September 26, 2005

Dear Friends,

All things in life come to an end, or, as they say in German, “Alles im Leben hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.”

Sometimes the end comes sooner than expected; sometimes it is the conclusion of a long journey amongst many obstacles, like traveling with cows in the road for 150 kilometers.

On September 1, delegates to a special meeting of the Joining Hands Against Hunger organization in South Africa, to which we have been assigned, voted to end their program.

JHAH-SA was launched in June 2001. Partly for the purpose of accommodating the passions of all persons present, not one but three extremely complex focus issues were defined: unemployment, HIV/AIDS, and land reform. The goal of creating a national network was set, which lead over the years to the vision of an elaborate national structure with provincial substructures and a constitution fit for a national non-governmental organization. Neither human nor financial resources were sufficient to support such an undertaking. Funding from PC(USA) ended up financing projects of individual member organizations, not—as the Joining Hands vision intends—supporting collective campaign strategies of a network.

We arrived in South Africa in February 2004 to take on the role of companionship facilitators with JHAH-SA. We have spent the last 18 months trying to gain access to information about the program and asking probing questions. The resulting insights, which we regularly shared with the executive committee, eventually led to their recommendation to dissolve the organization. We are grateful that the final steps toward ending JHAH-SA happened both intentionally and peacefully.

Most of the people we have met through JHAH-SA are committed and skilled individuals whom we by now count among our personal friends. Some of you met four of them last July in Cleveland and might wonder how they are. We are sad to inform you that Mzwandile Nunes died suddenly in May 2005. He had resigned, for health reasons, as chairperson of JHAH-SA in November 2004. Pule Tshangela continues her work on behalf of impoverished communities and particularly women. She invited us to the traditional wedding of her second youngest son last month—what a spectacular event! Cameron Scott is busy training young people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds for employment in the financial services sector. Through email, he keeps in touch with people from other country networks whom he met last year at the global JHAH conference in Tacoma, Washington. Brown Motsau has left the Young Christian Workers organization to take a challenging position with the Benchmark Foundation, which monitors global corporate responsibility. He now wears a tie to work and is growing into new areas of expertise.

What does the dissolution of JHAH-SA mean for us? Our appointment as mission co-workers runs until the end of 2006. We have already started an extensive process of exploring the prospects for a more viable anti-hunger network in South Africa—one that would fit the principles of the Joining Hands Against Hunger initiative, and one that would be open to an ongoing relationship with the Presbytery of the Western Reserve and the global JHAH movement. We have enough experience now to know that this will be an uphill challenge. Please keep us in your prayers, together with the marginalized and impoverished people of South Africa.

Susanne and Ken

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 339