Coming back to my birthplace

In June 2023, after my only brother emigrated to the Netherlands, I requested permission from the Provincial to spend a period of time in a Jesuit community close to where my mother lives, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Permission was accorded and I moved to the Jesuit community in Auckland Park, a beautiful neighborhood of Johannesburg in January 2023. I returned to South Africa, the place of my birth, after more than forty-five years away.

South Africa is a very different country to the one I left behind as a teenager. Then, the country was governed by an apartheid regime with people of different colors strictly segregated and the system safeguarding the privileges of a minority of White people. The South Africa I have returned to is happily a democratic country with an extraordinary constitution that guarantees the rights and the dignity of all citizens and celebrates a rainbow nation, underlining multiculturalism and freedom of expression. Sadly, the country is passing through a time of profound crisis like so much of Africa. Poverty, corruption, lack of leadership and violence are very much part of everyday life and yet I still celebrate daily the end of the apartheid regime that defined my youth.

The Jesuits in South Africa are now part of a far-flung province with its administrative center in Lusaka, Zambia. Most of the Jesuits in the province live and work in Zimbabwe. In South Africa we are lass than twenty Jesuits divided in three locations: Johannesburg, Cape Town and Zinkwazi (Natal). Zinkwazi is the location of the tertianship program. In Cape Town, the Jesuits run a pre-seminary program for the South African dioceses and a parish and in Johannesburg, the Jesuits run an institute promoting Ignatian spirituality and formation, two parishes and are engaged in Jesuit Refugee Service.

I am living in the Johannesburg community, where we make up a community of twelve members, the majority being South Africans and others from Zimbabwe and Malawi. Our residence is a magnificent house on a property that includes rooms for retreat and the Jesuit Institute. I work fulltime in the Institute, engaged in teaching, spiritual direction and writing. My collaborators are three other Jesuits and six lay people, five of them women devoted to Ignatian spirituality. I help out in a Jesuit parish in the inner city that serves a mixed population of locals, migrants and university students. Whenever I can I go on Sundays to the other Jesuit parish in Soweto, the sprawling black township. Liturgy is a real moment of spiritual renewal even though mass is celebrated in languages I barely understand, Zulu and Sotho. What is transformative is the music and dance that accompanies the celebration and the full participation of the congregation.

Finally, it is a deep consolation to be able to spend time with my mother. On Fridays and Saturdays, I stay with her in the little housing project for the elderly where she lives. After decades away, this has been a time to bond again and a time for me to express my gratitude for the gift of life and nurturing that I received.

Photo: Community meeting – David Dryden, Joe Hampson, me, Norbet Munekani, Michael Lewis, Bruce Botha, Rampe Hlobo, Innocent Kalulu, Graham Pugin (10.5.2023)

Pr. David Neuhaus, S.J.