By Staff Reporter
South Africa’s plague of corruption and moral decay can only be dealt with by organised communities, men in particular, the Reverend Frank Chikane told a men’s seminar in June.
Delivering a keynote address at the Men in Prayer (MIP) seminar at the Ipelegeng Community Centre in White City, Soweto, the struggle veteran clergy and former Director General in the Presidency told over 200 men to organise themselves to make a difference in society. The MIP is a Christian organisation of men from all walks of life, Christians and non-Christian, seeking God’s guidance in becoming responsible men. It is led by Pastor George Ngwenya of the George Ngwenya Ministries. Chikane decried the country’s level of corruption and said South Africa was “rotten to the core”. “All of us must take the responsibility for allowing our glorious country to become what it is today. The world used respect us and we let the society to be so rotten that it is rotten to the core. We used to be the best example in Africa, many of our brothers asked that we shouldn’t disappoint the continent,” said Chikane.
Chikane said South Africa lacked leadership because today’s leaders have gone into leadership to serve themselves not the people. He said the time has now come for the young men to stand up to secure the country’s future. “People will never make a different if they work in silos. For young people to have influence, they need to be organised. Collaborations are important, your power is in influence, the ability to move with more people. If you don’t have influence, or the ability to mobilise society you have no ability to make any difference,” he said. He likened South Africa’s society’s fragmented responses to challenges of corruption to the apartheid experienced by the people of Israel.
“The people of Israel for example, are saying the state of Israel is not sustainable with this occupation (of the Palestinian territory), but they cannot do anything because they are not organised. The same is happening with those in Palestine, they are not collaborating with those people in Israel.
“When we conducted the struggle, we mobilised the communities to deal with the apartheid government. We organised from national right to the communities with blocks to street committees. We organised across society, from sport to church and across the colour bar,” said the church leader.
Pastor Ngwenya said Chikane’s message was well-received by the MIP. He said Chikane was spot-on because men are major players in many of the things that have gone wrong, pointing out that “if we are to solve these problems, we must attend to men’s mindset.”
Ngwenya said as part of the resolutions from the seminar, the MIP will be mobilising men’s forums across Gauteng into an organised provincial structure. “We will be doing so in order to collectively and systematically respond to matters affecting men and the building of our communities and the province at large. We will also be looking at the MIP to facilitate effective structures in response to men’s challenges and community building initiatives,” he said. The organisation has begun setting up a preliminary working committee to develop action plans in dealing with boychild mobilisation. Sports, arts and culture, issues of absent fathers, family and marriage as well as livelihood as part of ensuring men’s participation in political and economic streams of the society.
