"Faith leaders 'should shout from the rooftops that AIDS is not a punishment from God but a medical condition which is preventable,' the former leader of South Africa's Anglican church, Archbishop Njongo Ndungane, has told the World AIDS campaign. Bishop Ndungane was speaking in an interview for the World AIDS campaign ahead of the 20th anniversary of the marking of Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day."
"This year, 2006, marks the 25th anniversary of the identification of AIDS, 10 years since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy, and five years since United Nations member states unanimously adopted the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on AIDS. And still, 25 years after the first AIDS cases were reported, there is no sign of a halt to the pandemic, which is likely to spread to every corner of the globe, said Peter Piot, head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)".
Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, "outlined three priorities for achieving a world free from AIDS: [1] a comprehensive, holistic and integrated approach by all stakeholders in dealing with the pandemic; [2] constructive and creative partnerships between governments, the private sector and the broad church of civil society organizations including faith communities; and [3] a huge resource mobilization in order to curtail the spread of the pandemic".
"Earlier this year the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, led an extraordinary pilgrimage of reconciliation and hope to Robben Island. Robben Island was the place where the former South African Government imprisoned those African leaders it saw as a security risk during the apartheid years. President Nelson Mandela, Dr. Stanley Mogoba, Robert Sobukwe, and the Archbishop himself have all been incarcerated there."
Archbishop Ndungane believes that the Anglican Communion needs reforming and that the head of the Communion should be chosen from among the primates or even all bishops. He also said that "the Church of England needs to be `liberated' from the notion that it is the Anglican Communion. "His experience at last year's Lambeth Conference reinforced his view that the conference needs reforming. `We (almost) live in the 21st century and you cannot bring 750 bishops to a conference as if it were a tea party with a host and hostess marshalling us around,' Archbishop Ndungane said. `It's got to have structures in place for doing business if we want the mind of the communion to be expressed'."
Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, of Cape Town, was the keynote speaker at a three-day consultation dealing with trade, aid and debt which was held 4-6 June 1999 in a suburb of Washington DC. It was sponsored by the Washington Office on Africa and the Stony Point Conference Center. The "archbishop was blunt in calling for the `cancellation of unpayable debts as a first significant step towards a new economic beginning for the developing world, in particular Africa', providing `a springboard to new hope, to a new dispensation of economic justice". Archbishop Ndungane also repeated his call for the creation of an Economic Union of African States. The consultation also issued a final statement "Toward Economic Justice in Africa: A Kairos Moment for American Policy".
"The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, has expressed delight that the World Bank is to take steps that could see up to 80% of Mozambique's debt being written off." The Primate went on to urge that similar steps be taken by international financial institutions to provide similar relief to other countries in Africa and elsewhere.
"A proposal to use underground mine shafts as `super maximum-security prisons' in South Africa has been condemned by the country's Anglican bishops as callous and offensive." The government statement "came in the same week as a call by the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town [the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane], for urgent attention to be paid to the issue of prison reform".
Archbishop Ndungane of Cape Town, presided over his first Provincial Synod using the theme "Journey to Wholeness". "The Archbishop said: `We have not lived well with out differences. We have allowed them to form the basis for exclusion, prejudice and intolerance.' The Archbishop challenged the Church to live with `Differences and Otherness' and to start to learn how to celebrate the wealth of difference that God has created." The Archbishop expressed particular concern for the welfare of clergy and their families. He also paid special tribute to ecumenical work and "applauded the work of ARCIC and the African Anglican Lutheran Dialogue." "In conclusion, the Archbishop said: `We have reflected on that diversity within the Trinity. We have considered some of the challenges and threats to our wholeness; threats posed by poverty, violence and prejudice. .... may we look for ways to allow our diversity to mirror the divine diversity, rather than allow our diversity to divide us from ourselves and one another".