Gateway News interviews Cape Town missionary and author Ashley Cloete about his life journey as a Jesus-follower, anti-apartheid activist and student of revivals in the Cape spanning from the 1600s to the present
Tell me about your roots
I was born and raised in Cape Town in 1945. I spent the bulk of my childhood in District Six when many Jews and Indians had shops there.
In the 1960s I was deeply impacted and mentored in evangelism by the minister at the local Dutch Reformed Sending Kerk where a spark was ignited in my heart for missions.
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Isaiah 55:8 and 9 (God’s higher ways and better thoughts) would run like a golden thread through my life. I came to learn that adversity and suffering seem to be among God’s prime instruments to bring about significant change in the lives of people and even in countries.
An invitation to the CSV Stranddienste (Beach Evangelism) at Harmony Park at the end of 1964 indelibly touched me. There I discovered the power of prayer and the importance of networking in the Body of Christ.
How did your time overseas impact your life?
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I met my German wife Rosemarie while studying overseas in 1969 and 1970. Our marriage in 1975 led to my exile from the country I had loved so dearly and longed to return to intensely. We served as a pastoral couple in Moravian congregations in West Berlin and Utrecht (Netherlands).
Rosemarie and I started and led Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan,a local evangelistic agency in Zeist (Netherlands), with volunteers from different churches and Bible Schools of the region. There we also started the first group of believers in the Netherlands of the Regiogebed. This and a personal challenge to pray for persecuted Christians in Europe were a couple of nudges for me to put pen to paper on how God divinely intervened in answer to prayer. This also triggered a yearning to encourage Christians to unite in prayer and in opposition to apartheid. My own attempted contribution was many letters to the apartheid government and subsequently collating them in a manuscript that I called Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger after Justice). After receiving loving correction by a brother in the Netherlands, noting that the manuscript was like an overdose of medicine to a sick patient, I toned it down. As a result of this, Wat God Saamgevoeg Het came into being. This booklet had my battle to get the legal prohibition of racially mixed marriages repealed as core. Aided by two of our children, What God Joined Together, our love story, was published in 2015 and reprinted last year.
I was convicted of arrogance in my attitude towards the apartheid government, confessing this in an aerogramme to the new State President on October 4, 1989.
When did you return to SA and what did you do?
After our return as a family with five children in January 1992, we operated as missionaries of WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) International, focusing on service to and with Muslim background believers. Since 2003 we have been changing our focus to compassionate outreach to refugees and other foreigners. We were involved in the founding of the missionary NPO, Friends from Abroad. in the process, serving subsequently as leaders. A new agency evolved from that in 2020 called Born Again Believers, a ministry that focuses on the discipling of new believers that have come from another faith.
Challenged by the discovery that the sons of Abraham buried their father together (Genesis 25:9) and that Romans 1:16 included the words….to the Jews first, I linked up with Messianic Jewish believers in a low-key way with Isaac Ishmael Ministries. This led to visits to Israel in 2011 and 2014.
How long have you been researching and writing about the history of the Cape?
Two assignments for a post graduate degree in Islamic Studies at the Bible Institute of South Africa in 1992 necessitated research into the history of Islam at the Cape and the occurrences of Jesus in the Qur’an.
The comparative study of the Abrahamic religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity — became much more than a mere hobby. The many good libraries at the Cape enabled me to do in-depth research on Cape church and mission history, as well asvarious aspects of Islam and Judaism.
Your writing has also delved into the subject of past revivals in the Cape?
In my research I discovered how what was happening at the Cape had been impacting events much further afield. The fact that the two volumes of Researches in South Africa by the missionary Dr Philip contributed to the ultimate outlawing of slavery in the British Empire, inspired me. Then we saw the Communist Iron Curtain coming down from 1989 predominantly in answer to prayer. The apartheid edifice was also dismantled during the course of my own low-key personal involvement and experiences via the prayer movement.
We were happy that our mission agency WEC International encouraged prayer such a lot. Terms like “strategic prayer” and “prayer walks” became common in due course. The nudge by a local Muslim background believer to have a time of prayer during the Friday lunch hour from September 1992 was ultimately also used in other countries.
What about prophesied future revivals?
Written material of various prophesies, about a future national revival that would start at the Cape, nudged me to contribute to that from a human point of view. Optimally this would encourage united steadfast prayer for revival until we experience it. This led to the compiling of material for the trilogy Revival Seeds Germinate. Part 1 covering the period from the 16th century until the mid-1900s and Part 2 covering the period until 1992, have been published. Part 3 covering the period from 1992 until the present is in progress.
Who would you recommend should read these books?
I would like to see prayerful people and especially intercessors inspired by the reading of the books, to discover how God responded in answer to prayer down the years. I feel blessed to have noted the reservoir of prayer in this country, a groundswell that continued more or less unabated since the run-up to the lock down of 2020.
What do you hope will result from people reading these books?
I pray that Revival Seeds Germinate may help to give hope to folk especially at this time. Furthermore, load shedding, the recent vote in Parliament to downgrade our Embassy status towards Israel and corruption that seems to be so pervasive, have been causing an air of despondency in many quarters. The news that we receive via the media is very negative most of the time. But God has not only been at work all the time, but He also has done great things, notably in answer to prayer. It is this that Revival Seeds Germinate highlights. We pray that the trilogy may perhaps be a divine instrument to help trigger the big world-wide revival for which so many have been praying, part of the one which may have started in Asbury in the US. Various prophecies have been pointing to a big revival that would start from the South of the African continent ultimately.
How can people obtain copies of Revival Seeds Germinate?
You can order either Part 1 or Part 2 (or both) as an e-book (Revival Seeds Germinate Part 1/ 246 pages) and/or What God Joined Together from Sela Books at info@sela-books.co.za or 082 5634407. You will be asked to make a donation into the account of SELA Books. Thereafter you will be sent a link to download your e-book. The recommended price for the hard copy of Part 1 is R150 (plus a contribution for PUDA delivery) and R80 each for the E-book. (Part 2 still has to be printed.) My book about our love story, What God Joined Together sells for R80 and can also be ordered from SELA. The proceeds will help to defray expenses hitherto, such the editing and printing. 50% will go to the ministry of Born Again Believers Network.
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