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From Ashes to Honour
 By Gavin Northcote
Clarens, South Africa
My name is Justice. I have come to be saved.
These words are etched in my memory of the planting of Dihlabeng Church, South Africa in November 1996. They were spoken by Justice Mofokeng as he introduced himself to Steve Oliver a week after the initial church meeting on Steve’s farm in his barn.
The gospel had come to him in a place which had previously harboured terrifying memories of oppression and hatred. Now it was a place of joy and celebration of God’s grace, and Justice’s life would never be the same again.
Rejected
Justice was born on Kromdraai Farm in 1964, the youngest of nine children. His parents were poor farm labourers, living with their family in a small village. The village was fenced off from the rest of the farm and the children lived in fear of punishment from the farmer should they stray beyond the village. They were also bound by their traditional religion of ancestor worship; they continually paid homage to their deceased relatives and lived in constant fear of not satisfying their apparent demands which were communicated through witchdoctors called Sangomas.
Justice’s family was expelled from their home on the farm in 1980 and his father took the family across the Caledon River into Lesotho. This move caused them immense suffering and hardship as they moved from one state of abject poverty to another. Lesotho is one of the poorest nations globally. In spite of this great hardship, Justice completed his schooling and was contemplating a career in the police when he started to have dreams about preaching the Word of God. In these dreams a man spoke to him, telling him that his work would be to preach the gospel. Because of his family’s ignorance and superstitions, they were afraid of these dreams and tried to persuade him to forget them. But the dreams persisted, until the day that Steve and Heather Oliver and their family arrived on Kromdraai Farm in July 1996, the place where Justice was born 32 years earlier.
 Saved
News soon spread from farm to farm and village to village that a church meeting was going to be held on the first Sunday in November. Over 500 people gathered at that first meeting, some having crossed the Caledon River from Lesotho to attend, and 64 people were saved. Although Justice was there, he was not among those who were saved. He was once more on the farm which brought back childhood memories of oppression and suffering. What he now saw and heard in the barn was the sound of exuberant celebration and of people praising God, and a preacher sharing the good news that Jesus Christ had come to earth to die on a cross for our sin, that whosoever would believe in him would be saved. He was terrified and did not respond to the gospel that day.
Throughout the following week he began to feel God calling him to repentance and to surrender his life to Christ. All the dreams he had been having began to make sense. His family continued to press him to ignore them, but Justice could not resist the gospel call. Such was the urgency that before the meeting started the next Sunday Justice introduced himself to Steve and asked to be saved. At the end of the meeting, when Steve asked people to respond, Justice walked forward. Little did he know that Steve had received a promise from God that He would hand-pick the leaders to help him in this great work; here was the first of many.
Restored
Whilst Justice was savouring the joy of being a new creation, he was again challenged by the fears of the past as Steve invited him into his home to sit at his table and enjoy lunch together. To have a South African white man invite him into his house to eat and talk was a new and unforgettable experience! This was the house from where suffering and injury had been inflicted upon him and his family. Now God was demolishing the dividing walls of mistrust, suspicion, racism and hatred around the meal table.
Justice’s growth as a Christian and as a leader took shape in the following weeks and months. A man of over six feet in height, one would have thought of him as confident with aspirations of leadership; but he despised himself as poverty-stricken and insignificant. The gospel now changed all that, restoring his dignity by showing him his value in becoming a child of God. His wife and children came to salvation as well as his parents, brothers and sisters. He was baptised in the Holy Spirit along with a small group of leaders whom Steve was discipling. Justice soon became Steve’s right-hand-man and translator amongst the Sesotho-speaking people, and together they preached the gospel every Sunday at Kromdraai. The fire of an evangelist burned in him as he saw many people saved, strongholds of witchcraft and ancestral worship demolished, and people set free week after week in the barn.
At the frequent funerals which Justice attended in Lesotho and the surrounding South African farms, traditional Basotho practices of ancestral worship at the graveside were replaced with the message of the gospel as he seized every opportunity to preach, and many people were saved and added to Dihlabeng Church. Since Steve was ignorant of the Basotho cultural practices and norms in the early years of the church, he relied on Justice to guide him through some very tricky cultural minefields!
Loved
Steve asked Justice to join him on the staff of Dihlabeng Church and, when the meeting place changed from Steve’s barn to Clarens town, Justice and his wife, Anna, and their three daughters moved over the border into South Africa. Today, Justice is inheriting many of the promises which he received from God when he was newly saved. He is an elder in Dihlabeng Church and has been part of many church planting teams into neighbouring towns such as Manyatseng in Ladybrand, and even into Lesotho when City of Joy Church was planted in Maseru in April 2006. Mention the words ‘church plant’ in his presence and he’s immediately asking if he can be part of the action! In our local community of Clarens, Justice is respected and admired for his passion for the gospel and for his day-to-day commitment to displaying the gospel’s power and influence in his own life. In Dihlabeng Church, he is loved by both rich and poor alike, and navigates cultural differences and challenges with ease as he shepherds and cares for the flock of God.
Psalm 113:7 says that ‘…He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. He seats them with the princes of their people.’ Justice’s life and the story of how the gospel changed him is surely a testimony to this promise. From growing up under an oppressive regime and suffering the indignity of extreme poverty, to hearing and responding to the gospel and enjoying the outworking of God’s grace upon his life, Justice has been caught up in world mission, to take the gospel to every nation, tribe and tongue. |
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