Thousands gather to celebrate Annual Manche Masemola Event
Ga-Marishane
Thousands of congregants and tourism enthusiasts from different parts of the country have on Sunday 4 August 2024, gathered to celebrate the Annual Manche Masemola event, held at Ga-Marishane Village within Makhuduthamaga Local Municipality (MLM).
Manche Masemola died in 1928, she was a South African Christian martyr who died at the age of 15. The fallen heroine remains a symbolic figure for the Anglican Christian Church and the Sekhukhune community.
Manche was born in 1913 in Marishane Village near Jane Furse. She lived with her parents, two older brothers, a sister, and a cousin.
During that time, German and then English missionaries had worked in the Transvaal Colony for several decades and by the early twentieth century there was a small Christian community among the Bapedi people, which was widely viewed with distrust by the remainders of the tribe who still practiced traditional religion.
By 1919, an Anglican Community of the Resurrection Mission was established by Augustine Moeka in Marishane. Manche attended classes in preparation for baptism with her cousin Lucia, against the wishes of her parents.
Her parents then took her to a Sangoma claiming that she had been bewitched. She was prescribed a traditional remedy, which her parents made her consume by beating her. Relations worsened, and the mother hid the girl’s clothes so she could not attend Christian instructional classes. On February 4, 1928, her parents led the teenager to a lonely place, where they killed her, burying her by a granite rock on a remote hillside.
Manche had said that she would be baptized in her own blood. She died without having been baptized. Manche’s mother converted to Christianity and was baptised forty years later in 1969. Manche was declared a martyr by the church of the province of Southern Africa in less than ten years.
Manche Masemola life is celebrated or commemorated in the first Sunday of August each year at her grave side.
Speaking on the side-lines of the event, Acting Executive Mayor of Sekhukhune District Municipality (SDM), Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) Cllr Orginia Mafefe, emphasized the significance of the site and the annual event in uplifting the tourism economy. Mafefe was alongside the MLM Mayor Cllr Merah Mahlase and several other Cllrs.
“As government, we continue to engage stakeholders to see how best we can grow the event even further, looking at how it attracts so many guests and tourism enthusiasts. Government remains committed to working with the church and many other congregations to enhance community development and social cohesion,” said Mafefe.
She stated that Manche Masemola’s legacy continues to inspire and draw more attention to the district’s socio-economic growth.
In other activities during the same day, another SDM MMC, Cllr Samaria Mashilo, attended the official welcoming and induction ceremony of the new Dean elect, Rev. R.A Seoketsa of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Groblersdal, held at the Groblersdal Agricultural Hall.
