Dr. Martin spent most of the 1990s in South Africa, where he witnessed the inauguration of Nelson Mandela and worked on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In June 2009 he revisited the country with a group of Christian scholars and recorded these images of the church.
J. L. Zwane Church has AIDS.
This Presbyterian congregation runs a series of impressive programs reaching out to members of the Guguletu community striken or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has reached staggering proportions in South Africa’s townships. Guguletu itself has an HIV-positive rate of 29 percent. But J. L. Zwane is not interested in statistics; it is too busy providing refuge for suffering bodies.
Every Sunday during worship there is an AIDS presentation, where a member of the church addresses the congregation. As Mandisa approached the platform on the Sunday our group visited, the congregation sang, as only an African congregation can sing, “Never, never give up.” The same words are embossed on a wall of the sanctuary.
Diagnosed in 2001, Mandisa “didn’t expect to live three years, much less eight.” Despised and rejected by her family members, she came in fear and trembling to “the AIDS church” (as J. L. Zwane is popularly, if not notoriously, known). There she received a warm welcome, medical care, and support from one of the groups established for that purpose. The antiretrovitrals she’s taking allow her and her three children (all HIV-negative, praise God!) to live relatively normal lives.
AIDS remains a silent killer, but the stigma associated with it is nearly as destructive as the disease itself. According to J. L. Zwane’s minister, the Rev. Dr. Spiwo Xapile (who himself has lost five family members to the disease), pastors who dare talk about the issue run the risk of losing their jobs. As South African Council of Churches President Tinyiko Maluleke said to us later, AIDS denialism is the reason the disease is so “successful.” Denialism is not simply former President Thabo Mbeki claiming that the link between HIV and AIDS is not proven. Denialism is everybody (well-meaning liberals included) who want “to help those people who are suffering with AIDS.” AIDS thus remains someone else’s problem. And the basic problem with this, actually, is ecclesiological. I’ll return to this point.
The J. L. Zwane Centre has a number of programs that promote responsible behaviour, and take care of those affected by the disease. Each Sunday, public health volunteers come to the church and offer a clinic for those who cannot afford health care (which, with an unemployment rate of 70 percent, is the vast majority of Guguletu’s population). The church also supports grassroots initiatives, including the work ofPriscilla, an elderly woman who has opened her small home to 12 —soon to be 15—AIDS orphans. Another woman, Nancy, who herself has a 16-year-old severely handicapped daughter, is taking care of 12 abandoned children who are physically and developmentally challenged.
The public support structures are simply inadequate in Guguletu to meet these kinds of needs. So the J. L. Zwane church has organized itself into zones. Members in each track the needs of their community, and initiatives like Priscilla’s and Nancy’s. A network thus extends through the body of Christ, linking such small spaces where the kingdom of God has taken root.
We ought not romanticize—despite this good work, the challenge remains enormous. The Rev. Xapile put it baldly during one of our discussions: “we are dying.” Not they, but we. Here I return to the ecclesiological problem: AIDS affects the church precisely as Christ’s suffering body. “By his wounds, we are healed,” said Isaiah (53:5). And so as the church suffers with those bearing the social, as well as the physical, effects of the disease. It imparts the healing of Jesus Christ—one face, one body at a time.
Mark’s gospel tells the story of an unnamed women who had been suffering from “an issue of blood” for 12 years (Mark 5:25-34). She came, incognito, to Jesus—pressing her way through the crowd, hoping to touch the hem of his garment.
Contact with the woman would have made Jesus ritually unclean. However, the real miracle is not that the woman’s uncleanness is passed to him. His healing power, instead, flows from him to her. This story takes on new significance in the context of the “uncleanness” of HIV/AIDS. The unnamed come fearfully but courageously to “the AIDS church.” But rather than experiencing condemnation by the pure, they participate in the healing of Jesus Christ.
The lesson of J. L. Zwane Church is that the body of Jesus Christ has AIDS. We who are in communion with J. L. Zwane—which means all Christians who share the Eucharist—also have AIDS.
