Abstract
On 15 April 2014 the author conducted an interview with Selaelo Thias Kgatla (then 64) by means of a prearranged interview schedule to revaluate a life review. Kgatla’s years of academic and ecclesiastical involvement leading to his ordination as the minister of the Polokwane Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa at the age of 47 were considered. However, the focus was on the last 18 years before his retirement, which was to happen in December 2015. This period commenced with his ordination in 1997 and covered his involvement in church leadership as Assessor and later Moderator of the Northern Synod (since 1999) and as Moderator of the General Synod (since 2005), as well as his appointments as professor at the University of Limpopo in 1997 and at the University of Pretoria in 2010.In freezing this interview into the academic account given here, oral history and methodological sensitivities are considered. The interviewee’s ownership of his life review is acknowledged; his construction of the self as a coherent story of church leadership is respected; and the characteristics of remembering in later life are pointed out reverentially.The life review with Kgatla was expanded with interviews from colleagues and congregants of his choice who confirmed the construction of his life story as one of relationship and resistance. Finally, the author gives a concluding overview of aims achieved in the article in terms of oral methodology and the contents of a life review in which the interviewee constructed his life as a church leader on the interface between resistance and relationship.
Highlights
IntroductionThe aim of this article is to revaluate the life story of Selaelo Thias Kgatla in terms of his construction of the self in later life
Aims and sourcesA leader knows when to resist and when to relate.The aim of this article is to revaluate the life story of Selaelo Thias Kgatla in terms of his construction of the self in later life
The article addresses this self-construction of leadership as one of persistent choices between resistance and relationship. These were choices made in contexts of conflict as Kgatla took on leadership positions in the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) as Moderator of the Northern Synod of URCSA (2003–2014), Moderator of the General Synod of the URCSA (2005–2012), minister of the Word in the Polokwane URCSA (1997 till demission on the grounds of retirement on 14 March 2015) and professor of Theology (1997–2014) at the Universities of the North1 and Pretoria
Summary
The aim of this article is to revaluate the life story of Selaelo Thias Kgatla in terms of his construction of the self in later life The article addresses this self-construction of leadership as one of persistent choices between resistance and relationship. Kgatla gave expression to both these leadership values of resistance and relationship in academic articles of the past 18 years His resistance was, and is, against racial oppression, especially as it was embodied in the forced removals of the mid-20th century in SouthAfrica (Kgatla 2013a:120–132). Is, against racial oppression, especially as it was embodied in the forced removals of the mid-20th century in SouthAfrica (Kgatla 2013a:120–132) His resistance was in his own church, against the dependency of the black church on the white Dutch Reformed Church (DRC; Kgatla & Saayman 2013:1–9). He relates to the poor and the vulnerable and even to the ‘witches’ whose prosecution he exposes as fears of a society in transit (Kgatla 2012:52)
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