Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu led talks to broker peace between two feuding factions of the three-million-member St John Apostolic Faith Mission Church on Tuesday.
”Lives have been threatened [during the feud],” said South African Council of Churches (SACC) spokesperson Joe Mdhlela.
Former Azanian People’s Organisation president Ishmael Mkhabela and Khoza Mogoga, a former SACC president and TRC commissioner, were also part of the SACC peace-brokering team.
The meeting, in a chapel, held in the SACC’s Johannesburg offices, began with the singing of hymns and prayers.
The feud has its origins in a leadership struggle that began in the 1970s following the death of the church’s Archbishop Petros Nsango.
Two splinter factions have since developed: the St John Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa and the St John Apostolic Church of Prophecy.
”Year after year, it has been the same,” said Mdhlela.
Adelaide Tambo, widow of former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo, was scheduled to be in the SACC team, but was off sick. — Sapa