President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana


This website is sponsored and produced by Jack Hartland of Nuparadigm	President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana
Foreword by MICHAEL CASSIDY Profile by Dr CUTHBERT CHIDOORI JOHN BOND by Peter Watt Prologue Some Personal Notes My First General Conference of the Assemblies of God H. C. Phillips The Congress on Mission and Evangelism held in Durban W F P Burton and some Congo Missionaries Nicholas Bekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu – His Youthful Dreams – His Preaching - Bhengu and Education - Bhengu and Money - Miraculous Experiences - Spiritual Happenings - The Sanctifying Spirit of God – His Departure - Mylet Bhengu Bhengu’s “Isinthunzi” - Government and Politics – Some Faults, Virtues and the Burden of His Heart President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana Early Days in Durban The Glad Tidings Assembly William Frederick Mullan The Fairview Assembly Fred Mullan and the Gifts of the Spirit A Miracle and a Vision The Revival in Norwood James E Mullan Paul O Lange William Branham in Durban Oral Roberts in South Africa Billy Graham in Salisbury and Durban The American Missionaries from Springfield, Missouri C. Austin Chawner and the Portuguese Work August Kast and the Mount Tabor Mission Station John and Yvonne Stegman Colin La Foy and the Coloured Leadership The Work in Zimbabwe Mauritius and Reunion Island Special Answers to Prayer – 1 Special Answers to Prayer – 2 A Beautiful Square with Good Vibes Prayer and the Hippie Revival The Young Turks Tensions within the Group The Split of 1981 – Part One The Split of 1981 – Part Two The Beginnings of the Faith Movement in South Africa The Statement of September 1989 The Charismatic Renewal The Start of the Pentecostal Revival World Wide and The Swedish Pentecostal Assemblies Letting Go of the Reins Epilogue APPENDIX 1 : How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit APPENDIX 2 : The National Church by Nicholas Bhengu APPENDIX 3 : Article from the Argus 5/02/1981 APPENDIX 4 : Pointers to the future of the Assemblies of God in the New South Africa (10/06/94)	President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana was in a separate category from the Mtanzimas, Buthelezis and Sebes. Mrs Mangope, a devout Christian, was elected to head the women’s movement of the Back to God Crusade. Lucas Mangope was and is a member and patron of the Assembly of God at Motswedi, his home village. We owed him and his respected lady more than mere friendship. We owed them pastoral care as our distinguished church members.
	My first meeting with Mangope was in company with Nicholas Bhengu at an hotel in Mmabatho. Our discussions were tense. It seemed that from Mangope’s side, relations had become sour due partly to whisperings from ill-disposed persons. Bhengu was placatory. Matters were sorted out. Mangope grew increasingly magnanimous over the months and years that lay ahead. He was eager to do favours for the Assemblies of God. He helped us hire halls for our conferences in Mmabatho. He appeared on the platform with us. It was his territory. He was the tribal chief. He was state president. Courtesy demanded our respect. At Thaba Nchu he helped us purchase a conference ground. He did not donate it. We paid for it. But he took part in the dedication and his name appeared on the foundation stone of the new conference building. Such honour was accorded him as a church member, not as a politician. We were in his territory. People who feel we were carried away by the political clout Mangope had should realise this. Everybody recalls the events preceding the 1994 election. By that time our beloved brother Bhengu had passed on to be with the Lord. The General Executive felt strongly a pastoral duty to pray with President Mangope and to advise him as much as we could. We did have an audience with him in which we presented him with a letter expressing our concern for his welfare in the political position that was developing. We thought he should seek some accommodation with the ANC to avoid a personal disaster for himself and perhaps much bloodshed in his country. He received us courteously but did not heed our advice. One of our number went further and warned him privately in more explicit terms that the ANC were determined to crush him and the South African Government would not help him. He was being “sold down the river”. At about the same time, violence erupted in King William’s Town. There was shooting. Government buildings were torched. Some of our black Assemblies of God leaders feared for the conference centre at Thaba Nchu with the foundation stone bearing Lucas Mangope’s name. In the revolutionary climate of those days, feelings and thoughts were extremely confused. In alarm, the black Executive decided to remove the foundation stone, at least until things quietened down. They did not discuss it with Mangope. When he heard about it, he was incensed. Since then we have not been able to have contact with the brother, though we still feel a pastoral responsibility for him. Unhappily things in Bophuthatswana turned out much as we had feared. I am personally convinced that Lucas Mangope did not heed our advice because he was prepared to resist the invasion of Mmabatho trusting to the help of right-wing Afrikaners led by General Constand Viljoen. We now know that plans were fairly far advanced but the whole exercise had to be aborted when the AWB and Eugene Terreblanche intervened unasked. Terreblanche turned things into a fiasco and General Viljoen withdrew his force. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Had it been otherwise, there could have been wholesale fighting and much more bloodshed than there actually was. ~ My judgement is that Lucas Mangope has been hard done-by. The ANC government appears to have tried for years without success to pin misdemeanours onto him. Now at length he does stand accused of corruption. One can only wait and see, hoping he has not exposed himself to serious charges. But let it be said that when he was in power, Bophuthatswana was run efficiently. Mmabatho was thriving and clean. The hotels were of a high standard. The schools had excellent results. There was no apartheid there. Are the Tswana people better off now than they were under Mangope’s rule? In actual fact, Bophuthatswana is one of those anomalies plaguing Africa as an aftermath of the colonial era. Then, countries were divided up arbitrarily with no regard to tribal divisions. Hence for example one finds the tribes thrown together sharing regions, striving for ascendancy because some administrator once took a ruler and a pencil to create on a map a territory that cuts right across their ethnic boundaries. This has happened to Bophuthatswana. Ethnically Bophuthatswana is one with Botswana, not South Africa. Their existence as a separate South African entity is the result of the indifferent partition made in some historical process. In the years which culminated in the election of 1994, South Africa was in confusion, teetering on the edge of a blood-bath. With hindsight, one can wish that more calm and wisdom had prevailed in Bophuthatswana in the negotiations and that better decisions had been made. In those days, the whole country was in turmoil. We were all confused to a greater or lesser degree. I trust that in the years ahead we shall yet be able to minister to Brother and Sister Mangope and that Bophuthatswana will inherit the blessing they pray for. Pula! (Rain).