1 of 3

Mangena Mokone and Charlotte Maxeke—uncle and niece—wanted nothing more than to see South Africa transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But they chafed under white denominational structures. Joining others who proudly held up the banner of "Ethiopianism" (pp. 8, 14), these two powerful leaders left, respectively, Methodism and Presbyterianism, and joined hands with an African American denomination that had a history uncannily similar to their own.

Mangena Maake Mokone (1851-1931) was born in Sekhukhuneland in what is today the Limpopo Province but was then called the Transvaal. He was a member of the Sotho tribe and the son of Maake, a sub-chief. When the boy was 12, his father was killed in a war against the Swazis. At the age of 16, Mokone left his mother and with a friend went to Durban on the Natal coast, where he found work as a "kitchen boy" in the home of a Wesleyan (British Methodist) lady named Mrs. Steele.

The Wesleyans first came to South Africa in the 1800s as part of the military force that took over the Cape from the Dutch. When the first Methodist missionaries arrived in the early 1800s, they discovered Methodist Societies founded by local Transvaal men who had traveled to Natal or the Cape, where they had been converted and educated.

By the time Mokone went to Durban, it contained many local Methodist lay preachers (Wesleyan local preachers were not ordained) who supported their ministries by working at trades like shop-keeping and farming.

As he swept Mrs. Steele's bedroom each morning, Mokone saw her Bible, which she read every day. The young man wished he could read, too. Soon he began attending the Aliwal Street Chapel, and he proved himself an excellent pupil at the chapel's night school.

One Sunday Mokone heard a local preacher, Mr. T. Fine, preach about how pits were dug to trap animals and how the devil uses the same strategy to trap people. Deeply affected, Mokone was converted, and he soon became a local preacher himself.

Mokone seemed especially endowed with spiritual power in preaching. During one service, he so moved his congregation that they fell to their knees en masse, weeping loudly. Alarmed Europeans commanded the congregation to "Vuka!" (get up). They insisted that Mokone be replaced by a less "rowdy" minister.

For over a decade, Mokone worked as a carpenter by day and preached at revival meetings at night. Despite his dedication and success, it was only in 1880, when the annual conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church met at Pietermaritzburg, that Mokone was accepted as an "on trial" probationer minister.

After a year as a probationer at Newstead in Natal, Mokone was posted to Pretoria in the Transvaal. There he opened a school. By 1883 his work had grown from a congregation of six people and a school with three children to a crowded church and a packed school of 45 young scholars. As part of his work, Mokone, with the help of a fellow minister, translated the Methodist Catechism into Sepedi, his home language.

In December 1886, nearly two decades after leaving her, Mokone was reunited with his mother during a missionary journey to his native country. Mokone later wrote of the experience. Not recognizing him, "Three times she denied that I was Mangena, and at last she found out that I am the same. Oh there was great joy to see." The chief also received him with open arms, saying, "(We) are willing to receive Methodist missionaries at any time."

Finally in 1887 Mokone became a full Wesleyan minister. At that time, the meetings of the Methodist Church in the Transvaal Synod were racially separate. The practice had begun to avoid keeping white ministers from their churches in the long teaching and examining sessions for black preachers. But Mokone found this separation distressing—he felt that African ministers were being excluded from discussions among white ministers.

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help