People tend to forget that the Charismatic
churches mushrooming throughout the inner city of Johannesburg have their roots
in this country in the Pentecostal movement of the early 1900s. The American businessman turned evangelist,
John G. Lake, who founded the Apostolic Faith Mission and the Zion Christian
Church, was one of the forerunners.
I learned about Lake from Bheki Ndlovu, who
sells Christian and motivational books from his ‘shop’, a single, narrow
bookcase propped up on the corner of Bedford and Rockey Streets in Yeoville,
outside the fruit and vegetable market.
Bheki came to South Africa from Zimbabwe at a
time of severe repression/recession in that country seven years ago. He pays R 50
per month to rent the space for his bookcase. Previously he sold books from a small,
foldable table outside the Shoprite Checkers supermarket. One of many illegal
vendors, he had a contingency plan for maintaining a micro business in the
turmoil and instability of city life.
His 'shop' then consisted of exactly the number of books he could fit
into a suitcase, making it possible for him to gather his stock and run at a
moment's notice when the police raided. He
tells me he managed to avoid being arrested in the four years he operated
illegally: "If you are in the middle of the block, most of the time you
are spared. The police come from the ends of the street on both sides, and they
exhaust their manpower before they get to you."
His customers reflect the diversity of the
city. "They are locals, Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Congolese, Zambians, and
even some pastors from Ethiopia buy from me. I like that."
I went to see the house at 4
Melbourne Street in Bertrams, where Lake and his wife Jennie and their seven
children lived during Lake’s ministry in South Africa. Bheki discovered the address accidentally
when reading through a collection of Lake’s letters.
In 1908, Lake and his family arrived by boat
at Cape Town harbor and after a series of miraculous events, moved to
Johannesburg where Lake preached his first sermon to a ‘congregation of 500
Zulus” with the aid of an interpreter. Lake’s ministry was so powerful that it
spread throughout the country and across the border to Botswana. Thousands were
converted and miraculously healed. Gandhi, who became a friend of Lake’s,
predicted that Lake’s work would spread throughout the world.
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| House in Bertrams where John G. Lake and his family lived |
Obstacles to Lake’s ministry included a
virulent racist backlash from white South Africans who resented Lake’s close
relationship with his black followers. It is not clear whether racism or
jealousy was the catalyst for the controversy that festered around Lake’s work,
causing considerable hardship for him and his team of 125 ministers.
While Lake was away evangelizing and healing
the sick, his wife Jennie ministered to a steady flow of people at the family
home. During one of his preaching trips Lake
returned to find that Jennie had died, supposedly from exhaustion and
malnutrition. A few years later Lake
returned to the United States with his seven children, who turned their backs
on their father as they grew to adulthood, blaming him for their mother’s
death.
Controversial research published late last
year turns the 103 year old account of the cause of Jennie Lake’s death on its
head. The researcher claims that there is conclusive proof she was poisoned by members
of a rival church group.
I had a sense of the extraordinary potency of
Lake’s ministry when I accompanied Bheki to his church, a massive Pentecostal
church with 7,000 members led by a Zambian pastor known as "Prophet
Banda'. The church building is an abandoned factory in the centre of the city.
Known for his ministry to sangomas, Prophet
Banda addressed a young woman who was standing next to a blanket on the floor,
which was crammed with all the paraphernalia associated with traditional
healing practices. After interrogating
the girl and her mother, the pastor sent them outside accompanied by a team of
lay pastors, to burn the goods and exorcise demons. Then, turning to the congregation, he called
in a loud voice, for anyone who had ever been involved with such practices to
come forward.
Tracked by young men with video cameras, women
and men (mainly women) dotted throughout the congregation, screamed and cried
and writhed and fell down unconscious. The images were simultaneously projected
onto overhead screens located on pillars throughout the vast room. They made me
think of Dante's 'Inferno'. Finally, human bodies resembling a battlefield
of casualties, lay on the floor at the front of the church to be carried out by
lay teams for exorcism, and without a pause, Pastor Banda turned his attention
to others in the congregation suffering from marital problems, financial
problems, domestic violence, work problems, every kind of illness.
It was late afternoon when I left the church with a throbbing head, feeling quite overwhelmed by the underbelly of Jo’burg City and thinking that somehow it always seems to be women who are the witches, the bewitched, the shamed and blamed. I drove past Lake’s house at sunset and thought about Jennie Lake and the hardship and tragedy of her life.
