Baffling act against man of God

The suspension of Paul Verryn has been lifted, but the church owes him an apology for the aspersions that were cast on him

Hunting for the truth is our main game as journalists. In pursuit of the bare facts in public life, we daily examine the motives of dodgy officials and powerful people from every angle to see if hypocrisy or financial gain are lurking beneath the spin-doctored surface.
In politics, the motives behind bizarre human behavior are usually easy to find. We know why one of Cope's leaders trashes the other despite irreparable damage inflicted in the process on a young and once-important party: it's just a symptom of the rampant rivalry everyone expects from politicians.
Similarly, we know why the Suidlanders' leader hypes the prospects of a race war, advising his followers to stockpile rusks in anticipation of white genocide: he's just hoping to replace the late ET in the affections of right-wing Afrikaners, and to hell with the impact on national reconciliation.
We also know why the ANC's treasurer-general elects to defend a dangerously outspoken Julius Malema regardless of the credence this gives to suspicions that the ruling party is falling apart: he loves his job and just wants to keep it.
What we don't know – in the equally venal field of ecclesiastical politics – is why the Central Methodist Church chose to humiliate its leading figure, Bishop Paul Verryn, recently. The man was busy doing God's work in the face of enormous obstacles, including the state's growing resentment, when his own colleagues turned on him.
Not that the controversial cleric is a saint. Verryn has made some obvious mistakes in his current mission, as he doubtless erred here and there in an earlier Christian escapade that resulted in a punch-up with the formidable Winnie Mandela. But he is clearly a man of integrity, who tries with all his might to help others.
The sight of pitifully poor Zimbabweans passing around the hat to assist unasked in Verryn's defence when he was suspended by Central Methodist in Pritchard Street back in January must have brought tears to his eyes during his own hour of need. Even his harshest critics concede that the thousands living in the church are better off than they would have been without his tireless efforts on their behalf.
That the Methodist Church watched in silence as the media got in a muddle by speculating on the reason for Verryn's suspension being his supposed abuse of children - when the cleric was merely accused by the church of disobeying a couple of its bureaucratic procedures and was never suspected of any serious moral misconduct - is a grave assault on Verryn's reputation by his employer (and by the media for not doing what they ought to do: check the facts and expose the truth). The church owes the brave bishop a belated apology, especially now that it has lifted its silly suspension and admitted, in effect, that it had no business casting aspersions on him in the first place.
My greatest gripe isn't the unfairness of the Central Methodist Church towards Paul Verryn, however. It's the failure to recognize the importance of his mission as an apt compression of what most deeply ails our society – poverty. Bishop Verryn's church in the wider context of the country's social ills provides South Africa with an opportunity, a virtual laboratory experiment, to question our collective humanity.
This is why Verryn enrages the government and some of his holy peers. As he explained to a university audience recently: "Central Methodist is known as a place that houses foreign nationals. But it's really a place that confronts society over the issue of poverty. The poorest of the poor live at Central Methodist, amongst whom there happen to be foreign nationals with nothing but the clothes on their backs."
Inside the church - where thousands of desperate people, including highly-trained engineers and teachers, share meagre facilities in hopelessly overcrowded, indeed stinking, conditions - every conceivable aspect of life occurs, explains Verryn. People help each other, but they also compete and fight over resources.
The bishop has never said his church is anything like an ideal haven. "I have spoken more about toilets than I have about Jesus at Central Methodist," he admits. "You can't run a cohesive community in such circumstances. A person gets killed in the church, for example, and old ethnic conflicts rise up like ghosts. 
"What the mission at Central Methodist is saying is that poverty is a huge issue. We won't be free as a nation until we confront it head-on. Four per cent of the population can't continue to own 40% of the wealth of the country. That is never going to work."
Oddly enough, the politician who, like the Methodist cleric, understands South African society so well that he strikes unerringly at the heart of social dysfunction is Julius Malema. Beyond his vulgar expressions and knee-jerk responses, much of what Juju says about poverty and popular resentment is true and has resonance with the millions who live with dire deprivation, day in, day out. Like Verryn, Malema has been doing the work of the big chief in speaking to the masses on behalf of the ANC.
We may wish Juju would simply disappear, just as the government and others would like the contents of Central Methodist to be swept from Jozi's spruced-up streets and out of sight. But Malema is the voice of the voiceless (even though his deeds don't always match his words). And, like Verryn, not even the risk of suspension will shut him up.

The difference between these two bold South Africans, though, is as stark and perplexing as you'd expect to find during a search for the truth in the land of contradictions. One of them is a man of integrity; the other is not.