Practising what he preaches
Durban clergyman on a mission for poor students and against injustice
DON’T get involved in politics, Anglican priest Rev Alvin Sigamoney recalls his father warning him when he left the furniture industry to study to become a clergyman.
“He said: ‘Don’t do what your (great) uncle did, he was always getting arrested.’ ”
Decades later, Rev Alvin, now 55 and a grandfather, has been following in the footsteps of the Rev Bernard “BLE” Sigamoney and has been at the forefront of protests to free #feesmustfall activist and EFF student leader Bonginkosi Khanyile.
“My great uncle was known as Father Sigamoney. He was the first Indian Anglican priest who was born in South Africa. He fought a lot for the poor and underprivileged. He challenged (Prime Minister Jan) Smuts. He spoke out, like (Emeritus Archbishop Desmond) Tutu.”
No sooner had the younger Sigamoney entered theological college in Grahamstown, than he was arrested when a group from the institution went to see the town clerk over issues relating to the local township’s debt to the city council.
“We (the church) have got to stand up and make the powers-thatbe answerable,” he said at Durban’s St Paul’s Anglican Church.
After being ordained, Rev Alvin said, he and his wife, Janice, moved to Greytown where he was to be the first deacon of colour at a predominantly white church.
“I couldn’t believe this to be the case at the end of 1992. But by mid-year the next year, it was quite colourful.”
Murder
The Midlands town also felt the effects of the murder of Chris Hani. At a council meeting that followed, elders expressed dissatisfaction at the way Tutu (then archbishop) preached at Hani’s funeral.
“I asked them ‘do you really know the archbishop? Do you know what a miracle happened at the funeral by him preaching?’
“The country would have gone to war. He prevented that.”
The township outside Greytown prepared for a political rally to which he was invited, while white shop owners closed their businesses fearing looting and uprisings.
“I went to the meeting and they asked me to give a message. I asked them to call ‘viva Nkulunkulu (God)’ in addition to all the shouts of ‘viva Chris Hani, viva ANC’.”
The much-feared looting never happened.
Rev Alvin, who grew up in Chatsworth in a family with Anglican and Methodist heritage, said he “saw it all” when it came to gangs and drugs, but was saved by his family from being influenced, playing lots of sport and by his faith.
His drive for social justice came from a sense of there being a “radical Jesus” he came to know after having been a reserved youngster.
Fast forward to the present and Rev Alvin believes there is still much transformation needed in the journey to democracy and that the church has a role.
He said at the end of the recent #feesmustfall march, a young activist thanked men of the cloth for participating, saying their presence helped keep an element of order.
“It’s unbelievable in this day and age that a person is arrested on hearsay evidence,” he said referring to Khanyile’s detention.
“Here is a student who is fighting for the other students, for a cause that’s for all of them and he was arrested on hearsay, yet murderers are being given bail.”
Rev Alvin, who holds a student chaplain post at St Aidan’s Church near the Durban University of Technology, said it was clear that Khanyile’s being denied bail was politically influenced.
This week the Constitutional Court granted Khanyile R250 bail after he had been in jail for 155 days. The Durban Magistrate’s Court and Durban High Court had both refused bail.
Rev Alvin is baffled as to how South Africa was able to pull off the 2010 World Cup “with so few glitches compared with Brazil”.
“Why then, can we not give basic service delivery to the people?”
That said, he did not expect everything to run as smoothly after apartheid. “I always expected a wobble… and now our leaders have failed us. We need to grow our churches and take a stand. The ANC was born as a liberation movement. It needs to move out of that mindset to the majority organisation in government. And it needs to govern properly.”
He likened government leaders to the US President Donald Trump.
“They tend to blame, like Trump who won but still blames everyone else instead of getting on with the job.”
Rev Alvin also said it was time for South Africans to form a strong opposition alliance to take on the ANC. “Today, a lot of people are disillusioned at elections. If you don’t take part, nothing changes. At least vote for somebody. We need to instil in people that they have responsibilities as citizens.”
Meanwhile, the clergyman who seems to be following in the footsteps of his uncle has another mission up his sleeve, to sort out another crisis: the drought.
“We need a massive inter-faith meeting to pray for rain.”