Article May 9, 2005 Issue

'EVERYONE MATTERS TO GOD'

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town shares his hopes for South Africa.

By Meg Dendler

EDDY GRANT'S "Gimme hope, Jo'anna" is one of my new Jazzercise routines. But I danced with new respect when my teacher pointed out that the singer is not begging for hope from someone, but from something he loves—his city of Johannesburg, South Africa, which he calls "Jo'anna."

Catching words like apartheid in the song gives me more pause than it would have a few months ago, because I have recently read a book by the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, A World With a Human Face: A Voice from Africa (WCC Publications, Geneva, Switzerland, 2003), attended two lectures he gave at Alma College in Michigan, and talked with him one-on-one.

The archbishop's account of his struggles for his country in the past, and his prayers for the future, brought my thoughts close to what had always been to me a faraway country. It was hard to believe that this soft-spoken man had spent three years as a political prisoner on Robben Island, seven miles off the coast, near Cape Town. But through what he calls "hellish conditions," including working as a laborer to build the prison that would later house Nelson Mandela, he became stronger, and developed his relationship with God.