Bishop Kgosiemang finds peace at last

| Friday May 21, 2010 00:00

 

Peace has returned to the life of former Mochudi Dutch Reformed Church priest, Mmoni Kgosiemang, who is now leading her own church.

Rewind the clock to the period between 2004 and 2008, four years of hell for the woman priest who endured persecution from Kgatleng royals, led by Kgosi Linchwe II, DRC youth and a group of elders known as the Concerned Group who would not have a woman at the helm of the church.

Court case after court case, boos in the church, boycotts of her service and sabotage characterised Rev.Kgosiemang short reign at the Mochudi congregation of 'Dutch' as Bakgatla call it. This went on until she was eventually fired mid-2008.

But Kgosiemang has turned the trials and tribulations of the past into an advantage, by founding her own church to become perhaps the first woman in the country to do so.

She is now Bishop Kgosiemang of New Revelations Church, a new Pentecostal denomination in Mochudi, which has managed to attract over 100 youths from Kgosiemang's erstwhile flock at Dutch.

No more boos when she preaches. She conducts her sermons with authority - and a smile - as the flock responds with positive energy, shouting Amen! Hallelujah! Kgosiemang's new church is not glamorous, at least for now, as it still worships in a classroom. It has no music instruments but the celebrations are characteristic of  a young church filled with enthusiasm.

Hardly eight months old, Bishop Kgosiemang's church already has seven cells which meet in Mochudi wards to which non-church members are invited, the hope being that they will join up. Kgosiemang's church also has a women's fellowship and youth and Sunday school structures which meet at Isang with the Bishop on specific days of the week. 'The key aim is not to grow the church numerically as such, but to nourish the souls,' she says.

With Mochudi as its headquarters and Kgosiemang the archbishop, her duty is to spread her new church across the country. 'The vision is to build the headquarters here in Mochudi and start spreading to the rest of Kgatleng District and Botswana,' she explains. 'But for now, we are concerned with strengthening this first-ever branch of the church.'

But the woman who bears the scars of the four years of war with Bakgatla royalty and a good section of the 'Dutch' congregation opposed to the appointment of a woman as a priest is unwilling to discuss the torrid times during a Mmegi visit to her church across Ngotwane River at Isanga Primary School last Sunday.

'We have wiped the things of the past from our minds,' Bishop Kgosiemnag says. 'We do not want to talk about them. We can only say we love those DRC people and we love the Bakgatla royals. Talking about the things of the past is like opening old wounds.'

It is after the Sunday service and she is in the company of her executive committee. Evidently the new church bears no grudges from the past. On this particular Sunday, Mmegi found Bishop Kgosiemang's congregation collecting contributions specifically towards the construction of  Kgosi Kgafela II's Kgotla Arena, otherwise known as Leobo.

At the end of the service, members of each of Bishop Kgosiemang's various cells in Mochudi - Mosanta, Ramojane, Rampedi, Bogare, Phaphane, Boseja and others - came forward with a contribution. The Bishop says Kgosi Kgafela has requested them to contribute P2, 000 towards the project.

'We will soon go to the Kgotla to present our contribution,' she says. 'We are working hand-in-hand with the Kgosi. We have also joined hands with him in mobilising the youth in the fight against HIV. We have a duty to pray for the leadership and pull in the same direction with the leadership.'

The Bishop says her church is not against Kgosi Kgafela's initiation schools, bojale and bogwera. 'We believe that a person is free to make their own judgment regarding them,' she says. 'We do not have teachings against the initiation schools.'

Bishop Kgosiemang says her church started functioning in July 2009, a month after it was registered with the Registrar of Societies. They do not have their own place of worship yet, having started by gathering at various congregants' homes before coming to Isang Primary School where they use a room formerly used to store meat.

According to the Chairman of Bishop Kgosiemang's church, C.K. Sebole, when they first came here, the place was a bit of an eyesore. It took considerable scrubbing and refurbishing by congregants to make the classroom inhabitable. The same classroom is now used for adult education lessons in the evenings.

'We have applied for a piece of land and we have been promised something,' the Bishop says. 'By the look of things, we will be here for a while, though the school recently wrote asking us to vacate the premises.'

So far, congregants of the New Revelation Church Bishop are mainly young girls with a smattering of older women and even fewer men. Bishop Kgosiemang describes her decision to form a new church as a calling from God, rather than an effort to move away from persecution at her former church.

'Ke mo pitsong (It's a calling), she says. 'I never believed that one day I would have quit the church (Dutch). All along, I was fighting to retain the position I believed was due to me there, but God called me to new challenges. I still have love for Dutch where I left so many of my own products. However, we will no longer discuss Dutch. I just want to thank God that the Dutch have made peace with me and the royals have welcomed my church with both hands.'