Christian History Home > Issue 79 > A Transatlantic Alliance
A Transatlantic Alliance
Two South Africans changed their country by linking their church with an African American church
Joan Millard | posted 7/01/2003 12:00AM
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 ...
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