In the eye of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Botswana storm is a Ramotswa pastor-in-charge, Thabiso Segatle, who has defied an order by the Church Council that he step down. Step down because, as Bishop Dr. Cosmos Moenga explains, the church’s constitution says the pastor-in-charge position is full-time while Segatle, who is chaplain of the Bamalete Lutheran Hospital, does it part time.
Moenga does not use the term ‘favouritism’ but he describes a scenario that suggests that it was that anomaly that propelled Segatle to where he is presently.
An ordained pastor, Segatle has acted as volunteer pastor in Gaborone and was subsequently transferred to Ramotswa to replace a pastor who had been transferred to Mogobane.
“To be honest, what happened was not a good thing,” says Moenga, who retains the conviction that the transfers were designed in such manner as to create a space for Segatle in Ramotswa.
The suitability of Segatle for the position he holds was tabled in May this year with the Church Council, invoking the constitutional provision about the incumbent being full time. A decision was taken to transfer one Kedibonye Botlhole from Gaborone to replace Segatle. However, she refused saying as Moenga recalls, that she did not want to clash with Segatle.
Subsequently, the Ramotswa Congregational Church asked Moenga to come over and explain the situation. He honoured the invitation, taking along some church elders. During what by all accounts was a heated meeting, he restated what the constitution says.
“I also impressed upon the Ramotswa congregation that it could not have a pastor, who being part-time, was not accountable to anybody,” Moenga says.
He reported back to the Church Council when it met in August at the Woodpecker Seminary, church property along the Gaborone-Lobatse road on a Saturday. A call was placed to Segatle inviting him to the meeting but he could not come because of a prior engagement. Only two weeks later was he able to show up (at the headquarters in Gaborone West) and the Church Council restated its concerns about his case.
“His response was that he could not respond because he had not been alerted about what the purpose of the meeting was. He asked that he be written official notification ÔÇô which was later done ÔÇô and some days later, he called the secretary general to tell him that he will meet the Church Council on October 16 and will be bringing some congregants,” Moenga says.
The meeting wasn’t to be. Segatle brought some 22 members from the Ramotswa congregation and first went in to meet the Council in the company of two. The view of the Council was that the issue involved Segatle alone and not members of his congregation.
Says Moenga: “If he had to be reprimanded it would have been improper to do so in front of his congregants and it was also possible that we could discuss some confidential information. Thus we felt that it was not right to include everybody else in the meeting. The congregants viewed the matter differently and one told the Church Council that ‘we are going back with our priest.’ Notice he said ‘our pastor’, not the church’s pastor.”
Members of the Council will get another chance to discuss this issue further when they meet next month.
Meanwhile, Segatle continues to act as pastor-in-charge against the wishes of the Council ÔÇô against the dictates of the church’s rules, Moenga would add. At around the spat between the church Council and Ramotswa congregants began, the latter stopped sending staff salaries (called ‘targets’) to headquarters.
Moenga’s explanation is that congregations across the country send money to the head office in Gaborone, which processes the payments. A Ramotswa congregant tells Sunday Standard that as the stand-off continues, Ramotswa will disengage administratively from head office by degrees. Secession is not on the cards but the congregation would fight for greater autonomy.
From the start, Moenga and the Ramotswa congregation were never a match made in heaven. Long before he was elected bishop, Moenga was a prolific writer in newspaper opinion columns tackling topics from theology to politics. He says that as a theology lecturer (he taught at Kgolagano of Theological Education in Gaborone) this was part of his scholarship. Soon after being elected bishop in 2005, he gave an interview that rubbed some congregants the wrong way. Subsequently a group of elders remonstrated with him, implored and warned him off political topics.
Moenga chalks down the Ramotswa saga to resistance to change by some congregants.
“Generally, Africans don’t want change. There are people who feel that my predecessor should still be in post,” Moenga says.
His predecessor is Emeritus Bishop Phillip Robinson who retired in 2005 having led the church since 1980.
“To be fair to him [Robinson] he has never indicated willingness to take back the position but there are people who feel that he should return,” Moenga says.
Back in 1986 when he was outside the church’s administrative structures, a proposal was tabled at a meeting in Kanye that a bishop should be a lifetime position ÔÇô like papacy in the Roman Catholic Church. Moenga says that he was one of those who disagreed with that suggestion. Ultimately it was resolved that the bishops should retire at the age of 65.
In 2003, he says a souped-up version of lifetime bishopric was proposed by proposing that after reaching the age of retirement, a bishop should be allowed to work on a renewable seven-year contract t.
To him this is evidence that some people wanted Robinson to be bishop for life.
At a synod in Maun last year, a delegate from Gabane tabled a vote-of-no-confidence motion in Moenga. Although the motion was defeated, to him it was vivid demonstration of how determined some congregants were to get rid of him. He says that prior to the conference he had heard rumours that he was going to be toppled and replaced with Robinson whom he says had flown to Maun to attend the synod. Although the delegate was from Gabane, Moenga still sees his Ramotswa detractors lurking in the shadows. He notes that ‘Gabane and Ramotswa is one thing.’
In the current stand-off, he sees Segatle as a pawn being moved around by chess masters who remain hidden in the shadows.
One of the allegations levelled against Moenga is that he reinstated pastors who had been ex-communicated during Robinson’s tenure. One of those pastors had reportedly misappropriated church funds. He denies the misappropriation of funds part but admits that after taking over he implored the Church Council to be forgiving of the sins committed by the four pastors.
One of those, he adds, was married and was excommunicated after falling foul of the thou-shalt-not-commit-adultery commandment. As a result of his intervention, all the four were contacted and spent some time at Woodpecker undergoing rehabilitation and repenting their sins. Afterwards, two were rehired ÔÇô the other two already had jobs they chose not to quit.
“I am not the one who rehired them; it was the Church Council that did. It is the only structure in the church that can hire and fire pastors,” Moenga says.
Another hiring that attracted some controversy is that of how own wife, herself an ordained pastor with whom he studied in the United States. She worked briefly as an administrative officer for a month and, by Moenga’s account, quit following allegations of nepotism.
“A position opened up, she applied, was interviewed by a panel that I was not part of but later some people some said some panellists were my friends. She quit after working for only one month,” he says.
It remains unclear how long the fight will last but Moenga says that he does not see himself serving out his term. In ‘three or four years’, he will step down and pursue ‘other national calls.’
