Justice Driven Liberal Anglican South African Archbishop Abandons Wife

Commentary

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
Sept. 7, 2009

He was the gays best friend. He supped at the financial teats of The Episcopal Church for his entire episcopacy. He cried justice for the oppressed and down-trodden. He cried even louder for those who suffered with AIDS. He cried justice for all.

But at the end of his episcopacy, on the eve of his retirement, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Njogonkulu Ndungane abandoned his second wife, (his first wife died), bought himself a home and disappeared. The one person who needed his justice, the woman he had married and promised to love, honor and cherish and with whom he had lived for 22 years was now being denied justice, her very ability simply to survive.

Shocked at his abandonment of her, his wife Vokwana filed a suit for economic support telling the court that her husband just disappeared, leaving her with not enough money to support herself. The man who filled Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu's shoes as South Africa's Anglican archbishop found himself being sued for maintenance by his wife of more than two decades.

She told a Times (SA) reporter, "When I married him in 1987, he was still a provincial executive officer to Archbishop Tutu. My business was doing excellently and I carried the brunt of payment for every household cost. He would say: 'When I take retirement from the church, I'll be the one to take care of you.' "

Now she feels like the proverbial rug has been pulled out from under her.

Trying to explain her feelings of confusion and betrayal, Vokwana-Ndungane, 69, stated, "Having to live like this is not pleasant. You keep asking yourself a lot of questions and providing your own answers."

Ndungane, 68, never answered the charges. He filed for divorce alleging they had not shared a bed in 10 years.

"I still stayed where my husband had left me, even when he did not return. When they marry you in church, they say for better or for worse, do they not? "I later found out that he had secretly bought himself a house six years before moving out of our home," she said.

Ndungane's much vaunted public calls for justice for the oppressed apparently did not apply nor include his wife.

Southern Africa has always been the weakest theological and doctrinal link on the Anglican African continent. It is a theological weakness explored and exploited by the American Episcopal Church. At one point, he was photographed with Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola as a show of African unity. It was not successful. Ndungane had no use for orthodox Anglicanism. He had lived too long in the shadow of Archbishop Tutu to change the message from one of social amelioration to one of sin and salvation. Like his successor, Ndungane has been a staunch supporter of gay rights and has advocated for an Anglican Communion that is inclusive of all people, regardless of sexuality. He supported Tutu in his call for the inclusion of all bishops to Lambeth 2008.

In 2006, the South African Parliament voted 230-41 to allow same-sex couples to "solemnize and register a voluntary union by way of either a marriage or a civil partnership." Ndungane, ever the voice for the underdog, called for the African Church to abandon its "practices of discrimination".

Earlier in 2003, Ndungane sent a congratulatory message to the first openly gay U.S. bishop, Gene Robinson, during his ordination (to the chagrin of his African peers), saying at the time that the Anglican Communion should be at the forefront of fighting social ills in society rather than being bothered by what Bishop Robinson was doing or not doing. He is on record for calling homosexuality a "pastoral secondary problem".

The lap dog of TEC was striking a blow for his major financial supporter. He was well-rewarded with North American AIDS "missionaries", one of whom, a homosexual, would later scream that "the church has AIDS" and, TEC, of course has money. Ndungane was well supported by his Episcopal Church paymasters.

He was also known to, and befriended by, the Church of England's imperial gay community, first and foremost members of Changing Attitude and its leader the Rev. Colin Coward. In Dar es Salaam, when the Primates were meeting, Coward and Ndungane sat by the hotel pool laughing and talking together even though Dr. Williams had asked the Primates not to talk to the media. An iron curtain separating the media from the primates was publicly flaunted by the African Archbishop.

Ndungane apparently felt no compunction to obey Rowan Williams. By contrast, when Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola appeared in the hotel lobby and was confronted by the media, he strode through saying nothing.

The silence of the liberal Anglican glitterati to Ndungane's abandonment of his wife is deafening. Where is the outrage? Where are those who cry the loudest about justice for the church's pansexualists and for women mistreated by men? Why are they not crying aloud about his abominable behavior?

On the one occasion an American bishop abandoned his wife, on the eve of his retirement, David E. Johnson Bishop of Massachusetts shot himself through the heart with a .22 rifle amid allegations he was in love with another woman.

Ndungane, by contrast, leaves his wife and buys himself a house without telling her. An orthodox priest from South Africa told VOL that he always wondered if Ndungane was ever a Christian. He supported all the right liberal causes, but faith issues never featured much in any of his public utterances, he said.

The archbishop spent his life crying for justice for the oppressed, but at the end of his episcopacy he abandons his own wife denying her the very justice he so brazenly preached to the world from his pulpit.

END