Biker riding pillion with his message
A SEXAGENARIAN biker who is also a preacher, spreading his message to bikers, is scheduled to reach next weekend’s South Coast Bike Fest after riding down from Gauteng “the long way”.
“I’ll be doing the mountain passes around Maclear (Eastern Cape),” said Rene Changuion, who believes one is never too old to have a happy childhood.
Last weekend – on Easter Sunday – he handed his bikers church at Midrand to his son so he could “go back to the streets”.
“That’s where I started: at the bikers’ ‘jols’ and the rallies where normal pastors don’t go.”
Changuion said bikers were a group ignored and shunned by many spiritual leaders.
“I can understand that. For many years I worked to be the worst possible self. I’ve been there, got the T-shirt and realise there is another way of life.”
He started out his adult life as a motorcycle mechanic followed by conscription into the army. “I had an exceptionally bad accident while I was awol. I got into lots of trouble with the Military Police and the SA Police.”
After finding religion, he studied theology and headed north to volunteer with the Rhodesian Army, where he became a military chaplain during the war that led to Zimbabwe’s independence. “I used my Kawasaki 1000 to visit the troops,” he recalled.
“It was door opener. People would not see me as a padre but as a normal person. By the time they discovered who I was, they had used all the swear words.”
Changuion said that instead of taking church parades he would go out on patrol with troops and talk to them.