Coming Together!

Where is the place and space for people to be people? In a world filled with orders of state, and social realities of race, class and gender, which results in a society of have and have nots - one has to wonder if there is a place and space where coming together can be realized without social dictatorship.
Bonheoffer would advocate that a place and space where social equality and fairness in engagement is possible. Bonheoffer would suggest that such a place and space is a dialogical place where the I and the other choose to move from their place of social comfort to a place social risk. The risk is stepping into a common place without a desire to control the other.
Over the next few days I will be working alongside Rev. Dr Curtiss DeYoung to propel a place and space where people can come together. This coming together will be injected by spells of keynotes, preaching, teaching and insights offered by Curtiss DeYoung, in various places and spaces across Johannesburg. It is an honour to work on propelling a project that will allow people to come together and address matters of inclusion, diversity, race, class and gender, leadership and organizational change etc.
Curtiss has just released his latest book entitled, “Coming together in the 21st century”, and whilst moving from one place to the next in the coming week, it is my hope and prayer that our project:”Coming together”, will inspire, lead and surprise people as they discover and arrive at insights that will aid a brighter future for South Africa and our global community.

Schedule of engagements and comings together:• On the Date: 23rd March 2010
Time: 10am – 11am (Coming together – a dialogue on reconciliation in the workplace)
Venue: Young and Able offices,
Office 160, Dunkeld West Centre - 281 Jan Smuts Ave, Cnr Bompas - Dunkeld - 2196
Host: Buhle Dlamini
Contact: info@youngable.com - Phone: 27 11 341 0190
• On the Date: 23rd March 2010
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm (Coming together in Alex – a service and preach)
Venue: Stand No 2561 – Laduma Street, Extension 7 Far Eastbank, Alexandra Township.
Host: Pastor Charles Mokoena
Contact: 084 423 7735
Email: efm2030@live.co.za
• On the Date: 24th March 2010
Time: 9am – 11am (Coming together in an age of diversity)
Venue: Liberty Church, Discovery campus, 51 Celeste Crescent, Discovery
Cost: FREE, coffee & muffins will be served
RSVP to ed@libertychurch.co.za ASAP
• On the Date: 25th March 2010
Time: 10 am – 11:30 am (Coming together in the 21st century: “Woman in ministry” {keynote, followed by discussion and dialogue, q & a})
Venue: Church of the Nazarene, Penguin Street, Extension 1 , Lenasia
Host: Pastor Russel Abrahams
Contact: 011 852 5219
• On the Date: 26th March 2010
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm (Coming together in the 21st century: “Non- racialism as an ideology, a consciousness and way of life for the future” {keynote, followed by discussion and dialogue, q & a})
Venue: 57 Twin Centre, ANC Lenasia
Host: Mickey Padiachee
Contact: 011 854 2745, mickeypadaiachee@yahoo.com
• On the Date: 28th March 2010
Time: 9am – 11am
Venue: Jeshua, Reformed Church in Africa, 613 Greenwich Street, Lenasia South,
Contact: Rev. Seth Naicker 079 482 7445
It is wonderful to see these wonderful opportunities come together. It is my honour to facilitate and realize this moment, when my mentor, friend and Doctor Father of Reconciliation studies and ministry will speak from various spaces and places including the pulpit at the local church community that I am serving. Let’s come together in the 21st century!
Rev. Seth Naicker

Homecoming and potential for reconciliation activism!

Homecoming is on my mind in this day and this hour. My wife and I, our baby girl and son to be born in July will leave the twin cities, our Bethel University, our Church Sanctuary Covenant Church, and the host of family and friends, to return home to the land of our birth, South Africa. For almost 5 years we have studied, worked and lived our lives in the context of the twin cities, USA.

Our family, friends and community are looking forward to our being home on a more permanent basis. It has been difficult being away from those whom we hold most dear. Now in this moment of going home, there is a bitter sweet, of leaving a place and space that has become home, in more ways than one. It is here in St. Paul, that we have experienced life as a married couple, having our first child, and developing as a family. It is here that we have further advanced and equipped ourselves concerning our learning, and here that we have dug deep in our critical learning and analysis of social constructs of injustice.

I have been questioned by people from South Africa as to the social justice focus, during my time in a home away from home. Some folk have been delighted to learn of the study and research, which I pursued in contextual, liberation and reconciliation theology. For within a western context, dominated by western Eurocentric theology, I have studied and developed thoughts and theological knowledge rooted in critical pedagogy. It has been my intention to understand my faith from the margins, and develop a moral ethic and approach that argues from, in and of the social cultural context of people who live with their backs against the wall.

The sad reality of life is that there are many people looking for a place and space to call home. I have journeyed with people who are born in the USA, and while I have realized it as a home away from home, there are those of first nation or Native American, African American, Latino and the grandeur of ethnicities and languages, class, gender and religion, who live like aliens and foreigners in the land of their birth and beginnings.

This notion of homecoming is discussed and wonderfully propelled through the gentle personality, work and ministry of my Doctor Father of Reconciliation Studies, my mentor and friend Rev. Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung. In “Homecoming: A “white” mans journey through Harlem to Jerusalem”, Curtiss speaks of his experiences of coming into places and spaces that have symbolized homecoming. In the introductory chapter he tells of journeying to Africa, and more specifically South Africa. Here as he prepared to take the microphone and address a 600 capacity audience of youth leaders from all across South Africa and Southern Africa, he was blessed with the experience and an overwhelming sense of homecoming.

In South Africa, where Curtiss was not born he comes into this faith inspired sense of homecoming, that allows him to be at home amongst God’s people whether he is welcomed to be at home or not. For there are those who are critical of a white north American male declaring that he has come home to Africa. But the feeling of homecoming and consciousness allows people to engage people, even when there is every reason to be divided.

Merrishia and I have sensed homecoming in living out our faith in a home away from home, even when people have asked, “What right do you have?” Our activism, advocacy and ambassadorship of God’s highest agenda Reconciliation, has been and is propelled by our confidence and consciousness that “every place I lay my head that’s my home”. Choosing to make home in a place away from home has allowed us to critically challenge places and spaces knowing that we speak out with a mindset that states, “this place and space belongs to me as it does to you”. We are members of a global family, where there are no boundaries and barriers, where there is no Jew or Gentile, Greek or Hebrew, male or female. We are people!

Homecoming is physical, but it also spiritual and emotional. Gandhi experienced homecoming as a guru and voice of reason in and amongst people from all walks of life, amongst the Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist. Malcolm X experienced homecoming in Mecca amongst the great diversity of Muslims that came of different ethnicity. Mother Teresa experienced homecoming in amongst the children that she served in India.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela experienced homecoming in her engagement with Eugene de Kock, who was a lead agent and prime evil of the militant defense force of the Apartheid government. In “A human being died that night”, we read of one who was oppressed by and a victim of Apartheid coming into the gracious space of realizing her humanity and coming home to her healing, in her dialogue with an oppressor and villain of Apartheid. The sense of homecoming has the power to prepare a space and place for people to be people, even in the most horrendous situations of oppressor facing oppressed.

Jesus Christ sensed his homecoming in the garden of Gethsemane. It is here that Jesus Christ came to the realization that his humanity was bound up in the humanity of world. Jesus was too lay down his life as a symbolic sacrifice, for people to be assured of a Homecoming. Jesus Christ in saying, “Father not my will, but your will be done”, signified that Jesus Christ understood “I am because you are”. Jesus Christ understood that his humanity was bound up in the humanity of God’s people.

As my family and I head home to South Africa we are hopeful that our homecoming will allow us to continue the work of continuing the struggle for homecoming to be the right of all our people. We must continue the struggle for homecoming to be the right of every child, woman and elder. We must continue the struggle for homecoming beyond political freedom to pursue economic freedom for all our people.

May we desire to live our lives with a notion and sense of homecoming that avoids dehumanizing the other. May our faith inspire us to create places and spaces for all people to experience homecoming!

Reconciliation Day ! by Seth Naicker

The 16th of December 2008, marks our South African Day of Reconciliation in our 14th year of democracy. President Nelson Mandela in his speech in 1995 stated:

“There are few countries which dedicate a national public holiday to reconciliation. But then there are few nations with our history of enforced division, oppression and sustained conflict. And fewer still, which have undergone such a remarkable transition to reclaim their humanity. We, the people of South Africa, have made a decisive and irreversible break with the past. We have, in real life, declared our shared allegiance to justice, non-racialism and democracy; our yearning for a peaceful and harmonious nation of equals” (MESSAGE BY PRESIDENT NELSON MANDELA ON NATIONAL RECONCILIATION DAY 16 December 1995).


There is a remnant that still holds true to the wise words of our honorable Madiba. But today we are in a post romantic era of our South African politics, an era filled with anxiety, anguish and concern about the depth and authenticity of our Reconciliation process.

In my discussions with seasoned leaders and political minds, it has become apparent there is great critic of our current day South Africa where our differences are being utilized as political rhetoric and device to divide us rather than unite us ‘into a source of strength and richness’. It would be most insightful to hear the Father of our Nation Nelson Mandela reflect on our political process thus far, as we draw closer to the 15 years of democracy. I choose to believe that our honorable Nelson Mandela would acknowledge the divisive schemes of politics gone bad, and would reach out to the souls of leaders and consciousness of people to live for a ‘peaceful and harmonious nation of equals’.

Our current political process leading up to our 15th democratic election, is held by some as an exciting, rigorous and competitive election, which will yield a better South Africa for all. There are others who are skeptical and fearful of the signs of the times, as political competition between the African National Congress and Congress of the People intensifies.

It is my hope and prayer that there will be a recommitment, a revitalizing and reviving of our South Africa to remain true to as Nelson Mandela proclaimed in 1995, “The rainbow has come to be the symbol of our nation. We are turning the variety of our languages and cultures, once used to divide us, into a source of strength and richness.”

Reconciliation is worth pursuing at all costs, and I am hopeful for my country as I am for our world, that there are people who are willing to go the distance and take on the pressures and social injustices of our day. DeYoung (2007) explains, “Faith-inspired activists live and practice their faith in ways that do not recognize socially constructed boundaries They strive to transcend race, culture, class, and other artificial limitations” (Living Faith, 2007, p. 139). On this Day of Reconciliation, may we be reminded of transcending the barriers that prevail, pursuing a world that some might say cannot be realized in our ‘here and now’.