
Gideon Masinga
Photo courtesy of Nkosinathi Emanuel Mdletshe.
Masinga, Gideon (1915–1981)
By Nkosinathi Emanuel Mdletshe
Nkosinathi Emanuel Mdletshe, D.B.A., M.B.A. (AMA University, Makati, Philippines), currently serves as researcher and communication technical assistant for the SID Ellen G. White Research and Heritage Centre, situated at Helderberg College of Higher Education in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Mdletshe has also earned an M.Th. and M.Div. degrees at Nations University, New Orleans, United States of America.
First Published: November 18, 2024
Gideon Zonke Masinga was a veteran Adventist pastor, choirmaster, and champion of the disabled people in the Natal Mission from 1940 to 1981.
Early Life and Conversion
Gideon Masinga was born on February 3, 1915, in Matikwe, Nanda, on the North Coast of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. He and his wife, Joyce, wedded on August 11, 1942. They received the Adventist truths through the Voice of Prophecy correspondence course lessons. Masinga wrote to Miss Dawkins, their teacher at the time, about the possible location of Sabbath keepers nearby in their area.1 When the coordinator of the Voice of Prophecy course, Pastor G. S. Stevenson, heard about this family in Port Shepstone, he spoke with the North Bantu Mission Field President J. D. Harcombe. Harcombe agreed that the couple could be baptized if they ready and convinced of the Adventist truths.
The family had just been blessed with a newborn baby at that time. The baby was born before he accepted the Adventist truths. He and his wife were baptized in December 1943 in Port Shepstone, a coastal town in KwaZulu Natal, almost 130 miles from Durban. The baptism occurred in a small European church, and their four-month-old daughter, Bathabile, was dedicated on the same day.2
Masinga served as a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in the Bantu North Field (later re-organized as Natal-Zululand Field). He was a diligent minister and trendsetter of a then-unknown ministry for disabled people. His views on the need for a special ministry for people with disabilities were probably triggered by the prevailing social and political circumstances of his time, especially in the black community, where African individuals with physical impairments were left to the care of their immediate families, as society had no place for them.3
Background
Before Masinga joined the pastoral ministry, he spent eighteen years as a musical composer and a seasoned choirmaster. He toured extensively to raise money for orphanages and people in need. He sang with the Sunrise Choir of Volkrust and Moonlight Six of Durban from 1925 t0 1930.4 Then, in 1938-1940, he joined the Broadway Entertainers and, later, the Melody Makers, touring and raising money for establishing homes for people with disabilities around the coast. The Rhythm Darkies, which performed from 1944 to 1948, was where he spent most of his time. He composed many Bantu songs on freedom, heave, social ills, and spiritual topics. Then he moved to Butterworth at Gcuwa in the Eastern Cape to begin his theological training, where he joined the famous and renowned King’s Messengers that ministered and recorded several albums.
Pastor Masinga served under a new field led by a black president, Pastor P. Mabena. The Southern Union Mission proposed splitting the black Bantu missions into nine fields. Prior to that time, black directors led the North and South Bantu fields, with limited authority and had to make decisions in consultation with the union leadership in Johannesburg. Natal-Zululand was one of the proposed fields that started to operate in 1960.5 The black field presidents had jurisdiction over local church activities but could not administer the schools, hospitals, and orphanages, which remained under the predominantly white union administrators. Hence, the new administrative arrangement was accepted with some reservations.
In 1945, Pastor Masinga and his wife left for a training program at Bethel College, and the Bantu Field president supported their decision.6 In 1952, Masinga was part of an effort in Standerton where many people gave their lives to Christ. In 1954, he assisted in another effort in Mzikulwana, where fourteen souls joined the church. The Southern Africa Division in 1955 initiated a program to train black workers at Solusi College in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which was subsidized by the Division. The challenge was that the black leadership was not fully recognized in the South African Union Conference. The black pastors saw the arrangement as possibly resulting in further segregation between the black church and the white church, not in coming closer as one body of faith.7 Nevertheless, the work of evangelism continued, and all the fields witness an increase in membership.
Several prominent pastors championed fieldwork in black churches. Among these, to mention a few, were J. Phomodi, who conducted many evangelistic campaigns in Lesotho, M. R. Moeletsi, who faced harsh challenges in in Kroonstad and persisted after losing his daughter, B. Tshukudu, who served in the Free State, and M. Africa, who ministered in Thaba-Nchu. Masinga served along the black pastors in the Zululand field, including E. J. Khuboni and N. M. Ngwenya, who contributed to naming the Ekukhanyeni Mission at KwaNongoma in 1949.8
Contribution
Pastor Masinga was a celebrated hero of people living at societal margins. He made personal and financial sacrifices to raise funds for people experiencing poverty. His music uplifted thousands of people. Masinga was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1960. With him, several other black pastors were ordained, including Grellman, a graduate of the then only white Helderberg College, and Michael Mkasi, J. N. Mseleku, and Gideon Masinga, the first black pastors in the union converted through a study of the Voice of Prophecy lessons.9 The 1960s, new fields were inaugurated, and Pastor Masinga joined the Natal-Zululand Field, under the presidentship of P. Mabena.10
In 1961, Masinga became the South-Natal district director. He ministered well in the region. However, the first challenges started when he began to incorporate welfare ministry in the community of Port Shepstone. He had ministered to people in need in his previous career as a choirmaster and a music composer. The church was conflicted about his new ministry. Some encouraged it, and others thought it left him very little time for his other pastoral duties.
Masinga felt the need to impact his church’s immediate surrounding communities by ministering to people with disabilities through what was known as the “cripples” project. Such a ministry was unheard of amongst the black churches at the time. Only white churches had welfare programs and institutions, having more access to government funding. In Pastor Masinga’s project, people experiencing disabilities and poverty were provided with Bible lessons and food, resulting in the initiative’s attracting a solid following throughout the province.11
Masinga continued to develop social relief projects in Port Shepstone and its surroundings. However, many church members thought he should be dismissed from pastoral ministry if he kept prioritizing his welfare projects over his pastoral duties. The field leadership saw the projects’ potential downside as Masinga was perceived as starting “his own church.” The field president spoke with Masinga in September 1961, before the field executive committee met on October 12, 1961, to decide whether Masinga should be released from his pastoral duties to focus on the “African cripples’ ministry.” Pastor Masinga was asked to choose between his pastoral work and his welfare projects.
The congregation of Port Shepstone churches lodged a complaint to the field office about what they thought was an unfair treatment of Pastor Masinga. Some members even threatened to withhold their tithes and offerings if Pastor Masinga was not allowed to serve as pastor and oversee the welfare projects. Other members supported the field leadership’s decision, including the Ezingolweni church, the oldest church in the region.12 In November 1961, Masinga wrote to the field president that he regarded himself as a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Nevertheless, some perceived his independent ministry as estrangement from the church because, at that time, the church did not have an official ministry for the black churches that exists today and is known as Possibilities Ministries. On November 21, 1961, the field suspended Masinga from active salaried service.
Masinga promoted his projects on the radio and in local newspapers. He launched the first “Association for the Cripples” on November 26, 1961, at KwaMashu in Durban. A small group of members, who were later called “Abalindi,” continued to support him. Following his active years, Masinga resided in Inanda, Matikwe, his hometown. He composed many songs for Abalindi Church Choir, formerly an independent ministry, that rejoined the Seventh-day Adventist Church.13
Legacy
The Abalindi Welfare in Matikwe, Inanda Township, is the fruit of Masinga’s legacy. This welfare center currently includes an elderly home, a daycare and preschool, and a center for HIV/Aids patients and people experiencing disabilities and poverty. It continues to serve as an independent ministry. The Abalindi Church reconciled with the Kwazulu-Natal Free-State Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in 2004 and has since been part of the sisterhood of churches under this conference. The Abalindi Church started the “Abalindi Choir,” which is still active today and serves as Gideon Masinga had envisioned. The church also started “Reality 7,” a well-known and successful acapella group in the province, as attested by their many trophies and awards. Masinga’s musical legacy continues through his grandson, Fisani Masinga, a renowned songwriter, soloist, choirmaster, and song-arranger.
Masinga was a trailblazer for the welfare work when such ministry was not established within the church. He carried out his mission through many challenges. Clifford Nhlapo shares his insights about the past: “The field president had a correct administrative view of the matter, while Masinga had a correct social view.”14 Sometimes, the full realization of a worthy idea is in the future, when the time and people are ready. In later years, Masinga’s work planted the seed for the Anerley Camp, a center of community services in Port Shepstone. Inspired in part by Masinga’s “Cripples’ Project, the National Tru-Foods Limited of Len Clark in Heidelberg was established, and Pastor Dennis Baird started the Meals-on-Wheels in East London.
Sources
Huskissen, Y. “The Bantu Composers of Southern Africa/ Die Bantoe Komponiste can Suider-Afrika.” In The Bantu Composers of Southern Africa. Johannesburg, SABC: 1969.
Nhlapo, Clifford. “Work in Kwazulu-Natal.” In Tears of the Black Pulpit. Wandsbeck: Reach Publishers, 2010.
Sparrow, H. M. “Direct Results of Voice of Prophecy Studies.” The South African Division Outlook, July 15, 1951.
Stevenson, G. S. “The Work in South Africa Reorganised.” The South African Division Outlook, March 15, 1961.
Notes
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H. M. Sparrow, “Direct Results of Voice of Prophecy Studies,” The South African Division Outlook, July 15, 1951, 3-5.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Clifford Nhlapo, interview by author, Cape Town, June 10, 2024.↩
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Arthur Sibisi, interview by author, Cape Town, June 10, 2024.↩
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Clifford Nhlapo, “Work in Kwazulu-Natal,” In Tears of the Black Pulpit (Wandsbeck: Reach Publishers, 2010), 69.↩
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Sparrow, 3-4.↩
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G. S. Stevenson, “The Work in South Africa Reorganised,” The South African Division Outlook, March 15, 1961, 8.↩
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Nhlapo, 69.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Clifford Nhlapo, interview by author, Cape Town, June 10, 2024.↩
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Ibid., June 11, 2024.↩
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Nhlapo, 70-72).↩
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Y. Huskissen, “The Bantu Composers of Southern Africa/ Die Bantoe Komponiste can Suider-Afrika,” In The Bantu Composers of Southern Africa (Johannesburg, SABC: 1969), 106.↩
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Nhlapo, 74.↩