What God Joined Together

By Ashley Cloete

What God Joined Together is a true story of a prohibited love during the apartheid era of South Africa.
The author, a so-called 'Coloured' born and bred in Cape Town, meets and falls in love with a white German woman while he is studying in Germany. The woman's parents' opposition to their daughter's relationship with the African brings such tension to the home that the young lady gives in to a compromise suitor, and writes a 'final' letter to her big love, who had returned to South Africa at the completion of his studies.
The story, that swings back and forth between committing the biggest 'offence' in Afrikaner circles at the time - romantic relationships across the colour bar, dealing with a spy network that reached all the way to Germany, government interception of letters, a rebound towards the compromise suitor, possible reclassification for a South African marriage, a final termination of relationship to both young men, reinstatements, work in South Africa permitted then refused by the South African government, makes the reader giddy with suspense.
The 'happily ever after' is held in abeyance after the exiled young man, in an attempt to reconcile, moves to work with the Moravian Church in Germany at the end of November, 1973, which is followed by a failed reconciliation with the young woman's parents, a further visa refusal, a warning from the Special Branch of the South African Secret Police, and finally an appeal to the South African Prime Minister.
What God Joined Together, originally written in Afrikaans, was an attempt to help assist the scrapping of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and other apartheid legislation.
This version reads like a romantic thriller that also gives an insider's glimpse into South African history and more especially into the lives of people under Apartheid.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashley Cloete
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9780620997515

Ashley Cloete

Ashley Cloete was born and raised in Cape Town, but lived in Germany and Holland for many years. He served as a teacher while studying extramurally at the University College of the Western Cape in the suburb Bellville. At this time he also served on the executive of the national youth union of the Moravian Church.A bursary facilitated by the church sent him to Germany in January 1969, where he met his wife Rosemarie while studying Greek and Biblical Hebrew. After completing theological studies at the Moravian Seminaries in Cape Town and Bad Boll (Western Germany), he served as a pastor in West Berlin and Utrecht (Netherlands), with residence in nearby Zeist.Because of apartheid-related legislation, his marriage led to exile from South Africa. During this period he contended via correspondence with the government of that time to enable a return to the country with his family of seven. A sampleof this correspondence is included in What God Joined Together.After returning to South Africa in January 1992, the family became involved with prayer and evangelism movements. The blessings and positive impacts in Germany and Holland during exile, inspired the vision of such work in his home country of South Africa. Since 2003 the family has been focusing on compassionate outreach to refugees and other foreigners. This ultimately led to the founding of the organization Friends from Abroad, a low-key umbrella organsiation in which mission agencies and a few churches have been networking since 2006.Already as a teenager, during the apartheid era in South Africa , Ashley had been impressed with need for a visual local expression of the unity of followers of Jesus according to the prayer of Jesus that his followers may be one (John 17:21-23). This vision became part and parcel of the inspiration to start an evangelistic agency Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan in the Dutch town of Zeist in 1983 with believers from different denominations. (He felt that it was the rightful responsibility of committed Christians to face the challenge of racial reconciliation in South Africa.)Later, together with Messianic Jewish and Muslim-background followers of Jesus a low profile organisation Isaac Ishmael Ministries was established in 2010. The need for successors as leaders of Friends from Abroad gave rise to the start of a new organisation in 2021, the Born Again Believers Network.Ashley and his wife have been blessed with five children and fourteen grandchildren.

Book preview

©2015-2022 Ashley Cloete

What God Joined Together

Smashwords Edition.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without the written permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN: 9780620997515

What God Joined Together

First Printing, 2015.

This new edition of June 2022 is a joint publication of

Sela Books and Truth House Publishing.

To my grandchildren

CONTENTS

Original Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1. Getting acquainted with God’s higher ways

Chapter 2. Don’t marry a foreigner!

Chapter 3. Don’t get involved in politics!

Chapter 4. The girl from Mühlacker

Chapter 5. Love grows, where my Rosemarie goes

Chapter 6. Miles apart

Chapter 7. A confession with serious consequences

Chapter 8. A final farewell?

Chapter 9. Love the stranger as yourself

Chapter 10. Stormy waves

Chapter 11. Reunited

Chapter 12. More turbulences

Chapter 13. A honeymoon with a difference

Epilogue

Appendices

Glossary

References

ORIGINAL FOREWORD OF THE AFRIKAANS VERSION

November 1979

With this booklet we want to make a modest contribution to the discussion around the Mixed Marriages Act. This is deliberately written subjectively, but at the same time we hope to share some of the human problems that the law in question gives rise to. We do not claim completeness at all because we have restricted ourselves here only to our close circle of friends.

We hope that prejudices can be broken down by this booklet. Moreover, we ask God to use this booklet to unite all the people of South Africa into a closely knit nation that wants to serve Him. In the meantime we had to learn once more: If the Lord does not build the house, we build in vain with our human plans.

We have noticed that even hardening can occur if we rely only on our human insight and therefore we send out this material with the prayer on our heart: Lord, use it to your glory.

Zeist, Netherlands

November 1979

P.S. The thrust of the beginning of the Foreword does not apply, because I assumed the goodwill of the government in South Africa. The latest development there does not indicate that this - humanly speaking - can be reckoned with in the near future. However, we hold on to our intention not to publish the material offered here abroad in the form of a printed book [before doing this in South Africa] first.

P.S. Die strekking van die begin van die Voorwoord geld nie neer nie, omdat ek uitgegaan het van die welwillendheid van die regering in Suid-Afrika. Die jongste ontwikkeling aldaar dui nie daarop dat hiermee - menslik gesproke - in die nabye toekoms gereken kan word nie. Ons hou egter vas aan ons voorneme om ‘ n eerste publikasie van die hier aangebode materiaal in die vorm van ‘ n gedrukte boek nie in die buiteland te doen nie.

***

INTRODUCTION

In earlier years we used to enjoy singing:

I want God’s way to be my way

As I journey here below

For there is no other highway

That a child of God should go

Though the road be steep and rough

Where He leads me ‘tis enough

I want God’s way to be my way every day

Little did I know back then that this chorus would go on to become like an anthem over my life. Time and time again, my wife and I were able to experience God’s clear leading in our lives – particularly on those occasions when the road was indeed ‘steep and rough’. One of the most rugged roads was undoubtedly the one that ultimately led to our wedding on 22 March 1975. A by-product of choosing to walk this road was an involuntary exile from my country of origin, forced upon me by the apartheid legislation that was in place in South Africa at that time.

Even before I reached adulthood, I felt that it was the rightful responsibility of committed Christians to face the challenge of racial reconciliation in South Africa. At a later stage I deemed this as my special God-given duty to the country of my birth. As part of my effort, I collated personal documents and letters, hoping to get these published under the title Honger na Geregtigheid [Hunger for Justice].

In that manuscript I included correspondence with the apartheid era rulers of the 1970s and 1980s, along with comment. I hoped to win over the one or other person from the overwhelmingly Afrikaans National Party government of the time by writing the manuscript in our mother tongue.

A good friend in Holland, where I was living with my family when I was collating that document, pointed out to me that the manuscript took on too critical an angle. He felt that it lacked a sense of genuine love and compassion towards the Afrikaner people group. I had to concede that the manuscript was possibly an overdose of medicine to a sick society. I went on to revamp and tone down the Honger na Geregtigheid draft, dividing it into three smaller booklets.

The first of these concentrated on personal experiences relating to the so-called Mixed Marriages Act. I named it Wat God Saamgevoeg Het [What God Joined Together]. The present book is a translated, updated and changed version of this original collation of letters.

Looking back over well over 50 years since Rosemarie and I first met, it is hard to miss the obvious pitfalls I allowed myself to land in at various points in my life. False activism is one of the traps that I fell into regularly. So I wish very deliberately to record my gratitude to the Lord for correcting me continuously and bringing me back whenever I strayed. He used no other person more in this than my wife Rosemarie to whom I devoted an earlier version of this text on the occasion of her 60th birthday. I am grateful beyond words to our Father for leading me to such a wonderful woman.

I am also very thankful for God-fearing parents. The title of chapter one is derived from a Bible verse (Isaiah 55:8) through which my parents were challenged to take a step of faith regarding finances needed to see me through my teacher training. God used this parental obedience to set a pattern in my life. They helped me to learn from early on to trust that God’s ways are indeed higher and much better than anything we could ever contrive ourselves. As a vote of thanks to them I presented memoirs with the title His Higher Ways to my late father on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Rosemarie’s late mother’s obedience to the Master also played a pivotal role in our story. This very special contribution is highlighted in chapter 4 of this book.

As mentioned, the original version of What God Joined Together was written in Afrikaans. I attempted to get this published in the early 1980s, but this did not meet with success. Nonetheless, I did sense some satisfaction when the law that prohibited people from different races to get married was finally repealed in 1985 (without tangible proof that my actions contributed to that).

The death of our revered President Nelson Mandela in December 2013 brought back many fond memories, and inspired me to resume work on this story. I hope that one day our grandchildren will be able to read it.

Due to the nature of our story, racial terminology is used numerous times throughout this book. I have chosen to utilize the most commonly understood terms Black, White and ‘Coloured’ to differentiate between the three biggest racial groupings in South Africa. I have put the word ‘Coloured’ in inverted commas and capitalized the term, as I am aware that this classification of my own race group has caused particular controversy over the years.

To the other races I refer as 'Black' and 'White' respectively, with a capital B and W, to denote that it is not normal colours that are being described. I refer readers to the glossary for explanations of Afrikaans and German words. I wish to record my sincere gratitude to our daughter Tabitha who edited the document to make it more readable. She also photographed the picture of our hands on the cover of this book.

Our son Rafael proofread the final product.

I pray that many may enjoy reading about What God Joined Together so sovereignly and particularly about how He did it so beautifully with us.

Cape Town, March 2015

P.S. to the slightly changed Introduction in May 2022:

What was to