ANC chaplain-general investigated for 'blatant disrespect of women'

The ANC has announced that the party's chaplain-general, Reverend Vukile Mehana, will not officiate at its January 8 celebrations scheduled to be held in Durban.

This after Mehana was implicated in a recorded phone call conversation with Raymond Sibanga that went viral and which the Methodist church of SA said amounted to "blatant disrespect and portrayal of women who are characterised in a dismissive, humiliating and degrading caricature".

ANC acting spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said in a statement that Methodist church presiding bishop Zipho Siwa had agreed that Mehana "will not officiate at the January 8 celebrations planned for next week in Durban".

In the leaked conversation about male priests ordained by a woman, Mehana is heard saying to Sibanga: "Leave the books but what would you say being touched in your chest by women? — that is what I am asking. What would the wives of these men say hearing their husbands are being touched on the male breast by another woman?"

When Sibanga asked Mehana what should be done to the men who were ordained by a woman, he replied: "We must redo. They must be recalled so we (men) can reaffirm them. I am an African theologist. I do not care whether you call that patriarchy or whatever rubbish you want to call it, but there is no man (in the church) who has ever been ordained by a female. Voetsek. This should not be allowed in the church."

The ANC said it was disappointed with the utterances of Mehana but would give the Methodist church the space to deal with him internally.

The church, through Siwa, said a "full investigation is under way" to get to the bottom of Mehana's "offensive and highly intolerable opinions particularly in our current climate in which women are dehumanised, abused and disrespected".