serve Muslims from other countries, was another way to befriend foreigners. One of those we taught was the trader from Cameroon whom we subsequently invited for a meal. His home language is Hausa. This gave us a natural invitation to ask him to watch the DVD More than Dreams since Hausa is one of the original five languages of Muslims in the DVD. These Muslims saw Jesus in a dream. In this dream He appeared to them attired in a white robe. In the course of our outreaches in the city and at the Home Affairs Refugee office, we served the people there with some beverages. There we met a few foreigners who displayed openness to the Gospel. When we invited him to share a meal with us, we discovered that Hausa was his home language. This was the cue to watch one of the More than Dreams testimonies, a DVD with five stories of Muslims who had a dream of a man clad in a white robe. This evolved into a weekly Discovery Bible Study (DBS) with a few foreigners who were Muslims. One of them, a trader who had been a street child who never attended a school, ultimately verbalised in so many words: 'It seems as if everything in the Bible points to Jesus.' (Autodidactically he would teach himself French and English also in writing next to learning 9 African languages for communication purposes over the years. How special it was when we could become 'parents' to a couple who got married at the Home Affairs office in 2016. They were ready to serve in a country that is still firmly closed to the Gospel. The husband came to faith in Cape Town after being one of our DBS participants. He subsequently met his wife from another country at a Bible School. Impact of an Event Film When the movie The Passion of the Christ was released in March 2004, it was clear that this would be another event film. Hardly anybody suspected that its ripples would go around the world with so much speed. Objections by diverse individuals only gave more publicity to the controversial film. Believers in Jesus Christ, ordinary cinema visitors as well as people from different religions around the globe, were deeply moved as they witnessed the last twelve hours of Jesus Christ in the unusual movie. God used the film to communicate the Gospel as rarely before, also at the Cape. The very opposite spirit that had motivated Muslims to go and view the movie, that of the forgiving Jesus, came through. The message of loving your enemies, and Jesus praying to His Father to forgive his persecutors while still on the Cross, hit many a theatre-goer powerfully. Quite strikingly, after the movie, many Muslims seemed to start accepting the death and resurrection of Jesus, doctrines which are denied by orthodox Islam. That Jesus addressed God as his Father surely shook many of them. (In Muslim countries children learn in a nursery rhyme that God neither has a son, nor does he beget.) The effect of the film was one of the most spectacular visible and known answers to the ten years of prayer for the Muslim world. Subsequently thousands have been turning to faith in Jesus Christ in Southern Asia and the Middle East through dreams, visions and various other evangelistic agencies. Contact With Special Foreigners For Nursilen Rajagukguk, an Indonesian missionary colleague in our team who had previously served in Hong Kong, it was quite special to watch the video version of The Passion of the Christ in our home together with two Uyghur females from China. Nur had a special burden for the Uyghur, a Muslim tribe in the Northwest of the vast and populous country. For years she prayed for those people, without seeing any change. Now God had brought some of them to the Cape . Within months we had contact with other Uyghur folk who had come to the Cape Town. (The increased interaction with the Peoples' Republic of China brought many nationals from that country to Cape Town. With the Olympic Games of 2008 in Beijing looming, many students came to learn English in our city.) The conversion and baptism of two Uyghur Chinese in the first quarter of 2005 were very special, the result of divine intervention. One of the two converts needed a second dream to convince her that Jesus was indeed the one to follow. In the first dream she had asked God to reveal to her which one was the one to follow. She had discerned that it could be either Jesus or Muhammad. Her room was brightened up with a supernatural light early the next morning,which happened to be Christmas morning. Simultaneously she came under a strong conviction of sin. She knew that Jesus was there with her. His divinity was so natural that she prayed spontaneously: “Jesus, forgive me my sins!” The other Uyghur person, a male, had a similar dream of a person that radiated light, sensing a divine presence in his room. (A few months before this I could lead him to the Lord after the penny had dropped during private Bible Study.) The two compatriots were initially very fearful that the other Uyghur folk would get to know about their decision. A few months further however, we were blessed to baptise both of them at the same occasion. In due course a group of Asians was meeting once a month on Sunday afternoon for Bible Study. The couple from Indonesia would become the parents at our discipling house for people from another faith background. (During the xenophobic mob violence of 2008 we also took in believers from Zimbabwe to whom we had ministered at the time.) The 7-DAYS Initiative As a follow up strategy of Transformation Africa prayer in stadiums all over Africa in 2004, a ‘7-Days initiative’ was launched. Daniel Brink of the Jericho Walls Cape Office distributed the following communiqué: ‘...From Sunday May 9th thousands of Christians all over South Africa will take part in a national night and day prayer initiative called ’7 Days’. The goal was to see the whole country covered in continuous prayer for one year from 9 May 2004 to 15 May 2005. On relatively short notice, believers in communities, towns and cities in South Africa were challenged to pray twenty-four hours a day for one week apiece. The prayer initiative started with the Western Cape taking the first seven weeks. Daniel Brink invited believers of the Cape Peninsula to ‘proclaim your trust that, when we pray, God will respond. Declare your trust that if we put an end to oppression and give food to the hungry, the darkness will turn to brightness. Pray that houses of prayer will rise up all over Africa, as places where God’s goodness and mercy is celebrated in worship and prayer, even before the answer comes.’ Global Prayer Watch, the Western Cape arm of Jericho Walls, filled the first seven days with day and night prayer at the Moravian Church in District Six, starting at 9 o’clock in the evening on May 9, 2004. Every two hours, around the clock, a group of musicians would lead the ‘Harp and Bowl’ intercessory worship, whereby the group would pray over Scripture. In another part of the compound, intercessors could pray or paste prayer requests in the adjacent ‘boiler room’. What a joy it was for Hendrina van der Merwe, the fervent Afrikaner intercessor, to be present on that opening evening in the Moravian Chapel. However, she would neither experience a spiritual breakthrough towards new church planting in Bo-Kaap nor the start of a 24-hour Prayer Watch in the City Bowl. On the 31st of December 2004, with her Bible in her hand, she went to be with her Lord! From the 6th to the 15th of May, 2005, Jericho Walls challenged millions of believers all over the world ‘to seek the face of the Lord and ask him to fill the earth with his glory as the waters cover the seas’ (Habakkuk 2:14). Young people were encouraged to do a ‘30-second Kneel Down’ on Friday 13 May, and to have prayer, a ‘Whole night for the Whole World on Saturday 14 May 2005, just before the very first Global Day of Prayer.’ An Apology by an Apartheid Era Cabinet Minister Adriaan Vlok is the only former apartheid Cabinet minister (of Law and Order) to have testified before the Amnesty Committee of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Former President P.W. Botha had ‘intense interest’ in security. A central role had been given to the police to ‘sort out’ unrest. President Botha had been congratulating Mr Vlok for police operations, including the bombing of Khotso House in Johannesburg, where the South African Council of Churches has it headquarters. Mr Vlok received amnesty from prosecution for a series of bombings. An apartheid Cabinet minister apologised publicly to a prominent anti-apartheid activist In mid-2006, Vlok apologized for a number of acts that he had not disclosed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and for which he could therefore be prosecuted. In a very special gesture, the former apartheid era Minister of Law and Order apologized (initially privately) to Reverend Frank Chikane, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and a trusted adviser to President Thabo Mbeki. As secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches, Rev. Chikane had been targeted by the security establishment for assassination. 7 Subsequently, Mr Vlok extended his journey of repentance by washing the feet of nine widows and mothers of the 'Mamelodi 10', who were lured to their deaths by a police agent. Their bodies were burned and buried in a field in Winterveld, near Pretoria, where the remains of the bulk of them were found and identified by the National Prosecuting Agency. The gesture of former Minister Vlok had a blessed aftermath when he shared his testimony in many a church around the country. 12. Grabbed by the Scruff of the Neck Sometimes God has to take people ‘by the scruff of the neck’ to bring them into obedient submission, just as he once did with Jonah. This happened to Michael Share, who was challenged to leave his work in the police force to start Cops for Christ at the turn of the millennium. A cop was stranded in a shack with bullets flying past him After being involved in a raid, Michael Share was stranded in a shack with bullets flying past him. He experienced supernatural protection. Not a single bullet hit him. This was to him a wake-up call. Through the ministry of Cops for Christ Michael Share called on policemen throughout South Africa to bring spiritual life and encouragement into police stations, when anarchy was threatening once again. Fanie Scanlen was already a Superintendent of the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street in the Mother City when he was stabbed seven times, narrowly escaping death. This became a turning point in his life. Superintendent Fanie Scanlen became an important conduit of our effort to get more prayer into the Central Police Station. He became a significant divine tool of the preparations for the first Global Day of Prayer. Fanie Scanlen also organised a teaching course based on Christian principles at the police station, which allowed us to meet other Christians working there. Catalysts of a 24/7Prayer Room Towards the end of 2003, it was my turn to be taken by the ‘scruff of the neck.’ During the short post-operative period in Kingsbury Hospital after the removal of my cancerous prostate gland, I was challenged to stop looking for other people to get a 24-hour prayer watch going in the City Bowl. I sensed that I should get involved personally. The hospitalisation was God's instrument to challenge me. A Prayer Venue at the Civic Centre In due course Die Losie, a former freemason lodge at the police station, became our regular prayer venue. As preparation for the 2006 Global Day of Prayer, prayer drives were organised, during which participants prayed Scripture. The prayer drives converged at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. God used this event to touch at least one person in a special way. (Wim Ferreira, an intercessor, had been a transport engineer working with the City Council. He was challenged to to concentrate on prayer for the City. He was around that time invited to work with the Deputy Mayor of the metropolis.) When all the groups had arrived at the police station, they were taken to Die Losie. There Daniel Brink, the co-ordinator of the event, asked me to share in a few words about how God had changed things at the police station. Wim Ferreira was deeply touched at this occasion. He promptly requested a room for prayer in the metropolitan Civic Centre where he had started to work. This was another divinely orchestrated move. A few months further on, a regular Friday prayer time was functioning in the ACDP board room of the Civic Centre. Before long, a trickle of workers from all walks of life was coming to faith in Jesus as their Lord as a result of these prayers. On Wednesdays at lunch time, believers from different denominational backgrounds gathered there to pray and intercede for the city. The Lord also challenged Wim Ferreira to start a day long prayer meeting at the Civic Centre premises. Soon a prayer room near to the parking area on the ground floor was frequented by many people throughout the day. The foundation stone towards 24/7 prayer in the CBD of the metropolis was laid. The prayer room at the Civic Centre is still used. In April 2019 it served as the foundation stone for a World Prayer Tower, that was subsequently started in Observatory. The latter location would become the prayer hub for the African continent. Meetings With a Stamp of Revival Trevor Peters and I started building a good relationship with Captain Tania de Freitas. Beginning in 2006, Tania started to attend our Wednesday meetings faithfully. In due course she would become God’s instrument for the transforming of many lives in the course of her duties as she counselled traumatised staff members. Meetings organised on Fridays at the police station had the stamp of revival. People were healed and lives changed. The arch-enemy must have been very angry, because soon thereafter there was fierce opposition at the police station to these meetings. Captain de Freitas became a fearless stalwart prayer warrior at the station. Towards the end of 2009 she challenged the station leadership to uphold absolute ethical norms. She paid a price for this. Subsequently she was hassled and ostracised by many at the station because of her radical expression of her faith, but she did not give up. (She is still serving there as a spiritual pillar. Regular monthly prayer resumed at the police station on every first Thursday of the month from December 2017.) She also tried to bring prayer warriors of different churches together in far-away Kraaifontein where she lives with her family. Mysterious Ways of God We all know that God moves in mysterious ways. A young couple from Green Point, Andy and Lizelle Draai, started praying with us, both in the Koffiekamer and at our once a month prayer meeting in Bo-Kaap. We heard that His People Ministries started a new fellowship at the Waterfront. When we attended there once off as visitors, Tim Makamu, a Venda believer from Limpopo, whom I had helped moving when he was a CPUT student, was the preacher. Tim immediately spotted Rosemarie and me in the audience and promptly called me to the front. I used the occasion to challenge the congregation to get involved with outreach to the refugees at the near-by Home Affairs premises and to come and join us in praying for the Bo-Kaap. Our friend Bev Stratis came up with the idea of performing a 'Jericho walk' near to Bo-Kaap at this time. We got ready to pray up and down Buitengracht Street along the border of Bo-Kaap on six days and seven times on the seventh day. On one of these prayer walks we were joined by Andy and Lizelle Draai. Subsequently the couple became the pastoral leaders of the City Bowl Church when it became a congregation of the Every Nation denomination. Prayer Warriors Invade Chambers of Government Other interesting things had also been happening at the Cape. Around Pentecost 2007 I joined Wim Ferreira and a few other prayer warriors including Pastor Barry Isaacs in the ACDP board room at the Cape Metropolitan Civic Centre every Friday. Barry Isaacs had just become the new co-ordinator of Transformation Africa as successor of Graham Power. This enhanced his position as a widely respected Church leader country-wide. (Before this, he had already been on the executive of the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) and The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa (TEASA). The Lord put the unity of the Body of Christ on our prayer agenda once again Once again, the Lord put the unity of the Body of Christ on our prayer agenda. We continued to try to get Capetonian believers to pray together. We deemed this an important step towards the revival we were yearning for. Prayer meetings started in October 2007 at the Uni-City Council Chambers on the third Saturday morning of every month at 5.30h. (The starting time was later changed to 6 a.m. and to the last Saturday of each month.) There we experienced wonderful answers to prayer again and again. At one of these occasions, the lack of the availability of the Civic Centre Banqueting Hall for a combined prayer event on Ascension Day 20008 touched Advocate Peter Williams, the secretary of the Provincial Parliament. He promptly extended a provisional invitation to the group to come and pray there. On 31 May 2008 more than 100 believers gathered in the legislative chamber of the Western Cape for prayer at 6 a.m. Three days later there was a hush, and no mocking, when two Christians shared their biblical convictions at the same venue, as part of normal parliamentary procedure. Peter Williams saw this as a direct result of the united prayer there! A Farmer Became an International Celebrity The biographical film Faith like Potatoes depicted how Angus Buchan, a Natal farmer, experienced an amazing personal revival. Thereafter he began to impact the lives of many others. His Mighty Men Conferences and other revival events would change thousands of lives in subsequent years. Angus Buchan suggested that change in our country should not come out of the Houses of Parliament but from the kitchens. The daily household events should display the spirit of our Lord. Amazingly, over the weekend of 18 April 2008, 62 000 men attended the Mighty men’s conference with Pastor Angus Buchan. It surely was significant that so many men, hungry for the Lord, were content to stay in tents, after travelling for many hours. They came from all over the country and from as far away as Namibia! The Mighty Men’s Conference was more than merely a ‘flash in the pan.’ The first Mighty Men’s Conference was more than a flash in the pan. Real reconciliation between fathers and sons took place. Fathers and husbands returned home as changed men, and families were restored. This event divinely pre-empted a demonic onslaught on the country via xenophobic violence in May 2008. Pastor Angus Buchan would subsequently become known as an evangelist internationally. In the next chapter we highlight similar spiritual dynamics. We will be taking a few steps back in history to see how things had unfolded at the Cape in particular. 13. A ‘New Thing’ Sprouting Rosemarie and I were experiencing a very traumatic period as a couple due to the tension caused by our new mission leaders. We were personally encouraged by Isaiah 43:18, to forget the past and to expect a ‘new thing’ that had been sprouting. During the first term of 2006 a young Operation Mobilization (OM) missionary started to serve more closely with us. Occasionally he joined us in outreach in the township Parkwood. He also had a longing to minister to foreigners. In the course of looking for a neutral venue where we could assist the sojourners from other countries with English lessons, the young colleague suggested that we pop in at the home of Pastor Theo Dennis, one of the OM leaders in the Western Cape. I experienced a sense of homecoming once again. When Pastor Dennis shared about their ministry in the UK some years ago in Coventry and Bradford called Friends from Abroad, I experienced a sense of home-coming, especially when he mentioned that the group no longer operated in the UK under that name. (Theo Dennis and his family were confined to the UK after OM had decided that people with South African passports were too much of a liability on their ships.) Ever since our return from Holland in 1992, I had been hoping to be a blessing to foreigners coming from other countries as I had been positively impacted overseas. Both Rosemarie and I felt that this was the new thing that had been sprouting, a renewed challenge to get more intensely involved with foreigners. After some collaboration with Theo Dennis, we decided to approach a few City Bowl pastors regarding a common effort. Initial responses were positive when I asked them to pray about possible involvement. We were however wary of getting too excited prematurely. Haven’t we been disappointed more than once when we attempted to get churches of the City Bowl to do something together? Perhaps this was just God’s time. Could the plight of the destitute and exploited foreigners possibly be the trigger to bring about the revival we have been praying for so long? Next to Straatwerk, only one church sent two females for this venture. We formalised the ministry, starting a non-profit organisation that we gave the name Friends from Abroad. Our attempt to reach out lovingly to foreigners who had come to the Cape, brought matters to a head in WEC International. Our newly elected national mission leaders could not accept our vision of the combination of reaching out to Cape Muslims and stronger involvement with foreigners. Prayer at the University of Cape Town From 2006 young people from different churches, backgrounds and cultures in the Rondebosch area came together to ‘simply’ worship once a quarter. In mid-2006 a Simply Worship service was held in the Jameson Hall of the University of Cape Town (UCT). There our son Sam was challenged to go and pray at UCT. About ten people came to him afterwards, indicating their interest in joining him. They started meeting together to spend time in worship and intercession on a weekly basis, but they also spent much personal time with God in the prayer room at UCT. Eventually they organised an event. They decorated the prayer room and encouraged people to worship God, using their creative gifts. The students prayed continuously for 77 hours, leading to the next Simply Worship evening. Somalians Killed in Masiphumelele While we were in Holland in 2006, we could read about many Somalians who were being killed in the township of Masiphumelele near Fish Hoek. This was because of xenophobia towards them by the Xhosa-speaking original inhabitants, fanned by the traders. We heard how Alan Profitt, a SIM missionary colleague, and Sheralyn Thomas, an UCT student, the daughter of John and Avril Thomas whom I knew from my service with CCFM till 2004, were involved with negotiations between the two groups. We were hoping that could still function with our ‘new thing’, the new umbrella NPO Friends from Abroad, under the auspices of WEC International. We remained committed to operate in a positive frame of mind until the end of July 2007, while we prayed for clarity about what God had in store for us. We were sure that our ministry in Cape Town had not been completed yet. We sensed that God was possibly using the personal trauma to shake us towards flexibility for change. Empowering People from the Nations It was with great excitement that we heard the news that Floyd and Sally McClung were coming to the Cape with the vision to ‘establish a training and outreach community in Cape Town that impacts Africa from Cape Town to Cairo’ and also ‘for a multi-cultural community that exemplifies the kingdom of God.’ We also wanted to see countries outside of Africa impacted from Cape Town. Getting the vision across to local Christians and pastors, remained however a big challenge. Long before the official inauguration on 17 February 2007, one of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad (FFA) which Rosemarie and I had started before we left for Europe in 2006, was fortnightly sessions of fellowship, Bible Study and prayer. We did this with a few Uighur believers from China, as well as other Asians. The philosophy of FFA is to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, just as I had been impacted while I was in exile in Holland. A Supplement to our FFA Philosophy We resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. (In 1995 he initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten-Forty Outreach.) We thought that his ministry could be a valuable complement to our Friends from Abroad concept - to bless expatriate Christians and empower them to be a blessing in and for their own countries. Through Pastor Theo Dennis we got linked to Ds. Richard Verreyne, pastor of the Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk in Parow. Pastor Deon Malan and his wife Iona, a couple with mission experience in North Africa and our YWAM colleague Rochelle Smetherham-Malachowski became members of our core team of Friends from Abroad (FFA). Together we started free English lessons for refugees and other foreigners at the church in Parow. It was an added blessing that we had a short-term missionary from Germany to help us keep the children of the refugee ladies busy in a good way. This was a forerunner of a weekly children’s club at the same venue with refugee-related and local children. The FFA compassionate outreach to foreigners soon included a jewellery workshop for refugee ladies, the bulk of them Muslims. This helped them to have some income. Our daughter Tabitha not only assisted there with the children, but she also kept the ministry running all on her own - long after the German short termer had returned to her home country. A jewellery workshop for refugee ladies, to help them earn a few cents and teach English to quite a few of them, was part and parcel of the FFA compassionate outreach to foreigners. Our involvement at the Parow church opened the rather conservative Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk for subsequent fruitful ministry to foreigners, including regular French services. Back to the Land of the Living In 20??, Pastor Bruce van Eeden had to be taken from the wreck of a car after a collision in rural Rwanda the course of the TFO ministry (??) in Africa. It was a terminal situation, along with another person for whom there was medically speaking no hope. He noticed in his semi-conscious condition how female believers stood around them, praying. Thereafter he was put into a wheel chair. That was the last thing he remembered before he 'regained consciousness' amid a big commotion. In the meantime the news was relayed that a 'foreign missionary' was killed in a car accident. To all and sundry this could only have been an America When he in the rural hospital there was a. He had been 'dead' to all intents and purposes. Through the prayers that had been Later the same day he was 'discharged' from the rural hospital because they did not expect him to survive. He was taken to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, from where a decision about the body of the possibly 'deceased' missionary would have to be taken When the news arrived there, a high ranking police officer, a believer, indicated that if any care was needed for the foreign missionary, he would take responsibility for it at their home. Ps. Bruce recuperated there until he was strong enough to be flown to Cape Town. God obviously had more things for Ps. Bruce van Eeden and the Evangelical Mission Church to accomplish in His Kingdom ministry, notably with an annual TFO prayer event at Cape Agulhas towards the end of each year. Throwing the Net to the Other Side? Another word from Scripture came to the fore in the last quarter of 2006. We felt challenged to throw the net ‘to the other side’. But what would this imply? Ds. Richard Verreyne invited us to a meeting of the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in February 2007 with Floyd McClung as one of the speakers. At the meeting in the New Life Vineyard Church of Pinelands we set up an appointment with Floyd. This ultimately led to our joining All Nations International. A Pyrrhic Victory? The gay lobby showed exceptional efficiency during 2006, although the odds were stacked against them to get same sex marriages legalised. Almost all the major religious groups - the spokesman for the SACC as the lonely exception – as well as traditional leaders, came out against a proposed law that had no scriptural and popular backing. Very cleverly the gay lobby played their joker - the card of discrimination - which in South Africa found very eager and sensitive ears, because of the heritage of apartheid. They managed to get the ANC, which had a massive majority in Parliament, on their side probably with effective use of bribes. (Subsequently it became increasingly clear that interest groups would buy influence via bribes and support, e.g. through substantial gifts to help the ruling party at election time. The issue became quite a hot potato in the run-up to the 2009 elections when the Dalai Lama had been refused a visa as a result of the prior financial support of the Chinese government. Already under President Mbeki the government had moved ideologically very close to the People's Republic of China.) Our blessed ministry in a clothing factory was impacted through negatively because it was forced to close along with a few other related ones in the area because of the cheap imports from that country. Evangelical Christians had organised very well under the leadership of the Marriage Alliance, but they could never win without the backing of the ruling ANC. The law allowing same sex marriages took effect on 1 December 2006. The open question was whether the gay victory was Pyrrhic. On face value it was a rather worthless piece of legislation. Surprisingly, the lobby for alternative life-styles became increasingly influential subsequently. Crime and Violence Spiralled Again In Parliament Rev. Kenneth Meshoe, the leader of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), warned that the country was invoking God’s wrath through the passing of this law. This seemed to get a prophetic dimension when crime and violence spiralled in the first two months of 2007, despite the vitriolic assurance by State President Mbeki that crime was not out of control. On the flip side, this seemed to be God’s way of stirring thousands to prayer. God raised people to pray for the removal of an abomination It was good to hear soon thereafter that God had already raised individuals like Cedric Evertson, to pray for the removal of the gruwel, the abomination, as this prayer warrior dubbed the new law. When only Murray Bridgman was there alone with me on Signal Hill for our monthly prayer event of 2 December 2006, I was initially somewhat disappointed. We were in the clouds, but not in a pleasant way literally. It was cold and wet. Murray had so much wanted to introduce me to Cedric! A mobile phone call brought Cedric to join us for prayer, simply sitting in the car. How exciting it was to hear from Cedric how the Lord had been leading him. The Holy Spirit touched his heart to stand in the gap like a Moses on behalf of the nation. To this end he would go to Tygerberg - man alone - to pray there in the morning, three days a week. Two homosexual international leaders - one lesbian and the other 'gay' - turned their back on the movement in 2007 after becoming followers of Jesus Christ. The gay victory to get same-sex marriages legalized in December 2006, seemed to have become Pyrrhic indeed. Many years later, it had, however, become rather unlikely for the law to be repealed in a climate of political correctness. Divine intervention seems to have become necessary to get biblically untenable laws scrapped. It is much more difficult than the abohorrent apartheid laws that had at least been outlwed internationally. Starting to Feed Refugees After aprayer session at the Foreshore Home Affairs offices on Friday 13 April 2007, we decided to start feeding the refugees and other foreigners once a week, liaising with Straatwerk and local churches. This looked to me another wonderful opportunity to get local churches involved in a combined effort to express the unity of the Body of Christ. With Straatwerk we networked wonderfully, and from the churches’ side the German Stadtmission became involved with two volunteers. By July 2007 it had been confirmed for us that it was time to move on. We resigned from WEC International. 14. New Church Planting Experience Rosemarie and I had been encouraged by the arrival of Floyd and Sally McClung at the end of 2006, especially because we detected kindred spirits when we were reading about their reason for coming to the Cape. We endeavoured to see a church planting movement established among those foreigners who had been coming to the Mother City of our country. We longed intensely for the metropolis to become the Father's City. Disasters Shake Young Christians Towards the end of our stay in Germany in July 2007, where we had gone for the wedding of our eldest son Danny, we received an email from Sam, our son, who had returned from Germany earlier than us. The subject of the email was ‘Pray!’. Sam shared that Rüdiger (Rudi) Hauser, his close German friend who had gone to Austria to study, had been killed in a mountain cabin with some friends the day before, when a gas explosion collapsed the house. Rudi and another friend died on impact. The incident shook Sam very intensely. He had been leading the Bible group at the German High School with Rudi. Students were moved to contribute sacrificially towards a deposit for a children’s home. At a ‘Simply Worship’ event shortly hereafter, independently of each other, the Holy Spirit ministered to Sam and Brendan Studti, another student friend. A group of UCT students now started to come to our home quite regularly on Fridays hereafter, as they prayed and organised, hoping to establish a children’s home. They were moved to contribute sacrificially, to give savings towards a deposit for this cause. One student put a bequest given to him into the kitty. The dynamic Sheralyn Thomas was one of these students. We were nevertheless quite surprised when Sam blessed us with a gift on Christmas Eve of 2007- wrapped in newspaper and containing a picture of him and Sheralyn!! Joining the Church Planting Experience One thing led to the next until Rosemarie and I joined the Church Planting Experience (CPx) course at the beginning of 2008, with the intention of becoming members of the All Nations International family. (CPx teaches a new dimension of church - whereby simple non-denominational independent fellowships are planted. They attempted to come as closely as possible to the practice of the first generation of ‘New Testament’ followers of Jesus.) Along with our Friends from Abroad colleagues, we now started to partner with local fellowships, to get believers in home groups from the nations equipped, hoping and praying that they would ultimately minister in their countries of origin in a similar way in the future. The 'Ten Days for Jesus' concept had a special sequel when participants started not only to lead the event in the subsequent years, but that also got envisioned to take the concept in different formats to all sorts of places. In 2010 'One Day for Jesus' was held in Masiphumelele, but plans were also made to have 10 'Ten Days for Jesus' in Zambia and India. Fires Ignite Spiritual Renewal Our son Sam invited Floyd McClung to address UCT students. At the end of 2007 - from 10 to 20 December - some UCT students of the 24/7 prayer initiative, including Sammy, engaged in ‘ten days for Jesus’ with All Nations International in the Masiphumelele informal settlement. Young 'White' students assisted admirably to rebuild shacks Their effort had hardly started when a fire raged through the township. When the young people, most of whom were 'White,' assisted admirably to rebuild the shacks, it created a lot of goodwill. This proved the ideal preparation for an international group from McClung and Church Planting Experience (CPx) participants to move into the area at the end of January, 2008. After a lot of spadework by Timothy Dokyong, an All Nations colleague from Nigeria, a house church was started where the students assisted to rebuild shacks. At one of the house churches that was started there in 2008, the most notorious alcoholic of Masiphumelele, who got the nick name Black Label (a liquor brand), was totally changed a few weeks later. The February 2008 CPx All Nations International course had just started when fires destroyed homes in Scarborough and Red Hill, the southern-most communities of the Cape Peninsula. The whole CPx team - ably assisted by local municipalities and other interested parties - got involved in the rebuilding of shacks in the informal settlement of Red Hill. ü Georg Müller Emulated! Sam, Sheralyn, Brendan and their group of UCT students soon found a house for sale in the suburb Diep River that they deemed suitable as a children’s home. We were blessed to witness the purchasing of premises from close by. It could be regarded as an emulation of the 18th century Georg Müller of Bristol, who ran a children’s home without appealing for funds. Nobody outside the close circle of family and friends was allowed to share with others the financial need of just over two million Rand. The students trusted that God would provide the funds. The seller was a believer who supported the cause. He gave the students a new date a few times when the funds for the payments did not come in as the students had hoped. When the Resurrection commemoration of 2008 approached, this was also the final date, after which the students would have forfeited their deposit. Instead of fretting, the students staged a day of worship at the premises a week before the due date, getting it ready for occupation in faith. They trusted God to come through for them. On the Wednesday thereafter one of them received a phone call. Some student colleague who had heard about the children’s home had an uncle in Johannesburg who wanted to donate furniture. This was of course a blessing which the group gladly accepted. When the atheist lawyer arrived there the next day with the donation, he walked around the place. After listening to their plans, he said: 'Here is some special energy at this place, Brendan! I am curious however about how you intend paying for the property.' Brendan shared how they had used their savings plus some donations of Christians and how they were trusting God to see to the rest as well. 'How much do you still owe?', he asked. Jokingly, Brendan replied: ‘Well, we only owe 2.1 million Rand, which is actually due to be paid by Monday.’ The lawyer was in no mood for jokes. He was touched: ‘Listen, Brendan! Tomorrow is my birthday. Already as a child I wanted to contribute towards a children’s home. Please give me the bank details!’ The Tuesday after Resurrection Sunday the full amount owed was in the bank account of the seller of the house! Outreach in a Redhill Shebeen The compassionate outreach in a Redhill shebeen, an informal liquor outlet, led to regular Bible Studies. Matters accelerated even more when the group was joined by another CPx colleague Godfrey Mosobase, a Lesotho national. To Rose McKenna, who had attended a Jerusalem-Africa summit in June 2006, the Israeli offer of expertise - rather than funding - had made a big impact. When funds were not forthcoming, she enquired from a Community developer what would be needed for her to share the expertise which she had gained 50 years ago in the then Northern Rhodesia, now called Zambia. Moshe Ledermann, a Jewish expert, felt that a piece of ground the size of a rugby pitch would be a good start. Because fires had decimated the squatter camp, and because the Zimbabwean refugees were housed there, they immediately went to meet the CPx volunteers. Soon McKenna linked up with the Red Hill CPx team led by Alex and Joanna Campbell, a British couple. There Rose was blessed when she discovered that her friends from Zimbabwe had been allotted a piece of ground at their shacks, where she could help them grow vegetables. (For two years Rose and two of her Zimbabwean friends had been searching around the Peninsula for the required ground.) CPx volunteers lived in the shack of a prison inmate Together with three short term CPx volunteers, the American couple Nic and Paula Watts, and another American, Liana Bumstead, the group started a garden. As a witness of God’s love, the CPx volunteers lived in the shack of a Red Hill inhabitant who was in prison. Advocacy for Godly Family Values In a sequel to the 2006 preparation to the law to legalise same sex marriages, evangelical spokesperson and advocate for a biblical stance on Homosexuality, Pastor Errol Naidoo, left the pastorate at His People Church to launch the Family Policy Institute (FPI). On 15 May 2008 the agency took occupancy of its new headquarters at Parliament Chambers, 49 Parliament Street, Cape Town. This was as near to Parliament as one could wish, just outside the gates of Parliament. FPI set out to primarily serve the Body of Christ, to ensure it fulfils its Biblical mandate to be 'salt and light' in society. To this end, weekly newsletters and a TV programme 'Watchmen on the Wall' valiantly implemented this goal down the years, opposing the distortion and lies of the mainstream media. In 2009 the FPI newsletter exposed the blaspheming of the name of Jesus Christ in the despicable cartoons of the UCT rag magazine Sax Appeal and Ps. Naidoo and his FPI played a big role in defeating the attempt of Dstv and TopTV to launch 24 hour porn channels and leading the public campaign to decriminalize prostitution for the World Cup in 2010. A major milestone was FPI's submission on adult prostitution to the SA Law Reform Commission (SALRC). Ultimately the SALRC agreed with FPI's conclusions that prostitution must not be decriminalized in the country, making this recommendation to government. The vast expansion of the internet and availability of pornography on cell phones would in due course marginalize the effect of FPI, but Errol Naidoo and his team continued to fight valiantly for Godly families and biblical values. A Visible Expression of Christian Unity? The Lord put the need for a public demonstration of the unity of the Body of Christ quite strongly on my heart again in 2009. I hoped to see believers unite with the possible renaming of 'Devil's Peak', linking with Pastor Barry Isaacs and Murray Bridgman, a local advocate. Advocate Bridgman had been praying with us at different venues over a number of years. Taking supernatural activity as a premise, we suspected that satan would not let a revival take off without a good fight. 'Devil's Peak' – historically linked to the corrupt rule of Willem Adriaan van der Stel at the turn of the 18th century – has been ruling supremely over the Mother City. Jacob Zuma, a rather corrupt ANC politician, had become State President in 2009. That he had been avoiding to face criminal charges of corruption was widely known. The charges against him had been set aside irrationally, possibly through the aid of his special connections and bribes. That would haunt the country throughout his presidency. Wide-scale xenophobia, the fear of other African foreigners, had not only brought the country to the brink of wide-spread civil unrest in 2008, but the government seemed to be supporting it covertly, notably at the Department of Home Affairs with the maltreatment and discrimination of refugees from African countries. Widespread township violence kept simmering after slowing down intermittently. Farm murders was another issue which reared its head significantly. Prayer Outreach By 2010 we had been praying for Bo-Kaap for many years. Blair Carlson, the director of the Lausanne III Conference, got accommodation at Mesopotamia Place in Leeuwen Street for him and his family. They came to prepare the global event at the International Convention Centre a few months before the conference, and they were due to live there for a few months thereafter. Noting that the venue used by the Lausanne III Conference was more or less equidistant from Sea Point and Bo-Kaap, the respective Cape strongholds of Judaism and Islam, I had hoped that the conference could express some form of regret or even confession for the negative ways in which heretical Christianity had impacted Islam. We prayed that breakthroughs in Sea Point and/or Bo-Kaap might lead to simple house fellowships in these suburbs and lead ultimately also to reconciliation under the Cross. We perceived this as something that could send ripples to the rest of the continent, from Cape Town to Jerusalem. We even hoped that it would ultimately trigger a spiritual revival. Dreams and visions of various believers encouraged us to prod on. Our prayers in this regard were not visibly answered, but years later one could read diversely how God used that conference to influence matters elsewhere. (One of these effects is the impact on cities, as you can read in one of the appendices.) World Cup Outreach The football World Cup of 2010 afforded us a unique opportunity to touch the nations. The event was another vehicle to reach out to many juveniles who knew very little about the Gospel before that event. During a visit to our own children in the UK prior to that, we had been inspired by OM missionary colleagues who operated there with a literature table. Ahead of the global event we procured hundreds of tracts in different languages. We finally received permission to set up a literature table on Green Market Square. We also had many copies made of More than Dreams, a DVD that God had been using to speak to many Muslims around the world. This DVD contains the dramatized testimonies in five different languages with English subtitles. (Prior to the big event, copies of the More than Dreams DVD had been dubbed into French and Arabic.) One of the highlights of our World Cup outreach was the day when Algeria played in Cape Town. On the day that their national team played here, we distributed many DVD copies to the Algerian fans who were quite conspicuous in their green and white attire. What made this outreach very special was that our missionary colleague Rochelle Smetherham, on a visit during 'home assignment', bumped into a Syrian national in Washington D.C. in 2012. The person reacted excitedly when she saw a copy of the More than Dreams DVD. The Syrian wondered whether this was the same DVD about which Algerians were raving! Another evangelistic attempt targeted the North Koreans who also played in Cape Town. The hostess of our church home ministry group, Amanda Nkhosi, held a top position in the Cape Tourism industry. She had access to people who organised the accommodation of the various teams. Through Amanda Nkhosi we found out where the North Koreans were accommodated. At that time, we had a (South) Korean language student living with us. She had come to faith in the Lord here in Cape Town through the loving outreach of a Chinese-background short term missionary colleague from the US. The student was attending a Korean congregation where she was involved in ministry to children. We procured Korean Bibles through that fellowship. After a number of phone calls, we succeeded in getting the Bibles to the hotel in the suburb Newlands where the North Koreans were lodging. At the end of their stay we fetched the remainder of the Bibles. Using our Open Doors contacts, these Bibles were couriered to North Korea, an extremely closed communist country in respect of the Gospel. Is it too outrageous to hope that we might still hear some day how one or more of these Bibles impacted North Koreans? Dreams of a Man in White After the World Cup we continued with weekly outreach every Thursday at the Central Methodist Church on Green Market Square. We had been very much encouraged during the World Cup to use the More than Dreams DVD. We interacted with traders in the city and elsewhere, trying to find out whether any of them could possibly be open to the Gospel. It had become well known that many Muslims had become followers of Jesus, after having seen a man in white in a dream. It didn’t pan out for us in a similar way, but it did give us quite a lot of encouragement. (In one case Rosemarie bumped into the leader of an expatriate community in Cape Town who had three dreams of Jesus.) In another scenario, a young man with a dream of Jesus became part of a chain reaction that saw another African trader ultimately prepare for ministry in North Korea. (The latter trader had been impacted at the Cape via English lessons and subsequent attendance of our Discovery Bible Study group.) Treasure Hunting We had heard from different sources of a new method of evangelisation called Treasure Hunting. In August 2011, when a Dutch missionary occasionally joined our bead workshop with refugee ladies, we decided to get some teaching about it. After two training sessions, we started applying some of the teaching and began to do Treasure Hunting. We would have some exceptional experiences in the course of the next few months doing this. We were not at all surprised that we met folk from Bo-Kaap 'by chance' in the city from time to time, as some of our 'treasures'. Treasure Hunting gave us such fun as we evangelised. We used this especially when groups came to join us, such as those who came from overseas through the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) base in Muizenberg. A Cloud Over Ministry The intense involvement of Muslims in illicit drug peddling frequently had a connection to gangsterism. In 1992 we were involved in a fairly successful response to the gangster violence through Operation Hanover Park in a networking effort of local churches. All too often, the gang lords were Muslims. Many a businessman with collar and tie was a co-religionist who plied the same trade. The Cape Peace Initiative of the late 1990s possibly had the biggest impact of all peace accords with gang leaders. It became the divine instrument that ultimately marginalised PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs). Simultaneously this period catapulted Rashied Staggie, a drug lord, into prominence. The late Rashied Staggie became the proverbial ‘Achilles Heel’ of gangster conversions. So many gangsters returned to their previous lifestyle after their parole or discharge from prison. Staggie had become quite an embarrassment to Church folk after he had been paraded publicly – possibly prematurely – as a sort of trophy at the big Newlands Stadium event of March 2001. After he was finally set free from prison on parole, he displayed no remorse nor did he become positively involved with Christians, although Pastor Ivan Waldeck, a former gang leader from Hanover Park, assisted him with employment. The links to drug peddling continued to play a role in the background of many township pastors. When the locally produced drug called ‘Tik’ (crystal methamphetamine) swept across the Cape Peninsula, causing great devastation among the youth, we attempted to revive Operation Hanover Park. (The drug had been virtually unknown as late as 2003.) This attempt was seriously impeded when it became known that certain pastors were on the payroll of drug lords. The link between township pastors and drug-related activity, along with back slidden drug addicts, would remain a weak point. This hung like a cloud over wonderful ministry and victories in the outreach to gangsters and other criminals in prisons. The fanfare around the glamorous funeral of Rashied Staggie after his gang-related assassination in London Road, Salt River on 21 December could not patch up this sad situation. This was the same street where his twin brother was publicly executed, albeit that it was a dual Christian occasion at the nearby Jubilee Church in Observatory and on a sports field in Manenburg where Pastors Ivan Waldecck and Eric Hofmeyer officiated. At the latter venue a few thousand inhabitants came to pay the last respects to their controversial icon. The younger brother Sollie, who had also grown up in Manenberg, more than redeemed the family legacy with committed service after his release from prison in 2015 serving especially in the ministry of The World Needs a Father. Taxi Violence Addressed. Another challenge for the churches and the community was taxi violence. Pastor Bongani Mgayi of Glory Manifest Church organised a reconciliation and repentance prayer meeting in Philippi on 5 November 2011. The meeting was well attended by Christians, leaders and pastors from Crossroads and all over Cape Town and beyond. Adriaan Vlok, an apartheid era Minister of Law and Order, attended the meeting and addressed the elders and community of Crossroads. He asked for forgiveness for all the atrocities and hurt caused by the apartheid government. He then asked to wash the feet of the elders from the community and the taxi leaders. At the meeting, Mrs Meme, a retired school principal who had been forcibly moved to Old Crossroads in the 1970s by the apartheid regime, told her story after hearing Mr Vlok. She was relieved. She had always yearned in her heart to face the ‘White’ people who had caused her and her family so much pain. Afterwards, months of prayer services and meetings were held privately. A structure was set up by the two taxi associations, CATA and CODETA, to self-regulate the industry and to work towards unity and peace. In July 2021 the same two taxi associations aggravated a tense situation in the country after looting and burning of shops created mayhem in Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng. The Western Cape had been spared all this when the taxi dispute prevented thousands of commuters to have transport to and from their places of employment. 15. Christians Respond to Xenophobia During our outreach at the Foreshore Home Affairs offices, we soon heard from our contacts among the refugee foreigners whom we served with sandwiches and at our bead workshop at the Discipling House of the intense corruption there. The practices there would ultimately permeate almost every sector of the government. But we did make a serious effort to combat what was happening there. We terminated our 'feeding scheme' when the refugees were served at new Home Affairs premises in Nyanga. But the question was: When should we throw our nets out again? And what was ‘the other side’? We grappled with these questions, praying that clarity would soon come. Opposing Xenophobia and Corruption When Mr Mvuso Msimang became the new national Director of Home Affairs, a government department that was notorious for corruption, much was expected of him because he was known to have engineered wonders at the revenue sector, another government department. When it came to our attention that Mr Msimang humbly invited people on grassroots level via national TV to assist, I volunteered on behalf of Friends from Abroad. In a series of emails, I repeated our wish to meet him or a representative to give some suggestions on how we think matters could be improved. We gladly endorsed the vision to oppose xenophobia and to fight corruption We were subsequently invited to meet Ms. Martha Mxagashe, the new Acting Home Affairs Provincial Manager of the Western Cape. We gladly endorsed her vision to see the Western Cape take the lead countrywide to oppose xenophobia and fight corruption. Linking up with Braam Hanekom, who had started PASSOP (People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty) and other refugee stakeholders, we attempted to address the situation at the Home Affairs offices. At that time, the Department of Home Affairs processed only 20 asylum applications daily, while 600 to 2,000 refugees camped outside the department in a queue. We were initially quite frustrated by the reaction to our suggestions to bring down the backlog of asylum seekers - a situation caused by corruption and inefficiency. We were thankful when the national head office sent Mr. Dean Pillay to come and assist with this task. How we rejoiced when corruption at the expense of the refugees seemed to have been given a massive blow within a matter of months. A Zimbabwean Refugee Dying of Starvation In the Weekend Argus of November 3, 2007 it was reported that a Zimbabwean refugee died of starvation on the streets of the Cape Town CBD. The death of Adonis Musati ignited a flood of goodwill. Gahlia Brogneri, an Italian-background Christian, became God’s instrument to launch the Adonis Musati Project. Through this endeavour, she started to care for the refugees outside the Foreshore premises of the Department of Home Affairs’in a holistic way. (We had been feeding foreigners there in the preceding months once a week, attempting to get local churches involved. In our case, we had little success in getting other City fellowships interested.) Gahlia got many volunteers involved in the Adonis Musati Project, also assisting the refugees in finding accommodation and employment. They also helped to get people on training courses that included security and fishing. Corruption Flares Up Again The satisfaction to see corruption all but stamped out at the Cape Town Home Affairs offices was short-lived and replaced by sadness and anger. Dean Pillay had hardly turned his back, leaving Home Affairs to take up a vocational position outside of government, when corruption flared up once again. Within weeks it was worse than ever before. We battled in vain a few weeks later to try and assist someone to get refugee status. In that case it was the obvious result of corruption at the Nyanga Home Affairs Refugee Centre. I was so sad that things had deteriorated such a lot since March 2008 when we thought that the corruption and the duping of the destitute and hapless refugees at the Home Affairs offices had been stamped out. A Special Spiritual Victory But there were also spiritual victories. One of them happened when I was called in because a refugee lady from Burundi had collapsed at our bead workshop.( On two days a week Rosemarie and her volunteer helpers were running a small workshop to enable a few refugee ladies to put some food on the table of their families.A year prior to this occurrence the lady had been one of my English learners.) I took her to Somerset Hospital where she was admitted and treated for about a week. After her improvement and discharge she was taken to relatives to recuperate. When however some medical backlash occurred, the relative deemed it fit to involve a sangoma, a witchdoctor. Hereafter she became completely insane. She had to be taken to a mental clinic in Stikland in the extreme northern suburbs of the city. From the mental clinic she was transferred to the psychiatric ward at Tygerberg Hospital where she was soon regarded as terminal. Family members started with preparations to take her body to Burundi for the funeral there. We discerned that we now had an extreme case of spiritual warfare. After a day of prayer and fasting we took along Arsene Kamptoe, our All Nations colleague with us. There in in Tygerberg Hospital he led all of us in prayer for divine intervention in the name of Jesus. The terminal patient recovered dramatically as a trophy of God’s grace She not only recovered dramatically as a trophy of God’s grace, but she also returned to the workshop a few weeks later. Volunteers Attacked by Xenophobic South Africans With the 2008 winter approaching, the homeless people living near to the (former) Home Affairs premises on the Cape Town foreshore near to the International Convention Centre did not have adequate shelter. Lili Goldberg, a 16 year-old St Cyprian’s High School Jewish learner and her mother, brought bags full of clothes and shoes to the Home Affairs refugees on May 9, 2008. There the two volunteers of the Adonis Musati Project were suddenly attacked by xenophobic South Africans. Lili was in the back of their 4x4 vehicle, passing clothes and shoes, when a group of ten South African men approached her mother from behind, hitting her. Then they smashed the window, trying to drag Lili through it. She was very badly injured and was subsequently hospitalized for weeks. Mrs Goldberg remained determined however to continue with their humanitarian effort. Xenophobic Mob Violence Spreads Like Wildfire This Cape occurrence turned out to be yet another forerunner of countrywide xenophobic mob violence. Within a matter of days the mob violence had spread countrywide. On Wednesday 21 May, 2008 mayhem also broke out in the Western Cape. Greater carnage was possibly prevented because the police commissioner of the Province had beckoned all stakeholders and station commanders to the police Headquarters in Bishop Lavis Township the previous day, setting up contingency plans. Thousands of Black foreigners were displaced In spite of determined efforts by the police, it took days until the situation calmed down. However, by that time thousands of Black foreigners were displaced. Many of their shops were destroyed and looted by criminal elements and other poor folk who exploited the anarchic situation. We were very sad to hear and read of mob violence and xenophobic behaviour in Masiphumelele and Ocean View, where our All Nations colleagues had been serving. Philoxenia and Compassion Ushered in On Friday 23 May 2008, I wrote in an email to our prayer friends: ‘This is not only a matter for political activists. May I suggest that we … protest in the best sense of the Latin root word: pro testare - to make a positive statement. Let us replace xenophobia with xenophilia (The word should have been philoxenia, but still meaning love for strangers. This is the word that has usually been translated in the ‘New Testament’ with hospitality.) . At this time our CPx colleague Timothy Dokyong from Nigeria, who lived in Masiphumelele, was inundated with phone calls from concerned colleagues. He felt quite safe there as South African 'Blacks' from the neighbourhood rallied around him, promising to protect him. Soon he joined a number of Malawian and Zimbabwians from Masiphumelele in the team house in the nearby 'White' suburb of Capri. There they engaged in intensive intercession for ‘Masi’ and all the people living there. Churches Respond with Compassion Was all this the forerunner of the revival for which believers have been waiting for years? This seemed very much the case when the Lord gave Rosemarie a picture at our home church in our Discipling House on Saturday evening, May 24, 2008. (Some of the congregants were refugees from African countries). She saw a big clay jar with a handle that was being filled with the tears of the refugees. Adjacent to the jar there was dry arid earth with many cracks. Thereafter a big hand poured out the content of the jar on the dry earth. The moisture coming from the jar – the many tears that had been flowing all over our country, including those of the refugees among us, filled the cracks. Grass started sprouting all around the area. Churches and mosques opened their doors to displaced Africans Within a matter of hours the vision became alive when reports came in of South Africans donating food, clothing and blankets. Churches and mosques were opening their doors to displaced Africans. The government dropped their resistance to accommodate the refugees in mass quarters temporarily. Many of the displaced folk were taken to the Youngsfield military camp in Wynberg, to mass beach camps erected at Blue Waters (near to Strandfontein), at Silwerstroom (near to Atlantis) and to a camp apiece at Soetwater (near to Cape Point) and Harmony Park. Big marquees were erected at these sites to deal with the emergency. Personally all this was very special to us. In 2006 and 2007, when many tears were wetting our pillows, the Lord had been comforting us with Isaiah 43:18 and 19. Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will sprout … I will even make … rivers in the desert. There had been various prophecies for the continent over the years. (Prophecies might still sound strange to some people in our day and age. I include a few of these prophecies in the appendix.) The Country Brought to its Knees Satan may however have overstepped once again. The xenophobic mob violence brought the country to its knees. A call for prayer was issued, requesting all denominations and Christian organisations to pray on Sunday, 25 May, 2008 and in the weeks to follow, for the ethnic violence to stop. A suggestion was added to these prayers, intercession for the near-genocide situation in the neighbouring country of Zimbabwe. There was now a groundswell of goodwill towards displaced foreigners In the next few days we were elated to hear of compassionate action by Christians, churches and individuals, indicating that there was now a groundswell of goodwill towards the displaced foreigners all around the country. At a Consultation of Christian Churches planning meeting on 31 May 2008 in Parow, it was exciting to hear how various concerned pastors enquired how they could join in compassionate action on behalf of the displaced foreigners. Among those attending the meeting there was Anglican Catholic Bishop Alan Kenyon, who would play a special role in countering xenophobia in subsequent years. Stolen Goods Returned The township Masiphumelele was a big exception countrywide, not caught up in and affected by xenophobic mass hysteria. The spade work of Christian mediators and workers since August 2006, along with the prayers of believers in the All Nations International team house in Capri, was bearing fruit. When signs of trouble began there, many foreigners started leaving the township. Pastor Mzuvukile Nikelo, a physically small pastor, decided to tie a loudspeaker to his car. Driving up and down the streets he announced: ‘As leaders of the community we have made a clear decision. We are not attacking anyone... If you see people leaving, don’t make any bad remarks and don’t intimidate them. Let them go in peace.’ The situation in Masiphumelele became national news when stolen goods were returned to the owners. The Xhosa-speakers drafted a declaration, asking for forgiveness, inviting their fellow Africans to return to the township. Youth Day Celebrations address Xenophobia Every year on the 16th of June, which is a public holiday, South Africans celebrate what the youth of 1976 had done for the educational system of our country. The YWAM-related Beautiful Gate workers in Philippi and Lower Crossroads decided to have their celebrations in a church hall at Philippi, where they had drama, music and dance performances, along with poetry recitals. Their focus on that day was on issues that are faced by young people at schools and in their communities. Their skits addressed the violence at schools, as well as the widespread xenophobia. Another chance to be given to people such as ex-convicts They hoped to teach the community folk to give people such as ex-convicts who have changed, another chance. These ex-convicts would then be required to practise restitution in the communities. The aim was to get the youth talking about these issues and look for possible solutions, also educating them on the effects these matters have on the next generation. Young people from different communities (Philippi, Lower Crossroads, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and Crossroads) congregated, enjoying themselves, without the influence of alcohol and drugs. Parents and kids witnessed and appreciated the performances. The CCC Response Our relationship to Ds. Richard Verreyne, a FFA board member, gave us a close link to the CCC (Consultation of Christian Churches) executive. The CCC Leaders’ Forum released a statement to the press regarding the xenophobia and violence on behalf of the Church in the Western Cape. The Leaders Forum called on all Christians to pray for the situation in our city and country. All Christians were urged to pray for two minutes every day at noon for peace in the communities; that all people’s dignity might be respected and restored. Some believers put a reminder into their cellphones to this effect. A concrete result of the xenophobia issue was the formation of a think tank to work at a plan and set up structures by which the combined Church could assist the government. Tim Makamu, a leading pastor of His People Ministries and Barry Isaacs - who had just accepted taking over the coordination of the Transformation network from Graham Power - were the main pivots of this initiative. Along with our own interest and work with foreigners, it was natural that I got involved as well. We decided to investigate how the Church could supply capacity and integrity which the government lacked. A plan was devised to give a menu to communities where pastors and community workers would network in 18 areas where we felt that the Church could give valuable assistance. This was however subsequently only implemented in the Helderberg area. Modern Jihad Methods At an Islamic conference in Abuja, Nigeria, a new strategy was set out to bring Africa into the Islamic fold. Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa would be targeted as strategic countries in the West, East and South of the African continent. Somalians brought a new version of jihad into play in 2009. Pirates extorted millions of dollars as ransom from ships with valuable cargo on board that were sailing past their coastline. The revenue was partly used for Islamic expansion in Kenya, e.g. for the building of mosques in that country. In Nigeria churches were burned and strife was stirred up between Christians and Muslims. Around the centrally situated city Jos, retaliation of a few Christians played into the hands of Islamists, leading to the killing of hundreds of Christians. At the Cape Islam expanded quietly, e.g. through the use of petrodollars and the flexing of economic muscles. In the Gatesville-Rylands residential area the Muslims already boasted the biggest mosque at the Cape and a massive Islamic educational institution. The minute Christian presence took a big blow when the former manse of the Indian Reformed Church was bought up by Muslims. On another page, Somalians bought up shops, also penetrating into the CBD of the metropolis. Xenophobia Increasing Again On Wednesday 19 May 2010 Rosemarie came back from their bead jewellery workshop, sharing that her African ladies said almost in unison that xenophobia is increasing once again. They had even been harassed in trains and threatened. They would be attacked and killed after the Football World Cup. This was scary stuff. I was reminded how the bishop of Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu warned the government of the day in vain of the anger amongst the youth in 1976. The warning was not heeded at that time, leading subsequently to the tragic Soweto massacre of learners. I immediately took the message to the opening of the Global Day of Prayer Conference in the Cape Town Convention Centre on 19 May 2010, sharing it with Barry Isaacs. I was thankful to hear that a TV report mentioned that these threats were also uttered in other parts of the country. In answer to prayer and due to the alert and persistent actions of Anglican Catholic Bishop Alan Kenyon, the threat could be defused. He got the task force of President Zuma involved. Foreigners supplied the number plates of three cars that disseminated inciting pamphlets in the 'Black' townships. These cars could be tracked to addresses in Grassy Park. This was possibly another PAGAD-related attempt to destabilize the country towards preparing the soil for an Islamic jihad. New Outreach to Somalians The biggest ministry challenge for us was always the outreach to Somalians of whom the biggest concentration in our country is in the suburb Bellville. In 2010 there were an estimated 20,000 Somalians. The African Islamic Propagation Centre is also situated in Bellville near to the station in the same complex. Aware that a breakthrough among the Somalians in Bellville could make an international impact with a snowball effect, we were always careful not to rush things. To get the Christians in Bellville towards some semblance of unity proved to be quite a challenge, just as it remained a big problem to see something similar happening in the City Bowl. In 2009 Emeritus Professor Pieter Els held a seminar on Muslim Evangelism at the DRC Church of Bellville West where his son Johan was a minister, at which I was invited to share. This led in turn to a teaching series on Muslim Evangelism in conjunction with Metro Evangelical Services (MES), led by his daughter-in-law Ilse. We included practical outreach on the last Friday of every month into the area that had almost completely become Somalian residentially and in other ways. Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout of the local Wynstok congregation joined with a few congregants. This resulted in an outreach by the fellowship to the Somali community, using soccer as a tool to forge friendships and a closer relationship with the Wynstok fellowship. That congregation retained their love and interest in the Somalians ever since. In 2017 a link to new Operation Mobilization missionaries could be forged in a networking capacity. From 2019, Tertius and various church members started joining us for outreach on many a Thursday at the Methodist Church on Green Market Square, praying there with many a visitor. We had to terminate this outreach in 2020 when hundreds of refugees came they under false pretences, hoping that the UN would help to get them to a third country like Canada or Australia. A Church With a Love for Muslims Tertius Bezuidenhout was still a teenager in the 1980s when his uncle, Dr Kosie Booysen??, a medical doctor, returned from his missionary engagement in Zimbabwe. They started praying together for the Muslims in Northern Mozambique. Tertius went to Stellenbosch University for theological studies in 1992, where Johan Els, the son of Professor Pieter Els, was a student colleague. In the mid 1990s Tertius was a speaker at the same occasion where Johaar Viljoen, a converted imam, shared his testimony. They got befriended after which Viljoen impacted Tertius greatly. The cataclysmic event of September the eleventh, 2001 impacted this many people immensely for an interest in Muslims. This included many Afrikaners in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town. After finishing his studies, Tertius served with the Kenridge DRC congregation. Thereafter he started an independent Afrikaans congregation Die Wynstok in Bellville with other believers in 2002. Subsequently he became the pastor. Soon thereafter, a team from this church went to Afghanistan for the first of two prayerful outreaches, with Johaar Viljoen as a member of the team. Soon thereafter a team also went to Pakistan. Subsequently teams would go to Libya, Egypt and Algeria. Prayer was the pivot of all efforts, carried by the fellowship. One day in May 2008, Tertius was asked to lead prayer for the city. As he prepared and meditated the Holy Spirit imprinted the foreigners in our gates on his heart. The very next day a violent xenophobic outbreak erupted in the country against all foreigners. The fellowship understood that they also had to get involved locally, apart from praying for the Muslim world. (By this time there were already many shops in Bellville have been taken over by Somali's and Ethiopians. Die Wynstok congregation members went from shop to shop to offer their support and assistance. They also started organising soccer games against Somalians. Church members also started learning their language.) The African Propagation Centre near to the Bellville station hereafter offered stiff resistance to all their outreach efforts. A prayer room has also been operating for a number of years as one of the powerful tools. When the first new Somali believers needed a venue for their discipling, Die Wynstok afforded practical assistance to missionary workers. In recent years congregants starting giving English lessons to Somali women and children in loving outreach to share God's love. Contrition and Remorse At the moving opening ceremony of the Global Day of Prayer Conference on Wednesday 19 May, 2010 the South African flag was nailed to a big cross in a prophetic act. Prior to this, three leaders prayed in repentance and confession respectively on behalf of the Khoi, indigenous people of South Africa, the 'Black' tribes that arrived later in Southern Africa and for the Afrikaners and the other nations who arrived subsequently. The whole evening was bathed in an atmosphere of contrition and remorse. Seed was sown for the spiritual renewal of the African continent, that it might become a light to the nations. A second theme running through the drama on the stage was a fire - revival fire to be lit. Objection to the Presence of Foreigners In due course I took a leading role within the group of those working on behalf of the refugees - more or less by default - along with Braam Hanekom of PASSOP. When local traders objected to the number of foreigners at the new premises in Maitland, I took Ps. Barry Isaacs along, to speak to the main complainant. We managed to negotiate some temporary reprieve. Sadly, some of the agents who started assisting refugees, became corrupt themselves. Our presence was a thron in the flesh, distributing tracts and refreshments. Because we continued to monitor corruption at the Refugee Centre until 2011, we were ultimately prohibited to be on the premises to serve refugees with refreshments at the Home Affairs premises in Maitland. We should have fought that ruling. In no time corruption was back in force, soon worse than before. Devil's Peak to be Renamed? At the beginning of 2011 the possible renaming of 'Devil's Peak' came to the fore once again. With municipal elections due later that year, we did not want the issue to become embroiled in the run-up to the elections. On election day 2011 our small group, Pastor Barry Isaacs, Advocate Murray and I deliberated with Marcel Durler and Maditshaba Moloko who have been joining this group in the meantime. We asked Ps. Barry Isaacs to take the matter to the executive of the Religious Forum for their input. The provincial Heritage Council was initially quite favourable. (We had roped in an academic to provide more research. Dr Ashley Lillie, a historian with a “heritage” perspective, concurred that the peak had previous names like Windberg and Doves’ Peak.) The matter turned out to be quite an intricate issue when Table Mountain was declared one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We knew by then that satanists had vested interests in the retention of the name. The prayer and waiting continued for the renaming of the peak to become a reality. 16. Ministering to Muslims In this chapter we will briefly go back in history, highlighting a few things of what we have shared about ministry to Jews and Muslims at the end of the 20th century. In the mid-1980s, the German missionary Walter Gschwandtner organized believers who prayed in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap, a Muslim dominated suburb of Cape Town just below Signal Hill. The knowledge of these Bo-Kaap prayer meetings got almost lost when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya. Attempting to Turn the Clock Back At the Cape Town Baptist Church a few believers, including Hendrina van der Merwe, an Afrikaner intercessor, prayed at the church when outreach groups would go to the nearby Muslim areas of Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. Turning the clock back in those areas that had become Islamic was now the goal. They prayed that these communities would become vibrant ones for Christ, even more than before. (Nominal lukewarm Christianity was customary there! Prayer walks in Bo-Kaap resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in mid-1992 in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer from 73 Wale Street. The prayer meetings focused on reversing the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap. Picture of some of the Group around 1994: The ladies from left to right, Rosemarie, Cecilia Abrahams and her daughter Mercia, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids. Floyd Daniels and I standing at the back Hendrina van der Merwe suggested that we could start a home church in Bo-Kaap if we would have four males attending. This became a prayer target. From the beginning, Floyd Daniels had been attending faithfully, coming from Kenilworth by train. When Sybrand de Swardt, a member of the Cape Town Baptist Church joined us, we were almost there. But then Floyd was tragically injured seriously because of a cycling accident in the mountain, from which he never recovered. We also started a monthly prayer meeting for the Middle East in our home in Tamboerskloof. This evolved from the fortnightly event in Bo-Kaap. The vision grew to see Jews and Muslims reconciled around the person of Jesus Christ. It received fresh nourishment when we started praying on Signal Hill from September 1998 on every alternate Saturday morning at 6 a.m. (Signal Hill is situated just above three residential areas that are associated closely with the three Abrahamic religions. Tamboerskloof is a predominantly ‘Christian’ suburb, Bo-Kaap is still a vibrant Muslim bastion and the bulk of Jews in Cape Town live in Sea Point.) At one of these prayer meetings, Achmed Kariem suggested that we should pray on Fridays at lunch time when the Muslims have their main weekly event in their mosques. Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings In September 1992, we started with lunch time prayer every Friday in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street near Heritage Square. In addition to prayers for a spiritual breakthrough in the area, these lunch time prayer meetings would become a foundation and a catalyst of many blessed ministries in the following years, notably the hospital ministry for which it was a catalyst. A few years later when the building was sold, the weekly event switched to the Koffiekamer at 108 Bree Street. (That venue was used by Straatwerk for their ministry over the weekends to the homeless, street children, and to certain night clubs.) Prayer Groups Across the Peninsula? The vision to get prayer groups formed all over the Peninsula, so that the spiritual eyes of Muslims might be opened to Jesus as the Saviour of the World and as the Son of God, did not take off. Here and there a prayer group started, but petered out again. Two prayer groups, however, operated perseveringly in Plumstead and Muizenberg for a few years. The prayer group in the Abrahams' home in Bo-Kaap's Wale Street continued functioning over many years. This one later moved to the home of Daphne Davids, a faithful participant since the pristine beginnings. She lived diagonally across the road of the Abrahams' home. The Friday lunch hour prayer meetings persevered in the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk until July 2007, when it was relocated to our Discipling House in Mowbray and moved to another day of the week. At present they are held every Tuesday morning, continuing remotely during the lockdown of 2020, and resumed in 2022. Slaughtering of Sheep in Bo‑Kaap In our outreach to Cape Muslims it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. During our missionary orientation in Bulstrode in England we were required to read how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea until he found the peace child as a cultural 'key' to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines to get a 'key' to the hearts of Cape Muslims. Muslims around the world commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at their Eid-ul Adha celebration. This made me realize how near the three world religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - actually are to each other. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is central to all three faiths, albeit that Muslims and Jews generally have hardly discerned the Father heart of God who did not spare his Son, allowing Him to die like a criminal. One day our Bo-Kaap Muslim friends invited us as a family to the festivities around the Korban, the slaughtering of sheep. Attending initially with some trepidation and prejudice, the occasion became such a special blessing to my wife and me. The Lord gave us a key to the hearts of Cape Muslims Five sheep were slaughtered that Sunday afternoon. Vividly we saw how one sheep after the other went almost voluntarily to be killed. At the sight of the sheep being led to be slaughtered, Rosemarie and I looked at each other, immediately knowing that the Lord had answered our prayer. He had given us the key to the hearts of Cape Muslims. The ceremony brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learned by heart as a child. It points to the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world – Jesus! Proximity to Biblical Atonement A few minutes later the message was amplified when a little girl came into the kitchen where Rosemarie was talking to the ladies. (I was in the living room with the men, according to prevalent custom). The animal-loving child sought solace from her mother. ‘Why do the innocent sheep have to be slaughtered every year?’ The answer of the mother was special: “You know, my dear, it is either you or the sheep.” Noticing the washing movement as part of the Islamic ritual, we were amazed how the atonement concept was possibly unwittingly passed on in their religion. It was wonderful to discover somewhat later that, according to Jewish oral teaching tradition, Isaac was believed to have carried the firewood for the altar on his shoulder, just like someone would carry a cross. Hereafter I shared in many a church how resurrection faith was birthed in Abraham’s heart. Utilising the Bo-Kaap experience, we also shared the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus to many Muslims who listened eagerly, usually without any objection. (Officially Muslims are not supposed to believe that Jesus died on the Cross, let alone that He died for our sins!) A Breakthrough in the Spiritual Realm The contact I had made with Jan Hanekom of the Hofmeyr Centre and SAAWE in Stellenbosch was quite strategic. Through this unheralded spiritual giant I got linked to the countrywide prayer movement. (Jan Hanekom was preparing prayerfully for entry into Bhutan, a Buddhist stronghold that was completely unknown to believers at that time. He intended to go there as a tent-making missionary, to work there low-key in some secular occupation. Spiritually speaking, Jan Hanekom was honourably wounded in the battle, contracting a mysterious disease. He died tragically as a result – much too young from a human point of view!) A Focus on Muslim Background Believers While I collated testimonies for the booklet Op Soek na Waarheid, I discovered that many new Muslim background believers (MBBs) had reverted to Islam due to deficient discipling and follow-up. This had notably been the case at the campaign of Reinhard Bonnke in Valhalla Park in 1984. Rosemarie and I decided that the discipling of new Muslim background believers should be a focus of our ministry. It was furthermore our vision to attempt to initiate or start small groups of MBBs all over the Peninsula in conjunction with other missionary colleagues. Already after a few months at the Cape I was the chauffeur for a Muslim background group of believers in Southfield, networking with Alain and Nicole Ravelo-Hoërson of The Evangelism Alliance Mission (TEAM) once a month on a Friday evening. Around the same time we also started with a group around Alec Patel from the remnant of the Moravian Hill congregation of District Six and Azisa Engelbrecht from the Fountain of Joy Assemblies of Joy fellowship in Woodstock. Salama and Colin Temmers from the Calvinist Church soon joined us after they had been coming to our Friday lunch hour prayer times. A special addition was Ayesha Hunter, who had been miraculously healed. (We had originally met her in the course of our Groote Schuur Hospital outreach as a terminal cancer patient.) An Eye Opener We started the first cell group consisting of male Muslim background believers in Hanover Park in mid-1993 with Adiel Adams of nearby Crawford as a pivot. There we examined well-known biblical personalities that also figure in the Qur’an. This Bible Study with the Hanover Park group was an eye opener for me to the real nature of the Qur’an, notably when I discovered how pointers to the Cross were consistently omitted in the use of biblical figures, mentioned in the prime Islamic book. (The problematic origins of the Islamic sacred book, however, only became completely clear to me when I did an in-depth study of the angel Gabriel a few years later. I could have known or suspected that because the British author Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding under police protection because of his highlighting the nature of Jibril in the novel Satanic Verses. A fatwa by the Iranic despot Ayatollah Khomeini led to unsuccessful assassination attempts on Rushdie). Quite close to the vision of attempting to initiate cells with believers from Muslim background, was the hope to see a drug rehabilitation centre started. Towards this effort I was inspired by the highly successful Bet-el ministry of WEC International in Spain. The theft of our vehicle the same weekend when a con-man, masquerading as a new Muslim background believer, operated in some demonic conspiracy. This gave the ministry a double blow from which we took years to recover. Neither did the Hanover Park MBB cell group resume, nor could we start a rehab centre to impact Cape Islam thereafter. The Battle of the Airwaves Escalates In the meantime, Gill Knaggs, our co-worker from Muizenberg, offered her services to CCFM. Gill had previous experience in commercial scriptwriting. At a meeting on 7 January 1998 we decided to start with a regular programme on CCFM, and use two converts as presenters. On the same day the radio station Voice of the Cape published their intention in the Cape Argus to use a convert from Christianity as one of their presenters. Gill Knaggs was willing and ready to write the scripts for Ayesha Hunter and Salama Temmers, two followers of Jesus with an Islamic upbringing. We started with a weekly programme The Islamic precedent created space for CCFM radio to follow suit - with less fear of PAGAD reprisals for putting Muslim converts on the airwaves. With Ayesha and Salama we soon started with a weekly programme, beginning with the theme the woman of two faces. Gradually many women, some of them Muslims, started responding with phone calls, giving evidence that the radio programmes were making an impact. At a meeting on 7 January 1998 it was decided to start with a regular programme via CCFM, making use of the two converts. Fearless Women Ayesha and Salama were two fearless women in their own right. The Thursday morning Life Issues CCFM women’s programme with the two of them alternating, made a significant impact. (Independently from CCFM, the related station Radio Pulpit, which broadcasts countrywide, also started using a convert from Islam.) Elsa Raine, the CCFM worker responsible for the prayer ministry, faithfully passed on to us all Muslim-related phone calls for follow-up. The impact must have filtered through to PAGAD and other Islamists. Two arson attempts on the radio station bear witness to their fury. Life Issues, the women’s programme on CCFM on a Thursday morning with Muslim background Christians, went from strength to strength. (It was unfortunately discontinued in the second half of 2004 when CCFM restructured their programmes for 24-hour transmission.) In due course Salama Temmers and her husband Colin would become pastoral leaders in the Good Hope Christian Centre, that had become one of the mega churches of the metropolis. The Response to an Attack on Community Radio Stations On 20 August 1998 a white paper was rushed through Parliament which contained a veiled threat: to close down community radio stations. There had previously been an attempt to close down Radio Pulpit, a Christian radio station that broadcasts nationwide. The ill-fated government white paper on public broadcasting - whatever its original intention - triggered a mass march to the houses of Parliament on Wednesday, 2 September, 1998. The perception could not be denied that some atheistic inclined person(s) in government wanted to regulate the airwaves in such a way that the freedom of religious broadcasting would be severely curtailed. Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity for religious freedom Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity, fighting for religious freedom and that its expression would be retained. One of the banners proclaimed 'United we stand'. This was a wry reminder of PAGAD’s main slogan. Wisely, the government dropped their plans. Global Reverberation Gill Knaggs became one of the first students of Media Village that had been started by Graham and Diane Vermooten in Muizenberg, a ministry linked to Youth with a Mission. Her documentary on Robben Island was subsequently used on the ferries to and from the renowned island. The founders set out to train believers for media work and also to tell the stories of God around the Globe. In later years the Media Village DVD would carry the story of the Global Day of Prayer around the world. Impact of Christian Radio Stations The phone-in programmes of Radio CCFM and the sister Afrikaans station, Radio Tygerberg, proved very effective. A number of Muslims, as well as converts and secret believers, phoned. During March 1999 we heard of supernatural visitations. A Muslim woman phoned CCFM radio after she had various visions of Jesus. She had received instructions from the Lord to read portions of the Bible that very clearly related to her life. Soon thereafter, she accepted Christ as her Saviour. A very special result transpired when a young Muslim lady, who had phoned the station in 2003, could be ministered to. She subsequently became a follower of Jesus. Later, the new convert, Fazleen ??. also became one of our co-workers, responding to the calls of Muslim enquirers as Elsa Raine had done so faithfully until she died of cancer. Another special link to our ministry transpired in 2010 when an UWC student got our phone number from CCFM after she had been evicted from her home. We had little hesitation to take her into our home and subsequently into our Displing house. For many years Carol ?? had been phoning CCFM until she become an attendee of the MBB ladies Bible Study group and in 2022 also a resident of Moriah House. 17. Ministry to Jews During a lunchtime prayer meeting of City Bowl ministers in October 1996, I spoke to Messianic Jewish pastor Bruce Rudnick, pastor of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. Subsequently I got to know him better at church meetings on many a Friday evening. Fulfilment of Messianic Prophecies For many centuries the fulfilment of Messianic prophecies was not emphasized in sermons or church teaching. So-called ‘Replacement Theology’ remained in vogue, even in evangelical Christianity. The common belief was that the Church had replaced Israel. This opinion started to change gradually, notably at the Lausanne Consultation of Jewish Evangelism global event here in Cape Town in 2010. Isaiah 19:25 given a boost by the so-called 'Arab Spring' For a long time, Isaiah 19:25 was regarded by some believers as a prophecy of the widespread conversion to Jesus as the Saviour and Messiah in Egypt, (As)syria and Israel in that order. The general interpretation of the prophecy was understood by some believers as the run-up to the reign of our Lord as global ruler for a thousand years. The vision was given a boost by the so-called 'Arab Spring' in North Africa in January 2011, after which thousands of Muslims started to turn their back on Islam, and many a Jew – even among the Orthodox - came to recognise Jesus as Messiah. This also happened increasingly in Israel, notably among those who came from former communist Eastern Bloc countries. Towards Muslim/Jewish Dialogue and Reconciliation For many years our love for the Jews found very limited expression. This changed to some extent from 2004 when we increased our networking with missionary colleagues who ministered to Jews. During 2004 our messianic Jewish missionary colleague Edith Sher organised a prayer breakfast in Sea Point, during which a Cape Muslim background believer also gave his testimony. Lillian James is a long-standing contact and one of our prayer partners. She grew up bilingually in Woodstock among people of different cultures. After she had become a committed follower of Jesus, she got to love both Jews and Muslims. She had been one of the believers who attended our prayer meetings for the Middle East, where we prayed for both groups. Lillian introduced us to Leigh Telli whose husband comes from Muslim background in North Africa. Leigh has a special love for the Jews. This served to confirm our calling of ministering to foreigners and also linking our ministry to Messianic Jewry. Rosemarie and I were encouraged anew to attempt stimulating Jewish dialogue at the Cape. We were ready for another attempt towards facilitating reconciliation under the banner of Jesus, with the aid of Messianic Jews and other followers of Jesus – notably also those coming from Muslim background. More Reconciliation Moves The next step was a seminar on reconciliation on February 19, 2005. In our preparation for the seminar, we worked closely with Leigh Telli. In her contribution she shared about the role of the descendants of Isaac in the last days, and I did the same for those of Ishmael. (Our co-worker Rochelle Malachowski who had been working in Palestine, reported on the ministry of Musalaha in the Middle East.) Subsequently a manual of our two papers was printed, in which some of Leigh’s paintings also featured. Soon hereafter we conducted an open air service in Camps Bay called ‘Shalom Salam’, signifying our intention to reach out to both Jews and Muslims. These efforts became the start of a close friendship between Rosemarie and Leigh Telli, and a strengthening of the ties to Edith Sher. Edith Sher started a weekly radio programme on Sunday afternoon Edith Sher started a weekly radio programme hereafter on Sunday afternoon via CCFM under the auspices of Messiah’s People. (Edith became an important additional source of information for my manuscript Pointers to Jesus, in which I highlight how the Hebrew Scriptures that is commonly called the 'Old Testament', profoundly point to Jesus as the Messiah.) For quite a few years Esther Krüger, an Afrikaner, produced a programme for Jews on Radio Tygerberg called Israel Kaleidoscope, on which Leigh Telli featured frequently. Confrontation With the Holocaust Rosemarie and I had joined All Nations International, led by Floyd and Sally McClung. In one of the sessions Floyd challenged us to ‘tithe’ our ministry time. For years Rosemarie had been battling with the guilt of Germans in respect of Jews. She was deeply convicted, resolving to try and devote a tenth of her ministry time to loving outreach to Jews. This implied quite a challenge for her as a German in the light of the anti-Semitic Nazi history of her nation. Rosemarie was challenged to share the platform with a holocaust survivor. God was not slow in answering her prayer. Soon thereafter, our friend Leigh Telli invited Rosemarie to share the platform with a holocaust survivor. Our involvement with the All Nations International CPx course was a genuine reason for procrastinating the issue. Rosemarie however finally accepted the challenge. Rosemarie and a Polish Holocaust Survivor At a meeting in Durbanville on 31 May 2008, Rosemarie shared the story of her upbringing as a post-World War 11 child in Germany. David, a Polish holocaust survivor, was the other speaker at this occasion. Quite a few Jews present at that occasion were clearly touched. She highlighted the fact that she learned to appreciate Jesus as the scapegoat for our sins. Among other things she said in her talk: ‘… I also stand here this afternoon with great humility. After having listened to David and his enormous sufferings during these horrible years of the Holocaust (and what this caused most probably for the rest of his life) brings myself as a German descendant to a place of utter humility and shame. And yet I want to thank God that He has given me this opportunity to stand here today. For many years I was searching for a way to express my deep feelings of regret, sorrow and shame as a German in respect of what has happened, to Jewish people in general, but even more so towards those who have suffered so much themselves during the Holocaust and those who have lost family and friends in a senseless and cruel way…’ Rosemarie closed with the following remarks: …I also want to ask forgiveness for the Church, whose role should have been to stand up for the Jews in the times of horror, instead of being mainly silent. As for myself, it feels like being insulted myself when anybody says something negative about the Jews. I love them with all my heart and I am glad that I had the opportunity today to speak out what has been in my heart for a long time. God bless you all.’ Hope Springs Eternal  After this event, a Jewish lady asked Rosemarie to come and speak to her group in Sea Point. This took place at a follow up meeting in August 2008. There she, Leigh Telli and Cecilia Burger, a veteran Dutch Reformed church worker among the Jews, were warmly welcomed.      Rosemarie was thereafter invited to share her story at various meetings      Unexpectedly, Rosemarie was thereafter invited to share her story at various meetings with Jews, including one with another Holocaust survivor, to Jewish business people on the 20th of April 2009. The organiser of these events was energetic 85-year old Mirjam Lichtermann, herself a holocaust survivor.  Rosemarie received another invitation to a Jewish home in Claremont on 20 May 2009, and to a meeting in Sea Point the same day. On this occasion, Rosemarie was heavily attacked with depression in the days before these events. She prayed fervently as she felt so completely inadequate. The Lord encouraged her, not only with a word from Matthew 10, that she should not fret about what she should say. She deemed it a special privilege to encourage the Jews with Isaiah 40:1 Comfort ye my people.... For quite a while after these opportunities, things went quiet in respect of Jews. We continued to pray that God would bring natural Jewish contacts on our path. Isaac and Ishmael Reconciled? I was significantly touched at the beginning of 2010 when I was blessed, to comprehend on a deeper level, especially that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, had buried their father together (Genesis 25:9). The evident reconciliation between the two sons of Abraham was probably preceded by confession and remorse. Or was there some reconciling agent involved? (Subsequently I also discovered that Isaac ‘breathed his last and died at a ripe old age, joining his ancestors in death. And his sons, Esau and Jacob, buried him, Genesis 35:29). I started to pray more intensely that a representative body of Christians might express regret and perhaps offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians. Tears Rather Than Laughter? For years I had been examining the history of genuine revivals. I discerned that, as a rule there had been: (a) united prayer across barrier of church and race and (b) genuine remorse, accompanied by tears. These phenomena would help to indicate that a revival had not been hyped up artificially. The first Saturday of October 2010 I stated publicly on Signal Hill the need for tears of remorse, as a possible condition for genuine revival. I was praying that I might also genuinely experience this. (In different places we had been seeing ‘laughing in the Spirit’, notably in the 'Toronto Blessing' movement of the mid-1990s, but the deep remorseful crying to God as I had been reading about, was lacking.) Quite soon thereafter, my prayer in this regard would be answered, publicly and very embarrassingly! Jews First On 11 October, 2010 the Lord ministered to me from Romans 1:16 when we received the Quarterly Bulletin of the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism (LCJE). That edition of the LCJE Bulletin highlighted the legacy of Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus. In the paper that Rosen delivered as part of the Jewish Evangelism track at Lausanne II in Manila in 1989, he highlighted 'Jews first'. In the printed summary of his paper, Rosen proposed 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization as the bringing of the Gospel to the Jew first. The Jew first is God’s blueprint for worldwide evangelisation Using the example of Paul: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Romans 1:16), Moishe Rosen proposed that ‘by not following God’s programme for worldwide evangelisation – that is, beginning with Jerusalem (Israel and the Jews) – we not only develop a bad theology because of weak foundations, but we also develop poor missiological practices.’ I felt personally challenged to get involved with low-key loving outreach to Jews. The very next day, a long-time friend, Brett Viviers, visited me. He was a Messianic Jewish believer, and a former elder at Cape Town Baptist Church. His daughter's prayers for Muslims were instrumental in linking Rosemarie and me up with that fellowship in 1993. I agreed to start Ishmael Isaac Ministries with him, joined by Barauch Mayaan soon thereafter. On the Muslim side, Achmed Kariem joined in our early deliberations. Brett and I did many a prayer drive together in Sea Point. Years later, I would also join Amanda Hattingh and other prayer warriors on the occasional prayer walk in that suburb. Overawed by a Sense of Guilt On October 19, 2010, we received an email from our friend Liz Campbell, with whom we had started prayer meetings for the Middle East in the early 1990s. She shared 'that Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five amazing children are back in Cape Town from Israel.  A quick and sovereign move of God believe me, and worth coming and finding out why! … we have sent this out to not only those who know Baruch and Karen, but also to those we know will be greatly touched by Baruch's ministry.' The meeting with the Maayan family on Saturday afternoon, 23 October, at a private address in Milnerton was a defining moment. Baruch shared his conviction that he was sent to Cape Town a second time. He used the example of Jonah to challenge believers with the message of the Highway from the Cape to Jerusalem. I felt very much embarrassed I felt very much embarrassed there when I broke down in tears uncontrollably. I was completely overawed by a sense of guilt towards Jews, while I felt a deep urge to apologise on behalf of Christians for the fact that our forebears had been side-lining the Jews. My excessive weeping was an answer to my own prayers, but it was nevertheless very embarrassing, especially as many others present followed suit. The 'sea of tears' however knitted our hearts to the Maayan family. The Lord had called them back to be part of a movement to take the Gospel from Cape Town throughout the continent of Africa, and ultimately back to Jerusalem. Replacement Theology Still an Issue! It was very special for Rosemarie and me to attend an event that was linked to the international LCJE Conference on 15 October, 2010. For the first time this was held in Cape Town. People from all over the world who were somehow involved with outreach to Jews attended - including those delegates who specially came for Lausanne III. It was however very much of a shock to us to hear that a few lines in the draft document for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. (Christians have been haughtily suggesting down the centuries without scriptural backing that the Church has replaced Israel as God's special instrument, somehow omitting that we have been merely grafted into the true olive tree Israel (Romans 11:17) On Sunday evening 24 October I received an SMS from our friend Richard Mitchell whether he could come and stay with us for a few days. (We had been working together so closely in the mid and late 1990s in the prayer movement at the Cape and especially in the fight against the PAGAD onslaught and battle against the effort to Islamise the Western Cape, until his departure for the UK in 1999. Richard was also my presenter on the CCFM radio programme 'God changes Lives.') I knew that Richard had been attending Lausanne III, but somehow we could not find a moment to meet each other. Tuesday 26 October 2010 was quite eventful as I took Pastor Richard Mitchell along to Noordhoek where we had a wonderful post-Lausanne report back by Floyd McClung, our leader. He requested me to share as well, knowing that Rosemarie and I attended Connected 2010, the conference specially organized for all those who had not been invited to the main event at the International Convention Centre. Rather spontaneously I shared our concern that a few lines in the draft for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. Soon thereafter I was called to book in an email, a very painful experience indeed. I had taken for granted that our concern would be shared in evangelical circles. The email rattled me quite a lot when I had to discover how deep-seated the effects of Replacement Theology still is among evangelicals. This was even more so when we had to learn that also at the Convention Centre they needed a lot of further deliberation to draft wording which could be included in the final Cape Town Commitment document. The flaw was thankfully corrected in the final revision when it was published in the Cape Town Commitment. The flaw was thankfully corrected in the Cape Town Commitment. Start of the Highway Fellowship On Wednesday afternoon, 27 October 2010, I had a meeting to attempt Jewish-Muslim Reconciliation under the banner of the Lamb with Achmed Kariem and Brett Viviers. Soon thereafter, Baruch Maayan approached Brett Viviers and me. At a meeting in the Company Gardens, Baruch announced that he would start with weekly prayer on Monday evenings at the home of Gay French in Claremont. We agreed to invite a few followers of Jesus from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to a meeting on Saturday 30 November. The 30 November meeting in Sea Point would become the beginning of monthly Highway meetings, during which however the Ishmael element was unintentionally pushed aside. At the end of 2010 we made another attempt at Muslim/Jewish dialogue and reconciliation, an effort to link Messianic Jewish believers and Muslim background believers at the Cape. Soon it was decided to have ‘Highway meetings’ every last Saturday of the month at the Sea Point High School. Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, who had responded obediently to a divine call, to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer, was at this time fairly closely linked to the group. He had also started a fellowship in Parow, where Maditshaba Moloko became a prominent member. She would also become connected to the Maayan family and the Highway fellowship when the family moved to the centrally situated suburb Pinelands. Simple Local Churches on the Route to Jerusalem Obedient to Romans 1:16 and Matthew 28:19 and 20, we attempted to share the Gospel with Muslims and Jews. We prayed that some of these people who would be open to the gospel, might become followers of Jesus. As the new believers had to be discipled, we hoped that ultimately we would possibly still see the one or other enlisted in the planting of simple churches on the route to Jerusalem, the spiritual African Highway from the Cape to Jerusalem, and to the ends of the earth. Rosemarie and I hoped to take this as a focus for the last period of our ministry and service. This was however not easy at all to implement, because we were also leaders of Friends from Abroad, where there was no vision for Isaac/Ishmael reconciliation at that stage. Neither was this the case with our All Nations colleagues. (Things started changing in 2018 when an elderly couple, Bernhard and Erene Schwarz joined our team. The couple that also has a love for Israel. had been asked to leave Sudan by the authoritarian Bashiri regime.) Hope For More Evidence of Jewish- Muslims Reconciliation It was still our firm hope that clear evidence of reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape may send some powerful signals around the globe. In Cape Town we have the special situation where we have sizeable minorities of Muslims and Jews, next to the majority group of Christians. On top of that, we have a heritage and history where representatives of the three Abrahamic religions have lived harmoniously next to each other for decades in places like District Six, Bo-Kaap and Green Point until the 1950s. Of course, at that time no one even remotely thought of the possibility of movements like those that we now have in the Middle East called Lech Lecha and Musalaha, where both Jewish and Arab Christians meet from time to time. (Lech Lecha bring young people from both Jewish and Arab background together. Musalaha is a non-profit organization that works towards reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians based on the Biblical principles of peace, justice, and love. The name Musalaha comes from the Arabic word for 'reconciliation'. Musalaha was founded in 1990.) Run-up to the 2011 Jerusalem Prayer Convocation In mid-2011, Baruch Maayan challenged us at one of our Monday evening meetings to pray about becoming part of a group to attend the annual Jerusalem prayer convocation. On June 27 Baruch, his wife Karen and a few other believers in Claremont prayed fervently that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the Jerusalem convocation. Knowing that our children wanted to sponsor Rosemarie for her 60th birthday in July 2011, so that we could fulfil a secret wish of going to Israel together, I prayed now for confirmation for finances for myself. (Rosemarie had served in a children's home in 1973 after she had been black-listed for entry into South Africa.) The very next day I received a letter from Germany, which informed me that I would receive a small monthly pension, retrospectively from 1 January 2011. I sensed that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for all the funding necessary for the Jerusalem convocation. For Rosemarie it was very special that she could now be a part of the South African delegation. (When she served in a children's home as a volunteer in Israel for a few weeks in the European summer of 1973, their leader had taught from a Bible study during her visit to the Holy Land that nations would in future be going up to Jerusalem.) When we left for Israel for the annual International House of Prayer (IHOP) convocation in Jerusalem in October 2011, we had one special prayer: We did not want to be the same on our return to South Africa. The Lord would clearly answered our prayers in this regard. In the Holy Land At the convocation itself we took a firm decision to spread the word of the Highway of Holiness to our personal contacts. As a group of eleven South African Christians from diverse racial, and geographical backgrounds (Messianic Jewish, ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’, Afrikaner and English-speaking), that was attending the IHOP convocation in Jerusalem, we prayed separately for our country. At the first session we set out issues for praise and prayer. Even before we looked at praise points, the concern came up to pray in remorse and confession for divine forgiveness, because of the biased expressions of certain South African leaders in Church and State regarding Israel. We agreed to disseminate the following lines to our friends through personal emails: We derive from Scripture that since the two sons of Abraham buried their father together, we believe that loving both Muslims and Jews is the biblical position to take for followers of Jesus. We ask God for his favour upon our country and for a change in the official position of our government in favour of a negotiated settlement (not the unilateral one the Palestinians are striving after). An even better suggestion would be if our government could take an independent line, striving to encourage Arabs and Jews to live peacefully next to each other as the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. We praise God for divine intervention and the leadership in racial reconciliation that spared our country a civil war in the 1990s… We note with sadness and remorse that African theologians played such a big role in doctrinal bickering that set the pattern for the disunity of the Church. Concretely, we repent of the resultant side-lining of Jews and the perception and belief of many Christians that the Church is understood to have replaced Israel... In all humility they are enjoined to love Israel and provoke them to a jealousy that could bring them to discover their lost son who was pierced (Zechariah 12:10)... Arabs and Jews in Harmony At the prayer convocation we were blessed to listen to Israeli Arab and Jewish pastors who were meeting each other regularly. In every effort of reconciliation, a price has to be paid. This is the basis of Paul’s challenge to all followers of Jesus, to be reconciled to God and to accept his gift in faith, the death on the cross for our sins. The biggest price of all has already been paid by no less than God himself, who gave his one and only, his unique son to reconcile us to himself. What a surprise it was for Rosemarie and me to hear and see how Orthodox Jews and Arabs were actually living in close proximity in the controversial East Jerusalem. We were sad that many people were still clamouring for this portion of land to become the capital of a Palestinian State and thus perpetuating the strife, instead of praying that the day might be hastened when they would serve the Almighty together as descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. This would of course be the culmination of the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We were challenged concretely towards increased commitment to usher this in through the Highway of Holiness from the Cape to Jerusalem. A video presentation from Singapore mentioned something about a prayer room where intercessors could intercede around the clock. Rosemarie picked this up, sharing with me the vision of getting a prayer room facing Israel at our home. Is This Your Idea, Lord? Because of inclement weather conditions on the first Saturday of December 2011, the prayer warriors met at our home. (They would have gone to Signal Hill.) What an encouragement it was when Baruch Maayan climbed on to the roof above our dining room, where we hoped the prayer room facing Israel would be built. There he anointed the space. A big challenge was the funds for the project, but our faith had grown after so many experiences over the previous decades that God was faithful. We trusted Him to see us through if the prayer room was His confirmed will. Here and there a financial gift came in towards the project, but nothing substantial. We became somewhat unsure whether it was indeed the Lord's commission to have the prayer room built. Or was it just a nice idea? Confirmation of the Project In His faithfulness, the Lord confirmed this, when Rosemarie came out of our dining room door on a beautiful sunny January morning, surprised by a special phenomenon. This was no less than a modern-day variation of the fleece experience of Joshua in the Bible. Above the awning and the area adjacent to it, on the edge of the table on our north-facing balcony, there were rows of drops, whereas the rest of the balcony was completely dry. Because the awning was just below the place where the prayer room would be built, we gladly interpreted this as divine confirmation of the project. A few weeks later, just before the Passover weekend, we had a devout young German medical student visiting us. He worked in one of our townships as an intern. When he heard about the prayer room project, his down to earth question was how we expected to fund it. We did not hesitate to tell him that we expected God to do it. We were however very much surprised, dumb-founded, when the very next day we received an email from Holland. The Dutch HQ of WEC International had received a bequest for the missionary work of the Cloetes in South Africa in 2010, which had just been cleared. The Dutch WEC folk of the Netherlands were not compelled to pass this on to us since we were not WEC missionaries any more. The committee felt however that they should honour the wish of the deceased. We had no qualms to accept the bequest. We were blessed because it more or less covered the bulk of what we would still need for the building of the prayer room. How we rejoiced at this divine intervention and provision! Issues Around our Prayer Room Rosemarie and I did not expect to get the prayer room without some difficulty. That it would become a big nightmare was however not what we wished. We were initially very much blessed when Doug Smetherham, a structural engineer and the husband of our missionary colleague Rochelle, expressed willingness to donate his services towards the project. The preliminary steps would however keep us on edge for months. There were so many delays to get the plans ultimately approved at the city council. And then there was the actual building which ultimately led to an asthmatic condition of Rosemarie because of the dust emitted. The pinnacle of this challenge was a serious mistake made by the Christian builder to whom we had given the task, which was compounded by exceptionally unseasonal heavy rain in February 2013. Our daughter Tabitha and her husband Mike visited us just as Rosemarie and I were praising God while we attempted to address the flooding of our kitchen! We had learnt through experience that praising God in adversity is such a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare. The choice of another builder to complete the job would become another wonderful chapter of God's over-ruling. The testimony of Cecil John, a former gangster, whose Kingdom ministry was the use of his exceptional building skills to empower broken people, had all of us in tears - overawed by the divine work in and through sinful human beings like us! To be inserted: Picture of the Prayer Room In April 2019 Pastor Callie Liew from Singapore came to explore whether Cape Town should have one of seven world prayer towers. It seemed as if things were coming together via the vision in Jerusalem in 2011 which had impacted us. 17. A New Season of Spiritual Warfare At one of our Monday evening prayer times with Pastor Baruch Maayan in Claremont, we heard about the intention of the ANC to commit the country to the ancestors of their founders and past leaders at its centenary celebrations from 6 - 8 January 2012. This led to a season of intensive spiritual warfare in which Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, played a prominent role. He had responded obediently to a divine call to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer. In an email, it was suggested that we cherish and celebrate the Christ-like legacy of ANC founders like John Dube and Albert Luthuli, but in the same email it was also mentioned that we have to oppose the abomination of ancestor worship. The programme for a week of special prayer was prepared by Pastor Eze and a few other prayer leaders. Another Name Change Effort of a Mountain Peak The name change of Devil’s Peak was still high on our prayer agenda. Noting that racial prejudice, discrimination of all sorts, unwitting demonic activity through ancestor worship and freemasonry have been practised in traditional religious rituals, repentance and forgiveness were included in our prayers. Central in all of it was the uplifting of Jesus. 'Jesus, we enthrone you!' was our theme song throughout the week. We invited believers to join us. We prayed that the Unity of the Body of Christ might be visibly demonstrated in the prayer event. 8 Days of Prophetic Prayers Pastor Light Eze called 'the city watchers, gate keepers, prophetic intercessors, and leaders of His people … to seek His face and to take responsibility to prepare the way for an unprecedented outpouring of His grace, His spirit, and His Blessings upon the Cape in 2012.' In an email he listed various goals lie - Releasing Africa into her prophetic destiny in 2012; - Establishing the foundations and spiritual infrastructure to enhance Economic Empowerment among God’s people; - To take a corporate spiritual stand against the Top-TV plan to further destroy morals by launching a 24hr pornography in South Africa in 2012; - To open the gates and welcome our Lord and King into our City, Province and Nation from Cape Town (the tip of Africa, the rainbow city, the feet of Africa and the prophetic muzzle of the revival gun); - To raise an altar of unity unto the Lord to deal with the issue of racial discrimination in Cape Town and South Africa as a whole; - To seek God’s wisdom, strength, guidance and blessings for those in leadership positions in Cape Town, the Western Cape and SA. Pointers to Divine Approval Supernatural things seemed to point to divine approval, such as water coming from the ground next to St George's Cathedral where we were praying - as if it was coming from a well!. This could never have been manipulated. Similarly, water dripping from the lions' mouths at Rhodes Memorial, was very special. Deep remorse was evident at the evening at national parliament for some of the laws promulgated that encouraged sexual immorality. We prayed for a reversal of them. Our prayers at the Green Point Stadium addressed sexual immorality especially, but they included also thanks and praise to the Lord for the victory of 2010 when the Lord so wonderfully answered our prayers regarding human trafficking. (Hundreds of prostitutes had been ‘imported’ for the World Cup. They were hardly used because so many men who came to the event brought their wives or partners along.) The last evening definitely ‘took the cake.’ There on Signal Hill we have never had such a diverse crowd before – one of the best representations of the body of Christ that I had ever experienced in every respect. Very special was the extended session of praying for Israel and for the Jews. Pastor Chris Eden of Bridges for Peace showed us from Scripture where we have faltered as a nation and as the Church. The prayers included repentance for the replacement of Israel by the Church down the ages and for the side-lining of Jews. Pastor Light then invited all persons present with a special link to a nation, to pray and repent on behalf of his/her nation, in its dealing with Israel. Eighteen countries from all continents were represented. Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, a Tswana intercessor, led us in a prayer of blessing Israel. The congregation was then requested to stretch our hands to the north, so to speak in the direction of Israel. At that moment a rainbow was visible around the moon. What a confirmation this was of the divine unction on the ‘apple of His eye!’ A Picture of this Phenomenon? A Bull's Eye in Spiritual Warfare Spiritual warfare at Rhodes Memorial seemed to be a proverbial ‘Bulls Eye’. Our battle had as target the corruption that was associated with the Zuma administration. Advocate Murray Bridgman had been sharing how Devil’s Peak was said to have received its name. (Murray Bridgman had been putting some persevering stalwart research into that process.) We decided subsequently that we would use ‘word of mouth’ as our new strategy to achieve our goal. A Significant Backlash We must have angered the arch enemy at least to some extent. Some of the main Cape evangelical role players experienced the one or other form of attack at the beginning of 2012. It was touch and go or I was eliminated by a heart attack on the night of 30/31 January 2012. This happened a few days before a Transformation Africa mountain peak name change event that was set for Saturday 4 February at Rhodes Memorial. I would have been one of the speakers. Three severe artery blockages should have taken me out but God had fore-stalled this massive attack on my life. A few days prior to this, Beverley Stratis, a good friend and a faithful intercessor, received a vision while she was praying. She saw a dark cloud and a life-threatening vibe of death surrounding me in this vision. That was the cue for her to engage in intense intercession for me. About two weeks later Erika Schmeisser, an intercessor who attended our Saturday evening fellowship with Pastor Baruch Maayan regularly, came up to me to tell me about her special experience. She had heard that I had a heart attack. At that moment she woke up from a massive pain in her chest. Fearing that she was going to die, Erika immediately sensed that this was the experience of someone else who was having this severe pain. This circumstance highlighted Isaiah 53 to me in a special way. Initially it was suspected that I had contracted a ‘slight heart attack’. (The doctor who sent me to hospital for an EKG, was very perplexed that I had been driving there by myself, with the low pulse that I had.) At the angiogram performed on me two days later, it surfaced that I had a complete blockage of a main artery and two blockages on another one. Any one of the two occurrences could have caused death. At Vincent Palotti Hospital the nurses were very surprised that I had no need for tablets for pain in the chest region. Picture of the Angiogram The Gospel message became clear to me as never before, namely how Jesus could bear our sins, ailment and pain vicariously, in our stead. Three stents gave me a new lease of life. Unintentionally, the venue of our Rhodes Memorial prayer would trigger off a train of actions with ramifications on various university campuses as far afield as Oxford in England and Los Angeles in the US in 2015. Prayer Service on Human Rights Day A meeting was held on 15 February 2012 at the CODETA offices at Site C, in the taxi rank of the Cape township Khayelitsha. Mr Mtengwana from CODETA called this meeting 'a historic event that has never been seen at this office and taxi rank.' The occasion was attended by the taxi leaders and over 40 Christian members from CODETA and CATA, the two main Cape taxi operators. Later, the Western Cape taxi industry hosted a prayer service of forgiveness and peace in the taxi industry at the Philippi Stadium on 21 March 2012. The prayer followed a request from the two taxi organisations who asked the Church to host a day of prayer for the taxi industry. They had lodged this request at a reconciliation and repentance prayer meeting organised by Pastor Bongani Mgayi on 5 November 2011. The taxi leaders invited Mr Adriaan Vlok, former Minister of Law and Order under the apartheid government, to address the community. He accepted the invitation and paid for his own flight. He said in his address: 'apartheid was wrong. It was evil. Though I never created it, I fully supported it.' At the stadium, Vlok addressed the crowd: 'apartheid hurt you and I want to say sorry. I am asking for forgiveness.' After he washed the feet of the taxi leaders, various ‘Black’ leaders washed his feet and blessed him. Run-up to the Visit of Pastor Umar Mulinde In search of a Muslim background follower of Jesus and speaker with a love for Israel, Cecilia Burger, the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism coordinator at the Cape, surprisingly invited Umar Mulinde from Uganda, a Muslim background pastor. He was however still very sick indeed. In fact, he had a major operation only ten days before his arrival in Cape Town in August 2012. Pastor Umar Mulinde had miraculously survived an assassination attempt. On Christmas Eve 2011 after a church service, where many Muslims received Jesus as Lord and Saviour, Pastor Umar was on his way to his car when he heard someone calling, pretending to be a congregant, “Pastor, help me!” As he turned around, acid was thrown into his face. He ran back to the church and more acid was thrown onto his back. In unbearable pain, he was rushed to the hospital in Kampala. Due to inadequate medical facilities and further attempts to kill him, Pastor Mulinde was taken to India to receive medical treatment and from there through a spectacular divine sequence of events, Pastor Mulinde landed in the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel. There he received the best treatment he could have enjoyed anywhere in the world. The acid badly burnt the right side of his face and he lost the use of his right eye. Despite his brittle health condition, his schedule at the Cape was filled with many meetings. He was convinced that the Lord wanted him to visit South Africa. (By the time he came here, he had already undergone five major operations.) Grace to Forgive Pastor Mulinde received divine grace to forgive his assailants. His heart’s desire for the Muslims is that they should hear the Gospel and be saved. Coming from a person who had been persecuted for his faith, we were encouraged with the words of Paul to Timothy For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind ( 2 Timothy 1:7). Pastor Mulinde highlighted that believers often keep quiet because of fear, whereas people whose plans are evil, are bold. A silent believer is powerless. The Lord requires prayer and action. While the world is filled with hatred, we as believers must not keep quiet. 'We have to oppose the spirit of Islam, but love the Muslims!' He is Our Peace The South African Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJSA) conference theme with Pastor Umar was taken from Ephesians 2:14, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…” Christ Church in Kenilworth experienced the unique presence of a number of believers. Among the 150 people who attended the two-day conference, there were Messianic Jews and Christians from a Muslim background. The unity was also stressed when a Jewish believer and an ex-Muslim told their stories of how they came to faith in Messiah Jesus. A few days later, a very remarkable meeting took place in our home on Tuesday afternoon 28 August 2012, In the audience of over twenty people more than half of them were Jewish. Pastor Mulinde’s deep love for God’s chosen people and his concern for the safety of the land of Israel became apparent in the course of the afternoon. A Jewish woman with a background in radio broadcasting asked the million-dollar question: “So what led you to become a Christian?” Pastor Mulinde shared how he came to accept Yeshua as his Lord and Messiah. At the end of his message, one of the Christians, Jamie Campbell, felt prompted to pray for Pastor Mulinde. He concluded his prayer with the words “...in the Name of Jesus the Messiah”. What was especially striking to the people listening to the story of Pastor Mulinde at the different venues, was that this man who clearly bore the marks of someone who had suffered greatly for his faith, also stood with Israel and the Jewish people. Persevering Hope I continued to hope and pray perseveringly that Church leaders would get on board against our own government's anti-Israel stance. I wrote an email to pastoral colleagues with the following content after the visit by Pastor Umar Mulinde where he had shared how the Church in Uganda opposed efforts to introduce Sharia Law in their country: Dear Pastoral Colleagues, At the City Bowl ministers' fraternal this week, one of the colleagues brought up the concern that a Cabinet minister has recently presented a government view that is in all likelihood only supported by a small minority of the population. The tragedy is that the anti-Israel position our country has taken, may take us towards an economic precipice. It is probably no co-incidence that the view expressed on 14 August was followed by the Lonmin mine disaster two days later which brought the currency decline and the unprecedented rise in the price of petrol and a string of mine strikes in its train. (This is definitely not the first time that some form of divine wrath followed the 'cursing' of the apple of God's eye (Compare Genesis 12:3). The brother colleague expressed his concern at the ministers' fraternal that the Church is so quiet. In recent weeks Pastor Umar Mulinde of Uganda encouraged us with the example in their country when a minority of the population succeeded to get a proposal for Shariah Law onto their statute books. The Church stood up in united opposition to that move. The question is: Must we wait until similar moves also happen here? The point is that there are many a precedent in Africa where countries went into serious economic decline after turning against Israel in recent decades (DR Congo (Zaire), Malawi…) Other efforts to get the local churches of the Cape Town City Bowl to join in concerted action, also floundered. Although the Lord had already comforted me at the end of 2011 on this score that unless he builds the house, I would toil in vain, I was nevertheless disappointed when there still seemed to come no change in this regard. Now, well over eight years later, nothing has changed substantially, but we keep our eyes on the Lord. Isn't nothing impossible for Him? A New Version of Huguenots? In the early 1990s gangsters and prostitutes started making Woodstock and Salt River hotspots of crime. The influx of ‘Black’ African refugees into these suburbs turned the situation around to quite an extent. Because of other reasons however, these new residents were not valued. The flood of refugees, many of whom came to the Republic of South Africa because of economic reasons, caused xenophobia. South African ‘Blacks’ saw the refugees as a threat and competition to the already tight employment market. This unfortunately drove some of the expatriates to the lucrative drug trade. Criminals were soon on hand to take control. In contrast to that, the Cape Town Baptist Church became a model for other congregations. They not only took care of foreigners, but were also being blessed by them in what can be described as a 21st century version of the French Huguenots. The intensive Friday night prayer meetings, many of which turned into all night intercessions until Saturday, especially by those who came from the Congo region, was apt to bless the city with spiritual renewal. Sadly, competitive rivalry and materialism linked to prosperity theology, diminished much of this positive effect. A Biblical Paradigm A biblical paradigm could be the attitude of our Lord to Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-11). When everybody looked down upon the small man, in a double sense, Jesus looked up, showing respect and displaying the opposite spirit of his compatriots. He gave Zaccheus dignity, by enjoying a meal with the notorious traitor. Jesus not only allowed despised people to serve him, but he even allowed socially repugnant people like lepers and prostitutes to touch and anoint him! I took liberty to suggest that Church leaders everywhere, also to evangelicals after September 11, 2001, should use ISLAM as an acronym: I Shall Love All Muslims. Having experienced first-hand how powerfully the principle operated both in the wake of the St James Church massacre of July 1993 and the PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) scourge of August 1996 to November 2000, South Africa could show the way. Wherever I had the chance, I suggested that a significant expression of regret by Church leaders in respect of the omission and neglect towards Muslims and Jews regarding the Gospel could play a special role. Ongoing Xenophobia Rosemarie and her assistants continued interacting with the refugee ladies at the beadwork workshop, where FFA helped many of them to provide some semblance of a livelihood. During our outreach we ministered to many a trader. There we were often reminded, quite tragically, of the ongoing xenophobia. What made us very sad was that this also happened at government institutions, notably at the Department of Home Affairs. The hassling and rudeness that people were experiencing at the refugee department, were blatantly xenophobic. Even we as stakeholders had to bear the brunt of the sheer rudeness and bad manners of officials. During 2012 we witnessed how our hard work of the past was being eroded. The government seemed determined to close the facilities for asylum seekers and refugees in Cape Town. When stakeholder colleagues took the government to court successfully, the response was new hassling of the foreigners whom we tried to assist. After advocacy on their behalf, networking where possible with other role players, the closure date of the office was changed to three months and still later to six months. Then Home Affairs brought a new xenophobic stipulation. Those refugees who entered the country through other centres like Johannesburg or Durban, even though they had been in Cape Town for years, were required to go there every month for the extension of their permits. Many of them would hereafter rather risk illegality than going to such expense that they could ill afford. This only had the result that corruption could thrive even more. At a saga at the end of the decade hundreds of refugees came to the city even from places far away. Crooks misled them in 2020, creating the hope that the United Nations would assist them to get to a third country. Their extended sojourn in the Methodist Church on Green Market Square and its surrounds bedevilled much of the sympathy there had been left for their lot among South Africans. Spiritual Contributions of Laiety South Africa is no exception when it comes to doubtful Church practices that are far removed from biblical teaching. Thus hierarchy came into the Church, possibly via Judaism. (The high priest was at the top of the echelon.) The most notable emulation followed in the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope, Cardinals and Archbishops at the top of the ladder. However, although servant leadership was clearly taught and practised by our Lord, a hierarchical set-up is still very common, and not only in denominations which are structured this way. Small congregations that are not linked to a denomination, often have a (senior) pastor who leads proceedings all too often prescriptively and domineeringly. Where things are done more biblically, the notion that normal, so-called lay church members should also have substantial contributing input, is not widely found at all. In September 2012 Maditshaba Moloko, one of our friends, felt charged by the Lord during her time of devotion 'to gather His people so He can speak to them, to gather the five-fold Ministers in the City so that He can make known to them His plans for the Church and city, country, continent and Israel through some of His sons and daughters.' The result was a special conference organised on fairly short notice in the Good Hope Centre on 10 and 11 December. Another Attempt to impact Cape Judaism The visit of Pastor Mulinde in August 2012 opened up significant contact with Jews at the Cape. On Wednesday evening 31 October 2012, Camps Bay High School was the venue of yet another significant event, namely an attempt to counter the false information spread by the media about Israel. This event coincided with an announcement by the ANC leadership to support the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) programme directed at Israel. At a conference on racism in Durban in September 2001, at which Israel was vilified and side-lined, the BDS started as a movement to isolate Israel and the Jews. The dedication of the Western Cape to God on the Grand Parade at this time, led by Pastor Light Eze from Nigeria, was a united act of faith by the body of Christ in the province by which we expressed our total dependence on God. ‘By this act, we are bringing our land, the people, the resources and all elements of creation in the Western Cape and South Africa to the Lordship of Jesus Christ ... It’s a united declaration by the body of Christ that we will serve no other gods!’ On Signal Hill on 12 December 2012 at 12 noon seven of us interceded for Bo-Kaap and the Jewish communities of Cape Town. We also prayed for these communities. ... We asked the Lord to forgive us for the damage done in the past and …that Cape Town would truly be that Gateway of LIGHT AND LIFE, FROM THE CAPE TO JERUSALEM. We prayed for God's LOVE to be released and the power of God to be experienced. A Role for the Church in Corporate Restitution? A group of believers met in Goodwood for a follow-up and evaluation of a conference at the Drill Hall in December 2012 around the five R's (Repentance, Reconciliation, Restoration, Restitution, Revival) with restitution at its core. The intention was also to get some unified action started by the Body of Christ. In a response to notes by Hilary-Jane Solomons, the following lines were written after one of the meetings. (It was quite exciting to hear of biblical research around Sabah and Ramah as the possible ancestors of the first nation of South Africa, the Khoisan): Confession by the Body of Christ for the gradual increase in the first A.D. centuries of anti-Semitism of non-Jewish background Christian believers and … that the Church replaced Israel. General global confession is also needed for the subsequent side-lining of Israel and Jews (notably by the decrees of Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century) and for the general neglect of the Tenach ('OT') as second-rate in respect of the 'New Testament' by the Body of Christ at large. I believe that a possible subsequent return of the Body of Christ to the Torah in a non-legalist and loving way and/or giving prominence to it could be something which the Father will honour in a big way…. ​ The initiative petered out to some extent, although the movement for church-led restitution, started by Dr. Charles Robertson and Pastor Martin Heuvel, prodded on perseveringly. 18 . Correctives in Church Practice One of the necessary correctives of South African History is the role of the Church in the apartheid era. While it is true that the mainline churches were more often than not guilty through complacency, fear and indifference, there is a side that has generally been ignored. In Gateway News of 31 August 2012, Pastor Bongani Mgayi made an attempt to fill that void. He highlights the fact in that article that the accounts of history that we have in the Gospels are accounts by simple men who had no status. An Addition to Recorded History The academics, historians and authors of the time had no interest in keeping an accurate record of the Lord’s work or writing an account of the work of the Church. Pastor Mgayi concludes that 'We must preserve our own history and testimonies, lest we allow the world to write a distorted history for us.' Pastor Mgayi furthermore wrote as follows: My parents have a different account of history. They remember how they as Christians would pray and fast, holding night vigils and meeting illegally in back rooms to intercede in the townships. This happened while the politicians were in jail, in exile and on the streets murdering other ‘Black’ people through necklacing and humiliating old ladies by giving them OMO washing powder to drink as punishment for going to work. My mother remembers vividly how they were praying in a shack in Crossroads when a group of security police stormed in to arrest and beat them. But as they crashed inside, they found the women praying. They took off their hats and quietly slipped out… Pastor Nkomonde, an elder at the Assemblies of God, once told of an account how they as young men were working as assistants to Ps. Nicholas Bhengu. Bhengu would set up tent crusades in townships ... With the tent’s arrival there would be peace and criminals would return their loot, violent men would bring their weapons to the tent and there would be no stone-throwing or tyres burnt in the streets, a kind of peace the Stability Unit of the police could never achieve. Mrs Mene, a retired school principal from Old Crossroads, narrated how they were living in fear, while the ‘witdoeke’, a group led by Johnson Ngxobongwana, were burning down shacks and hacking other black people to death in the streets. She mentions that their only comfort was to meet at churches and pray... The Church was part and parcel of the struggle for freedom in South Africa and does not need to justify its existence to the world and onlookers. The Church must unapologetically assume its position as the bona fide agent of peace, justice and transformation in society. A Caribbean Journalist called to the Cape In April 2005 Wendy Ryan, who hails from the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean and former director of Communications for the Baptist World Alliance, visited Cape Town. During that time Wendy toured the different Living Hope facilities. She observed this work of mercy and heard testimonies of how God was changing lives because of it. She felt a powerful tug in her heart. Compassion filled her soul as she felt God calling her to come to the Cape. As complex and impossible as it seemed, God put all the plans together and,under the commission of Evangeline Ministries (EM), Wendy returned to Cape Town in January 2006. After listening to women in HIV support groups, the Holy Spirit impressed on Wendy that these ladies, mostly poor and under-educated, needed skills to help them earn a living for themselves and their families. With the introduction of anti-retroviral drugs (ARV’s) they were no longer consigned to death. With the blessing of Pastor John Thomas and his wife Avril, Wendy began a sewing programme. Evangeline Ministries (EM) determined that this would be given free of charge to the women from the Living Hope support groups. Once they began, Wendy was challenged to give to the women a skill and also a tool. EM decided to award each graduate from the sewing class a new sewing machine. Over the years EM has given hundreds of sewing machines to graduates. Teach One to Teach Many Each woman received a Bible in the Xhosa language and every class ends with Bible study and prayer. At graduation and at other times, special speakers come in to present the gospel message in the proper cultural context and invite them to accept Christ. Some of the participants are already believers, but others are steeped in traditional ways and EM believes God when He says, 'The entrance of thy word brings light' (Psalm 119:130). An additional focus is now to teach women who will in turn teach others in their communities. Women from another informal settlement, Sweet Home Farms, have already started to put their training to use, showing the women in their HIV and AIDS group and others how to sew. They have inspired Wendy, and the Holy Spirit has used their example to show EM the way forward. 'When we sow the seeds, God gives the harvest!' Prayer Mushrooms as a Key Helen Phillips, a Cape intercessor and radio presenter, had a vision in 2011 of a big ‘mushroom of prayer’ that would impact the country. In a newsletter she described it as follows: All of a sudden in my mind's eye I had an aerial view of Cape Town. I do not know if it was from Table Mountain or if I was just floating in the air but I saw everything so clearly, the buildings, streets, parking spaces and parks.  Then I saw little mushrooms coming up in the streets and in the buildings, little mushrooms coming up everywhere. I was puzzled as mushrooms do not grow in tarmac or concrete and I asked God what this was. He said clearly in my heart that these were the prayer groups in business and they were the true body of Christ as they were prepared to unite over denominational barriers ... He said I must find them, encourage and grow them and start more as they needed support and motivation. I said eagerly, that I would do it of course: 'Yes Lord!' Then the vision changed and I saw a huge mushroom cloud over the city, growing and growing like an atomic cloud, enormous and vibrating with light and sunset colours. I was filled with awe as I could feel the energy and power from this explosion but it was so beautiful. I asked God what this meant and He said this was the power that would come out of the prayer groups, saving our communities, cities and country. Isn't that exciting? We can have a part of the salvation of our world in these end times and it is our united prayers that will do it. There is great power in our united prayer. Cape Pioneers of the Church Planting Movement At the beginning of the new millennium the City Mission discerned that the emphasis on welfare projects and the good name they won through the various ministries, had not been without a cost: their earlier focus on church planting had fallen away and new leadership was not coming through. Charles, the son of the City Mission pioneer Fenner Kadalie, left the more traditional confines starting to work on farms in the Philippi area. His wife Val led a church planting initiative that grew out of their new focus as they searched for men and women of peace. (Defining a church planting movement as a church that has planted at least 100 new churches through three generations of reproduced new fellowships in two years, the movement New Generation and their covenant partners has seen many new fellowships started in various African countries throughout the continent.) In South Africa itself, through the sacrificial ministry of David Broodryk and from here throughout the continent, new multiplying 'simple churches' mushroomed. The term 'home church' became a misnomer in the movement, that was ably led by the dynamic David Watson. The groups met in all sorts of venues in the market place and on different days of the week. The strategy was to pray for a 'person of peace' who already had access to some group of unevangelized people in the community that could be reached, evangelised and later discipled. Young Zimbabwean Servants Munyaradzi Hove was a lone participant from Zimbabwe at the 2008 CPx of All Nations International. He was a member of the small team that Rosemarie and I led for the outreach phase of the CPx. The outreach at Green Market Square would have significant ramifications when a little 'simple church' could be started there. One of the participants, Valentine Chrume, also hailed from Zimbabwe.   Subsequently Valentine married an US national. At the memorial service of Floyd McClung they happened to be on home assignment. Valentine spoke on behalf of many Africans that had been impacted by the great man of God.) Munya personified the vision and philosophy of Friends from Abroad more than anybody else before or after him. After he returned to his home country, initially as a part of teams that he led, he and other All Nations young people led many people in Victoria Falls to faith in Christ. Thereafter, when he returned there permanently in 2010, he gathered the new disciples of our Lord in discipleship groups and simple churches. We were blessed to see also others impacted at the Cape who would return to their home countries or who went to other countries to share the Good News of Christ. Sustainability of new churches remains a big challenge, but a dent has definitely been made via the spreading of the Gospel into areas that had been unreached or unevangelized. CPx Impact on Bo-Kaap After we had finished the teaching section of the Church Planting Experience (CPx) in the first term of 2008, Rosemarie and I were appointed as leaders of a Bo-Kaap 'home church', along with two couples from Cameroon and Nigeria respectively, as well as Munyaradzi Hove from Zimbabwe. Munya became like a son to us. The five CPxers plus the son of the Nigerian couple lived at our Discipling House during this practical part of the course. (During the xenophobic mob violence of that year we gave shelter to a few young Zimbabweans and one from Rwanda in our Discipling House. Munya became our temporary house father.) The following year the Bo-Kaap 'home church' of CPx was accommodated at our home with Munya as the leader when we only had our youngest two children still living with us in Vredehoek. In 2010 Gerda and Lourens Scheepers led the CPx team. This stint there helped them to some extent to follow it up with service in Morocco. From where they were ultimately evicted by a government hostile to Christian missionaries. In Bo-Kaap Gerda blazed a trail with low-key loving service at the Islamic Schotsche Kloof Primary School, where Mignonne Schumann from Friends from Abroad (FFA) would serve learners from 2016 into the present. Diverse CPx Initiatives By the beginning of 2010 Masiphumelele had become a breeding ground for projects that started to impact the continent. Bethany O’Connor, a social worker from the USA, got deeply involved in these families’ lives. She also started a project with pregnant women who considered abandoning or aborting their babies. The Baby Safe Project took off with leaps and bounds. Thereafter care was developed within the context of an adoption programme. The project caught on to such an extent that Christians in Holland started sponsoring the devices that could be placed in different townships. In due course enquiries came from other African countries. The general training programme to teenagers opposed a perception amongst teenagers that the government was funding them to have babies. Teenage pregnancies dropped significantly in Masiphumelele in due course. Cape Town for Jesus Campaigns For decades Reinhard Bonnke was the only evangelist who could draw crowds that could fill a sports stadium. The only significant one at the Cape happened in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010 when Ps. Angus Buchan was invited in an event that would serve as a trial run. Dag Heward-Mills, a Ghanaian pastor based in Accra, approached church leaders in 2015 to have an evangelistic campaign here at the Cape, after one that was scheduled for Kwazulu Natal, had to be cancelled because of wide-spread xenophobic expansion there.  The success of the campaign that was organised in seven weeks, encouraged the 30-odd Cape pastors to attempt repeating the event annually. In 2016 the first Cape Town for Jesus campaign was held in Belhar with a resounding success. At the beginning of 2017, the Athlone Ministers’ Fraternal approached the steering committee of Cape Town for Jesus. From across the Peninsula and from places quite far away from the Athlone Stadium, many believers showed up for the three-day event. On the Sunday afternoon a Xhosa evangelist was the main speaker, with a choir from Khayelitsha in attendance. This was a conscious effort of the organizers to make the event inclusive. That ‘White’ Christians did not join and that some rain fell on two of the nights, did not dampen the spirits. Around 1000 people filled in the slips for a possible follow-up. 19. A Special MBB Impact A phone call from Dr Ernst van der Walt from his retirment abode towards the end of 2012 would thrust me soon into activist mode to organise meetings for Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, a former Muslim from Algeria. Visit of Pastor Youssef Ourahmane This visit would become a blessing to our own ministry after Ps. Tertius Bezuidenhout had told a fairly new Algerian believer at the Cape about a meeting with Pastor Youssef Ourahmane. At this meeting he was challenged to attend a Bible School, which he subsequently did. He graduated at the end of 2016. In due course John, the new name that he adopted, would be leading a home church of MBBs. In February 2013 we had Pastor Youssef Ourahmane sharing at various venues how there had been a revival in that country. Before 1980 the number of born-again followers in Algeria could be counted. In 2006 the Algerian government prohibited evangelism of any kind and ordered several churches to close down. The churches refused to obey the government. They said: 'Build more prisons because we are not going to do what you are ordering!' Since that time, because of the persecution of Christians, the church grew faster than before and the Algerian government came to understand that they would never be able to stamp out the church. (In 2013 there were already over 100, 000 believers in the country. He had personally seen imams, Islamic scholars and terrorists come to faith in Jesus.) Subsequently the Algerian government said to the church 'You must train your pastors!!!' Permission was given for a Bible School to be built. At the various events during the first days of March 2013 that they addressed at the Cape, Pastor Youssef and his wife did not only share these facts, but they also shared with us their ‘secret’, a prayer chain. We used the visit of the couple from Algeria to challenge a few Muslim background followers of our Lord to organise an evening in Mitchell's Plain. A Fasting and Prayer Chain Takes Shape We warmed to the idea of a prayer and fasting chain, deciding to pursue it. The response was fairly positive. On Friday 19 April a few people came to our home to pray and a few more showed interest to participate. An email from Pretoria announcing a National Day of Prayer for 19 May 2013, sparked a country-wide reaction. That was the background of my question to other Cape prayer warriors to join in some way. The reaction was quite swift. Within a few days the Drommedaris Hall of the Good Hope Centre in the City was booked and plans made for a meeting from 2-5 pm on the 19th of May. MBB’s and Messianic Jewish Believers Uniting? Jack Carstens, the leader of the David and Jonathan Foundation, that has been supporting Messianic congregations in Israel substantially for many years, organised a meeting for Messianic Jewish Believers in Brackenfell for 20 April 2013, along with our missionary colleague Cecilia Burger. This was the first time that such an event took place in Cape Town. About forty people attended, including a few MBBs. Two Muslim Foreigners of Bo-Kaap Changed Two Muslim foreigners, one man and a woman who had been living in Bo-Kaap, were significantly changed. Dianne Komani, a believer from Kenya who had been joining us on prayer walks in Bo-Kaap, told us about Alrasheed, who worked in a city restaurant. He was keen to learn English in order to study. A few miracles further on saw him graduating at CPUT with a Masters degree in IT. Ps. John Miller of the City branch of Every Nation, introduced us to the Zimbabwean woman of Bo-Kaap who was suffering from terrible abuse by her husband. Our high hopes that the breakthrough in Bo-Kaap was imminent, did not materialise however. We baptised the young man from Sudan in December 2013, along with another MBB from Senegal, a trader who had been attending our DBS and who also got linked to our All Nations colleagues. The woman, an Indian background Zimbabwean, who had been married to a Somalian, was baptised soon thereafter. (Their unique stories are recorded in the booklet Into the Light, and accessible on our internet blog.) During the next few months, we came into contact with a few other male MBBs, where accommodation for them became a matter to be addressed. At some stage we had three of them living in our home! Things remained fairly slow on the front of the visible interaction of Jewish and Muslim believers. The 2014 visit of Alon Grimberg, a German with Jewish ancestry, who is married to an Arab believer, kept the vision alive. As leader of the Lech Lecha ministry to Jewish and Arab young people in Israel, he was invited by Messianic Testimony to their annual conference. He also spoke at a few churches. Alpha Courses in Cape Town Alpha Courses started in Cape Town in 1993, soon impacting churches across a very broad denominational spectrum. The above-mentioned young man from Algeria was radically changed at the Holy Spirit week-end of one of the Alpha courses organised by the Edge Assemblies of God congregation of Edgemead in July 2004 Annalise Petersen, who is married to Marlon, became the Western Cape Alpha Coordinator in 2013. The couple introduced the Alpha Course in the Drakenstein prison near to the town of Paarl. (This is the prison where Nelson Mandela spent the final part of his imprisonment, before going down the long drive.) The challenge of all prison ministry remains the restorative part. The need for half way houses is massive. There is a dire need for families that are willing to walk a road full of risks with ex-prisoners. In 2019 Marlon Petersen and his family moved into a half-way house for ex-convicts, networking their Gilgal Ministries closely to that of Message Trust, that attempts to give convicted drug addicts and former gangsters a new chance in life. Prayer for Revival Gets a Fillip Some divine guidance seemed to have been happening in 2013, calling various believers into the prayer movement. Marlon Petersen, a Cape intercessor and pastor with roots in the Seventh Day Advent Church reported: 'I started a prayer group on Facebook February 2013 and it grew to over 30000 in the first 2 years. It now has 43100 members.' In mid-2020 these words were completely dwarfed by what God would do in the wake of the corona effect. It is nevertheless good to be reminded of what God has been been doing in the run-up to the longed for big revival, as Marlon narrated: 'It all started while our early morning devotions had challenges with attendance because of shifts ...' Because many wanted to attend but could not, a request was put to Marlon to start a prayer group on Facebook that would give everyone access at any time. Resonance of the big Welsh revival After reading in 2010 Rick Joyner’s book The Power to change the World about the Welsh revival of the early 20th century, Daniel Brink, Cape leader of Jericho Walls, was challenged to see something similar happen in the Cape. When I visited Daniel at his office in mid-2013, we were both rather discouraged about the lack of unity of the Body of Christ everywhere. (However, towards the end of 2011 the Lord had spoken to me anew through the words of Psalm 127. It was not my business to try and forge the unity of believers locally. God would build the house in his own time.) But then something started to happen with Daniel Brink. He noticed that his clock sometimes had ‘doubles’ like 09h09. He decided to make a deal with the Lord. He was willing to pray for revival daily if the Lord would confirm that, by letting him see more of these doubles. Soon after this prayer, he looked at the clock. There it was - 11h11! He decided to be obedient. Subsequently the Jericho Walls prayer movement got a dramatic boost. Also in our ministry there was a sudden push forward. After many years without any visible fruit, seven new believers that had been impacted through our ministry, were baptised in December 2013 and January 2014, all bar one coming from Muslim background. Sabbatical Snippets In the run-up to a three-month sabbatical in 2014, the bulk of which was spent in Europe, we heard about the conversion of male Muslims on a surprising scale at that time. Before our departure we had been involved in the discipling of a gang leader. His conversion, along with that of two other gang leaders, led to a substantial decrease of criminality in the Athlone area. Because email contact was very common by 2014, we were blessed with news snippets from the Cape, such as a prayer march in the Northern suburbs in which our colleagues Dennis and Denise Atkins, our Discipling House parents, were significantly involved. We also heard of an initiative at Pentecost, Durbanville for Jesus (D4J), where believers from different denominations came together for prayer. The few weeks we spent in Holland encouraged us to consider spending the middle months of every year there, to help support an outreach to the Moroccans living in that part of the country. Upon our return from overseas, our excitement was dampened when we heard that the presence of various Muslim background males, some of them new believers, had caused a crisis at our Discipling House. The need for a parallel institution, one for male Muslim background believers (MBBs), seemed to be urgent. Two of these new believers, one from the Ivory Coast and the other from Sudan, were residing at our home. We also heard that our friends in Holland started making plans to send us a container in which they intended sending various artefacts, as they had done at the beginning of the millennium. We were very much blessed when Andre van der Westhuizen, a member of the DRC Bergsig Church in Durbanville took a keen interest. Along with a few members of that congregation, he wanted to assist to bring a Discipling House for males into being. When Almo Bouwer, a member of that congregation, revealed that the Lord had challenged him to consider building something in District Six, the venture was also linked to the mountain peak name change operation that was still an ongoing prayer point. Our intention to try and purchase or build another building turned out to be very premature. While we took it in our stride that the new MBBs came from the drug culture, we knew that this would not be easy. A Forward Push of the Five-Fold Ministry Events to highlight the five-fold ministry kept the prayer for revival alive. (Referring to Ephesians 4:11, the four-fold or five-fold ministry became more prominent in charismatic and Evangelical Christian circles. Five facets of ministry are mentioned in the Word, namely those of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors (or "shepherds") and teachers.) A significant move in the spiritual realm occurred when Maditshaba Moloko, who had been ordained as pastor, was appointed as the co-ordinator for the annual Jerusalem prayer convocaion in 2014. The gifted intercessor and visionary moved with her business into office space on the 20th floor of the Thibault Square building in mid-2015. Soon thereafter, a monthly prayer meeting for Jerusalem started there. These premises would become the venue for many a strategic city-wide meeting, such as one ahead of a big event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow in July 2015. 20. Church Unity Addressed More Intentionally In 2001 Arthur and Michelle Coetzee started the Global Harvest 24/7 International Prayer Network after their involvement at the Sophiatown police station, Johannesburg,. From the 24/7 prayer room there, they started mobilizing prayer in relationship with the community police forum. Global Harvest was founded by this couple that is passionate about raising a canopy of day and night prayer over the nations. Going Global Arthur and Michelle Coetzee developed resources as they organised international prayer gatherings, also facilitating training for intercessors, to train and equip skilful intercessors that will pray effectively. In 2012 the Lord called them to Krugersdorp to mobilize prayer there. From 2004-2020 the couple mobilized 50 days of fasting and 24/7 Prayer in Correctional Centres. Propagating the 'war room' strategy with the seven mountains of prayer, they travelled around the country, mapping territory for spiritual responsibility from 2015 to the present. When the couple ministered in Kwazulu Natal in January 2017 they clearly understood: 'I am moving you to Bloemfontein. There is going to be a big prayer meeting.' In March 2017 they moved there in divine timing, soon thereafter organizing 24/7 Prayer and establishing a N=national altar of prayer. They were on the spot coordinate a 3 day fast there, ahead of the big 'It's Time' gathering with Pastor Angus Buchan on 22 April 2017. 'Divine co-incidence' occurred when they planned the inaugural use of a container in the township Beacon Valley, Mitchell's Plain, as part of the Resurrection Project there. This fell time-wise exactly when Pastor Callie Liew from Singapore visited Cape Town the first time to start a World Prayer Watch Tower in April 2019. I was intensely involved with the itinerary of Ps. Liew, amazed how God orchestrated even small details of meetings such as the prayer week of Jericho Walls that also fell in that period. Limited Church Unity The enthusiasm of the Highway event of November 2014 at the Lighthouse Christian Centre started dwindling after a few months. We were however blessed by an initiative of Elizabeth Jordaan of Jericho Walls in Durbanville in April/May 2015, which linked the Cape with believers in Malaysia and Holland. This showed some evidence of Church unity. Michelle and Arthur Coetzee, a couple from Krugersdorp that has a ministry in the prophetic realm, were invited to bring a message from God that they were led to share with the Church in Cape Town. On Sunday, 7 July 2015, the Body of Christ was called to come in unity for worship and prayer. The 'Uniting in Prayer and Worship' meeting on that occasion was a most inspiring and exciting event. As a symbol of unity and dying to self, the leaders knelt and cast their crowns, symbolic of their ministries, at the foot of the cross. Different people prayed for seven 'gates of influence' in society: Family, Belief systems(church), Government, governance and leadership, Economy Education, Science and Technology, Media, Arts and Culture. Another big prayer event labelled as a National Day of Repentance for South Africa. was called for the 13th of September the same year. The main event was in Bloemfontein where the ANC had dedicated the country to the ancestral spirits. In the Mother City an event was arranged on short notice to coincide with that one in St Mary's Catholic Cathedral just outside Parliament,. That we united for prayer with Roman Catholic believers was quite significant. Ignition of the #Mustfall Movement The statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the UCT campus triggered the Rhodes Must Fall movement. The first protest, and the action that started the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, occurred on 9 March 2015. A 'Black' student threw human faeces onto the statue. The student protest was initially about the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a symbol which the protesters felt, was oppressive. It was expanded to include institutional racism, the perceived lack of racial transformation at the university, access to tertiary education and student accommodation. Protesting students created a Facebook page entitled 'Rhodes Must Fall'. A train of ‘Must fall’ campaigns followed. That led to the Fees Must fall and Zuma Must Fall campaigns. The latter one became rather anarchic in due course. Students used occupation, civil disobedience and violence during their protests. Property and vehicles were damaged, buildings gutted. The Embassy Downgraded In October 2015 our ANC government gave red-carpet treatment to HAMAS leaders. This had an immediate backlash in the spiritual realm. It was the complete opposite of blessing Israel. Things seemed to go from bad to worse. The Muslim minority in the ANC, led by the vocal grandson of Nelson Mandela and Nellie Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, who is married to a Muslim, succeded in getting the Embassy in Tel Aviv downgraded. Also at the United Nations our envoy shifted the country's stance on Middle East matters from a neutral position towards a clear bias in favour of the Palestinians. The clear downward slide got the country reeling economically. An Escalation of Prayer The short-sighted actions of our government did however also spark an escalation of prayer. Intense spiritual warfare ensued. Via the friendship with parliamentarian Steve Swart of the ACDP we tried to address this matter. In the fortnightly prayer with him in Parliament, this matter came up from time to time. Five years later, the downgrading to consular status as some ANC politicians, driving by the Muslim lobby, still did not get their way. We continue(d) to pray that our country may be a conciliatory blessing in the Middle East conflict. A petition launched by the South African branch of the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem requesting Churches and citizens in general, to get the government to reconsider that decision, had only a luke-warm response. Divine wrath was hanging like a 'sword of Democles' over the country. A Capable Finance Minister Appointed On Wednesday 9 December 2015, President Zuma replaced a capable Finance Minister, Nhlanhla Nene. In a shocking move that caused the Rand currency to plummet, President Jacob Zuma appointed David ‘Des’ van Rooyen, a relatively unknown backbencher, who had been serving as a member of the finance committee in Parliament, to replace Mr Nene. (Nepotism was all too evident. Nene had been at loggerheads with an incompetent South African Airways chairperson Dudu Myeni. The latter also served as the chairperson of President Jacob Zuma’s Education Trust. South Africa On the Rise? Simultaneously, God raised up a Christian in East London, Pastor Robbie Black, to initiate prayers all around the country on the last Sunday of February. A movement was birthed called United Prayer for South Africa. At the beginning of 2016, various Christians felt challenged to oppose the negativity in South Africa. The argument of the South Africa must rise campaign, an initiative of Pastor Errol Naidoo, the well known leader of the Family Policy ministry, was that ‘If everything must fall - then eventually, the nation will fall’. The death of our revered (former) President Nelson Mandela in December 2013 inspired me to make our love story available in hard copy for our grandchildren. This led to the low-key publication of WHAT GOD JOINED TOGETHER in 2015. Our son Sam started‘#hopeforsa’ as a catch word in the South Africa must rise campaign using WHAT GOD JOINED TOGETHER in the campaign through Facebook. A groundswell of prayer came out of concern because of the student unrest and the seemingly never-ending corruption in government circles. The 'State Capture' report in which the actions of various government officials were exposed, brought some correction, but its effect was minimal. A Prophetic Word From Jerusalem A prophetic word was brought to Cape Town from Jerusalem by two couples linked to the Hallel Prayer Room there, just at the time when we had a Unite in Worship and Prayer Committee meeting. The group relayed the prophetic vision of a wave across Africa that would shake witchcraft and idolatry. An email of Rick Ridings, a Jerusalem prayer leader, triggered a prayer event at Cape Point. Cape Town intercessors, together with those who had come from Jerusalem, decided that Ps. Baruch Maayan should be the person to 'strike the waters' with his staff in a prophetic action. Later that day we heard that Baruch Maayan was planning to be in South Africa within the next two weeks! That fifty intercessors showed up on very short notice on Friday 11 December, 2015 at the venue, for which entry was quite expensive, was something akin to a miracle. Led by Ps. Baruch Maayan, a group of leaders and intercessors joined in a prophetic act at Cape Point. The impact and effect of the prayer was quite significant. That President Zuma heeded the advice given to him was a special miracle. (Subsequently he stubbornly held on to his position in spite of many calls to step down, including many from within the ranks of his party.) In a desperate act to salvage the economy of the country, Mr Zuma appointed Mr. Pravin Gordhan, a former Finance Minister, who had an excellent track record. The Rand recovered to a level almost to where it had been before the appointment of Mr. van Rooyen. Believers continued to pray a few more times around the possibility of economic collapse. (A repeat of this demonic attack with even more possible effect, would transpire in July 2021.) The divine reply in answer to prayer was in July even more pronounced. Stance for Freedom of Religion South Africa Freedom of Religion South Africa (FOR SA) was founded in 2014 after the Joshua Generation Church (a well-known evangelical church in the Western and Southern Cape) was targeted by an atheist couple for its Biblical teachings on parental discipline. The Church was investigated by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) who recommended that the Church no longer teach the 'offensive' Scriptures'. The Church was required to remove them from the teaching manuals. Andrew Selley, lead elder of Joshua Generation Church, decided to take a stand to defend the religious freedom rights granted by the South African Constitution. Section 15 of the Constitution in particular grant all South Africans the right to believe, to preach and teach (and by implication, to pass on to their children), and also to live out their religious convictions and beliefs. Teaming up with Adv. Nadene Badenhorst, they started a legal advocacy organisation endeavouring to protect and promote the constitutional right to religious freedom in South Africa. FOR SA engages with government on policies, making submissions to Parliament on draft legislation, that may negatively impact religious freedom. They also appear, as a 'friend of the court' or principal party, before government commissions and the Courts (including the Constitutional Court), in cases affecting religious freedom. Increasingly, laws were being proposed in our country that make the State rather than the Bible the highest authority on what Christians should believe, and how they should act according to those beliefs. Many of these laws subscribe to a secular liberalist world-view and as such, are in direct conflict with Christian and family values. This amounts to a serious threat to the constitutional rights of religious freedom, freedom of religious expression, freedom of association and the rights of religious communities. Our Constitutional Court has recognised that together these rights give churches a degree of autonomy to govern their own affairs. Drug Addicts Changed Two years before their retirement was due, Dennis and Denise Atkins were called back into field work. This was confirming a divine call because the Lord had spoken to them from Micah 2:13 The One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out. Their King will pass through before them, the LORD at their head. Hereafter they started Theos Community Network where they saw many young people, including drug addicts, touched and changed through the 'Ten Steps to Breakthrough' programme. Later the Theos Bible Academy was started to further train, shape and prepare young people for ministry. Here many young people were transformed from utter brokenness into powerful vessels of God and missionary diamonds serving God in their local churches or on the mission field. Friends from Abroad became the thankful recipients of this couple's service for a stint of two and a half years as the houseparents of Moriah Discipling House in Mowbray, while they continued running a pre-school for refugee children that they had started in Parow. For them and for us the relatively short stint there, ahead of their 'retyrement' to Betty's Bay, rates among the most impactful. (The diabetes-related health problems of Dennis, a brain tumour and surgery speeded up this process. Many a time Denise had to rush her husband to Groote Schuur Hospital, where it was sometimes touch and go or they could have lost him.) The proximity to Groote Schuur from Mowbray was a special blessing. In 2016 they started Kyrios Transformation Centre at Mooi Hawens Camp site in Betty's Bay, bringing the Breakthrough and Bible School programmes under one umbrella. It was always Dennis’s dream to build a mission home on a small holding in the Overstrand, but in 2018 he went to be with the Lord before realizing that dream. Instead, the decentralizing of the Bible School training brought about 4 new satellite sites in which Denise is still active. This was however not the end of ministry for Denise. In fact, an extensive ministry in primary schools in the Overstrand got off the ground in recent years, as well as her assisting Michelle and Arthur Coetzee, the leaders of the Global Harvest prayer ministry. Her ongoing service at the Kensington Treatment Centre with female drug addicts, contributed to quite a few of them being rehabilitated. 21. Time to Rise When I turned sixty-five in December 2010, I started looking more intensively at ‘re- tyring, ‘putting on new tyres’ as I called it - not merely re-treading old ones! We seriously considered relocating to the Middle East to share the Gospel in a low-key way there among Arab speakers, and also engaging in some itinerant teaching. During our sabbatical in 2014 when we were in Holland for two weeks, we were very much challenged by the fact that hardly anything was done by believers there in a loving outreach to the Moroccans, many of whom had been living there for generations. Crossing the Jordan! At the beginning of 2016 Rosemarie and I were challenged and blessed by the sermon of Wilna van der Merwe, the new pastor of First Century Vineyard Church that we were still attending. (Three years prior to that we looked at our attending this congregation as a transition.) She used Deuteronomy 11:11f as her point of departure: You are crossing the Jordan to take possession of a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven... Bo-Kaap was the 'Jordan' that we wanted to cross. We still hoped and prayed for simple churches to be started in Bo-Kaap and that we could perhaps assist with some monitoring. ‘Crossing the Jordan’ became our goal as we prayed more intensely for three leadership units to take over from us. The Discipling House and the overall outreach to foreigners who had come to the Cape, our friends from abroad, were the other two units that needed leaders. We were blessed when shortly thereafter, a couple contacted us that was serving as missionaries elsewhere. They intended to return from there soon because of the education of their two teenage children. God had challenged Theo and Mignonne Schumann on the island Ibo in Northern Mozambique, to serve Malay people when they heard about our ministry via a colleague. (A sector of the present-day Bo-Kaap was known in earlier days as the Malay Quarter.) In due course we could hand over the responsibility for Bo-Kaap to them, as we went to increase involvement in District Six from 2017. United Prayer For South Africa During a meeting in January 2016 with church leaders in the 20th Floor premises at Thibault Square of Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, it surfaced that nobody knew whether anything was happening in the Cape Peninsula regarding the United Prayer for South Africa initiative. I had picked up through Gateway News that Pastor Robbie Black of East London had the vision to get South Africans to pray on Sunday the 26th of February 2016 at 14:00h. He said: “It is time for us as Christian believers to rise, take a stand and unite in prayer for our nation. I pray that you as a fellow Christian will share in the excitement and join us in the United Prayer for South Africa … to have a prayer session at prayer points all across our country, mobilizing as many towns and cities as possible.” Just like 1994 when my inquiry brought the Marches for Jesus in the Western Cape into my lap, I hereafter found myself attempting to get United Prayer for South Africa off the ground in our part of the country. This time round it was however fairly easy with the technological advances of emails and whatsapp at our disposal. In due course I found Terence Phillips, with whom I had been praying at various occasions already, notably on Saturday mornings, willing to take over that responsibility. Sinister forces seemed to collude to bring the able Finance Minister Gordhan down. We were not buying the Saturday edition of the Cape Argus as regularly as we used to do, but we happened to buy a copy on Saturday the 25th of February 2016. There on the front page it was disclosed that President Zuma was about to remove Pravin Gordhan. It was only natural to mention that fact as a main prayer point at Rhodes Memorial the next day, along with prayer for Dove’s Peak, the attempt to change the name of the mountain peak that seems to rule supremely over our city. We were blessed that our prayer intervention clearly resulted in a special response. The secretive links of the President and his cronies to the Gupta family, that came to be known as ‘state capture’, were exposed in the weeks thereafter. It would however take another two years for President Zuma to be deposed. Surprising Input From Elsewhere From two different sources I heard that Rev. Peter Chapman, who had come to serve at the Gardens Presbyterian Church, had a heart for the unity of the body of Christ. After making an appointment with him, we lost little time to get a pastors’ weekly prayer time and interaction started there. Advertised as a private meeting with Dr Richard Harvey, a Messianic Jewish believer from the UK, we also had a few of our Muslim background believers from Algeria and the Ivory Coast present, along with Jewish friends. Our hope that this could be the start of a divine move to forge more visibility of the Body of Christ in the City Bowl was soon thoroughly dampened We could not get other pastors to join us for prayer on a one-off basis. Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu was the only other City Bowl pastor who was a regular. A Water Crisis Towards the end of 2016 a crisis started building up as the dams in the Western Cape were approaching critical levels. Parallel to this, fires had to be extinguished at different places. Many of the fires which caused extensive damage were probably arson-related, started by politically motivated people. There was unhappiness in ANC ranks that only the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance is ruling, thrives. Corruption within ANC ranks was rife and the towns and provinces where they ruled, service delivery was lacking. The arson-induced fires coincided with a serious shortage of water, notably in the Mother City, as well as in many parts other parts of the Eastern, Northern and Western Cape. Thousands of churches around the country prayed for rain on 22 January 2017. Indeed, what the arch enemy planned for evil, was sovereignly turned around, albeit that the prayer for rain remained unanswered for many more months. Monthly Combined Worship Started When we had to find a venue on short notice for a meeting with Omri Jaakobovic, a Messianic Jewish believer of Hosting of Israeli Travellers (HIT) on 1 April 2017, Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian congregation obliged immediately. The service took on a deeper significance when we decided to turn the event into the first of a three-part 10th anniversary celebration of Friends from Abroad. That occasion evolved into a monthly combined worship time on the last Sunday of every month. This had a positive spin-off when a Kingdom weekly prayer group for pastors started around Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian Church. When Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu left for Burundi and Rev. Peter Chapman for Kimberley soon after each other, only missionaries remained that were involved with outreach to Muslims and Jews. This gave a new lease life to the networking within Isaac Ishmael Ministries. After the departure of Baruch Maayan and his family and the sudden death of Brett Viviers in 2018, this aspect of ministry became quite dormant. A wonderful worship service in the Moravian Hill Chapel of District Six in 2019 with our Eritrean refugee brother as speaker was one of the last services of this kind before the Covid crisis the next year stopped them. They have not been resumed as yet, albeit that a very special worship event was held on 25 April 2021 in District Six. An event initiated by the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape was advertised as 'Come to the Table' at the Congregational Church in Kloof Street on Pentecost Sunday in 2022. This event was a catalyst to a City-wide expression of unity of the Body of Christ via the 24 hubs (sub-councils of the metropolis). However, the bulk of the 80 believers who attended this event, came from churches further away. Countering a Threat Around Jerusalem The real threat of a tense situation around Jerusalem and a ‘so-called’ Peace Conference in Paris on 15 January 2017, spawned a world-wide call for prayer. Followers of Jesus linked with Israel and other Jews, prayed that the enemies of God might be scattered and confused. God did this in no uncertain way. At this time the incoming new US President Donald Trump had put the moving of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem high on his list of priorities. The UK sent a low-profile delegation to Paris and clearly stated that they would not sign the final statement. Likewise, in New York on 17 January 2017, a divisive UN Security Council resolution was not passed. That would have given the right of way to the Palestinian Authority to divide Jerusalem unilaterally. A major escalation of the Middle East conflict was thwarted in this way. It is Time ...! Crime, corruption and a general wave of negativity was sweeping the nation during the first months of 2017. Pastor Angus Buchan announced ‘It is Time ...!’, calling intercessors to come to Bloemfontein for a day of prayer on 22 April. He expected a million intercessors to attend. However, there were only six weeks to prepare! This would have been impossible humanly speaking!... But God! From all around South Africa Christians came in their numbers in all kinds of vehicles. Modern technology enabled an event of a magnitude that would have taken ages to prepare a mere few years prior to that. Significant at the occasion was that Angus Buchan mentioned in his sermon cum prayer that we would be able to witness the result in Parliament. (This would happen on Friday, 24 November 2017 when 150 intercessors and believers from across South Africa gathered in the old parliament precincts. It was there where all the apartheid laws had been enacted.) Many intercessors prayed for the end of the corrupt regime of President Zuma. That was not to be, not even by an extended process. Parliamentarians were required to vote in a secret ballot on 8 August, 2017. This could theoretically have been a way, also for ANC members, to express no confidence in him. However, President Zuma survived not only that vote of no confidence, but also many exposures of corruption, that had become known as a part of 'state capture'. It seemed that a miracle was needed to unseat him before the elections of 2019. The Miracle of Khayelitsha Already around ten years earlier a miracle started to evolve in Khayelitsha, which had been started as a new home in the late 1970s to dump the 'Blacks', notably the informal settlers of Crossroads and Modderdam, whom the apartheid regime had problems with. Hansie Louw, an Afrikaner, who went to live there for 18 months with his family from ??, recorded what transpired there from around 2006. With a few other intercessors he went to what was called the Throne Room. where there were about 90 people from different nationalities praising God in their own language, praising and praying. Racial Tension Erupts In some clever electoral manipulation, the African National Congress (ANC) encouraged many Xhosa's from the Eastern Cape, one of their strongholds, to come to the Western Cape where the Democratic Alliance (DA) had been ruling for many years. A whole new township developed in this way on the outskirts of the rural town of Grabouw, significantly changing the political landscape, without however causing significant friction there. Fifty kilometres away, a crisis developed in Hermanus. The talk of land expropriation was interpreted by some folk as an opportunity to go and settle on vacant land. In Sequalo, a new informal settlement of Mitchell's Plain next to Vanguard Drive which was renamed to Jakes Gerwel Drive, racial tension rose to a critical level between the new Eastern Cape Xhosa settlers and 'Coloured' folk. Many of them had been waiting for years on housing via lists of the Cape Town City Council. The mediation of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC) proved invaluable in this situation. This included stalwart ministry of Bishop Mark Bloemstein and Rev. Annie Kirke, who subsequently became a coalition catalyst on behalf of the group More Than Peace. The CCWC involvement put the Church back on the map after both the Consultation of Christian Churches (CCC) in the Western Cape and the Western Province Council of Churches had become silent. Run-Up to 40 Days of Worship After our return from Europe at the end of August 2016, we seriously contemplated another extended stint in Holland in 2017. Major problems during our absence at our Discipling House brought about second thoughts. We believe that our succession as leaders of Friends from Abroad should be properly in place, before attempting another extended stint abroad. We ultimately left for only six weeks. There we heard that a Brazilian couple, Francis and Mildred Lire, had a vision for 40 Days of Worship in South Africa that should start on 24 September 2017. The Lord opened a door for Francis and Mildred to come and live in the Mother City quite near to us in September 2017, just prior to the 40 Days of Worship. We changed the venue of our monthly combined worship time to Rhodes Memorial for that occasion. Next to worship, praying for rain was a common topic at various other venues all around the Western Cape. There we prayed of course also for the name change to Doves' Peak. A Catalyst for Revival The actual 40 Days of Worship were quite special. Apart from indoor events throughout the country there were also worship occasions on Cape heights and at Blaauwberg Beach. Shofars were being used increasingly. At the various venues praying for rain was part of the programme and fairly prominent. On Tuesday 26 September we invited Francis and Mildred Lira to our home. It was quite crowded in our prayer room but very blessed. Our friend Ernald Arends led us in worship. God’s presence was almost tangible. While we were praising the Lord, an unseasonal deluge suddenly poured down as confirmation that God was pleased with our adoration. Organised by our friends Selby and Phillip Shaw, intercessors started gathering at Rhodes Memorial every last Sunday afternoon of the month subsequently until Covid-19 had another victim albeit one meeting was held at the end of March 2021, networking with United Prayer for South Africa and Global Harvest. Towards the end of the 40-day period, we heard that there would be a prayer time in Parliament on 24 November with Pastor Angus Buchan. This felt like a continuation of the 40 Days of Worship although the intention of the event was completely different. White Friday ‘Black Friday,’ the day after the annual day of thanksgiving in the USA, also found its way to South Africa. 24 November 2017 was a day to remember, so much so that I dubbed it ‘White Friday’. Around two hundred and fifty church and prayer leaders from all over the country had been invited, with Pastor Angus Buchan as the special speaker. The venue was the old chamber of Parliament where Dr Verwoerd had been stabbed in 1966. The event was thus filled with nostalgic dynamite! It got very hot under the collar for me personally when one speaker after the other recalled laws that had affected me personally, such as the Group Areas Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. (As a result of the former law and the related practice of so-called ‘Slum Clearance’, almost all the buildings and places of memories of my childhood had been demolished. The racial marriage prohibition had been the cause of my exile of just over eighteen years. I was glad that I found a seat where I was more or less out of sight of the video cameras. I was crying quite a lot. I heard later that many other tears were flowing freely, tears of remorse and repentance!). Anneke Rabe, an Afrikaner intercessor, started the meeting with moving prayers of repentance on behalf of her people. The confession on behalf of ‘Blacks’, e.g. for the farm murders and other atrocities that had been inspired by hatred or resentment of 'Whites', were just as moving. Quite special it was that Rev. Michael Cassidy, the aged stalwart founder of Africa Enterprise and initiator of the unsuccessful battle against legal recognition of same sex marriages in 2006, also offered a prayer. (He had been the driving force with a few other believers, in the organizing of the Rustenberg Conference of November 1990, the event which divinely ushered in our democratic era out of the apartheid quagmire.) In his contribution Steve Swart, an ACDP Member of Parliament, confessed the anti-Semitism of the government during World War II when Jews that had fled the Holocaust in Germany, were not allowed to disembark in Cape Town. (The attitude of our present government towards Israel is of course something that we are not at all proud of as followers of the Jewish Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.) We continue to pray that the government may change its attitude and become more active towards reconciliation between opposing factions in Israel. We also pray for a change in the xenophobic practices that are so evident in the treatment of African expatriates at the Department of Home Affairs! Not surprisingly, ‘the cherry on top of the cake’ was the relatively short speech and the terse powerful prayer for rain of the unique Pastor Angus Buchan. A few times his typical AMEN! roared through the auditorium. Significant in his speech was a simple prophetic proclamation that the Cape dams would be full by the end of March. In due course his stance became the cause for various attacks on him. He was not always innocent with some of his quips. (This was notably the case two years later, when he formulated an invitation rather unfortunately to Afrikaners for an Its Time event on Loftus Versfeld Stadium, scheduled for 1 February 2020. Singling out Afrikaners, next to Jews, as the only people to have come into a covenant relationship with God, was a terrible mistake. Subsequently he displayed deep remorse, going to apologise personally to 'Black' pastors and cancelling the envisaged mass event.) A Response to the Murdering of Farmers 'One Settler, One Bullet’ was a rallying cry and slogan that originated in the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the Pan African Congress (PAC), during the struggle of the 1980s against apartheid in South Africa. The slogan parodied the African National Congress's slogan 'One Man, One Vote', which eventually became 'One Person, One Vote'. ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’ was the competing war cry of Peter Mokaba of the ANC at the April 1993 funeral of assassinated South African Communist party leader Chris Hani. (When the fight against apartheid was nearing its end, a settler was defined as a ‘White’ participating in the oppression of indigenous people. It thus did not include all ‘White’ South Africans. Those 'Whites' whose 'sole allegiance was to Africa' were considered part of the African nation. They were excluded from the settler category.) In 2015, the student activist group Rhodes Must Fall and other affiliated movements revived the slogan by chanting 'One Settler One Bullet' at rallies at the University of Cape Town and by statements on social media. A gradual increase of farmers being killed reached its peak in October 2017 when in different parts of the country ‘White’ farmers gathered for prayer, joined by other Christians. At the Cape quite a number of ‘Coloureds’ joined in these events. Hope in South Africa was fanned that the end of the Zuma era was nearing when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as president of the ANC at their annual congress in December 2017. Many were still hoping that Jacob Zuma would step down voluntarily, so that there would not be a leadership clash. This would however not be the case. By contrast, true to what had happened in the years prior to this, Zuma clung to his position fiercely. That Cyril Ramaphosa deemed it fit to participate publicly in ancestor worship, dampened the spirits of Christians who had been hoping for spiritual renewal within the government party. That was minimally redeemed when he led the singing of 'If you believe and I believe, the Africa will be saved'. It’s time Again! In mid-January 2018 Ps. Angus Buchan sent out a WhatsApp call for another It’s time occasion like the one in Bloemfontein of 22 April 2017. Buchan selected the venue as Mitchell's Plain after reading the testimony of Ashley Potts in a Scripture Union booklet. Someone abused his name to call intercessors to a time of prayer for rain on Wednesday 24 January at 13h. The hoax message, claiming to be from Ps Buchan, and written in his style - referring back to last year’s historic “It’s Time” prayer day in Bloemfontein - spread rapidly through Christian social media networks. South African believers, concerned about the water crisis in the Western Cape, took up the call all over the country, for an hour of prayer from 1pm to 2pm on Wednesday 24 January, sharing the message widely, promoting it in churches and at events, and planning ways to participate in the national prayer event in groups or alone. Swieg Nel, an influential member and co-ordinator of the ACDP party in its early days, played a special role in keeping this whatsapp group going. Jericho Walls posted a call to prayer on its website, saying: 'Several groups asked for Christians to unite in prayer on Wednesday 24 January 2018 to pray especially for the water crisis in Cape Town, but also for the drought that was plaguing nearly the whole country. Pray as individuals, but try to unite in prayer in groups anytime between 12:00 and 14:00 or in the evening.' A Great Response Although the effect might have been blunted when the message was corrected by Ps. Buchan as not from him just prior to the day, the response was tremendous. Denominational boundaries crumbled as people came to pray in diverse venues and in homes. At the meeting in the Mowbray Baptist Church I found myself attending this prayer meeting, taking along a few people, including a Hindu background follower of Christ and a MBB. The intercessors decided to make this a weekly event to pray for rain and revival. Here I got to know believers better who are linked to the Message Trust, an agency that had been operating at the Cape since 2014. Reporter for Gateway News? When Andre Viljoen asked me to write a report of the preparatory event with Angus Buchan at the Lighthouse Christian Centre on Wednesday, 7 February 2018, ahead of the ‘It’s time’ event scheduled for March 24, I had no hesitation because I would have gone anyway. What a special joy and privilege it was to write articles for Gateway News in the weeks prior to the event in Mitchell's Plain. A Divine Response On Tuesday 13 February, 2018 something happened in the spiritual realm which linked the praying for rain at the planned 'It's Time' event to the Zuma administration. There was a strange dark cloud hanging over the centre of Cape Town that evening. This was followed by an extended roar of lightning and thunder which is very rare for the Mother City. It almost felt as if God was speaking. And then the news came that President Jacob Zuma would resign! The nation had to wait, however, until the late hours of 14 February before Zuma finally resigned. He had been clinging to power just like Robert Mugabe had been doing in Zimbabwe a few months prior to this. Intercessors perceived this as a wonderful gift from our loving heavenly Father. Land Grabbing Legalized? President Ramaphosa indicated in his 2018 State of the Nation address that ‘expropriation without compensation’ would be implemented. However, that a resolution to this effect was passed in Parliament soon thereafter, took many of us by surprise. He had displayed pragmatic views before this, but taking over from the unprincipled Jacob Zuma he was possibly also pushed in this move by the extreme left wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF party). Emotions ran unusually high during our prayer time in the provincial parliament on Saturday, 10 March. Just prior to this, the Democratic Alliance gave open support to the Gay Parade on 24 February 2018. Same sex marriage and abortion were two issues, next to land grabbing, which appeared superficially to be tantamount to the legalizing of theft, that Christians felt should be addressed. The scary scenario of Zimbabwe at the beginning of the millennium, when 'White' farmers lost land big time, came to mind. (The country, that had been called the bread basket of Africa, was reduced to a poverty stricken region from which the citizens fled in their thousands to South Africa.) Expropriation to be Implemented The alarm caused by the February 2018 decision in the South African parliament to expropriate land without compensation, brought a few Christians together once again. The idea came up to provide biblical guidelines to the electorate in view of the 2019 elections. Using our Doves' Peak committee as nucleus, a few other Cape Christians representing different organizations, were asked to join this ‘think tank’. We were quite thankful that the government did not steam-roll the scary law through Parliament. Instead, public hearings around the matter were ordered. This differed to the previous steam-rolling of new legislation. The ANC could have abused their two-thirds majority with the aid of the EFF. We attempted to get 'into Parliament', to dialogue with different political parties. Via Steve Swart, the ACDP member of Parliament and a friend, it was fairly easy. On 20 April 2018 quite an array of pastors pitched up, including some however who had a score to settle with the Christian party. Our goal was therefore more or less still born. Steve Swart was subsequently a member of a government commission that went around the country to give rank and file folk the chance to verbalize their opinions about the sensitive issue that was dividing the nation along racial lines. Pro Testare I was reminded of my personal stance during the apartheid era, proposing that believers should interpret protest to these laws with its unethical and unbiblical tendency from its Latin root pro testare. I was ready to share at a public hearing at the Friends of God (AFM) Church in Goodwood that my two brothers and I were standing by the decision of our parents to forgive the government of the day for the unfair expropriation of our property when we received a pittance as compensation in Tiervlei/Ravensmead. In due course Patrick Kuwana, a learned Zimbabwean economist who lives in Pretoria, joined the think tank. Murray Bridgman and I went to Parliament in person to deliver a document that had been compiled by our think tank. We were quite thankful that the country-wide reaction to the government intention at least delayed a possible steam-rolling of legislation which could have converted our country into a second Zimbabwe. Run-Up to It’s Time Cape Town When Pastor Angus Buchan read the testimony of Ashley Potts, who got to personal faith after being addicted to drugs, he was deeply touched. Buchan referred to Ashley as his “Macedonian man”. Ps. Buchan hereafter felt that God wanted the It’s Time prayer event to be held at Mitchell's Plain. He did not know that the suburb was a bastion of satanism. He had merely acted in obedience to what he sensed was a divine calling. Preparations For It's Time at Mitchell's Plain Daniel Brink invited believers to come and pray at the actual venue, the Swartklip Sports Complex between Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha on the Wednesdays prior to the 24th of March. Every week a few more believers joined in a crescendo fashion towards Wednesday, 21 March, Human Rights Day. It being a public holiday, many more attended than otherwise would have been the case. After a few others led in prayer for various other issues. Pastor Barry Isaacs rose to the occasion in his introduction, calling us to pray for racial reconciliation. He noted that he had not experienced naked racism in his fifty years of ministry as he has been doing in the recent past. Indeed, it seems as if the government support for taking property without compensation had unleashed unparalleled racial hatred. Pastor Isaacs challenged the audience ‘not to wait till tomorrow’ for racial reconciliation. He invited the believers to pray with someone from a different culture! Daniel Brink requested Pastor Alfie Fabe, a ‘Coloured’ pastor, to stand opposite him. Daniel thereafter asked all Afrikaners present to stand with him. All people who had been affected by the forced removals, were asked to join Pastor Fabe. Daniel Brink prayed a moving, remorseful prayer of repentance on behalf of Afrikaners, his people, not only for their attitudes of racial pride, prejudice and arrogance, but also for the forced removals of so many people of colour. He expressed remorseful regret for the brutal practices that accompanied that, repenting for the implementation of other apartheid-related laws. While tears were flowing freely, Pastor Fabe extended forgiveness to the Afrikaners and also asked forgiveness from God for the anger, bitterness and rancour towards all 'White' people. This was followed by another moving confession of Pastor Theo Roman on behalf of ‘Coloureds,’ for the bitterness they have been experiencing due to a feeling of being side-lined, first by the ‘Whites’ in the previous era, and thereafter also by the present government. Exchange Your Gun For a Bible! Saturday 24 March 2018 was an extraordinary day. One of the biggest crowds ever seen at an event in Cape Town (with the exception of special funerals), gathered to pray at the Swartklip Sports Ground, Mitchell's Plain. The peace of God was tangible at the venue and in the surrounding streets which are notorious for gang violence. People had predicted that there would be trouble as there had been at other events at the same venue. And, in one of many signs of God’s goodness and favour on the day, soft rain began to fall just after the arrival of Angus in a police helicopter, to be followed by several more gentle showers in the drought-stricken region. An extraordinary scene unfolded when farmer Angus Buchan called on gang leaders present to come to the front to 'exchange your gun for a Bible'. Descending from the platform to stand with the gang leaders who responded, Buchan said he was going to do what God had showed him in a dream. He said the Lord had impressed on him that the men were leaders, they were just going in the wrong direction, that the Father wanted to use them in His kingdom. He told the men that he wanted to give to them some objects because he wanted to show them that they were loved by God, by those present at the It’s Time prayer event, and by South Africa. He then gave his trademark hat to one of the young men, saying: 'From today onwards you are going to be a leader for Jesus. I want you to have my hat! You are going to be a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ!', he said to another young man as he gave him his 'very special Bible, given to me by my family'. Angus Buchan also gave his jacket, checked shirt and boots to other gang leaders before returning to the platform to lead prayers for Cape Town, the Western Cape and South Africa in his jeans, white vest and socks. Pastor Buchan went on: 'Those men are a representation of many others, but I am believing that the Church will get around them and rehabilitate them!' A Police Report and the Follow-Up The police report was a testimony on its own. The South African Police Service (SAPS) had warned the organizers that there had been a meeting of ten thousand people on the same ground the previous week, with forty-eight stabbings and over one hundred robberies. For the 'Its Time' meeting there was not a single incident reported! One of the first members of the Church to rise to the challenge of following up the repentant gang leaders was Ashley Potts, who grew up in Mitchell's Plain. As the director of the Cape Town Drug Counselling Centre, Potts wasted no time after the event, visiting two of the young men who had responded to Buchan’s altar call. With the help of the community, he set about to track all the others down. Subsequently Ashley Potts become a valued member of the Executive Committee of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC). Abuses By Pastors Addressed The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (which got known as the CRL Rights Commission) was formed in 2002, drawing its mandate from the constitution. The necessity of this commission became clear in the second decade of the millennium, when all sorts of abuses by pastors went viral. In due course the strange practices of certain pastors, many of whom happened to be expatriates, would aggravate the tension between 'Blacks' and foreigners. South African folk using the title of pastor and even of bishop, were guilty of similar practices. The CRL Rights Commission produced a report in 2016 entitled 'The Commercialisation of Religion and Abuse of People’s Belief Systems'.  This report recommended that: - the CRL (as an institution of State) should be given the power to license (and thereby control) religious practitioners and places of worship. the CRL should be given the power to be the 'final arbiter of religion' with 'final decision powers'. CRL Rights Commission Recommendations Rejected After due democratic process and hearings before Parliament’s Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Portfolio Committee, COGTA rejected these recommendations. Instead, COGTA recommended that a national religious leaders conference take place to consider the issues/concerns raised by the CRL’s Report and to develop solutions by (and for) the religious community. They further recommended the development of a Code of Conduct as a benchmark and a standard of voluntary accountability for the religious community. Code of Conduct For Religions In April 2018, a meeting of 70 plus senior religious leaders mandated the South African Council for the Protection and Promotion of Religious Rights and Freedoms (SACRRF) to draft a code of conduct for religious practitioners. They were selected for this task because the SACRRF had previously authored the Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms. Emeritus professors of Johannesburg University and Stellenbosch University respectively, Rassie Malherbe and Pieter Coertzen constructed a very commendable document. (Prof. Pieter Coertzen is the chairperson of the SACRRF.) In the interim, Marxist-oriented groups in Rwanda and Angola had succeeded to get many churches closed. The Cultural Religious and Linguistic (CRL) Rights Commission, led by a Marxist chair lady, appeared now to try to achieve the same in South Africa by hook or by crook. The work of the two learned gentlemen to draft the above-mentioned document seemed to have been brushed aside as she attempted to regulate religion and even attack the Church. The CRL Rights Commission subsequently co-organised a Religious Leaders Summit, which took place at Rhema Church, Randburg, a suburb of Johannesburg, on 13 February 2019. This event was attended by around 800 senior religious leaders from across the faith spectrum. At the meeting, there was an overwhelming consensus that the religious community accepted the CRL Rights Commission's declaration that they were 'handing over the process' to the Summit and therefore no further input from the CRL Rights Commission on this matter was required. Importantly, it further resolved that a local, provincial and (ultimately) national consultative process would now take place to consider viable solutions to the abuses and malpractices in the religious sector. FOR SA played a major role in facilitating a participative, consultative process in many cities and regions across South Africa. The purported concerns became more or less redundant when the draft Code of Conduct was hereafter brought back into play and discussed in different forums. When the new CRL Rights Commission was formed, the vindictive lady was not re-elected. The attempt to regulate religion (i.e. more especially the Church) was put on the back burner. It returned in May 2021 via amendments to the Equality Law which appeared to be at least as vicious as the proposals of 2019. Run-Up to the 2019 Elections The first salvos for the 2019 elections started as could be expected already a year earlier. Quite significant was how Christians would be voting. Pastor Errol Naidoo, well-known for his biblical views for family values, joined the fray of the ACDP. To that end he intended to use state of the art equipment and software in an effort to get 30 seats for the party. Going around the country with a message of hope, that would have translated in a 1000% increase, a tsunami in the political landscape. That could have made that party the official opposition. The rising excitement was sadly blown away when Pastor Naidoo resigned from the party a few months later. An Alliance of Related Organisations In April 2017 the News Nations Movement (NNM) was started and mooted as an alliance of related organisations, institutions and persons. The primary value of the NNM could have been in relationships between diverse persons and entities, drawn from across the length and breadth of the nation. Three of its leaders met evangelical and community leaders in the Cape suburb Table View on 9 September 2018. It was advertised as a 'Kingdom movement'. At the meeting, attended by churchmen plus a few Khoisan political leaders, they were challenged to state clearly that Jesus would be the King of the movement. The attempt to be inclusive, and not offend Muslims and other faiths, would however be an albatross of a promising movement. It was stated subsequently all too clearly that it would not be Christian-based. On the other hand, perseverance by this group, to get individuals standing as independents, did ultimately result in a victory in the Constitutional Court with a landmark decision on 11 June 2020. The case concerned the right of independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections. The Order of the Constitutional Court would deem the Electoral Act unconstitutional because it requires adult citizens to be elected to the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures only through membership of political parties. In its majority judgment, the Court reasoned that the defect had the effect of unjustifiably infringing on certain rights. Parliament had twenty-four months from the date of the Order to remedy this defect in the Electoral Act. To their honour Parliament did not drag this issue. (The highlighting of corruption via the Zondo Commission of politicians who were not held accountable by their parties, would have helped the cause of the News Nations Movement.) Prayer Action Launched Nationally In January 2019 Janet Bran-Hollis, an Eastern Cape prophetess, started operating together with Dr Arthur Frost to launch a prayer action called the Kingdom Nation Movement. They worked closely with Dr Arno van Niekerk, a lecturer in Economy at the University of the Free State using whatsapp. Believers were praising the Lord for raising Nehemiahs like Dr. Arthur Frost and Dr Arno van Niekerk to get the nation praying as never before. The availability of whatsapp made it all so easy. The resulting Christian Consensus was poised to impact the elections positively in a massive way. Dr Arno van Niekerk brought Christians who were in leadership in different parties together for indabas around biblical values. This gave great hope and expectation among believers for divine intervention at the polls. This wave of prayer was definitely unprecedented, fuelled by factors like the ongoing electricity load shedding that had already impacted the economy of the country very adversely. The run-up to the elections of 8 May 2019 and the fear of an explosion of racial animosity was also a cause for serious intercession (Parties on both extremes gave reason for anxiety. To ‘Fight Back’, as an Afrikaner party had as slogan, was surely not in the spirit of our Lord.) The unity forged by the Christian Consensus got a massive blow however when the ACDP leader broke ranks via their leader. The DA leader, Musi Maimane, a pastor and a committed Christian, was in a fix as well. His party was known for liberal unbiblical views around abortion and same-sex unions. The broadly advertised consensus became a misnomer. New Expectations The launch of the Resurrection Project of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape at the Beacon Hill Secondary School on 24 March raised high hopes of new local church co-operation. As Friends from Abroad, we had vested interest in the success of this project. Dean Ramjoomia is a Muslim background pastor involved who had been coming through our ranks. (He has been leading the independent ministry Nehemiah Call, with open air evangelistic ministry and feeding needy families during the Covid-19 crisis.) The launch of the Resurrection Project took place a few kilometres from the field where Ps. Angus Buchan had his big prayer event on 24 March the previous year. We invited believers to pray that the project might become a model of wholistic networking and community involvement, led by the local churches. The occasion on 24 March 2019 was very special, fanning the hopes that the prophecy of Mitchell's Plain, to be the flower of Cape Town, would come to fruition. Across the Cape Peninsula believers prayed that the Resurrection Project of wonderful church networking would be emulated in due course in other communities that have also been affected by vice, gangsterism and drug abuse. High Expectations Dashed In the political arena expectations were fairly high after Cyril Ramaphosa's first State of the Nation Address as State President, only to be dashed when his Cabinet was announced. Apart from the good moves to bring Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene back and giving Pravin Gordhan a prominent post, Ramaphosa basically merely rearranged the chairs after the Gupta debacle under Jacob Zuma. He was thus clearly not heeding the sound advice of his erstwhile youth leader and friend Kenneth Meshoe. Disappointments The initial unity displayed by the Christian Consensus that had been engineered by Dr Arno van Niekerk, had apparently been frittered away. The arch enemy seemed to have won on 8 May, election day. The biggest gains were achieved by two parties on the extreme left and right! Racial politics seem to have returned to our country big time! New Hope Quite a unique expression of unity transpired on 29 February and 1 March 2020 when intercessors from all nine provinces came to pray on Table Mountain. We also organised a prayer event on Signal Hill for the special occasion. The editor of Gateway News asked me again to write something. What a blessing it was to reminisce at what God had been doing down the years respectively on Signal Hill and around the low-key name changing effort of the big mountain elevation of the city towards Dove's Peak. 21. Jerusalem …. a Cup of Trembling? Rosemarie and I were blessed by wonderful times of prayer, notably due to the presence of visitors. Geert and Martien van der Veen, a Dutch couple linked to the Corrie ten Boom Foundation were with us at the beginning of 2018.  (Corrie ten Boom was the ‘tramp for God’ who travelled the world in the 1970s and 1980s to share her experiences in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, especially with the message of forgiveness. Martien van der Veen’s grandfather constructed the hiding place in the Ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland. 800 Jews went through the Hiding Place during the Holocaust at the end of World War 2.) Geert and Martien had quite a few common contacts around Israel, and we supplied them with a few more at the Cape where they could go and minister. We just marvelled how the Lord used their Corrie ten Boom connections to give openings to the couple, where they could share their faith freely in many a Cape Jewish environment! 70th Anniversary of Israel's Independence At a meeting around the expropriation issue we also took note that nothing seemed to have been prepared to commemorate the pending 70th anniversary of Israel's independence on 14 May 2018. At this time there was no clear unity among various organisations positively supporting Israel. I subsequently emailed all the main role players, calling a meeting for Tuesday 15 May, a day after the actual 'birthday' of the Jewish State. What we could not anticipate was that President Donald Trump had planned to announce the transition of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on that day. At this meeting we took note that the government was supporting the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) programme directed at Israel. At a conference on racism in Durban in September 2001, at which Israel was vilified and side-lined, the BDS started as a movement to isolate Israel and the Jews. We started looking at going to Durban in September with a delegation in an effort to redeem what had happened on South African soil. that was cursing us as a nation. Serving in the CCWC Executive I was quite happy to hear that Pastor Anaclet Mbayagu from Burundi, who had been an executive member of Friends from Abroad, was serving on the Executive of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC). After initially declining nomination with what I perceived as the need to do less and not more, I agreed later to serve with religious minorities as my portfolio. For the first time Jews and Hindus were now also included, next to serving foreigners in the forum. I succeeded in getting Denise Atkins also co-opted to the CCWC executive. Not only did this add a female voice to bring a touch of balance, but we also had in her a strong voice in support of Israel and an intercessor of note. The debate around the downgrading of the RSA Embassy in Tel Aviv continued for months. As CCWC we wrote our own press statement at the end of August 2020. The impact was minimal, but we trust that at least into the spiritual realm something happened. Healing the Nation Campaign The Soweto Ministers Fraternal (SMF) played a significant role in changing the course of SA’s political liberation. In partnership with Vuka Africa Foundation (VAF), they started focusing on mobilising the Body of Christ and encouraging fellowship among Christian leaders. VAF’s mandate to bring hope, restoration and healing to the people of Africa and the African diaspora was birthed in prayer after founder Apostle Linda Gobodo encountered the brokenness of fellow Africans during visits to a number of African countries. A meeting on 29 November 2019 at the UAFC Hope Church in Dube Village, Soweto, flowed out of VAF’s 'Healing of the Nation' campaign. Chief Justice Moegoeng Moegoeng was the keynote speaker on the Prophetic Voice of Healing in South Africa and Africa conference. Since 2017 the Chief Justice had become a powerful uniting force across all population groups. Working closely with Apostle Linda Gobodo, a 50-day endeavour transpired from Resurrection Day 2020 until Pentecost 2020. 'Pills' were 'prescribed' in the form of three Bible verses each in the morning and the evening under the headings of hope, healing and restoration. Chief Justice Moegoeng Moegoeng Moegoeng tackled many illnesses in SA society, dispensing 'medicine' for the sick Church and society, stressing the unity of the Church. There was however little evidence that the sick patient was willing to take the medication. All Sorts of Virtual Events Due to the corona virus situation Graham Power, the well known Capetonian instrument that God used towards the annual Global Day of Prayer, adapted a prayer which folk could use on 22 March. This was of course no visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ, but unprecedented as a global one. It went around the globe between 12h and 13h on that day. Zoom soon became the name of the game. All sorts of virtual events took place in the wake of the Covid-19 Lockdown in many nations around the world. A two-hour meeting on Freedom Day (27 April) with 300 church leaders across the country was followed by a Global three-hour global prayer event from 14-17h (SA time). A weekly prayer event in Jerusalem plus the ogre of new elections brought Israel increasingly into the centre of world-wide prayer attention. Intercessors were changing the world as miracles were happening almost on a daily basis, disseminatad by the electronic media. Prophetic Words in Quick Succession Prophetic words followed each other in quick succession, repeating that a big revival was pending. An encouraging prophetic word from Naomi Sheneberger in Zambia that Africa is waiting for the revival to start from South Africa, was followed by a prophetic message from Malawi, published in Gateway News on Friday, 24 April: 'I have come to bring hope, healing and restoration. I am healing South Africa. I am healing the continent of Africa that you may be a blessing to the nations'. Some prophecies had political repercussions. A warning of one of these, dated June 2014, when Cyril Ramaphosa was still Deputy President, was rehashed. In level 4 of the Covid 19 lockdown people were allowed to walk or jog from 6-9 a.m. Not able to congregate in their churches, Christians in Mitchell's Plain took to the streets in big numbers on Sunday, 9 May. This was in the middle of Ramadan. I wrote in Seeds sown for Revival, of which the first version was published in 2009: 'What could be signs of the beginnings of a genuine revival in the Cape Peninsula, which would usher in a massive movement of God on the African continent? I believe that a significant move of the Holy Spirit among Jews and Muslims at the Cape would be a sure sign that the fervently awaited spiritual renewal has arrived, that a divine visitation is a reality and not a manipulated or hyped-up revival. This would be a miracle of such magnitude that no human being could have brought it into being.' This expectation, which I repeated in an email on Sunday 26 April 2020, has almost become obsolete. Nick Hall of the 'Bible Quarantine' series hosted several virtual events, saw thousands of people across the world profess their faith within a matter of weeks. He said in a statement: 'The doors to our church buildings may have been closed, but the church has not closed. We are living through a Great Quarantine Revival, and I think God is just getting started.' Epilogue The visible expression of the Unity of the Body of Christ, locally and city-wide, has been on our heart for many years. God seemed to use various tools to cut away the edges of disunity, rivalry and whatever has been hampering the trigger for revival to be pulled. We have been blessed to see more of this coming to fruition via our weekly outreach and in the prayer movement. It bugged me that three mission agencies were doing outreach in the city with a similar target group every Thursday. The suggestion of having a once-off occasion on 13 February 2020, to start with prayer at the venue of Operation Mobilization in the city centre, developed into one where up to five different agencies would join, plus the one or other member of a church in Bellville, 25 km away. Subsequently weekly outreach started at the Harbour of Hope, the facility linked to our FFA ministry in the city until the Covid-19 lockdown forced us into remote prayer meetings. A Bumper Season of Prayer The end of the month of May 2020 would become a season of increased prayer. The availability of zoom would lead to many an international prayer meeting. Thus there was a connection to Israel every Thursday after Passover 2020, linked to the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and Callie Liew had many a session with her Prayer Watch tower folk in the some period. On Monday 25 May, on Africa Day, Chief Justice Moegoeng led the second of two international prayer occasions. When the State President announced that church services could resume with the commencement of level 3 of the lockdown on Tuesday 28 May, it was linked to the announcement of a national Day of Prayer on Pentecost Sunday. Many a prophecy in this bumper season of prayer created a great expectation of revival. At this time Covid-19 infection started to spiral, with Cape Town being the epicentre. Sixty per cent of the cases of our country were in the Western Cape. If there were to be another divine manifestation that the big revival has really arrived, a massive reversal of the increase or better still, a stop of further infection, would have been a sign. On 14 June the first Satanist 'Church' building of South Africa opened its doors at Century City. That Cape Town simultaneously had around 60% of Covid-19 infections country-wide brought many believers to suspect a sinister demonic connection. How would the Church react to this? A debate on the whatsapp group of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape looked at possible causes from a biblical perspective. Clear consensus that one of the major reasons could be the disobedience of the Church in respect of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19,20). There were very few churches that were still evangelising. Whereas many mission agencies still had national or regional offices in the mother city 20 years ago, almost none of them still functioned as a recruiting agency for new missionaries. Our Chief Justice Attacked Mike Swain, Director of ForSA, wrote an excellent article in Gateway News. Quite wisely, he left South Africa's role in the conflict out of the discussion. The article did mention, however, a group called Africa4Palestine, the new name for the BDS, the anti-Israel movement which uses the Palestinian issue as a smokescreen for its real objective, the destruction of Israel. On Tuesday 23 June the Chief Justice of South Africam Moegoeng Moegoeng appeared in a widely advertised zoom webinar with the Chief Rabbi of the country, organised by the Jerusalem Post. That the Chief Justice quoted Genesis 12:3, with a possible deduction that our country could have incurred a curse on our country because of the government's biased attitude. This unleashed a massive attack on him from the ANC. That he also said that South Africa could play a positive role in bringing about peace and that we as South Africans 'are denying ourselves a wonderful opportunity of being a game-changer in the Israeli-Palestinian situation', was conveniently ignored by those who wanted him at least censured. He also went on to say that the people of South Africa could be an asset that could be used around the world to 'bring peace, when there is no peace and to mediate effectively, based on rich experience'. But this was likewise completely absent. Instead, Africa4Palestine went on to lay a formal complaint at the Constitutional Court. Ultimately the Chief Justice was charged for operating outside of his non-political ambits. Months later, his apology was sufficient to put the matter to rest. We continue to pray that the Church of South Africa at large would also come out more strongly in a conciliatory role of our country also in international affairs. The Song Jerusalema a Global Hit The song Jerusalema became a global hit during the time that the Hope, Healing and Restoration campaign was praying for the peace of Jerusalem every week, together with many other SA believers who were praying likewise, Chief Justice Mogoeng came under fire for saying that he prays for the peace of Jerusalem. Believers saw the sudden fame of the song as an answer to prayer; South Africans were now making Jerusalem to be a praise in all the earth! Many were hoping that it could be a sign of South Africa turning to Israel. With gloom all around at the time because of the Covic pandemic, they saw it as a sign of hope from a nation whose government had unfortunately adopted a biased position against the Jewish state. The first music video of a version of a Gospel song made in South Africa by producer, DJ and artist Master KG, featuring singer Nomcebo, recorded over 46 million views on Youtube in seven months and a remix, featuring Nigerian musician Burna Boy and Nomcebo, had more than 2.3 million views in a month. Christians Prayed Outside Hospitals Christians across Cape Town turned out in numbers to pray outside hospitals for revival and for the healing of Covid-19 victims. Part of the citywide hospital prayer surge appears to be a resumption of initiatives which were started in an earlier lockdown phase last year but at about eight facilities in the Mitchell’s Plain and surrounding areas it is believed that the prayer activity was sparked by a pastor from Vryburg in North West province who came to Cape Town on December 31 to pray for his son-in-law who was a Covid patient at the hospital. The Assemblies of God pastor, Peter Lottering, told Gateway News this week that sadly his son-in-law, Francois Erasmus, passed away but he and fellow prayer warriors were continuing to pray outside the Melomed Mitchell's Plain private hospital every evening and he also prayed for Covid patients in private homes when he was asked to. He said they started praying outside the hospital with just six people and after video clips of their mission were posted on social media the group grew and new groups were started at other hospitals. Rozanne Visagie, who coordinated outdoor worship and prayer events around Cape Town and who maintained a Facebook page called Revival Prayer said in a post: “Revival prayers and prayers for the sick, the care givers and hospital staff are happening all over Cape Town at various hospitals. Praise Jesus! I have received so many videos from different places. It is really amazing to see how God is stirring the people and how this End-Time revival flame is being fanned.” While the hospital prayer surge in Cape Town was commended by many people on social media, a hospital chaplain, Pastor Neville Ontong, warned in a social media comment, that some well-meaning but overzealous church groups have been disturbing patients and hospital staff by using loudhailers to pray and preach messages. Moves Towards Unity in the Body of Christ At the beginning of February 2021 the leaders of Tygerberg Radio had a 'dinkskrum', (brain storming) to which Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout was invited to share from the Word the next time. . At this occasion he highlighted the fact that the radio reaches the extremes of Cape society including the affluent Klara Anna Fontein, the compound near to Durbanville which one cannot enter without ado. On the other hand, they as church have been serving in Da Nini, an informal part of Khayelitsha via Pastor Peter Makote and his fellowship. At that time churches were only allowed 50 people attending on Sundays because of Covid regulations. Pastor Tertius challenged Cape believers via the radio with '50/50 prayer outreach', to have prayer at 50 locations across the Cape Peninsula. The first one was at Da Nini, where a Xhosa lady who was born during the Spanish Flu of 1918, accepted Christ as her Saviour. Prayer at the townships of Delft and Belhar brought them in touch with believers who would link up with him in special prayer evdeavours later in the year. To go and pray as 'Whites' at the ganster-notorious Leonsvale of Eleventh Avenue in Elsies River got some eye- brows raised, but Die Wynstok believers trusted the prayerful leadership of their pastor, who had also been going to dangerous parts of the world like Afghanistan and Iraq for prayer ministry. In the beginning of March the Holy Spirit inspired Pastor Tertius Bezuidenhout to also come and pray in Bo-Kaap and District Six. A huge occult mural in District Six played some role in this regard: On Tuesday 17 August there were prayers at 50 locations across the Cape Peninsula Tertius furthermore got on his heart to invite intercessors to come and pray especially in Bo-Kaap, the Islamic cradle of the country. On Wednesday 8 September 30 of them came to the Harbour of Hope in Bree Street, the ministry workshop from which Theo and Mignonne Schumann had been operating. In a short devotion from Scripture, Theo used the story of David and Goliath where he compared the giant to the religion of Islam. After a period of silent prayer, Tertius Bezuidenhout invited the intercessors to pray for the area one day per week over a forty day period. Dialogue or Debate? It so happened that an Islamic Propagation Centre had been started at the historic Auwal Mosque of Bo-Kaap in 2020, the first mosque of the country. From the beginning of 2021 Hunter McComb, originally a missionary of Frontline Fellowship, who was seconded to OM in 2020, started to go there for interfaith-dialogue every Friday, amicably interacting with Imam (??) Ibrahim ?? from ?? With some expectation for interesting dialogue, a public meeting was scheduled at that venue for Thursday, October 2021. On short notice it was postponed to a week later. An invitation went out to 'please be praying for Hunter and his team as they will be having a discussion with a Muslim apologist in a mosque this Thursday, answering the questions: "Why Christianity" and "Why Islam?" We are praying it will be an opportunity to develop more relationships with Muslims and to share the Gospel with many Muslims who have not yet heard the truth of Jesus.' For the day prior to that Ps.Tertius Bezuidenhout had been inviting intercessors to come and pray for Bo-Kaap at the Noon Gun, thus just over half-way through the 40 days of prayer. When 40 intercessors came there, the bulk of them from further way. Also Pastor Peter Makote and his family attended. This augured well towards a breakthrough. The event turned out to be an anti-climax, which angered me terribly. Just over a week later Hunter sent to me the lines of what he had sent to the Islamic speaker: Appendices Appendix 1 Fasts in Cape Town Led to a Movement for the World’s Cities One morning in 2010, Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, sat down for breakfast with Bob Doll, a highly respected investment manager. On that October morning in Cape Town they were both participants in the Lausanne Movement’s Third Congress on World Evangelization. A few hours later, Keller and Doll sat down for their second breakfast of the day, this time with Mac Pier, long time friend of Keller and the founder of The New York City Leadership Center (NYCLC, now known as Movement.org). As the three spoke that morning, something ignited between them, and over the course of the congress, that spark grew steadily into a roaring fire. Their unique callings as pastor, marketplace leader, and non-profit expert came together to form an unconventional ‘three-legged stool’ that they believed was the key to realizing a vision they all yearned for: the acceleration of the gospel in New York City. Movement Day, which serves as the Lausanne Movement’s network on cities, was accelerated into a global movement. ‘Movement Day is an ecosystem gathering,’ says Pier. Keller, Doll, and Pier—three different but influential members of the New York ecosystem—had no ambition for anything larger than New York when they joined forces over toast and coffee in Cape Town. But God was setting the stage to do immeasurably more in the cities of the world. Appendix 2 Prophetic Words for South Africa The Violent Shaking of South Africa will Birth New Life By Kirsten Rossiter I’ve been feeling such a burden for South Africa, and in particular for our people. There is great pressure, great suffering, and a violent shaking happening right now. Many are feeling unsettled, insecure and worried about the future, and highly stressed from the mounting pressures in our nation and in their personal lives. I would like to share some of the things the Lord has been showing me, as He wants to unveil His Workings, so we can clearly see His Hand in the midst of the shaking, knowing that He is God, and He is in control of our nation even when we feel out of control. The Lord would say, ‘South Africa, South Africa, you are Mine. Have I not declared it, have I not said it? Am I a God who speaks lies and falsities? For this is your finest hour, this is your time of birthing. When I bring about the ‘new’, I first cause the ‘old’ to die. Have I not declared that in this time there will be a shaking of everything that can be shaken so that only that which is holy and pure will remain? I am shaking this nation to its core, dismantling and destroying the high places given to the enemy, and breaking her pride. I am bringing this nation to her knees, where she will cry out to Me, alone, for help. When this government finds itself in the dust, humble and prostrate, looking to Me, and locking arms with one another, that’s when I will birth this New Nation. Be not afraid when you feel the shaking. Let not your heart tremble, but trust in Me. Know that I am God, and no man can stop My Workings. There will be a twin-birth in this nation, made visible in the spiritual and natural realm. Know that the seed has to die for new life to come forth. The South Africa you’ve known will never be the same again. It’s in the death of the ‘old’ that My Promise of the ‘new’ will be fulfilled. Have I not said this is an Apostolic nation? For I am shooting out arrows, even now. Arrows of righteousness who have been purged in My Fire. My Fire has been burning on this land in the lives of many, and I have prepared them to ignite the nations, gathering in the harvest across the earth. Do I not create the right climate to bring forth My Purposes? Look beyond the veil and see what I am revealing to My sons and daughters. I am here and I am working on your behalf, South Africa, My Beloved land. Be not afraid when you see neighbours leaving, for I am sending out many in this hour, returning to their roots to build My Kingdom upon the earth. There will be a remnant who will rebuild the walls of this nation, with the help of other nations. I will send you aid, I will send you help. Your borders will open to new nations, inviting new skills. New people will join you, building a nation that will represent the nations of the earth, creating a new tapestry of colours, dimensions, textures, and shapes not yet seen. There is a strong Apostolic anointing and gifting upon the Afrikaner Farmers to build, establish, encourage, and enable. The enemy is strategically targetting them, trying to alienate them, for they have a pivotal role in the rebuilding of this nation. Where before they built for themselves, they will now build for all, and with all generously and humbly. I will use their ability to create something out of nothing, helping build this nation from its ashes. South Africa, let My shaking have its full purpose. Let it bring you to your knees where you cry out to Me! Let this government know that I am is on the Throne, ruling over this nation! Your humility will bring forth the unity that’s needed to birth this New Nation for My Glory.’ Appendix 3 The Trigger for the Revival? God had spoken to a group of Germans to pray daily for 40 days for Nigeria until October 1. I got another call from the US: a group had been praying for Nigeria for over seven years, now there was a leading for a 24-hour prayer cover which, fortunately, is an ongoing effort in Nigeria. Another pastor in the UK had been talking with me: God had prompted him to initiate 40 days of prayer and fasting for Nigeria until September 30th. We had been working at the logistics, mobilising intercessors towards the effort. That has been on, with impressive responses. I had got another call: a group of young student Nigerians in the United States was doing 60 days of quiet intercession three times daily until October 1. I have been in touch with them. The Catholic Bishops of Nigeria have proclaimed a 40-day prayer schedule that started since August 22, until Independence eve on September 30. The following day, Independence Day, shall be a day of common prayers. Their concern is the killings in Nigeria and the threatened destiny of the nation. The list is long of praying people, many of whom we would never know, groups and individuals in noiseless upper rooms who have seen a sign or heard a sound, to petition the heavens in this season for the birthing of a New by October, from the passing away of an OLD wine skin. At the end of one of our daily online prayer meetings in August, initiated at short notice in response to His Voice, a sister brought up her persuasion that thirty nations should be enlisted to pray a day each for Nigeria through September. That also has been on: 30 nations praying 30 days. The countries include Canada, Ghana, the United States, Uganda, China, Cameroon, Mali, the UK, South Africa, Panama, Turkey, Haiti, Qatar, etc. To what summon in the spirit are these all responding simultaneously, without plan? What sign is this? At least this also says to me that God is gathering eagles, and if any should be too proud or too busy, there are many replacements already out there. I do not wish to be replaced, not in this season nor ever. God is stirring the waters of Nigeria. Amen. At the beginning of this month, I got a message from a dear brother, a pastor over a prominent church with headquarters in Nigeria and branches outside, a missionary and an intercessor. The message stressed the point more strongly about the season and its signs. It said, "Welcome to the Month of Sept. This is the month that will end the year 2020 and begin the new year, according to the Jewish Calendar. The Jewish new year and the Feast of Trumpet is on Sept. 17th & 18th. The Day of Atonement & National repentance is on Sept 27th & 28th. I am calling all of us to a season of 21 to 30 days fasting and prayer, this month." The prayer call is for “Personal and Corporate Revival,” for “a great awakening in the Church and in the Nation,” for God to “raise and manifest the JOSEPH and the DANIEL COMPANY all over NIGERIA and the Continent of AFRICA.” It’s a “Daniel fast” during which participants might take only “vegetables and fruits” or break the fast in the evening. I was concluding this epistle when I got a call from a praying mother from the leadership of a global women’s prayer movement in Nigeria. She said she was calling to encourage me. They had just returned from a prayer mission to one of the states in eastern Nigeria. Our prayers in this season have not been in vain. Testimonies abound to the many answers to the season’s intense prayers, for which the enemy has been most desperately fierce. Sadly, we seem to have been hearing and fearing about the enemy’s calendar more than we would hear the Lord’s. What is God about to do in this season? Why all the ‘mobilizations’ to prayer? A ‘happy new year’ call in a very auspicious season according to God’s calendar coincidental again with Nigeria’s calendar? October 1 is another Independence celebration for Nigeria. For Pharaoh’s forces desperate to kill all Jews, may God prepare a Red Sea after a Night that shall not be passed over. Amen. Happy New Year, O land; Happy New Year. Amen. Look what the Lord has done for Sean. A month and half a go, he was a street person, staying on the streets, without a job. Today he looks have a job. God willing in the next view months he will be a captain of the boat. Is our God not awesome.  being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; Philippians 1:6 Morning. How are you doing ? Amanda, my captain just confirmed that i will start my courses in oct and also to do my skippers license next year, so i wont be visiting in oct. Thank the lord, this is the chance i need, tried for 6 years and now its on. Amazing. Keep smiling. Sean fOur God is awesome. All glory to God Answers to September 26 Prayer Breakthrough Against CSE – Major Doors Open At United Nations! (Ps Errol Naidoo in JOY News) Great news! The values-based sexuality education curriculum, “Smart Choices” is finalised. So are the supplementary educational programs, “No Apologies, “Not Guilty” and “Tomorrow’s Leaders in Training.” We have also finalised the ‘Online Brochure’ that outlines the benefits of these programs You can preview what these educational programs offer parents and educators Here. I have submitted the Smart Choices programs to certain educators, educational institutions and senior Church leaders for evaluation and consideration. Once we receive their response, the Smart Choices curriculum and the supplementary programs, which are safe, credible and agenda-free alternatives to the dangerous “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” (CSE) program, will be launched nationwide via a digital marketing campaign. Instructed and funded by United Nations agencies like UNESCO, the DBE have appointed “Brand Ambassadors” to sell the poisonous ideology of CSE to the public. However, DBE Minister, Angie Motshekga confirmed CSE is not compulsory. Parents, educators and religious institutions are therefore free to adopt alternative programs that align with their values and principles. Smart Choices and the age-appropriate supplementary programs adopts a sexual health and character-building approach to sexuality education based on traditional and common sense values. It is a safe and credible alternative to the abortion and LGBTQ propaganda Trojan Horse that is CSE. Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Smart Choices will make CSE obsolete not only because it’s a better model, but because it’s created by South African educators who understand the unique challenges faced by South African children. Arrest of Many ANC Leaders with Charges of Corruption The long-awaited arrests and prosecutions of public officials implicated in corruption appeared to be gathering momentum. Several senior ANC officials were arrested for fraud and corruption this past week and some appeared in court for bail hearings. The arrests of former Free State officials implicated in the R255-million asbestos audit scam dominated the headlines. The Asset Forfeiture Unit attached R300-million in assets belonging to kingpin, Edwin Sodi. The noose started tightening around ANC Secretary General, Ace Magashule’s neck. Most of the corruption, fraud and theft committed in the Free State, including the appalling Vrede Dairy Farm atrocity, transpired on the former Free State premier’s watch. Magashule was ultimately side-lined, but a clear follow up of the arrest clearly lacked. Into the second of of 2023 the country was still waiting on the return of the stolen money by politicians. Farmers and EFF supporters faced off in a tense confrontation in Senekal on Friday as two suspects appeared for the murder of 21-year-old farm manager Brendin Horner. Farm Murders Flare Up Farm murders flared up again in early October 2020. On 8 October Pastor Angus Buchan went viral via a video clip, imploring 'White' farmers not to retaliate when after hundreds of farmers turned up in front of the Senekal Magistrate’s Court where two suspects in the brutal murder of Brendin Horner appeared for the first time. Horner’s body was found last Friday and tensions have been high ever since, culminating in farmers storming the court house and overturning and setting a police vehicle alight. Appendix ? A Farmer’s Encounter at a Free State Spaza Shop A story about a farmer’s encounter at a spaza shop in Paul Roux, Free State, lifted spirits around the nation. The farmer, Gareth Going, shared his incredible experience on Facebook. “I’ve just got back from our quaint little village of Paul Roux after doing the usual mundane tasks of going to the co-op, getting feed for the animals and other odds and ends. Almost routinely stopping on my way out at our local Spaza for a cool drink for today and a box of cigarettes. “When I walked in it was rather crowded but funnily quiet with a few hushed whispers every now and again. All with masks on which has now become the norm and doesn’t make one feel uncomfortable any more. “An old man shuffled towards me and smiled at me and we had the good old greeting and normal pleasantries towards me. He then asked me, sir were you one of the guys in Senekal yesterday? The Spaza went quiet. I said yes that I was. an explosion of emotions from young and old. What happened next still has me feeling overwhelmed. There was an explosion of emotions from young and old. The ladies started singing and dancing. The men all came forward to shake my hand where I realized my African handshake needs some work! But I can say that after today it’s mastered.” One extremely well dressed young man approached Gareth, shook his hand, and said “thank you sir”, before continuing, in perfect English, to say something that really touched Gareth, and apparently all in the Spaza Shop agreed with him. The young man said: 'Sir, yesterday when all the boere drove past us, it became quiet. We all knew that today is the day that change will come. We have been waiting for the farmers to stand up and decide it’s enough! We are all scared at night and nobody is safe, we know having worked on farms where our food comes from. We know that it’s not the farmers fault for job losses. We are tired!' But that wasn’t all. What really bowled Gareth over was what the young man said next: 'Will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you!' Sir, we know that next week the court date is coming up. What we ask is, will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you. We need to all come together! Sir, we know that next week the court date is coming up. What we ask is, will the boere please stop with all their white bakkies so that we can fill them and join you. We need to all come together!' Gareth says: “A lot more was said and many a cheer and smile was made. Driving back, a load of feed and my mind racing with all my thoughts. I now realize that the time has come, we lost another young man with his entire life ahead of him. But his life has started a movement. One that I don’t believe we have any idea of how powerful it is. I have hope again, South Africa will come right. We must just stand together and make ourselves heard! I have hope again, South Africa will come right. “God bless you all and stay safe. Keep the fire going in your hearts!” Since sharing his post, it has gone viral with many people copying and pasting it without crediting Gareth so that some thought it may just be an urban legend. But South African people caught up with Gareth and he confirmed this amazing scene happened. He was blown away by the response. “My experience was wonderful, but the response that it’s had is incredible. So happy to give some people a form of hope again…” ‌A Time for Action! The crisis caused by the killing of 'White' farmers was clearly demonically inspired, bringing the country once again to the crossroads. The ogre of racial civil war suddenly became a possibility once again. Christian leaders, leaders of farming organisations and representatives of troubled communities came together in an extraordinary 5-hour emergency online meeting on Tuesday 13 October called by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to seek solutions for problems that are threatening to escalate already-high levels of violence in South Africa. The zoom meeting was 'attended' virtually with 200 leaders country-wide. The decision to allow so many voices to be heard proved to be profound, as speakers expressed how they were deeply humbled by the experience and aware of God’s presence in the meeting. Commercial farming organisation spokesmen were listened to as they shared a heart cry from 'White' farmers to be valued and recognised as Africans. As testimonies were shared everyone registered that farmers of all races were soft targets of brutal attacks which were often compounded by dysfunctional policing or courts. The link between a sharp rise in violence in Orange Farm and the cessation of regular prayer collaboration between the Church, police and clinics was highlighted. There were calls for restoration of the family structure, godly governance, poverty alleviation, an “agricultural Codesa”, a national conference on healing and a national safeguarding strategy. After everyone had spoken Mogoeng addressed the gathering, responding to topics and suggestions that had been voiced. “Let us see today as a beginning of something great that is going to turn this country around in a positive direction,” he said. He said that a summary of proposals arising from the meeting would be sent to participants for their input and for further discussion. It was agreed subsequently to have another meeting in Pretoria on 20 October to work at a nationally integrated safeguarding strategy. “I promise to engage with you again as we pursue unity and reconciliation, as we allow love to be the driving force behind what we do. Let us go out there and quell any volatility in our neighbourhoods and communities and rest assured that the best is around the corner,” he said before closing the meeting in prayer. 'Like never before, we need to stand together as one body. The devil has a habit of dividing and ruling. We will not allow that to happen. We will implement Psalm 133. When we stand together in unity, God will command a blessing.' An attempt was made to dedicate the nation to ancestral spirits on Saturday May 8, 2021. Christians were invited to join in prayer for the Nation on Friday 7 May, 2021 for one hour from 10h00-11h00 and dedicate the nation to its Creator, Jehovah Shammah. Ps Arthur Frost invited intercessors to pray for five minutes every hour from 9h on Saturday, 8 May the same day. Significant teachings were also disseminated via electronic media on the biblical message about ancestral worship, e.g. by Pearl Kupe and Patrick Kuwana. For so many Christians this was an eye opener. Another wave of united prayer was unleashed that was unprecedented. Feedback on an Attempt to Inaugurate a National Ancestor Day. Messages from different parts of the country came that the attempt to dedicate the nation to ancestral spirits on Saturday, May 8, 2021 flopped. This basically means that the so-called day of the ancestors did not take root at all or received much attention. One example came from the larger Bushbuckridge area where 6 million people live and where there had been great expectation by the organizers! The following was sent via a whatsapp message: Actually life went on as usual! People played football, went to town etc like any Saturday! There was a small group gathered at the royal palace where the main ceremony would take place! Even the local radio station and newspapers paid little attention to it! And all the leaders of all the parts of Bushbuckridge agree that we have not experienced any victory for the enemy in spirit! On Sunday, the Christian churches praised the Lord with more passion than before! A Prophetic Revival Scroll Released A prophetic revival scroll was released in Cape Town on Pentecost Sunday — May 23 — in a coordinated event that included teams on both the top and a lower level of Table Mountain, as well as ministry partners around the world. The scroll, which was brought to the Cape from Bloemfontein by walker for Jesus Edward Pozyn and a backup driver and mission partner, Anthony Fish, carrying a message about revival and the return of Jesus linked to Malachi 4:5,6. On top of the mountain apostolic, prophetic and governmental leaders and Revival Fire planning team members united in personal, corporate and national prayers of repentance on behalf of the nation before introducing Andre Venter of the House of Bread in Bloemfontein, who received the prophetic word conveyed on the scroll and the men who carried it to the Cape. Tears of remorseful repentance flowed freely as intercessors also repented for the role of the Church in many actions including the emphasis on peripheral matters like buildings and not supporting missionaries that had been sent to foreign countries. Lower on the mountain, at the level of the cable station road, dancers, worshippers and shofar blowers also participated in repentance prayers followed by a time of worship and dancing. Apostles Arthur and Michelle Coetzee release the scroll on top of the mountain — and it is received digitally by partners in Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Israel, Europe, America, Asia, Australia and the Fiji Islands. Both groups took communion before participating in shofar declarations followed by blowing the shofar to release a “sound of from Cape to Cairo to Israel and the nations”. Glossary Afrikaners:'Whites' of primarily Dutch descent, whose home language is Afrikaans. Apartheid: A formal system of racial segregation. Forcefully implemented by the National Party after it came to power in 1948, it entrenched 'White' domination in virtually all sectors of South African life. bakkie - a pick up vehicle, sometimes fitted with a canopy for the transport of passengers boer(e) – farmer(s) Bo-Kaap: The geographical area of the Cape Town City Bowl which borders the lower slopes of Signal Hill. It is sometimes also erroneous referred to by parts of the area, viz the Malay Quarter or Schotse Kloof. Ds.: The abbreviation of dominee, the pastor of an Afrikaans-speaking Reformed congregation. It is derived from dominus, which means means. master; sir; a title of respect formerly applied to a knight or clergyman, and sometimes to the lord of a manor. Heimat: German word for homeland, rather Fatherland, with a strong emphasis on home. Translation as Fatherland misses the aspect of 'home sweet home'. Kramats: the graves of Islamic saints of the faith evolved into shrines. Khoe (formerly known as hottentotten or khoi) and San (formerly called Bushmen: the indigenous first nation people of Southern Africa Two Demonic Attacks Rosemarie and I suffered attacks which had clear serious physical manifestations. On Wednesday 16 June 2021 Rosemarie told Deon January, our Moriah Discipling House sibling of her pending visit the next day to a back-slidden believer who had been baptised many years ago, with hardly any visible spiritual growth thereafter. Her continued dabbling in the occult including practising yoga was a clearly discernable link. Deon felt divinely led to advise Rosemarie not to go alone. She tried in vain to get someone to join her the next day. At the visit she sensed some heavy spiritual resistance, but at the end she could pray with the believer. She left with a sense of peace. On Friday 18 June Rosemarie went to the nearby Mediclinic for the removal of a cataract on her left eye. This is a procedure that is generally regarded as straight forward. In her case however, she came out of the operation with a complication that left her almost blind on that eye. The experienced eye specialist was very surprised, but we discerned a demonic link after the visit to the believer the previous day. Many believers prayed in the days and weeks thereafter. How we rejoiced when she got a special present on the 7th of July, her 70th birthday: a clear improvement of her sight on the left eye! How we praised the Lord, along with the other intercessors, family and friends who had been praying! Four weeks later we went to Blauwberg where I had a ministry-related talk with our brother John from Algeria who had been leading our home church for Muslim background believers, while Rosemarie and Bev Stratis, our dear intercessor friend who resides in our home went for a walk. Sitting on a bench over-looking the sea, I caught a cold that left me without voice the next day. I was due to preach at our fellowship the following Sunday, 18 July. I interacted with our dear brother John from Algeria, sitting on a bench, but where I sensed something happening with my voice. On Monday 12 July not only my voice was gone. News went around the country about looting and devastation that this country has not seen before. Even though it happened in far away Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng, the provinces in which big cities like Johannesburg and Durban are located, the fear soon spread like wild fire. Fires in the Free State literally wiped away the livelihood of many in the Free State. With so many South Africans we struggled with some measure of bewilderment. While an unprecedented wave of prayer swept the nation via zoom and in small groups. Electronic media sent many messages, some of them alarmist and not a few fake. Reports of looting exacerbated feelings of despondency, albeit my faith, and prayers Personal Reflections My bewilderment in the downward diving movement of the roller coaster ride had a personal touch to it when by Wednesday evening I still hardly had any voice. Automatically I was wondering what would happen when I would have to record my video message by Saturday. The ogre of Andrew Murray who had no voice for months was quite real, in addition to feelings of guilt that were triggered by the looting. On Thursday morning the tide turned significantly, albeit that my voice was far from normal as yet, definitely not sufficiently to preach. How blessed I felt to be able to pray with folk on many a platform and at home. On Sunday 18 July my voice was back. I could testify to God's healing touch in answer to prayer via my sermon. The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban from August 31 to Sep 8 2001.  The very conference which was intended to counter racism and foster tolerance quickly turned into a hate fest against Israel and against Jews.  It also became apparent that before the event a plan was put in place to hijack the conference, using a number of pro-Palestinian NGOs to spearhead an agenda to reawaken the narrative that Zionism equates to racism. (A 1975 UN resolution to that effect was revoked in 1991.) The conference included a NGO forum and a governmental conference which met independently. Members of the Jewish and Christian communities attended and were horrified at what they encountered. This was scheduled to be the first human rights conference of the 21st century and was to take place in Durban, South Africa, the birthplace of apartheid, where we could have commemorated the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. But what happened at Durban was truly Orwellian instead. “A conference that was supposed to be against racism and discrimination turned into a conference of hatred and racism against Israel and the Jewish people. A conference that was supposed to be engaged in the promotion and protection of human rights singled out one state and one people, Israel and the Jewish people for selective indictment and indeed characterised Israel and the Jewish people as the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil. And a conference that was to celebrate the ending of SA apartheid began with the calling for the dismantling of Israeli ;apartheid’.” He recalled that after landing back home on the eve of 9/11, one of his collegues commented to him “that if 9/11 was the Kristalnacht of terror, Durban was the Mein Kampf”. In a word, Durban, was the tipping point for new antisemitism. Felice Gaer, a director of the American Jewish Committee’s who was also at the Durban event in 2001 told the Jewish Report webinar that the secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan had called Durban 1 as the low point in UN -Jewish relations. (He had been the first secretary general to use the term Holocaust as the Soviet Union had prevented the term from being used in the UN.) Gaer said: “The expectation had been that the [Durban] conference would address human rights issues across the world, as it happened after the Rwanda and Bosnia atrocities. It was, however, not to be, as it soon became apparent that the Durban conference had been hijacked by a political group promoting solidarity with the Palestinians. A number of articles had been written by different organisations saying as much. They then proceeded to promote division, disruption and distortion and after it was all over they went into denial. Denial that any of it had happened. Denial that it was anti-Semitic. It was clearly all deliberate and all planned.” Posters outside the conference venue in Durban openly stated: “Too bad Hitler had not finished the job” and copies of the fraudulent anti-Semitic publication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were distributed. Four regional conferences were held in the run up to the Durban conference. The last of these was in Teheran, Iran and it was closed to Israel and Jewish NGOs. Israel was openly called a racist, criminal Nazi state at the Teheran event and the fact that there was no outrage cleared the way for those with an agenda to hijack the Durban conference. Previous UN-hosted conferences against racism in 1978 and 1983 had largely focussed on SA and apartheid issues and the expectation was that at the Durban conference various states would release reports on their own human rights issues during the NGO forum. The forum was however totally hijacked by a number of largely SA NGOs and a document was compiled with a section from the Palestinian and Arab caucus accusing Israel of genocide and various hate crimes. It was ironic, as Jewish delegates who had lobbied for policies against antisemitism, now experienced it first-hand at the very conference that was supposed to counter it. Shocking anti-Semitism was on open display and no one stood up to it — exacerbating the trauma for Jewish delegates. Nations that were guilty of human rights abuses were left totally unscathed. The USA had made it clear that they would not participate in the Durban conference if the “Zionism is racism” allegation was raised. They went on to boycott the conference, along with Israel and a number of other nations including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Poland. In the midst of the conference, as the horror story was unfolding, Solly Kessler, a past chair of the Zionist Council called Chris Eden from Bridges for Peace and asked him a question: “If you call yourselves our friends, now is the time, we need you to show us this friendship”. A newspaper campaign was quickly configured, emphasising three main concepts around Israel which countered the narrative being promoted at the conference. Within hours R41 000 was raised from various Christian Zionist organisations with the major donors being Bridges for Peace, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Christian Action for Israel and Christian Friends of Israel. The “adverts” went into all the major daily newspapers controlled at that stage by Independent Newspapers and The Star under the banner of the “The Alliance of Christian Zionist Organisations”. About 50 calls were logged, with some being very abusive, especially in response to the statement of Iranian oil being the lubricant that kept apartheid SA’s wheels turning. The Jewish community was very encouraged by the Christian support and expressed much gratitude towards the Alliance. The project was a big step forward in Christian/Jewish relations in SA. 2001 newspaper advertisement Back to the conference: Mary Robbins, the secretary general of the conference, raised objections to the language used in the document compiled by the NGO forum and said she would not present it to the governmental conference. A steering committee was appointed to “fix” the text of the document and members were physically assaulted while trying to change the wording. [See the final Durbanhttps://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf Declaration:  ] The last speaker at the NGO forum was Fidal Castro and when Mary Robbins asked him about his own nation’s human rights issues she was booed by the audience. Although the declaration that “Zionism is racism” was not formally adopted by the governmental conference and the need for countering antisemitism was mentioned in the declaration, the Durban 1 conference still led to Israel being labelled an apartheid state and the BDS (Boycott, disinvestment and sanctions) campaign was launched thereafter in an effort to dismantle the Jewish state. Immediate aftermath: The Jews were blamed for 9/11 which took place immediately after the conference.  A conference took place at the University of Michigan, launching the BDS movement with a resolution calling for the dismantling of Israel as a racist apartheid state. The UN Commission for Human Rights met soon afterwards and the majority of resolutions singled out Israel, while the real human rights abuser nations got off scot-free. Professor Irwin Cotler sums it up well when he states: “On a personal level Durban has been indelibly imprinted on my memory and on my being. Those of us who were at Durban were in one form or another transformed by that experience. The legacy of Durban is not only the legacy of hate, which would be bad enough. The legacy of Durban is that it became a tipping point for the laundering of antisemitism under the cover of human rights and anti-racism which we are still witnessing today. “The laundering of antisemitism under the protective cover of the UN, under the authority of international law, under the culture of human rights, and under the very struggle against racism itself and I think that legacy is still with us.”  The commemoration of the Durban 1 Conference is planned for September 22 at the UN headquarters in New York and has already been boycotted by 13 nations because of its antisemitic agenda. The countries staying away are Israel, the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK, Hungary, Austria, Netherlands, the Czech Republic, France and Italy. ‘Redeeming’ SA Tomas Sandell, the leader of the European Coalition for Israel, which mobilises Christians to oppose antisemitism, had a burden to see South Africa redeemed in terms of what transpired on our soil 20 years ago in Durban. He arranged a Global Celebrate Israel Marathon — an online event to counter the Durban narrative and bid Israel “shana tova” (happy new year). Six hours of video footage, including 15 minutes from Cape Town and Durban, was broadcast online from various nations across the world on Sunday September 5 on the eve of Rosh Hashana.  A spectacular rendition of the Jerusalema dance from Durban and messages from African Christian Democratic Party MPs Rev Kenneth Meshoe and Steve Swart speaking outside Parliament in Cape Town were part of the SA contribution to the online marathon. The SA clip also includes an assurance from Christian leaders in Durban that from now on the name Durban will be associated with love and support for Israel. Video from DurbanVideo from Cape Town The marathon issued a Geneva Declaration cherishing the presence of Jewish communities worldwide as well as the State of Israel. The Declaration quotes German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in stating that “Jews have been instrumental in writing and shaping our history and in illuminating our culture.” The declaration was presented and read out in celebrations across all continents during the online marathon, thus contrasting the Durban Declaration from 2001 which had accused Israel of racism. *Survival to Revival*  8 - 14 November 2021 This Sunday evening at mignight, 16 nations in *Africa & South Asia* will be praying, *night-and-day*, for 7 days - trusting God for *spiritual awakening and social transformation* in each nation. The following nations will be participating this coming week, each having their own 24/7 WhatsApp Prayer Group. Janet Brann Hollis of SA Back to God which called the time of prayer and fasting. She said she would continue to pray on Wednesday mornings with watchman of the nation “until we witness the changing of the guard in SA politics”. She said that God’s favour and blessing on the prayer and fasting assignment had been tangible. “God wants SA for himself, and He will have it — through faithful prayer and the many spheres of Kingdom governance working together,” she said. “South Africa is covered by a blanket of prayer.” This was the declaration of a Christian leader that recently returned from an extended trip abroad. I agree – not only because of the countless prayer initiatives that inspire citizens from all walks of life to intercede for the nation – but because there is growing evidence God is sovereignly answering these prayers.   The shocking and historic results of the recent Municipal Elections can be attributed to other factors. But I believe God is at work in our politics. For the first time in our democracy, the ANC lost its dominance and struggle to form governing coalitions with opposition parties. The three largest political parties, the ANC, DA and EFF all strived to extend their power-base in municipalities across the country but failed to establish common-ground with smaller parties. The balance of power started shifting to the smaller (less arrogant) parties. Corruption, fraud and money laundering got exposed almost. The governing party is racked with in-fighting. Evidence of tender fraud, gross maladministration and theft of tax-payer money has exposed the ANC for what it really is – an organized crime network. Significantly, Eskom, the beleaguered energy utility at the epicenter of the ANC facilitated looting frenzy provided compelling evidence of internal sabotage. Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter is uncovering (and halting) massive fraud by the politically connected. (Energy expert Mark Swilling, a professor at Stellenbosch University, told the Sunday Times of claims from various sources that sabotage is taking place. He added that the culprits were likely low-level managers and that the consistent pattern of breakdowns is unlikely to be maintenance-related. Please continue to pray for De Ruyter and his team. There is an orchestrated campaign to remove them because of their remarkable success at exposing corruption and theft. Errol Naidoo, in a Family Policy newsletter, which was also published in Joy News, wrote: 'My strong encouragement to believers is to intensify prayers for our political, civil and Church leaders. The winds of change are blowing but you and I must not lose the momentum or the faith and intensity to co-labor to ensure the Lord’s will is established for South Africa.' Swimming Agaianst the Stream And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Dear Mr President My name is Dr Naseeba Kathrada. 11 months ago I wrote a letter to you pleading to give hope back to the people and trust back to the doctors. On the eve of a suspiciously accurately predicted 4th wave, I am once again asking you Mr President…give hope back to the people and trust back to us frontline doctors. In February 2021 you, Mr President, assured your fellow South Africans that “Nobody will be forced to take this vaccine.” Not only did you repeat this statement, you went on to say “Nobody will be forbidden from travelling to wherever they want to travel to, including from enrolling at school or from taking part in any public activity if they have not been vaccinated.” You made this promise to us Mr President… and a mere 6 months later I am inundated with distress calls and pleas for help from South Africans being coerced and “forced” to take “this vaccine”. These same South Africans, like me, trusted you and your promises are now feeling betrayed and helpless. Mr Ramaphosa, if you take a step back and look at status of the world currently, you will see that Africa is the continent least affected by the covid pandemic. In fact , although Africa houses 17.6% of the worlds population, it accounts for less than 3% of the world’s covid deaths. This means that Africa is doing something remarkable and something right. Of note - less than 10% of the continent is vaccinated with ‘this vaccine’. The same vaccine that you assured South Africans will not be forced on any citizen. A learned, Belgian scientist recently told me ‘Africa will save the world’. I am sure that when you look at the continental figures Mr President, you will agree with him like I do. The Seychelles has the highest number of vaccinations per population in Africa and has the highest number of breakthrough infections. South Africa has the highest covid mortality in all of Africa - we take our lead from the west and follow guidelines from the WHO and CDC. We need to turn to Africa and learn lessons from this forgotten continent. Yes, I agree that testing for covid is probably not on par with the rest of the world but this means 2 things, we treat sick people not test results and all cause mortality has not increased which means that covid deaths are all accounted for. The average age in Africa is 18. This could account for the low mortality rate because young people have a 99%+ survival rate from Covid - yet in South Africa our universities and technical colleges are mandating vaccines and schools are allowing kids as young as 12 to be vaccinated without parental consent. The high rate of malaria and its treatment with hydroxychloroquin , or the widespread use of ivermectin could be another reason for the continents low covid mortality rate. Or it could just be that most of Africa has bigger problems than a flu like virus with a less than 2% mortality rate. Mr President - the answers are so apparent yet our government seems to be perpetuating the uncertainty. If all the measures the government is taking is indeed to ‘save lives and livelihoods’ like you have mentioned many times, why is there so much emphasis on vaccinating the nation in the middle of a pandemic? Why are we so focused on advertising and pushing the vaccines but not telling the people with the same fervour where and how to report side effects ? Or even allowing them their basic human right of informed consent by advertising and reporting everything we know about ‘this vaccine’. Instead, the government is perpetuating fear and driving people to take the jab without doing due diligence. At a worst survival rate of 98%, what is the hurry to vaccinate everyone. Especially since we now know that vaccinated people spread Covid just the same as unvaccinated and some studies are showing that there’s potential of vaccinated to have higher viral loads when infected post jab - and yes - vaccinated can get covid, and die from Covid , post jab. In your last address to the people of South Africa , Mr President, you spoke about the travel bans and how unjust it is to segregate a country , is it not even more unjust to segregate people within a country ? If vaccines are now proven only effective in protecting one’s self, why the need to continue spreading the misinformation that we are all only safe when everyone is vaccinated ? It is very encouraging that you have appointed advisory committees to get the best advise during these unprecedented and uncertain times. However, the appointment of these committee members needs to be a transparent, democratic process. Right now, the doctors on the frontline see the picture first and the clearest. We are the ones who speak to the patients and families first hand. Our experiences are not ‘anecdotal’ they are factual. I, like many colleagues that I know will gladly be part of the new advisory committee you have just set up - you need just ask us and we will be happy to serve our fellow South Africans. Why do we have to look to other countries for advice ? Let’s innovate and not imitate the west. Our slow vaccine roll out can be a blessing in disguise because it has given us a chance to see the devastation that the vaccine has caused worldwide. Not only are the people in America, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America protesting because of the adverse events being under reported in their countries, they are also rising up because their freedom is being violated. South Africans more than any other nation in the world know the all too well importance of liberty and freedom - We, as a nation, will not give up this freedom (again) easily. I implore you .. Mr President - reconsider your stance at mandating vaccines. We as a country and a nation will not survive further division - especially if it’s being enforced. Our unemployment rate has already doubled - pandemic fatigue is rife in all sectors of the community, we will not survive forced mandates. Trust us doctors, to give the best advice to our patients, trust us to uphold the oath we took - to ‘First… do no harm’ and give hope back to the people of South Africa. Hope that our President and our country will not follow the narrative. Hope that your promise to never be forced to take this vaccine will be upheld. In these uncertain times - let us agree to disagree with respect and dignity. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika Dr Naseeba Kathrada Westville, Durban South Africa 4 December 2021 “Mandatory Vaccinations” On Monday 6 December the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape published a statement for which I had written the draft in the wake of a wave of serious strife as Christians attacked each other for either being vaccinated or the converse. As Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape we take note - with great sadness and regret - of the grave disunity and strife that the (possible mandatory) vaccinations have caused among believers and even within families. The source of this strife is quite easy to trace as the father of lies and deception of whom one of the names is diabolos, the separator. The divine nature of the triune God is the complete opposite, restoring, reconciling, healing and uniting. Because there is no clear-cut biblical teaching in the matter of taking vaccination or refraining from it, we propose an adaptation of the Pauline teaching of Romans 14:4 as a guideline: Let not the one who takes the vaccination despise the one who abstains from taking it and vice versa. We have great liberty to encourage believers across the board to oppose the spirit of division 'with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace' (Ephesians 4:2,3). We would furthermore exhort pastors to set an example in their teaching and preaching to calm the storm and not fan the flame, so that the biblical values of tolerance, love and mutual respect would remain the testimony of the Church as we seek to give guidance in these troubled times. The prayer that has been attributed to Francis from Assisi is in our view quite helpful in this regard:, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Amen. From the CCWC executive A News Snippet With General Relief On Tuesday 7 December the following news snippet brought general relief: The National Assembly fails to pass the constitutional amendment Bill. The vote has just taken place. 204 votes for 145 votes against. The constitutional amendment is not carried as it did not obtain the required two-thirds majority. With the country already teetering on the threshold of economic disaster because of the Covid-19 effect, one needed little imagination to discern what a constitutional amendment to allow expropriation without compensation could have triggered via a withdrawal of foreign investment, followed by a possible brain drain.