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November 2, 1997 / Volume 18
It's just over three years since we sent out Blue Press no 17 to family and friends. Then it was just after South Africa's first democratic elections, and democracy was a novelty. The novelty has worn off, and South Africa faces the same kind of humdrum political problems as most other countries: poverty, crime, taxes, development.
Thirty years ago an English friend, Shirley Davies, used to say that when apartheid eventually goes, South Africa will wake up to the real problem, which is not the blacks and the whites, but the haves and the have nots.
I'm not sure that the Thatcherist policies of the ANC government are the best way of dealing with that particular problem, though. The policy of "privatise everything and watch the bottom line" may be politically correct at the moment, but something is lacking.
Like the National Party before it, the ANC has been cutting spending on health services and education. But it was interesting to read an editorial in the Singapore Straits Times, comparing Africa and Asia. It said that one of the differences between African and Asian development was that the Asian countries are prepared to invest in people, and that means spending more, not less, on schools and hospitals.
As a result of getting an M.Th. in missiology cum laude in 1994, Steve was offered a Chancellor's Scholarship by the University of South Africa for doctoral studies, and has been working on a thesis on Orthodox mission methods.
The scholarship paid for (well almost) research trips to Russia, the USA and Kenya in 1995. In Russia I stayed at the pilgrim's guest house in Danilov Monastery, where Andrei Kashinski a former parishioner of our home church of St Nicholas of Japan in Johannesburg is in charge of the restoration of the buildings. I also visited St Tikhon's Institute in Moscow, and St Tikhon's parish in Klin.
In the USA I went to the International Orthodox Mission Conference at Brookline, near Boston, and did some research in the library of St Vladimir's Seminary. There's a fuller description of this trip on our Web page.
In November 1995 I spent a fortnight at the Makarios Theological Seminary in Nairobi, where I was able to meet and interview students from many parts of Africa.
In many countries of Africa - Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya in particular, Orthodox Churches started because various African independent churches wanted to be Orthodox. Those in Kenya and Uganda had links with the African Orthodox Church in South Africa, and one of the most fascinating aspects of the research has been to piece together the pattern of its founding leader, Daniel William Alexander. Only after I had returned from the USA did I discover that many of his personal papers are actually kept in a university library there, so I was not able to consult them.
Under Alexander's leadership the AOC grew and flourished until 1960. He then invited the leaders of the AOC in the USA to come and consecrate some more bishops for South Africa. Two of them came, and appeared to be envious of the success of Alexander's work, since the AOC in South Africa was far more flourishing than the branch in the United States. They deposed Alexander, and appointed an "administrator pro-tem", The administrators lasted about two years, after which they would break away, fed up with the American interference.
Within a few years, the AOC had shattered into separate fragments. In 1993 one of them, led by Simon Mhlonyane, joined the Coptic Church. Another, led by August Thamaga, is seeking to join the Greek Orthodox Church, and we have been very much involved with them, visiting their congregations and meeting their leaders.
For the last year our own parish has been without a priest, and we have sometimes had visiting priests from neighbouring parishes. When we couldn't get a visiting priest, we have held readers services. We've now published a readers service book, containing the things a reader needs to lead Sunday worship in the absence of a priest. Since there are many Orthodox communities in such a position, we hope it will be widely useful.
But the opportunities to have readers' services are diminishing. We discovered that the other clergy liked our parish and our singing, and wanted to keep coming. Fr. Alexander Gianniris, of St Cosmas & Damian in Sophiatown said that the singing was "addictive, like cigarettes - the more you have, the more you want". After Pascha, he went to be secretary to the new Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, and we gave him a tape of the last service, and labelled the tape box with cigarette packet labels, complete with addiction warnings.
Since the last Blue Press was sent out in 1994, our daughter Bridget, now 20, has left school. In 1995 she started a photography course at Pretoria Technikon, but dropped out in 1996. Her main interest was sports photography, and there seemed little opportunity for that. And the second-year course was mainly on advertising photography, which required a medium-format camera, and it was made clear that Hasselblads were obligatory. At R15000 there was no way we could have afforded it.
So Bridget worked part-time at a local book shop, and painting pictures of soccer players, which she sold at the Manchester United supporters club. The Pretoria parish priest, Fr. Michael Visvinis, saw some of her pictures, and encouraged her to think of ikonography, and suggested the possibility of studying with Maria Manetta, who came to South Africa in August to paint the ikons in the dome of the Church of the Annunciation here. He arranged a bursary for Bridget to study at university in Greece.
So Bridget is now in Athens, doing language study for a year, and will begin working on her degree in History and Archaeology next year.
Our son Simon (19) left Clapham High School at the end of 1996, and is studying Fine Arts at the Pretoria Technikon. This makes getting up in the morning an interesting experience for the rest of the family, as one never knows what he will have produced during the early hours of the morning. He is still interested in heavy metal, though he does not have much time to play at the moment. His course leaves him little time for anything else. He is also a watcher of cricket - he and Val will be up during the early hours throughout December and January tuned in to South Africa in Australia.
Jethro (16) is in Grade 10 at Pretoria Technical High School, and is still crazy about cars, and still gets As for motor mechanics. He laments the disappearance of the TopGear programme from our TV screens owing to the greedy MNet hierarchy who now have only made BBC World available to those rich enough for satellite. He is however fortunate to have a cousin, Kevin, in England with a similar bent, who takes pity on him and tapes the show. During December holidays last year he did a stint as a 'casual labourer' at Echo Prestress - helping in the maintenance department during the builder's shutdown .
Val has changed jobs several times. Rasco, the fire protection firm she was working with folded. This was a very sad occasion, it had been a wonderful company to work with, sort of an extended family and a very hard act to follow.
She went to work for a firm of accountants in Johannesburg, servicing several clients with a laptop computer. But the overtime combined with the daily travelling from Pretoria was too much.
In April 1995 she went to work for Applico, a computer support firm, as a consultant on the Accpac accounting program, but within three months they had dropped their Accpac distributorship, and she has since then been working at Echo Prestress, a company manufacturing Prestressed Hollow-core concrete floor/ceiling slab, situated at Chloorkop. It was quite a challenge as the company was brand new and the accounts had to be set up from scratch. This too is a very nice place to work, though the travelling is quite tough.
It is not only the distance (about 55 km each way) but the actual travelling. The Ben Schoeman Highway, has become impossibly congested due to the growth of Midrand without the necessary preparation for the growth needed in the infrastructure to support it.
The total insanity of moving the Transvaal Provincial Administration from Pretoria to Johannesburg which has added all those civil servants to the daily trek - a political manoever if ever there was one - has only exacerbated an already dreadful traffic situation. And NOW they are talking of Midrand for Parliament - no one who has travelled that road morning and evening would ever contemplate such lunacy.
In 1996 she did the inconceivable and won a ticket to the English FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium. This of course was an opportunity not to be missed so she cashed in all her savings, set off on a marathon flight with Kenya Airways to spend a totally unexpected week in London and was able to see Manchester United beat Liverpool to be double winners for the second time, even having a minute appearance on the TV coverage waving the South African flag.
She was also able to visit Pearson relations in England.
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If you've never received one before, you may be wondering what on earth this "Blue Press" is. At the moment it's a kind of family newsletter we (Steve Val, Bridget, Simon and Jethro Hayes) send to friends and family about every 3 years. It's cheaper and more informative than Christmas cards. . It started as a joke about 30 years ago, when Steve started a youth group of the Christian Institute in Durban, and sent out duplicated notices and announcements on yellow paper. A journalist member referred to these as "The Yellow Press", and the name stuck. When Steve moved to Windhoek in Namibia, he and Dave de Beer there produced a "Pink Press", using pink paper. And when they were deported from Namibia in 1972 sent out a Blue Press, which Steve has continued ever since.
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16 May 2009