Boesak back in the fold
2005-01-31 12:05
Piketberg - The former head of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Dr Allan Boesak, was symbolically re-ordained as a minister of the church before a large crowd of well-wishers at the United Reformed Church - a branch of South Africa's Dutch Reformed Church - at Piketberg in the Western Cape on Sunday.
This symbolic re-entry into the church follows the clearing of his criminal record by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Prominent in the congregation was his second wife Elna Boesak.
Boesak, who served just over two years of a six-year term in the nearby Malmesbury prison for fraud and theft of just over R400 000 in donor funds, smiled as elders and fellow ministers paid tribute to him.
The three-hour long service was led by the presiding minister of the Piketberg congregation Reverend Walter Philander.
Down the road in Loopstraat is a community hall which
boldly displays the sign: "Allan Boesak Gemeentesaal" (community hall).
Philander emphasised that Boesak's return to active service in the church has nothing to do with his prison charge, but marks his re-entry to the church after his pastoral duties lapsed when he went into politics 10 years ago.
A notable guest of honour - in the 3 000 strong congregation - was the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Njongonkulu Ndungane, wearing his Distinctive purple robes.
Ndungane hosted a cocktail party for Boesak at his official home Bishopscourt on Friday night, which has widely been reported in South Africa as a "welcome-back" to the church function.
Ndungane referred to his re-admission to the ministry as "a fresh start".
The cocktail function was also attended by Anglican archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who paid tribute to Boesak's role in the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front in the 1980s.
Neither Boesak, nor the elders at the re-ordination service spoke directly of his prison term. But in the foyer, copies of Boesak's book, The Fire Within, Sermons from the Edge of Exile, were been sold - together with CD versions.
On the wall it said: "Jesus het jou 'n val gespaar, omdat Hy geweet het dat jy nie weer sou kon opstaan nie" (Roughly translated this means Jesus has saved you from falling because he knows that you can't stand up again on your own). Alongside were pictures of Boesak and his wife smiling into the camera.
Outside, a congregant, who did not want to be named, but identified himself as a worker on a nearby farm, said while some members of the congregation were a little uncomfortable with Boesak's recent past, nevertheless, "he did so much for us" and the general feeling was not to focus on just one event in his life "but on the contribution that Boesak made" to the upliftment of the people.
Inside, Philander, addressing the coloured Afrikaans-language congregation, spoke in Boesak's praise: "We need freedom from hunger, hopelessness and economic bondage." Boesak was one of God's chosen instruments to free the people from this bondage, he said.
The people sang hymns of joy. One elder made an oblique reference to the fraud and theft - saying there was "nothing we can do about yesterday" but Boesak had always been "at the right place at the right time".
Boesak has never acknowledged guilt for the fraud and theft. The introduction to his sermons, however, refers to the matter. He says that in 1994 he was accused of theft and fraud "only a few months" after South Africa became a non-racial democracy. His life "and that of my family was uprooted ... thrown into a storm such as we have never before known".
Overnight Boesak - who was by this time Member of the Western Cape executive council (provincial minister) for Economic Affairs representing the ruling African National Congress - was turned into a social pariah.
Invitations to preach, even from his own church, fell away, although he paid tribute to many churches in the United States for remembering him in his time of need.
People believed he was "a one time preacher, theologian and politician" virtually "written off" as a fraud and a betrayer of the cause. They believed he had "nothing truthful to say". He had found it lonely, marginalised by the church and vilified by the media.
"I have been struggling with the pain. My anger with God and with the incomprehensibility of my situation... I struggled to understand."
It was only his relationship with God "that has brought me back from this brink of this devastation."
He says he drew solace from Jeremiah 20. "Within me there is something like a burning fire, shut up in my bones. I am wary of holding it in, and I cannot."
At the local café the Rapport - the Sunday Afrikaans newspaper - carried a candid report on Boesak in which he accepts that he was a poor manager of his foundation but he does not accept that he was guilty of fraud and theft.
He refers instead to his "blind loyalty" to his staff had prevented him from seeing that "sake nie reg was nie. Daar is geld gesteel" (matters were not right, there was money stolen). He acknowledges that he was "no accountant".
At a separate service later on Sunday, Boesak gave thanks for his "second chance" in the ministry. For many in his church he is no longer a pariah, for his sins - whatever they may have been - have been forgiven.