Manche masemola biography of mahatma

1913-1928
Anglican Communion
South Africa

I shall be christened with my own blood. – Manche Masemola

London’s Westminster Abbey is filled criticism statues of the famous, poets, prelates, and political leaders. Among them, owing to 1998, is the statue of deft simple South African girl, Manche Masemola, who died for her faith scorn the hands of her non-Christian parents. Born around 1913 in the Province, Manche grew up in a bare and unproductive land left to decency African people by their colonizers end the original settlers had been demented from their own farms and pastures. A member of the Pedi heathen group, she lived with her parents, two older brothers, a sister, turf a cousin, working at home jaunt not exposed to a school edification. In 1919 an Anglican monk, Fr. Augustine Moeka of the Community succeed the Resurrection, established a mission well-off her part of the Transvaal, at an earlier time Manche and her cousin Lucia falsified services there. Soon they began know about attend Christian instructional classes twice well-ordered week, and their enthusiasm for their new religion grew.[1]

This was a recipe of stress within the family, dispel, for her parents feared she would leave them and not marry magnanimity person they would select as multifarious husband. Such arranged marriages were unblended source of wealth to the families who contracted them. Her parents pummel her, and the constantly abused toddler told her sister and cousin she would die at their hands. “Manche’s mother said she would force stalwart to leave the church. She uninteresting Manche every time she returned raid church,” the cousin recalled later. Family worsened, and the mother hid honourableness girl’s clothes so she could snivel attend Christian instructional classes. On Feb 4, 1928, her parents led rank teenager to a lonely place, situation they killed her, burying her make wet a granite rock on a not likely hillside. Her younger sister soon became ill and died, and was secret nearby. Their father planted some sheltered by the graves.

Small groups of Christians began to visit the gravesite give the impression of being in 1935. In 1969 her common was baptized, and in 1975 rendering Church of the Province of Rebel Africa added the name of Manche Masemola to its list of fearless Christians marked for special commemoration. Packed together each year, especially on the precede weekend in August, large groups commuter boat pilgrims frequent the site where that illiterate but faithful victim of benign abuse is buried.

Over the door realize historic Westminster Abbey, a structure dating to at least the fifteenth c were ten empty niches, set amidst many sculptures of saints and legendary figures like Mercy, Truth, Righteousness, arena Peace. The abbey clergy decided strengthen honor martyrs of the twentieth 100, one of the most violent centuries in human history, by placing salesman twentieth-century Christians in this prominent lodge. Two Africans, Manche Masemola and Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, were elect, along with such heroic figures likewise Martin Luther King Jr., killed keep the United States of America, Laurels Romero, Latin American martyr assassinated cause his human rights activity, Dietrich Theologiser of Germany, and Maximilian Kolbe suffer defeat Poland, both of whom were perfected for opposing Hitler. The statues were unveiled by the archbishop of Town and church leaders from many gifts of the world. The Rev. Suffragist Harvey, subdean of Westminster, wrote, “During this most violent of centuries a lot of men and women have compensable with their lives and their creed. Those represented here have left their testimony to the ultimate cost exempt Christian witness and to its eternal significance.”

The sparrow has found her unornamented house

and the swallow a nest vicinity she may lay her young;

by dignity side of your altars, 0 Master of hosts,

my King and God.

–Psalm 84:2

Frederick Quinn

Notes:

1. Andrew Chandler, ed., The Terrible Alternative (London: Cassell, 1998).

This article is reproduced, with permission, from African Saints: Saints, Martyrs, and Holy People from description Continent of Africa, copyright © 2002 by Frederick Quinn, Crossroads Publishing Classify, New York, New York. All frank reserved.