To speak of Dr John Bolana, the late bishop of the Bantu Church of Christ, as merely a church leader is to misunderstand his historical role. He stood in the lineage of liberation theologians who understood a fundamental truth: Christianity in Africa was either a force for liberation or a tool of occupation ― never neutral. uTatomkhulu chose the side of the oppressed, unapologetically.
Liberation theology, as lived by Bishop Bolana, was not an academic exercise nor a borrowed theory. It was organic African theology, forged in the experience of landlessness, racial capitalism and spiritual humiliation imposed by colonial Christianity. For him, theology had only one legitimate starting point: the condition of the African masses.
God is not neutral in an unjust world, our beloved Tata often quipped.
Like James H Cone, the father of Black liberation theology in the US, Bishop Bolana rejected the lie of a “colour-blind” or “neutral” God. Cone famously declared that God is Black ― not in pigment but political outlook.
God stands with the oppressed against their oppressors. uTatomkhulu echoed this conviction in practice. His God was not found in grand cathedrals but in dusty New Brighton streets, among the hungry, the unemployed, the youth abandoned by the post-colonial state.
Where Cone wrote, Bolana built. Daily meals, youth festivals, communal discipline ― these were not acts of charity but of theological resistance.
Hunger, for uTatomkhulu, was not a spiritual failure but a political crime.
Consciousness before salvation was uTatomkhulu’s creed. Bishop Bolana’s theology ran parallel to the thinking of Steve Biko, though one spoke the language of theology and the other of political philosophy. Both understood that the greatest weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Which reinforced perception, resilience and resistance. When the mind is free, informed and empowered, even the strongest chains can be broken. He stood firm, fostering awareness, critical thinking and self-empowerment. He gracefully embodied these qualities. The epitome of Steve Biko’s legacy.
Colonial Christianity taught Africans to wait for heaven while accepting hell on earth. uTatomkhulu rejected this violently. His emphasis on African values, social cohesion and youth consciousness was a direct assault on mental colonisation. Like Biko, he believed liberation begins with self-definition ― naming God, naming oneself and naming the enemy without fear.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is often cited as South Africa’s premier liberation theologian. Yet while Tutu operated largely within global ecclesiastical and diplomatic spaces, Bishop Bolana remained embedded in African Independent Church tradition ― outside colonial approval structures.
Where Tutu confronted apartheid through moral persuasion, Bolana confronted post-apartheid abandonment through material action.
In this sense, Bolana represents a second-phase liberation theology: one that recognises that political freedom without economic justice is another form of colonial control. Like Bishop James Ngcanjini Limba, the founder of the Bantu Church of Christ, Bolana rejected European ecclesiology outright. Both men understood that liberation theology in Africa must include institutional independence, not just radical sermons. Owning the church, governing it Biblically but Africanly, and resisting co-optation, were theological acts.
Globally, figures like Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru and Óscar Romero in El Salvador articulated liberation theology against capitalist exploitation and state violence. uTatomkhulu shared their core belief, that sin is not only personal but structural, while not absolving the individual of responsibility for his actions and destiny.
But unlike many Latin American theologians, Bishop Bolana did not rely on Marxist analysis filtered through European categories. His framework was pan-Africanist, communal and rooted in African experiences and spirituality. The church itself ― its Passover gatherings, Sabbath observance and prophetic tradition ― became a liberated space, a territory wrested back from colonial religion.
Bishop Bolana’s close ties with liberation veterans and political leadership were not signs of compromise or social climbing, but of strategic engagement. Like Kwame Nkrumah, he contended that political power without ideological grounding collapses into corruption. He opened the church to those who had fought for freedom, reminding them, sometimes uncomfortably, that the struggle did not end in 1994.
Yet he never surrendered the church to party politics. His loyalty was to the people and his God, not to power. This is why the church fed the community daily, regardless of election cycles.
Unlike many liberation theologians whose legacy lives primarily in texts, Bishop Bolana’s theology lives in institutions, rituals and disciplined communities. Over 2.5-million members across Southern Africa are not followers of a personality, but participants in a living theology of self-reliance and dignity.
His belief was simple and dangerous to power: God walks with the poor; God eats with the hungry; God is African because Africa is marginal in the global vortex of power.
IsiXhosa sithi: uTatomkhulu Bishop Balona ebengumntu “untamo inamafutha”, enobubele uthando eyimvuzemvuze, ebengelilo “inqweme lentulo”.
The bishop is gone, but his theology of revolutionary love and redemption remains. uTatomkhulu Bolana has joined his ancestors, but liberation theology in the Bantu Church of Christ remains alive, militant and unfinished.
As long as land remains stolen, as long as youth remain unemployed, as long as African spirituality is treated as inferior, his theology continues to speak.
Like all true liberation theologians, he did not ask for permission.
He did not wait for approval. He did not wait for approval.
He organised faith into resistance.
And that is why history will remember him not only as a bishop but a theologian of the struggle of the dispossessed.
Lala ngoxolo Gaba Thithiba Nozinga Cihoshe Mgqosini Mjobi Mnt’womlambo
Thikoloshe Ndoko ...
Andile Lungisa, ANC NEC member and former ANCYL deputy president
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