Bishop answers refugee prayers

IMMIGRANTS fleeing South Africa's horrific anti-foreigner violence, with images seared in their minds of people being burned alive, have searched desperately for sanctuary from the mob over the past nine days.

Some 2,000, most of them Zimbabweans, have found refuge in a church in central Johannesburg, the headquarters of a Methodist bishop who became famous two decades ago when Winnie Mandela's notorious bodyguard, the Mandela United Football Club, was killing and torturing people in the black township of Soweto.

Bishop Paul Verryn has opened the doors of the huge Central Methodist Church to people fleeing their blazing homes and the machetes of their assailants, arguing: "As Christians we pray for the poor. Therefore we cannot chase them away when they need our help.

"These people are our brothers and sisters. We can't leave them on the streets. They also are human and we will help them."

The refugees from the killing are camped head to toe on the stairwells and in the passages, doorways, offices and other rooms, including the vestry, of the four floors of the church building, which is also the provincial administrative headquarters of the Methodist Church.

The stench of unwashed bodies in a building with limited ablutions is overpowering. Everywhere, except in the pews in the area of worship, exhausted people camp on the floors, wrapped in whatever they could salvage to ward of the intense cold.

Doctors from the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) run a small clinic from the church, ministering to the wounded and the sick, who report particularly with TB and other Aids-related infections. MSF's medical coordinator in South Africa, Dr Eric Goemaere, said: "We have also been treating gunshot wounds, head traumas, wounds resulting from beatings, lacerations, burns and other violence-related injuries."

Mobs have twice tried to storm the church in the past week to get at the terrified migrants. Outside they grabbed a deaf mute Zimbabwean known only as Tarro and deeply gashed the top of his head with a machete.

As he tended the bewildered Tarro's wounds, Herbert Nedi, a young medical student working with MSF, said: "It was clear he did not have a clue what they (the mob] were talking about. He doesn't understand what is going on."

One angry Zimbabwean who has found shelter in Verryn's haven asked: "Is this how South Africans are going to treat foreigners when they come here for the World Cup?"

Identifying himself only as Charles, he went on: "This is a shit country. It's to the shame of the rest of the world that they are allowing the World Cup to take place here. South Africans seem to think that no one's life is precious."

South Africa is scheduled to host the 2010 World Cup in several of its cities, including Johannesburg.

Bryan Burayai, a 25-year-old migrant from Zimbabwe, said he and his brother were beaten up in their home in a Johannesburg township after a Zulu mob asked them if they knew the Zulu word for "elbow". When they could not answer they were severely beaten but managed to flee to the Central Methodist Church. "I thought I would be safe here because Mugabe is a serial killer. But these locals are just as bad."

Verryn said: "This is a dreadfully shameful time for South Africa, so disgraceful… It is war."

Verryn, 56, was a famous participant in the struggle against apartheid. As a young white Afrikaner minister, he served the Orlando West Methodist Church in Soweto, just a short distance from Winnie Mandela's home. Verryn lived in a manse attached to his Soweto church and does so to this day.

Verryn was the first white minister to be placed in a black township by the Methodist Church. He had a courageous record, preaching against apartheid and police brutality, and he was popular in the black community. He spoke his defiance of apartheid by conducting funerals of blacks and whites who had died at the hands of the police and covert government death squads: it was enough to make him a possible target of the government's licensed killers.

But instead the attack came from Winnie Mandela. Verryn's manse acted as a safe house for 40 anti-apartheid activists at a time who were in hiding before being smuggled out of the country to join the exiled African National Congress (ANC). Verryn's many township projects were also attracting international funds away from Mandela and her football cub.

Consumed by jealousy, she launched an elaborate, ultimately unsuccessful, sting operation against Verryn, trying to brand him a gay seducer of township boys. When the sting failed, she sent her football club to raid the minister's manse. Among the ANC activists kidnapped was 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi, who Winnie Mandela beat up so badly that the boy subsequently died from brain damage and multiple stabbings. In a sensational trial in 1991 Mandela was sentenced to six years imprisonment for the kidnap and assault of Stompie: as the result of an apparent political fix, her sentence was reduced on appeal to Rand 15,000, worth £3,000 at the time.

Verryn testified at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation hearings in 1997 that he had never forgiven himself for failing to protect Stompie. His voice broke into a sob as he looked directly at Mandela and said to her: "I have been profoundly hurt by the things you have said about me. I have struggled to forgive you even if you do not want forgiveness. I am struggling for the sake of this nation and the people whom I believe God loves so deeply. I long for our reconciliation."

More than 500 people in the Johannesburg hall where the hearing took place stood and applauded Verryn. Mandela refused his offer of reconciliation.

Verryn hit new troubles two years ago when he opened the doors of the Central Methodist Church to give shelter to more than 800 homeless Zimbabweans.

But many of his South African congregants complained that Verryn had taken his deep-seated belief in Christian charity too far. They complained that the House of God was being used as a refugee camp where alcoholism, prostitution and violence flourished. "Our church has become a slum, a pigsty," said one of Verryn's junior pastors. "People are having sex in the church and women are falling pregnant and delivering babies. What kind of a church is that? How can we worship God in such a dirty place?"

Verryn lost some of his flock but persuaded others that opening the church doors is what the founder of the Christian church would have done in similar circumstances.

Today, as attacks against foreigners continue and as the South African government dithers about how it will find homes for the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians, Somalis, Tanzanians and others made homeless by the waves of xenophobic attacks, Verryn said: "I think that it is impossible to be the body of Christ and not to have scars and I think if a building represents Christ it's going to have scars.

"But I must say quite honestly I don't know how one can call oneself Christian and not engage with this. One way is to see this (the anti-foreigner pogroms] as a huge problem, and a problem obviously that one wants to get rid of. The other way of seeing it is a unique opportunity for us to become true neighbours."

By late Friday, more than 42 foreigners were known to have been killed in the attacks which spread to Cape Town and Durban. Hundreds had been wounded, many of them severely, and tens of thousands had been made homeless.

• A South African soldier shot and killed a man after he had pointed a gun at him, the defence force said yesterday. Brigadier General Kwena Mangope said that soldiers supporting police east of Johannesburg had approached the man after seeing him assaulting a woman on Friday night.