Posted on 09/04/2009 1:29:10 PM PDT by hiho hiho
The man who filled Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu’s shoes as South Africa’s Anglican archbishop is being sued for maintenance by his wife of 22 years.
Two years ago, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane announced to his family that he would be resigning from the church and would be going on a 10-day retreat in Polokwane, Limpopo, to “meditate”. But the clergyman never returned. Now his estranged wife, Nomahlubi Vokwana-Ndungane, who had kept her husband’s disappearance “in the family”, has turned to the courts in a desperate bid to force him to support her financially. The shocking allegations surfaced this week when the couple was called to the Family Court in Cape Town for mediation. The archbishop, who heads the Historic Schools Restoration Project since removing his mitre , did not attend the hearing. Instead, he sent a lawyer to ask for a postponement. In an exclusive interview, his 69-year-old wife told the Sunday Times that she could barely support herself. Holding back tears, she said in the past two years her only source of news about her husband was the media. She said they had only met once during this period, when she had swallowed her pride to ask for assistance “on something”. “I was still living in Bishopscourt when he left,” Vokwana-Ndungane said. “When it was time for the new archbishop to move in, I got a call from Rob Rogerson, the diocesan secretary, to ask me where I’d be moving to. I told him that I’d move to an apartment that I owned in Bantry Bay. “I never thought I’d be undergoing things like this at this age. One wants to retire without any stress.” She said she had sold her supermarket in Khayelitsha, which was left to her by her first husband, to allow her more time to travel with Ndungane when he was archbishop of Cape Town.
“When I married him in 1987, he was still a provincial executive officer to Archbishop Tutu. My business was doing excellently and I carried the brunt of payment for every household cost. He would say: ‘When I take retirement from the church, I’ll be the one to take care of you,’ ” she said.
Vokwana-Ndungane said she had approached the court because she did not know what else to do. She claimed she has had to put up with rumours that her husband had divorced her. “One friendly parishioner told me she had heard that I’d been divorced. When she saw my shock, she clammed up.” The couple met during the archbishop’s first year of study at the University of Cape Town. When he was jailed on Robben Island for three years because of his involvement in demonstrations against pass laws, the couple split up. “When he came back, I had married and so he got married too.” They later reunited when both their spouses died and were married in Newlands, Cape Town, on February 26 1987.
Vokwana-Ndungane spoke of a life of juggling a business to keep food on the table, being a priest’s wife and the hardships involved in helping her husband to rise in the Anglican church’ s ranks. Her husband helped her to raise her two children from her previous marriage. But now she feels like the rug had been pulled out from under her. Trying to explain her feelings of confusion and betrayal, Vokwana-Ndungane said: “Having to live like this is not pleasant. You keep asking yourself a lot of questions and providing your own answers.” Ndungane declined to comment. His lawyer, Kaamilah Paulse, said he would file responding papers in court this week
He sounds like a real user.
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