Urban Mission Fields

Millions of our poor have to live amongst  the filth and squalour of the thousands of informal settlements ‘squatter camps’. round the country. Inadequate street lighting exacerbates the very high rate of violent crime in these places. Drug and alcohol abuse is rife, sexual abuse of children  is common and filth and garbage is not collected. Great piles of it mar the dusty pathways and provide a breeding ground for bacteria, cockroaches and rats. Raw sewage, as seen in the centre picture runs down  shallow trenches between the ‘mkukus’ as the shacks are known and a foul odour hangs permanently in the air. 

For over 20 years we have witnessed the reality of life from within the sprawling squatter camps in South Africa. In certain urban camps there has been a huge moral decline. Alcohol and substance abuse, immorality, violent crime and alcohol fueled assault are part and parcel of daily life. We have wept with our people and rejoiced to see some saved and released from the bondage of life in these communities. Abject poverty affects every aspect of life. Large ‘families’, the term is applied euphemistically, the result of men refusing to allow any form of birth control, sees many children fighting tooth and nail for every morsel of food, or scrounging in garbage cans to survive and having to go about in rags. Rose of Sharon has ministered the word of God here and provided aid resources in the form of food, clothing, crisis relief funds and Christian counsellng for many years.