Here are some stories shared at the Heritage Service. We hope you enjoy this walk along memory lane. After the service a plaque was unveiled for members of the 12 o’clock congregation that passed away a few years ago.
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Sea Point Methodist Church in the ‘60s
I have been involved with the Sea Point Methodist church for many years having started in the Sunday School at age 3. I have attended the SPMC off and on from then till now, off when I lived elsewhere and on when living in Sea Point.
Sea Point Methodist Church between 1962 and 1969
I’m going to ask you to do something that only some of you will be able to do. Cast you minds back 50 years. I am able to do that!
Sea Point had more houses and fewer flats. Not many cars and plenty of busses. Schools were full of local children from the area which did not mean only white children. Whether it was because school headmasters and head mistresses didn’t check or what but that was the situation. Children in the area were catered for.
Church was a part of everyone’s social life. There was a full Sunday school, and church services at 7 am, 11 am, 7:30 pm and then also 9 pm.
Speaking of Sunday School, I was in Sunday School with Freda Muller as one of the many teachers. Colin Muller and Joy Muller her son and daughter in law are known to us still.
My impressionable years here were short on spirituality and long on social conscience. In fact from age 12 till now.
I have chosen to speak on those particular years to make a point of how important the teenage years are in any church life.
When SPMC became too small to house the congregation and loud speakers to the hall and surrounds were not enough, the church held a service at the Adelphi bioscope once a month. Because the services were all inclusive the Adelphi was threatened with having its licence withdrawn so we had to stop using them. They were happy to let us use the premises but had a cinema to run.
Temple Israel in Green Point offered space for a while for our services.
Many teenagers were in SP and a youth club was started. The present manse was turned into a coffee bar and was open 7 days a week till 10 pm. This coffee bar and light snack kitchen was run by the club members. Coffee bars were just starting out, not “coffee culture” of today but places where people could sit and talk face to face with each other. Very close friendships were forged and remember these were pre television, cell phone and internet days. The club was called Route 12 which was the number of the bus route along the Main Road.
The lonely and sometimes displaced teenagers were befriended by the members and often we would have different gangs in the coffee bar together. There was the Mill Street gang, Sea Point gang and Woodstock gang. We were all one group of friends. Many originally non church going youngsters were regulars at the club and felt they had a club to be part of.
A new manse was bought in Belvedere Road for the minister and family when the coffee bar and club opened.
It soon became evident that a proper youth service was needed. This was held on Sundays at 9 pm. Run by the youth and well attended. The young people would come from the beach to the club and move to the church for 9pm. The church was often more than half full.
Luckily there were many folk singers in the membership and leadership of the club and the music ministry or at least folk songs really made the service. The protest songs sung were those from the UK and USA and not African protests. We loved singing We shall overcome and If I had a hammer and the rafters rang.
A lot of the club happenings included Woodstock Methodist church and there were folk singers there too. They would also join us for combined easter camps. Soccer was popular in Cape Town at that time and SPMC put together at least 3 teams for the WP football association. By devious means, the details of which I don’t remember now (maybe knowing someone in the know) we fielded teams that included not only white players in a white league. Somehow we managed to get the required club cards required to be part of this fixture, set up. Having 3 teams means there were more than 33 (or more likely 43) fit young men in the club.
There was often no place for general workers in Sea Point to sit and have lunch – benches were marked for certain races – so the SPMC opened the gardens and grounds so that people could sit and eat their lunch in a good place.
In 1964 Rev Seth Mokitimi preached in this church and I was here. I certainly had no idea that church services were supposed to be separate for different races. That had never been mentioned or acted out at SPMC.
During this time I am reviewing, the Rev Theo Kotze was the Methodist chaplain for Robben island Methodists. Robert Sobukwe was kept away from the other political prisoners and Rev Kotze insisted that he be brought in for the services as he was also a Methodist – which the prison authorities did. All the prisoners were in the high security area and Rev Kotze walked up and down and shook hands with everyone greeting them by name (on their cells) and stood in the middle of the corridor to do his service. He asked which hymn they wanted and they said “Fight the good fight” at the first service.
The youth leaders of the time have gone on to do many extraordinary things in life. Teachers, university lecturers, one woman was in charge of Methodist Missionary work in China and when she retired from there she was given Africa to deal with. The previous couple of people having lasted a very short time as it is a difficult place to work.
Because of the minister being singled out as a troublesome person (he certainly gave the government a permanent very hard time) the church was watched and the leaders started recognizing special branch people watching their movements and it became at first amusing and then tiresome and then worrying.
Rev Kotze was approached and asked to start the Christian Institute in Cape Town (Beyers Naude being the person doing that job in Johannesburg) and he left Sea Point and set up the CI. Rev Kotze took a few of the youth leaders with him to assist. That was when the heat was cranked up by the special branch who we could recognize.
In the end, after heading the Cape Town office of the Christian Institute, Rev Kotze fled via Botswana and to Europe. That was after much intimidation, arrests and bombs thrown through his house windows. Once in Europe he worked tirelessly for anti apartheid CI in exile. There he had to fund raise for the liberation movements. When asked if he was scared when fleeing in the boot of a car his answer was that he was too busy singing Guide thee O my great Jehovah to have time for fear to manifest itself.
Because we carried on functioning in the “system” there are many people in SA who think that nothing was tried in the way of changing the country. That is the grim feeling that a lot of us have to live with as nothing we did was ever enough.
Most of the young people and club leaders moved from Sea Point. No one could afford to live here with a family any longer and Sea Point became a place of transient folk. People would live in the flats for a while and then move on, others move in and so on.
As I said previously many of the leaders took up interesting and subversive positions but were lost to Sea Point as they had to move out of the area but have been of benefit to their new areas.
Moving on in years ….
Gavin Graham:
When Gavin Graham was minister here there was a huge shift to caring for the homeless and feeding the hungry and clothing banks. Various styles of feeding were tried. Feeding at the church, feeding on the common at the old stadium and feeding from the manse. None of these could last due to safety (at the stadium) and neighbourhood complaints at the church along with anti- social behaviour. Gavin had to position himself between the neighbour with a hose pipe and the homeless.
It has been shown that the best way to do that good work is to attach yourself to an already existing NGO and offer personnel to assist.
(There were probably many other tries of the same sort but I was not here then).
In 50 years time (I have faith that this church will be alive and working) when someone suggests looking back I wonder what will be said of the years for instance 2015-2019. They will hopefully say that the remnant is flourishing.
Thank you
Susan Austin