THERE will be a review of whether the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba, and his diocese, met their obligation to keep people safe in the light of John Smyth’s presence in the area, it was announced on Sunday.
During a sermon preached at Emmanuel Church, Cape Town, Dr Makgoba said that he was consulting the Safe and Inclusive Church Commission, and the Church’s chancellors and registrars, to “work out the terms of reference of a review of whether the diocese, and I personally, met our obligation to keep you safe, and what we could have done better.”
Smyth died in Cape Town in 2018, while under investigation by Hampshire Police (News, 13 August 2018). Last week, Dr Makgoba’s office confirmed that Smyth had worshipped at an Anglican church, St Martin’s Parish in Cape Town, for “a year or two” after first coming to Cape Town in 2001, and again, before his death in 2018, this time “on condition that he was not to get involved in any ministry or contact any young person” (News, 15 November).
In 2013, the then Bishop of Ely, the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, (now the Bishop of Lincoln), wrote to the then Bishop of Table Bay, the Rt Revd Garth Counsell — a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Cape Town — alerting him to Smyth’s abuses. The letter included Smyth’s date of birth, email address, and home address.
He received a letter of acknowledgement, which stated that the Bishop was in conversation with the Rector of the parish that John Smyth belonged to, and that he would consult the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Makgoba. The letter said that Bishop Conway would be “kept informed”, but the diocese of Ely has said that no further correspondence was received (News, 10 May 2019).
The safeguarding adviser in the diocese of Ely, Yvonne Quirk, told the Makin review into Smyth’s abuse, published earlier this month, that she had made repeated attempts to establish contact with the Bishop’s safeguarding adviser in South Africa (“I think there were three emails, none of them acknowledged”). Bishop Conway told her that he had attempted “several times to make direct bishop-to bishop contact and had no response either”.
In 2019, Dr Makgoba’s office said that the letter from Bishop Conway had been received in 2013. But, on Sunday, Dr Makgoba said that he had first become “aware” of Smyth’s abuse in 2017, after a Channel Four News report in the UK.
“In the absence of any evidence that Smyth had committed abuse in the relatively short periods during which he had worshipped in our church, there was no action that could be taken under our canons (church law),” he said in the sermon on Sunday. “Nor did we know of any crime that he committed in South Africa, whether inside or outside our church, that could be reported to police. But the diocese and I are accountable to you, our church members, and to society, to ensure that all our churches are safe spaces in which to worship and minister.”
Dr Makgoba was preaching during a service for the institution of the Minister-in-Charge of Emmanuel Church, Cape Town, held in plurality with St John the Evangelist-Wynberg, the Revd Delmaine Peterson.
“In the light of the scandalous abuse in England and Zimbabwe that has forced the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, we have to ask as Anglicans in South Africa whether we have neglected ‘the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith,’” he said, quoting from Jesus’s condemnation of the teachers of the law, in Matthew 23.
“The details of the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, in the 1980s and 1990s, are enough to make you sick. Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say that no one is beyond the love of God, that no one is irredeemably evil, but I have to say that Smyth’s vicious and foul abuse of young men tests that belief. . .
“For someone in the Church, which is meant to be a safe and nurturing space, to prey on God’s children when they are at their most vulnerable is not only wrong, it is not only criminal, which it often is, it is evil beyond description. It makes me want to weep.”
He continued: “The sad reality of the culture of the bad decision-making, marked by secrecy, of yesteryear, in which we hid such heinous acts, is that it has crippled us today. In the Smyth case it has led to the tragic resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to ‘collateral damage’ for others of us, and a credibility crisis for the Church. Tough as this process will be, we must seize the opportunity to identify what we need to change and then to look forward and work for a new vision for tomorrow.”
He told Mrs Peterson: “Your work is cut out for you, and especially in this parish, where, because of the unfortunate stereotypes we have inherited from the Church of England, evangelical Christian witness is under scrutiny and stress.”
In recent years, there have been calls within the Church of England for a review into Smyth’s activities in Africa. The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to Dr Makgoba in 2021, asking whether he would be willing to undertake such a review, and offering his support for this.
The Makin review states: “There is little concrete information on John Smyth’s time in South Africa. It is highly likely that he was continuing to abuse young men and there is some evidence to this effect.” It refers to “evidence that abusive practices continued in South Africa until [Smyth’s] death in August 2018”.
In 2015, a Juvenile Court Judge in South Africa, came to see Anthony Cordle, who had served as Smyth’s “adviser” in 1982; in 2006, he moved to Cape Town, where he continued to meet Smyth. The judge and her husband, a pastor at a small non-conformist Church in Haut Bay in the Western Cape, were “very concerned that John Smyth was getting very close to their 18-year old son and she was very suspicious of him.” The review states that Mr Cordle “advised her to have nothing to do with him”.
Church on Main, in Cape Town, where Smyth worshipped from 2004 until his removal in December 2016, “questioned John Smyth’s behaviour in the Bible study groups he was running with young men”, the Makin review says. “These were local university students. They had complained to the Church leaders that John Smyth would shower with them and then stay naked as he discussed masturbation and pornography with them. They felt very unsure of him and questioned his motives.” This was first reported in early 2016. There is no evidence that a report was made to the police at the time.