Anglican Church accused of racism

An Anglican Church parish in Cape Town has been accused of racism after it appointed a white cleric and not his black counterpart.

South African-born but London-based Jeremy Ganga claims he was "too black" to land a top job at the St John's parish, in Wynberg, and has taken his fight to the Labour Court.

Ganga, 51, has accused the church of racially discriminating against him in favour of Duncan McLea, who was an associate rector at the church at the time, and of flouting job-interview ethics by giving McLea a copy of his, Ganga's, CV and letter of application.

Ganga argues that he was prejudiced in that McLea also interviewed him and advanced his opinion about him to the selection committee.

Ganga, who holds both South African and British citizenship, lost out on a job last year when a selection committee favoured McLea.

Yesterday, he told The Times that the incident had "offended my sense of fairness and justice as a Christian".

The matter was in court last week when Ganga, a full-time master's student at the University of London, was ordered to pay R75000 by the end of November as security if he wanted to continue with the litigation.

Ganga has accused the 180-year-old church of indirectly discriminating against him by giving McLea "a distinct competitive advantage" in circumstances in which associate rectors "are and historically always have been disproportionately white men".

"[This] has the effect of differentiating between white and black candidates," his lawyer argued.

Alternatively, he claimed that the selection process was "deliberately designed to favour the white candidate, and therefore that it was directly discriminatory".

St John's has strongly denied discriminating against Ganga and giving McLea an unfair advantage, saying McLea saw Ganga's application because of his position at the church.

Ganga did not get the job, it said, because of his poor interview performance and psychometric test scores, and because the selection committee - most of which was black - questioned whether he had sufficient experience in running a church.

It added that the panel "prayerfully considered the matter at length and unanimously decided to select Rev McLea". But Ganga's lawyer said his client had had "good prospects of succeeding".

In his security-of-costs ruling, Judge Anton Steenkamp said that though McLea could have tailored his responses in his interview "in light of the perceived strengths and weaknesses" he might have gleaned from Ganga's application, it was not clear whether this amounted to discrimination.

The evidence had not yet been tested in court, but Steenkamp believed that Ganga's prospects of success at trial were poor.

"Even though Ganga is black and McLea is white, the evidence thus far does not show any differentiation on the grounds of race," Steenkamp said.

Yesterday, Ganga told The Times that he was confident that he could prove his case.

He said he was forced to litigate after unsuccessfully trying to resolve the matter with the church.

He said the experience had left him and his family "hurt and disillusioned".

"It is this sense of injustice that eventually motivated us to approach the court," Ganga said.

He moved to the UK 23 years ago where he continues to live with his educational psychologist wife and three children.

He was previously a programme director at the Anglican Institute for School Leadership and a parish priest in London.