During my final two years, despite being part of a denominational minority, I was elected chair of Livingstone Fellowship, which comprised all theological students and represented them more widely. Livingstone Fellowship did much to foster a sense of ecumenical belonging, even though denominational identities were strong. It also brought me personally into contact with theological students at Fort Hare who would later become church and political leaders. I travelled there on several occasions – a two-hour journey by car – in order to discuss issues that threatened to destroy the already tenuous relationship between us at Rhodes and those studying Theology at Fort Hare. Although I always felt welcome, anger at both the injustices of apartheid and our liberal white paternalism was palpable.
Another task allotted to me as fellowship chair was attending the centenary of the Faculty of Theology (or Kweekskool) at Stellenbosch University in 1959 at the invitation of the Students’ Council. This turned out to be the beginning of a long relationship, which was uncomfortable at first, but enriching eventually. I went to the celebrations with James Elias, my Presbyterian friend from Cape Town. We were, I think, the only English-speaking guests among the students who joined the procession from the stately Kweekskool to the nearby and beautiful Moederkerk (Mother Church). There I listened to Professor B.B. Keet, doyen of the theological professors, who gave an overview of Reformed theology during the past century. Keet was one of the few Dutch Reformed theologians who had openly criticised apartheid, notably in his book Suid-Afrika – Waarheen? (Whither South Africa?), which I had read the year I was at UCT.
I made many friends in Livingstone House and by my third year, Isobel Dunstan and I had also become good friends. By this time she had broken off with her Methodist suitor, John Borman, and it was he who suggested that I should court her again. It was 1959 and Isobel was now in her final honours year. We began going out again, grew closer, felt attracted to each other, and discovered that we shared a similar spiritual journey and sense of humour. We were, in short, falling in love.
One weekend, I had to go to preach in Port Elizabeth, so we went together. We borrowed the minister’s small car on the Saturday evening, and went out to have supper on the Humewood Beach front. All we could afford were hamburgers and chips. It was then, in that “romantic” setting, that I proposed. Isobel later told me that she had anticipated my doing so. That evening we were young and I impetuous, the moon was full, and the future stretched invitingly before us.
Over the years of our now long marriage, Isobel and I have often commented that both our upbringings mitigated against expressing romantic feelings in overt ways. We had difficulty baring our souls or hugging and kissing exuberantly in public, simply because that was not done in our families. But reserve did not mean that love was absent or intimacy avoided. Years later, Isobel expressed this in a poem:
Mine was a loving, caring home
but not of demonstrative love …7
It is true that on the night I proposed to her I did not have a love poem to recite or a bunch of roses to give, nor did I fall on my knees; nor was her response a spontaneous hug and sensuous kiss, such as we had already shared aplenty while we walked and talked and lay on the grass on the hills above Grahamstown. Instead her response was a thoughtful pause and a request for time to think. She kept me hanging on a thread for two days. Then she accepted with hugs and kisses. Many years later, while looking back, she captured our relationship in another poem:
My love for you never was
an exotic brilliant-hued bloom,
or a heady-scented rose,
never a story
to catch the imagination
of the whole world.
Not Iseult loving Tristan,
nor Juliet with Romeo.
More like an acorn,
or the fleshy, round seed
of a yellow-wood,
small and insignificant,
but falling on dark, rich soil
and growing to a mighty tree –
deep-rooted and firm,
stretching arms to pluck
the rainbow from the sky.
Isobel’s love for me was immediately tested. Her parents were visiting Grahamstown with her younger sister, Elsie, soon after our decision to get married. I approached Mr Dunstan while he was alone and asked him if I could marry his daughter, and he agreed right away without more ado. But Isobel’s mother, Lilian, upon hearing the news later that day, was appalled. She flatly refused to give her support. My Congregational affiliation was unacceptable (surely there were enough eligible Methodists!) and I was far too young, which was true. Isobel dug in her heels. We were in love and she was going to marry me. That was that. In December 1959, we got engaged in Cape Town. Our photograph was taken by Happy Snaps while we walked arm in arm down St. George’s Street, with Isobel sporting her modest diamond engagement ring, paid for with money I borrowed from my father. I must remember someday to repay him.
After completing her Honours degree in Mathematics, Isobel went home and taught at a high school in Johannesburg. Unfortunately, her mother died suddenly on 16 March 1960, in the same week that I turned twenty-one. Preparations were hurriedly cancelled for celebrating this traditional rite of passage in Grahamstown, and I hitched a long overnight ride to Johannesburg to be at the funeral. Not only did Isobel now have to mourn the sudden loss of her mother, but she also had to take over the responsibilities of running the family home. This meant caring for her much younger sister, and managing a household for a busy father and two very active brothers, who were just a year or two behind her. Thus she was plunged into shopping and cooking, for which she had very little preparation, while I, 1 500 kilometres away, completed my BD.
The week of Isobel’s mother’s funeral and my aborted twenty-first birthday was made far more ominous by the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960. The terrible events that occurred that day rudely awakened many to the inherent violence of apartheid and the challenges facing the country. It happened just as I was finishing my studies and about to begin my ministry. I was one of a handful of theological students who signed a protest letter to the prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd.
During that final year at university, I learnt much from Professor W.D. Maxwell, an authority on Calvin and Liturgy; studied Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology in detail; and wrote a dissertation on Congregational Ecclesiology, tracing its roots in both the Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions, and showing how it had developed since then. I completed my BD with a first class honours at the end of 1960. I had now satisfactorily concluded my training for the ordained ministry – at least, that’s what I thought. I was soon to be proved wrong, but for now my thoughts were fixed on my impending marriage.
Isobel and I were married in Johannesburg on 7 January 1961 in her home Methodist Church in Parktown North. Ian MacDonald, later professor of Philosophy at Rhodes, was my best man, and Jean Pyle, a close friend of Isobel’s, was her bridesmaid. After a fun-filled and adventurous honeymoon that took us 6 000 kilometres around South Africa in a second-hand Fiat 600 that regularly broke down, we arrived in Cape Town where I was ordained to the ministry in my home congregation in Cape Town. There was a power failure that evening at the beginning of the service, so all the ministers processed into the church by candlelight. I don’t recall much else, except that Basil Brown preached, and at one point, as I removed my handkerchief from my suit pocket, I dislodged a wad of confetti that had become embedded there at our wedding. Not a very auspicious incident on that otherwise solemn, important and joyful occasion, which concluded with a party back at my parents’ house.
4
On a sharp learning curve
I’m wondering what you’ve got in your veins these days, you young priests! When I was your age we had men in the church