What is Happening in South Africa?
The Shared Heritage of America and South Africa To many Americans, South Africa is a regular news item of inexplicable turmoil and tragedy. Yet few realise the tremendous similarities between the history of the United States and that of South Africa. Nor do many appreciate how closely our fortunes and futures are connected. Shortly after Portuguese explorer Bartholemeu Diaz first landed on the shores of South Africa in 1488, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492. Throughout the 1600’s both America and South Africa were settled by pilgrims seeking religious freedom from Holland, France, England, Scotland and Germany. While American pioneers were moving Westwards in covered wagons to settle the vast, mostly uninhabited, interior; South African voortrekkers (pioneers) were embarking on the Great Trek Northwards and Eastwards, also in covered wagons. Just as the American pioneers had to cross the Rocky Mountain Range so too the vooctrekkers crossed the vast Drakensberg mountains. As the pioneers drew their wagons in a circle to defend their families from the hostile attacks so the voortrekkers formed the laager. Both South Africa and America had their gold rush. Both our countries fought the redcoats. Both our nations endured a vicious war between the states. South Africa was even known as the Union of South Africa (USA) between 1910 and 1960!
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Volume 2 - 1993
The Chairman of the Council of State of Ciskei, Brigadier O.J. Gqozo has published an eleven point statement of the Kei State National Values. At a time when so many are turning away from their Christian heritage and rejecting Biblical values it is refreshing to read these National Values: We affirm that:
Volume 4 - 1989
Regularly I hear that “South Africa is backward!” “We are ten years behind the rest of the world!” or “fifteen” or “twenty-five years”. The time gap differs but the complaint is the same: South Africa is “old fashioned”, “Victorian”, “Puritanical”, “out of step with the rest of the world.” These complaints often originate from journalists complaining about our “draconian” censorship board banning pornographic films like the blasphemous “Last Temptation of Christ.” Or from arts critics who feel deprived that we in South Africa are being robbed of the artistic merit of seeing homosexuals vomit and defecate over one another, with acid rock music throbbing in one’s eardrums in laser and neon light-lacerated public theatres, as in advanced Western nations in Scandinavia. Volume 2 - 1994
The March 21 edition of ‘Time’ magazine contained an article on the overthrow of Bophuthatswana entitled “Apartheid Apocalypse”. As an example of media manipulation and inaccurate reporting the article is more typical of an ANC propaganda pamphlet than of a news report. The writer reveals his political prejudices in the first sentence describing Bophuthatswana as “a black homeland.. .created by the South African engineers of Apartheid. “Bophuthatswana was an independent nation and the Tswana nation was hardly the creation of anyone. Even the British (who had annexed the then Bechuanaland) recognised the reality of the Tswana nation and granted independence to Botswana in 1960. However, when South Africa granted independence to the rest of the Tswanas in 1977 this was decried as “apartheid”! Volume 2 - 1991
According to World Council of Churches official, Wesley Ariarajah: Mission work has become unnecessary for “We must not take God somewhere — He is everywhere already.” All claims of uniqueness, he added are harmful in a world of religious pluralism. The 7th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches took place in Canberra, Australia, from 7 — 20th February 1991 with characteristic pagan ritual. Every July Frontline Fellowship runs a Great Commission Course (GCC) in Cape Town. This year participants came from Canada, USA, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The GCC is an intense and practical mission training programme. It involved many outreaches, film evangelism, literature evangelism and personal evangelism in overcrowded informal settlements, prisons, hospitals, railway stations, shopping centres, mosques and on the streets. Blankets and Bibles were distributed in squatter camps; and film outreaches were held in civic centres and in a tent that we specially hired to assist a Church planting project in Khayelitsha. |
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