It was the General Council of Maurice McGill that decided to open our presence in Kroonstad. (Rustenburg came later). Subsequent General Council were very supportive. I remember Bernard Phelan was the driving force as he was General Councillor for Africa. The first group included Andrew Mukulu, Ephraim Odhiambo, and an older Irish priest Kevin O’Donovan.
Our brief, as you know, was to help with the healing process begun post real Independence 1994. The TRC had done their job and now the long-term healing process had, and has, to continue at grassroots level. The Church can play a vital role in reconciliation and conflict transformation. Bishop Johannes Brenninkmeijer, a long-standing friend of MHM asked the GC for some missionaries to cover the northern end of the diocese, that cluster of parishes we both know and served.
I have so many happy memories of South Africa. ‘If they were written down one by one, I do not suppose the world itself would contain all the books written!’
I remember my first encounter with the new township springing up on the edge of Sasolburg, France. Rows and rows of corrugated iron shacks miles from schools, health centres, and shops. Many of the people there were migrating away from the servitude of farm work to seek a better life. Each family was given a small plot of land which had a sanitation cubicle and a freshwater standpipe. Electricity would come later.
One of the most basic challenges we experienced was to persuade the white members of the town parish to visit their brothers and sisters in the townships, and vice versa. Some white people had never been into a township and indeed at one time they were not allowed to enter without permission.
In answer to several of our invitations they said that townships were dangerous places, that they would not feel safe there, that they would not be welcome or welcomed. Of course, the reverse was true. Those few who dared to attend a Mass in the township were welcomed. The people were thrilled to receive them. The unconditional welcome of traditional African hospitality overcame decades of forced and often violent separation.
The process of reconciliation begins not only with broad sweeps of legislation and huge projects promoting integration, vital as they are, but also with the simple small steps like sitting together and finding common human and spiritual bonds. It is about providing opportunities to allow people to share their daily hopes and fears, their regrets and aspirations. Get people to sit together, one next to the other, in a common space – a church is a good place to start – and let us all discover that we belong together, and that God’s open secret is that we are brothers and sisters who need each other. Is this not what the Kingdom of God all about?
My hope for South Africa is that this very process, begun so well after the fall of the apartheid regime, will embrace the hope that small step by small step, sometimes two forward and one back, will be a journey in this direction. This will only be achieved by changing hearts and minds from within. And this, as we know from personal experience, can take a very, very long time.
I think we all as Mill Hull Missionaries can be very proud of contribution we have made and are making in accompanying those willing to seek a better, more peaceful and just future, not only confined to South Africa but wherever we are sent. All good wishes and blessings in abundance.
Fr Anthony Chantry MHM, April 2025.
BEATITUDES OF RECONCILIATION
Blessed are those who are willing to enter into the process of being healed,
For they will become healers.
Blessed are those who recognized their own inner violence,
For they will come to know non-violence.
Blessed are those who can forgive self,
For they will become forgivers.
Blessed are those who are willing to let go of selfishness and self-centeredness,
For they will become a healing presence.
Blessed are those who listen with compassion, For they will become compassionate.
Blessed are those who are willing to enter into conflicts,
For they will find resolutions.
Blessed are those who know their interdependence with all of creation,
For they will become unifiers.
Blessed are those who live a contemplative life stance,
For they will find God in all things.
Blessed are those who strive to live these beatitudes,
For they will become reconcilers.
(Sisters of St. Joseph, Concordia in Schrock-Shenk, 2000, 16)
