This article looks at some lived experiences of five African women in Mohlakeng township, situated in the West Rand District Municipality of Gauteng, South Africa, between 1980 and 2018. Four are Pentecostal pastors and one is an Evangelical pastor. Their biggest challenge was to demonstrate that they were equally capable as their male counterparts in leading a local church and functioning as pastors. These women displayed aspects of African motherhood and Bosadi (womanhood) as three functioned as pastors and two functioned in other non-leadership roles alongside their male counterparts. The article applies a combination of participatory observation and literature review as a research method.

In his work Bantu Prophets, Bengt Sundkler, a missionary, bishop, and academic, who pioneered the study of independent churches in Africa, mentions that one African Independent Church existed in Randfontein, a town that now forms part of the current Rand West City Local Municipality in the West Rand District Municipality of Gauteng, South Africa. This article contributes to Sundkler’s work by tracing the work of three Christian leaders from the same area. It also leans on John Mbiti’s work (the Kenyan-born Christian philosopher and writer who was an ordained Anglican priest) that popularised an African proverb, through his work titled African Religions and Philosophy, that “It takes a village to raise a child.” Additionally, Shutte’s emphasis that the community is the centre of Ubuntu resonates with the above Africa proverb Shutte argues that it complements the core European ethical notion of individual freedom which according to Nicolaides has Aristotelian overtones and shows how the two notions can be amalgamated to form an ethic based on a better understanding of our humanity. Mbiti’s proverb underscores the sentiments of this article by celebrating the association of Alson Nene, Buti Tlhagale, and Moss Ntlha with Titi/Oukasie–Mohlakeng (part of Randfontein). From an Ubuntu perspective (ka Setho/ngeSintu) these leaders upheld seriti/isithunzi sa (the moral force of) Titi/Oukasie–Mohlakeng (Randfontein) in the same way as other community leaders and members associated with this area. The article uses literature analysis and some personal communications with some informants associated with Titi/Oukasie–Mohlakeng (Randfontein) to demonstrate how Alson Nene, Buti Tlhagale, and Moss Ntlha, three male Christian leaders associated with the same area, contributed, and continued to missions, theological development and Christian leadership.

Paul usually ends his letters with salutations to believers who meet in someone else’s house. Far from being individualistic, these greetings also include people from different house churches. Considered from a functional angle, these greetings cement relationships between house churches. Within an ubuntu worldview, the oral praxis of sereto (Sepedi) or isiduko (IsiXhosa) (praise-poetry) establishes and confirms relationships between members of the same community (family, clan or tribe). The question is how such praxes affect women who belong to such communities.Contribution: This article is a comparative analysis of how some of the salutations used at the end of some of Paul’s epistles touch on gender relations in the same way as the ubuntu oral praxis of sereto or isiduko touches on gender relations among members of a community (family, clan or tribe).

The recent mass rape of eight women from a team shooting a music video on an unused gold mine dump near West Village, in Mogale City, in the West Rand District Municipality, of Gauteng Province, South Africa sparked a national outcry about Gender-based Violence (GBV) in the country. The men who gang-raped the women are called zama zamas (loosely translated ‘trying to attain luck’). The incident has raised two disturbing developments in the post-1994 South African context. First, statistics show that 1100 women were sexually violated in the first three months of 2022 in South Africa. The current president of the country, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa, declared GBV a national pandemic in his Covid-19 pandemic speech. Second, it also reminded the nation about the trend of business enterprises placing profit at the expense of poor and vulnerable workers. The article focuses on the second development by applying two Ubuntu values and a Christocentric approach to compare gold mine companies and the zama zama enterprises in the region. It also concludes by proposing an alternative to the problem of illegal gold mining in the region.

Practical theology has evolved from emphasising pastoral ministry to addressing contemporary issues facing local churches so that they can bring about transformation within the communities in which they operate. In addition, efforts and proposals to support practical theology as interdisciplinary have progressed and are considered to be transformative. This article explores the Lekgotla and Magadi processes by leveraging the African Indigenous Knowledge System (AIKS), with the aim of presenting two Ubuntu-based research methods for practical theology to engage and contribute to the transformational agenda. It combines social constructivism and the Ubuntu worldview to propose the Lekgotla method and the Magadi methods.