From village to city, nation cries for prayer, revival

This week I am visiting our church at Eluhewini in Ncora village. I am also here to do some missionary work in the area. Ncora is situated in the centre of a triangle between the popular Eastern Cape towns of Cofimvaba, Ngcobo and Cala. Ncora needs revival.

I think we all agree that our country is in desperate need of a transforming revival. Students of revival say that revival cannot be manufactured, but that it comes as a result of the presence of God on that locality. The presence of God is in turn ushered in by holiness or brokenness.

I hope revival comes soon.

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Unemployment is rife in Ncora, with government disability and pension grants the main sources of income. Crime is also a problem in the area – nurses are afraid to go to clinic as they are robbed inside the clinic. Nurses are also seeing increased cases of stabbing and assault.

In one bizarre case a community leader tells how a youth was taken to Ncora clinic to treat his stab wounds. His assailants then followed him there intending to finish him off. After beating him the perpetrators left him, thinking he was dead. Passers-by dragged the youth into the clinic. After some time he regained consciousness. He then took out a knife and robbed the nurses at the clinic.

Today this once-bustling village is a melting pot of social ills and misery.

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In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s the village was a flourishing agricultural hub with dairy and crop farms producing cheese, juice, yoghurt and many by-products.

My host tells me that the village was filled with life. Workers from far rented houses in the village and the villagers and their animals often ate fresh produce that was freely distributed by the factory owners, when they over-produced.

But that has changed. The dairy farms and factories have closed down. All that remains are the vestiges of a once-great industry – sky-high silos, rusty cattle pens, mouldy water reservoirs and dilapidated canal walls.

But the greatest of these relics stands out, the Ncora Dam, high up in the mountainous terrain. The dam was opened in 1973 by K D Matanzima, former Chief Minister (president) of Transkei. Ncora Dam supplied water to the Ncora Irrigation Scheme and water canals feeding into the nearby villages.

Villagers currently depend on catching rain water in their Jojo tanks. It’s difficult to reconcile that while the villagers don’t have clean or running water in their homes, a rim-filled dam is located just four kilometres away.

My host tells me that village people don’t want much from government. They don’t want RDP houses – they can build their own houses and they work with their own hands. All they want are basic things from authorities – running water, roads to transport their products, and schools.

The kind of revival that is needed here in Ncora is the kind that will jolt the public servants from their deep sleep and instil a heart of service. The kind of revival that is also needed here is the kind that will push people to abandon their evil ways that are masked as tradition or culture.

A few weeks ago in Cape Town, I pulled over my car after my eye caught sight of a witchdoctor performing his charms on the main road next to Eerste Rivier train station. The witchdoctor had the crowd mesmerised with his antics and muti, through which he performed ‘miracles’ in front of the crowd – handing out R20 notes and boxes of cigarettes he pulled out of an empty bag. Such workers of evil no longer hide themselves and are drawing crowds down to the pit with them. Moreover their actions and people’s participation has defiled our land.

A blanket of sleep has been drawn over South Africa. A cloud of negligence has covered the country. Fathers over the nation have lost their vision. The land has been defiled. Christians should break this veil of darkness sweeping over the country.

Christians should join the higher call to pray for revival so that places such as Ncora can be transformed. If you are in the Western Cape join the prayer to dedicate the Western Cape back to God on Saturday 10 November at the Grand Parade. If you are in Pretoria on 2 December 2012, add your voice in lifting supplications to the Father for the negligent actions of the fathers in handing over the land to the devil and defiling it through worshiping the dead.