Lecture series established in honor of the late Bishop of the Highveld, the Rt. Rev. David Beetge

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Rev Dr Thabo Makgoba, has established a series of lectures in memory of the life and work of the late Bishop David Beetge.   The inaugural lecture will be given by the Rt Rev Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and now Master at Magdalene College Cambridge.

The lecture is being given in Boksburg in the Highveld Diocese where Bishop David served, on Sunday October 30th at noon, hosted by the Rt Rev Dinis Sengulane, former bishop of Lebombo Diocese, Mozambique, on behalf of Archbishop Thabo. 

Bishop David served Emeritus Archbishop Njongo Ndungane and Archbishop Thabo as Dean of the Province until his untimely death in 2008 after an illness.  Bishop David’s vision and care for the area he oversaw resulted in a particular focus on people affected by HIV-TB, poverty and those with no access to education.  Thousands of orphans were assisted through a revolutionary programme of training community members to be ‘child advocates’, which created jobs, capacity and confidence at grassroots levels across Mpumalanga to the border with Swaziland, Ekurhuleni and eastern Gauteng towns and settlements.

The theme of the lecture will explore how social vision depends on theology, rather than ideology, if social justice is to be realised. 

Funds raised through the lecture series will be used to build a new school classroom at Kwasa College, near Springs, which offers low cost, high quality education to children from local settlement areas, whose parents are unemployed, having lost jobs when local mines closed down in the past decade.  The current Bishop of Highveld Diocese, the Rt Rev Charles May, is leading this initiative.