As I write this, we have just celebrated Heritage Day as a country. At St Mary’s, we had our Senior School Heritage Day service on Thursday 23 September. The liturgy was a celebration of our Christian heritage with influences from the Jewish worship tradition and early Greek Orthodox.

September is also the month when we commemorate the martyrdom of Bantu Stephen Biko, 12 September. The ACSA Liturgical Commission citation reads as follows:

Bantu Stephen Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist, intellectual, father of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), and martyr.

[… he challenged the institutional church to be an instrument of human dignity and freedom. He worked towards fulfilling a vision of a transformed South Africa and world.]

A lifelong Anglican, Biko had an ecumenical outlook and practised an explorative religious consciousness, especially with ideas from African culture and religion, and the politics of religions. However, he engaged passionately in African liberation theology, in Christ-like justice and righteousness, and had a clear vision of a redemptive, compassionate God. Biko had as his inspiration the mystic-activism of the Christian faith seeking to embody a radical Christ-Presence in the world for the lives of all. Fr Aelred Stubbs of the Community of the Resurrection named Bantu Stephen Biko a Martyr of Hope.

It is thanks to people like Steve Biko, who dedicated their lives to fighting for freedom and justice, that we are in a position to celebrate our shared heritage as South Africans with all its diversity with joy and pride.

Let us be thankful.

REVD RAKGADI KHOBO
CHAPLAIN