Revamp for the little church where it all began

AN old church in Bloemfontein is set for a multimillion-rand revamp as a heri-tage site to celebrate the birth of the ANC.

Not much is known about the former Wesleyan church, but it will be among various attractions during the ANC's centenary celebrations on January 8.

The building, now in the centre of the city, was built in an area then known as Dierefeng, a black township from which residents were forcibly removed during apartheid.

It was the venue of a meeting on January 8 1912 that led to the formation of an organisation which subsequently became the African National Congress.

Thami ka Plaatjie, a researcher for the ANC's centenary, said the church gathering was a "political meeting" by Africans who felt excluded when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910.

Ka Plaatjie said that two initial meetings had taken place, the first in 1906 after the Treaty of Vereeniging, which ended the Anglo-Boer War, and another in 1909.

The 1912 meeting resulted in the birth of the South African Native National Congress under the leadership of John Langalibalele Dube. It was renamed the ANC in 1923.

"The formation of the ANC arose out of the tenuous circumstances that marked the end of the so-called Anglo-Boer War," he said.

Wisani Ngobeni, a spokesman for the premier of the Free State, said the provincial government had been trying to buy the building for about five years and finally succeeded last year.

He couldn't divulge the cost of the revamp of the church, saying it had not yet been "quantified".

But, he said, the revamp of the church was among a number of heritage projects that the province had embarked on. Another was the acquisition of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's old house in Brandfort, which would be turned into a museum.

"That church is a place where African people decided that they were going to launch a struggle against apartheid, but that history hasn't been told," he said.

Hennie Biermann, whose business is situated across the road from the former church, said nobody had known that the church was the birthplace of the ANC.

His mother, 81-year-old Maria van der Berg, has lived in the area for 77 years.

She told the Sunday Times that she remembered it only as a former English church that doubled as a school for Africans about 50 years ago.

Ahead of the ANC's 100-year celebrations, workmen were this week busy with initial construction work to restore the building to its 1912 condition.