SHEPI MATI (ex-YCW)

overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/video.php?id=200

Interview Segment

Shepi Mati interviewed by David Bailey
June 18, 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Requires RealPlayer 

"I learned about YCW's own perspective on Christianity and the history of Christ, and Christ as a worker and a liberator." [2:48]

Mati became active with the Young Christian Workers (YCW), which was strongly influenced by Liberation Theology from Latin America, advocating that Christians should take "a preferential option for the poor.

Shepi Mati was born in 1961 and went to work at the age of 12 or 13 as a so-called “garden boy”. He attended high school in Port Elizabeth at the time of the student uprisings in 1976. In the early 1980s, he was recruited into the ANC underground and also became involved with the Young Christian Workers, which was strongly influenced by liberation theology. He helped to build the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and was national president of the organization in 1982. Mati worked with Community Video Education Trust (CVET) in Cape Town in the last 1980s to document the struggle on video. He now is radio manager at Idasa.

Play Full Interview [1:19:30]

Former YCWs on the Internet

Roddy Mzwandile Nunes

From Joe Falkiner

Hi Dominic,

Sorry I have not been responding. Thanks for Cheche's work, I will reply, but at the moment I am totally tied up organising a funeral. Please let him know.

The funeral is of an activist of more than 30 years, Roddy Mzwandile Nunes, who dropped dead of a heart attack last Friday. You may have heard of him. He is the one who made me conscious of the class struggle years and years ago. He had been devoted to worker issues from the time he left school in the late 1960's. Although he had been educated at a posh school (CBC Cape Town) and went to university, he then decided to experience the life of a worker, and became a baggage-handler for SA Airways. At various times in his life he was national president of the YCW, organiser of MCW, secretary of the Church and Work Commission of the Bishops' Conference, organiser of May Day rallies before the Unions even started doing so, detained for 5 months in 1978 because of May Day rallies in Cape Town and Johannesburg run by the YCW's, fundraiser for many NGO's concerned with worker issues, organiser of scholarships for working class students, and lecturer at various seminaries of various denominations on worker ministry. In the last few years he was based at Pietermaritzburg University. That is why I am running the funeral service, which will be ecumenical.

People (workers) are coming from all over South Africa. E-mails have been received from England, France, Belgium, USA etc, especially from funding agencies and friends. Memorial services will also be held in Cape Town on Thursday and Johannesburg on Friday. Much of the communication has been coming through my e-mail address and I have been sending it on as appropriate. (Much as you do very well every day) So I have been busy.

The funeral will be in our chapel of our house here, (which opens up into our conference hall). We expect about 200 people, and we are catering as well.

Thanks also for giving Ben Molapo my address. I taught him years ago in Lesotho, when I was Novice Master in our novitiate, and he was a postulant.

Regards
Joe

Editor's Notes: This was found on the internet at ::: 

http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/From+Joe+Falkiner