Take Your Glory Lord

By Mary Garnett

The Story of William Duma, a humble Zulu pastor who so depended on the Lord that his ministry was filled with God's miraculous power. The author worked in South Africa and learned of the healing ministry of William Duma at the Umgeni Road Baptist Church, in a low-income area of Durban. Struck by his humility, she was led to write his story, a work completed a short time after he died in Durban in 1977.  Originally published in 1979 in South Africa, reprinted in Australia in 1992, and in the UK in 2000.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CLC Publications
• Release date: Jul 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781619583344

Mary Garnett

Mary Garnett is the pen name of author Joan Goddard. Joan spent many years on mission stations with her father, a Congregational minister, before settling in Durban, South Africa, where she worked for the Health Department, primarily concerned with the health needs of Zulu women. Joan passed away in the mid-1990s; her prime concern was that Duma’s story be shared as widely as possible.  

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Editor’s Preface

Take Your Glory, Lord has already become a classic. It has been recommended by leaders such as the late evangelist Leonard Ravenhill and missiologist Patrick Johnstone. Translated into several languages and in worldwide demand, it was first published in 1979 for distribution within South Africa by The South African Baptist Missionary Society. Mary Garnett (pen name of author Joan Goddard) authorized Dr. Keith Cleland as her representative to make Take Your Glory, Lord available to a wider audience. Dr. Cleland had it re-published in 1992 in Australia by One Way Publications, and in the UK in 2000 by Sovereign World.

According to Dr. Cleland’s foreword to the 1992 edition, Joan spent many years on mission stations with her father, a Congregational minister, before settling in Durban, where she worked for the Health Department, primarily concerned with the health needs of Zulu women.

During her work, she came to hear of the healing ministry of a Zulu Baptist minister at the Umgeni Road Baptist Church, a corrugated iron structure set beside a hotel in a low-income area of Durban. The way some people put Duma on a pedestal upset her, but when she later met him, she was struck by his humility. Eventually, she was led to write his story, a work completed a short time after he died in Durban in 1977.

Joan Goddard’s prime concern was that Duma’s story be shared as widely as possible. This edition by CLC Publications will, we hope, distribute Take Your Glory, Lord to a wider international audience.

The presence of the Holy Spirit seems to permeate the pages of this book, just as it did the life of William Duma, whose story it tells. Numerous times, I found myself pausing in prayer and praise as I was reading. Although the miracles accompanying Duma’s ministry were often sensational, this book is not one of sensationalism. It was Duma’s desire that Jesus be the center of all and never that he nor the miracles take preeminence. Thus his well-known byword, Take Your Glory, Lord.

Because Take Your Glory, Lord was originally written for a South African audience, with distinct cultural references and terminology, a glossary was needed. (Special thanks to Rev. Ron Moyo, a Zimbabwean living in my local community, for his review and recommendations.) The glossary provides the cultural backdrop of mid-20th century South Africa, without which Duma’s story cannot be told.

This edition is almost identical to the original 1979 edition, aside from some corrections of grammar, typographical errors, and parenthetical interpretations of Zulu and Afrikaans terms. Joan Goddard had a unique understanding of Rev. Duma and his relationship with God. I feared that too much editing would lose the authenticity of Duma’s character and personality that the author often captured. The fact that the literary style is unexceptional makes the exceptional story itself the main point.

This is a book that both pastors and laymen who hunger for a deeper walk with God will find inspiring.

Kathy Jay

Hesston, Kansas

November 2020

1

A Dedicated Spirit

My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked

In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

—Wordsworth

SHE STOOD ON the brow of the hill, graceful as a gazelle, in spite of the full cotton skirt and overblouse she wore. Scanning the gentle hills and quiet valleys of the Umkomaas, she appeared to be looking for someone. A Zulu woman, bearing a clay pot of water from the river on her head, does not stand long admiring the scenery! She was unconscious of the gossamer beauty of the morning, unaware that the hills breathed an ineffable calm.

Lower down the slopes, hour by hour, a small Zulu herd boy (boy responsible for herding cattle to good grazing spots) leaned against a large boulder, his body shadowed by the ancient stone. He sat, still and silent as the rock, gazing ahead, seeing nothing, looking for nothing, consumed with the wonder of things. Suddenly he stiffened at the sound of padding feet. He turned to see the figure of a tall slender woman, coming down a narrow path. She stopped at the boulder and with consummate ease set her pot on the grass without spilling one precious drop. "Son of my heart, how still you are! Other herd boys are playing at hunting and wrestling; my William sits, unmoving, while the sun hurries by. My child, what are you thinking of?"

"Oh, mother! I look at the sky and think of the Great One, uMvelinqangi (one who appeared before all). I stare at the big mountain and wonder how it came there. It makes me frightened not to know. I wonder and wonder what God is like. How can I see Him? How can I tell people about Him if I don’t see Him? My heart cries to itself. I am so lonely. Sometimes I long so much for uNkulunkulu (the Great One, God) that I think someone must come from the sky to me; nothing happens and my heart has a stone in it. I also wonder, Mother, why your name is Nomvula (with the rain)."

"My little ten-year-old, what strange things lodge in your head! Your mind is as busy as a bird in springtime when the nest is being made. Your mother knows so little.

"Born a heathen, married a heathen, it was not until I became a Christian that I was fed with wonderful words— words which made beautiful pictures to hang on the walls of my heart, as we hang utensils on the walls of our huts. My strange name, little one, was given to me because the night I was born a wild storm raged down these hills. It pelted on the thatch of the hut like the beat of war drums. When my first cry greeted the earth, my mother said, ‘I name her Nomvula.’

It was a prophetess she was. On each important day of my life, a door in the skies opened to pour down a sea of rain. It came on my marriage day in the church, on the day you were born. I think it will come again the day I go away. Fourteen years ago I came as a bride to the heathen home of the Dumas and had a heathen wedding. When I became a Christian, your late father, a kind heathen man, consented to our being re-married in church. I was with great worry that day. The floods descended and I wondered how I could get through the swollen rivers. Three strong young men, who knew the deceptions of riverbeds and the vagaries of their tides, carried me across. Guiding themselves with stout staffs, they cautiously felt for boulders and treacherous holes while bracing themselves against the compulsive pull of water up to their armpits. I arrived at the church like a drenched fowl—but even that is not the end of my rain story.

"The day you were born there was a flood. That day, the kraal folk (home folk), although heathen, were joining the church people to picnic by the river and begged me to go. It was a beautiful morning. I refused because I knew you were coming very soon. I wanted to be alone to pray. I knew then, as I do now, that one day you will be a preacher. At dawn, with a heart in chorus with the birds, I went to the forest to cut wood for a fire. From the river I carried water. I also gathered fresh cow dung to smear the hut floor clean, as our custom is.

Then, alone in prayer, I promised God I would teach you about Him. I promised I’d never cease praying for you as the hours marched through the days and the days through the years. I sat alone outside the hut. The only sounds were the hens scratching for food and the call of a rain bird. Suddenly I felt cold. Looking up, I saw a bank of black clouds over the sun. Rain as heavy as stones peppered the roof. During that wild storm, William Duma was born.

"My mother, our name Duma means thunder, which also brings rain."

"In truth, my boy, waters seem to travel with us. It frightened me until I heard a white uMfundisi (minister, teacher) read from the Bible about God’s voice which was ‘as the sound of many waters’. I was never again afraid! There is more rain story for you, but if I don’t hurry with this pot of water, many tongues, like sjamboks (hide whips), will lash me long before I reach our home."

The Duma home, cradled in the hills of Umkomaas, Natal, South Africa, was called "The Big Kraal" (homestead) and consisted of twenty huts and two large cattle kraals (cattle pens). A benign grandpa held indisputable reign. On occasion, his voice could rival the thunder of his name, especially when the women were troublesome. Into this closely knit Duma family, Nomvula was welcomed as a bride with a traditional feast. Before dawn on her nuptial day, the hills were filled with the sound of singing, rising and falling on the wings of the wind. Searching the horizons from whence the singing came, no one could be seen. As dawn broke, figures, darkly silhouetted against the light, filled the canvas of the hills. In the glow of sunrise, figures of men and women, youths and maidens, clothed the veld (open, uncultivated country or grassland) until it seemed to be a moving entity.

As converging groups met, they greeted each other in song, tossing gay refrains to and fro, till merging, the swelling chorus, in unrehearsed harmony, rang in mounting crescendo through the air drifting down the hills. Nomvula, hidden in her hut, trembled with the ecstasy of a moment she fain would have captured. The beat of running feet shook the earth on the last wild caper down the hills, as they swept into the precincts of the Duma home.

The gaiety of song was matched by the beaded coiffured heads of the brown skinned coquettes; their blankets rainbowed with beads, their anklets and bracelets jangling as they moved. The youths, each affecting a jaunty red hibiscus tucked behind one ear, were proudly accoutered with assegais (iron-tipped, hardwood javelin-type spear), shields, and traditional sticks.

Gossiping grannies and mothers guarded three-legged black pots bubbling with amadumbe (African potato), mealies (corn), and beans. The fires under the pots were constantly replenished by the children with wood from the forest. Wire fences around the cattle kraal were bedecked with long strips of raw meat ready to be cooked over wood fires; a gory sight, but dear to the eyes of many a white-haired umnumzane (gentlemen) who could not resist stealthily seizing a juicy cut to eat uncooked.

In the second year of her marriage, one golden morning, Nomvula stood between two sunlit aisles of tall mealies, their tasselled stalks towering above her. Enchanted, she listened as the wind rustled through the leaves like the sound of lazy waves softly breaking over shingle on the shore.

The morning’s beauty obsessed her, luring her from work. She stood still, so very still, so very long, with the genius of stillness which black folk have—unmoving as a sculptured figure, soaked in secret repose of which she was unaware. Lifting her eyes to scan the hills, she saw the Mkize kraal and suddenly shivered as with an ague. Illness was there—a woman had been bewitched. Her thoughts became a cauldron of fear. "I could also be thakathiwe (bewitched). Perhaps someone already has sprinkled evil medicine on the path I have to cross. Many are jealous of my good fortune."

Fear was now riding her heavily. The day’s tranquil joy had been killed in one stroke, leaving her a prey to fears, superstitions and suspicions which governed the tenets of her tribe. The Duma home meticulously observed the rites, customs, and diviners in every kind of trouble or for advice. Below the lilting rhythm and carefree laughter of heathen life was the repetitive note of fear. Nomvula’s heart was now beating a pitiless tattoo and all the world was dark. Turning her back on the field of mealies she turned homeward with a churning spirit.

She met a stranger on the way and with customary friendliness they exchanged greetings and family histories. Nomvula then invited the elderly woman home where they sat in the shade of a hut with a calabash gourd of amasi (fermented milk) for refreshment. They were a picturesque contrast. The black clad elderly woman with hands misshapen from rough work, her face strangely, unexpectedly beautiful. The young woman with bare velvety shoulders tinted a richer bronze by the sun, her face full of childish wonder. For all her youth her face signaled deep distress. Thokoza Cele’s lined countenance framed in a black doek (headscarf, pronounced duke) was transfigured by a radiant peace, the peace of God, which P.T. Forsyth describes as not a glassy calm, but a mighty confidence.

Nomvula knew not how nor why she poured out all her heart’s agonies to the older woman. Thokoza, in turn, quietly related her history. She told of the death of her husband and seven sons, all of whom had died of tuberculosis. They had refused to go to the clinic or to be hospitalized. While they dallied with medicine-men and witch doctors, the disease was found to be incurable and they were admitted to the hospital to die.

As she listened with a frequent "Hawu" (Oh!) of surprise, there pierced through the superstitious inheritance of Nomvula the suspicion that this woman had something others did not possess. She could not identify it, for it was as elusive as the sough of the wind in the thorn trees. She must know what medicine or charms this stranger used to enable her, after all those deaths, to live alone in a hut at her age with eyes full of smiles and no complaints on her lips. Thokoza told her story of the day, now many years ago, when Jesus, the Savior of the World, met her and received her into His Kingdom. Although illiterate, her speech sparkled, pouring from her with the speed of love and the fire of pure oratory.

Following that encounter, Thokoza visited the Duma home regularly until the infection of a new love had gripped Nomvula and she too was Christ’s. This was the first flicker of light in the darkness of that heathen home. Instructed by widow Thokoza in the discipline of prayer, Nomvula was seen at the breaking of dawn, a blanket around her, going to her prayer hideout. She used to say, The fowls come down while it is still dark, but I go up to pray to send my spirit up!

God was training a mother who would train a boy of whom it would be said, He is a man of prayer.

William was now eleven, a year since his mother had been surprised into tears at his haunting cry, How can I see God, mother? Since then she had shared with him, grain by grain, the laborious gleanings of her own questing heart. Each night, a candle, set on a craftsman’s stool, cast a dim light on the treasured pages of the Zulu Bible which William shared with his elder sister. The family, mother, two sons and two daughters, sat on their mats, the wood fire on the hut floor etching their shadows on the brown clay wall.

Time had passed gently, peacefully, over the family at "The Big Kraal but to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heavens . . . a time to break down and a time to build up." No one suspected that a revolutionary breakdown in the comfortable rhythm of Duma life was imminent: but there was approaching that which would cleave the home life asunder. The actor in the drama of destiny was the beloved Uncle Vika Duma.

Having completed his shift in the Kimberley Diamond Mine, Uncle Vika walked purposefully to a cluster of stores in the town. His measured step was one with the tune he softly hummed, when, suddenly, he came to an abrupt halt. He stood there as if rooted, staring straight ahead as one transfixed. Long he stood, unmoving, unaware of the questioning look of black and white who had to by-step him. He had been abruptly transported in mind to the hills and vales of his beloved Umkomaas.

In his ears he heard the lowing of the cattle, he saw the women around their cooking pots, the hens scratching the soil as they moved around the home, the small brown figures of children with little else than a row of beads around their necks tumbling over each other in the grass, the smell of amasi and above all the drift of the smoke of wood fire where beans, mealies, and amadumbe boiled. It was the drift of wood smoke that engulfed his heart in wave after wave of unutterable homesickness. Slowly he realized that wood-smoke drifting from an adjacent yard had evoked the vivid experience, but it had done its work and done it effectually. The sounds and sights of home tugged mercilessly at his heart, the home call could not be denied. As a bird wings its trackless way home, that night a train was bearing him eastward.

The family at "The Big Kraal" had left the empty pots and grey ashes for an indaba (important discussion) in the largest hut. It was the yearly debate on the slaughter of a beast to placate the ancestors by providing them with a sacrificial food offering. If this rite were neglected the family feared that the anger of the ancestors would descend on the kraal by imposing a variety of disasters. They decided to await Uncle Vika’s return which, unexpectedly, was that very night. His advent was like a fresh wind, for he returned a convert to Christianity, which he awaited his opportunity to declare.

Pastor Duma recalled, "With Uncle at home the paramount question of the sacrifice to ancestors had to be settled. I shall never forget that appalling, disruptive night. The family argued about the most auspicious date for the feast, when they sensed a strange, new quietness about Uncle, as if he were enclosed in a silence throbbing with power. It was a separating silence, as if there was a strong antagonist present, dividing the family. Uneasily they asked, ‘What does our brother, so dumb there, say?’

"Vika replied, his words, as if they were stones, passing heavily over his lips, ‘I cannot join you in the feast. I cannot eat meat sacrificed to ancestors, nor drink the beer nor have any part in the occasion. I do not believe our ancestors can bless or curse us. That superstition I have thrown away forever for I do not believe the ancestors eat the meat of the sacrifice.’

"At this breathtaking renunciation, faces grew ugly with anger and fears. Words like poisoned spears jabbed the air until Vika raised his hand for silence, saying, ‘You want to know why? I will tell you.

"‘I have found the great secret which robs fear of its power. It isn’t wearing goat skin around the ankles, wrist or neck, or sacrificing to ancestors; it is a power mightier than you know, invested in a Name, the Name of names and the Name is Jesus. From now on I am Jesus Christ’s man. He is my Lord, Master of my life which is under His Kingly, Fatherly protection and love. When Nomvula came to this heathen kraal she was one with us. Then she became a Christian and brought us His name, but our ears were suddenly deaf.

"‘One day recently in Kimberley, a stranger came to me in distress, ‘Tell me, Zulu,’ he said, ‘tell me if you know it, the name of the God-Man who died for my sin. I have forgotten His name, but He is in my heart. I’m going home to my heathen people. I must tell them of Him. He found me a few days ago. He died for me and my people must be told He loves them too.’

"‘I told the old umnumzane His name was Jesus. He took both my hands in a grip of gratitude and walked away in a glow, his old lips murmuring, Jesus, His name is Jesus. I must remember, oh I mustn’t forget, His name is Jesus.

"‘Shame nearly drowned me and somehow my heart broke. I had tossed that Name here at home, but this stranger! I believe he would have forced his trembling spirit to stop everyone on the busy street, white or black, to learn the Name of the strange new Lover in his heart.

"‘The cement of my heart melted and through the crevices Christ’s love poured, bringing peace and joy. Since then my spirit soars like the wings of a bird up and up surely through boundlessness to the gates of heaven. What is my secret? Jesus Christ is my Lord and Master.’

"An ominous silence filled the hut, broken at last by a storm of words in which could be heard, ‘Suka,’ (‘get away from here’ as to a dog) and ‘Hamba’ (go). ‘Go, you and your family, we will not have snakes here. We will not offend the ancestors.’ Vika, seeing their faces distorted with anger and hate, horrified at seeing in their once loving eyes remorseless malice, knew he must go and go immediately.

"Silently he beckoned his wife, took her to their own hut and, alone, went up the hill, past the prickly pears and aloes. He had been rejected by the family and knew it was irrevocable. Sitting on the grass, wrapped in the mantle of a merciful, tranquil, moonlit night, it took him a long time to realize his position. He knew that the boiling hate engendered by his witness emanated from the kingdom of Satan. He marveled that for so long he had been a member of that kingdom.

"Slowly his attention was captured by the brilliance of moonlight on grass and bushes, in contrast to the density of the darkness of their shadows. This arresting contrast, moonlight and darkness, penetrated his bewildered mind. Gradually comfort flowed from the realization that against the darkness of sin which caused the rejection was the dazzling glory of Christ’s enfolding love for him. It warmed him as a blanket on a cold night. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘my heart has two rivers tonight. One deep, dark flowing, for my people, one fresh, sparkling, full of peace and strength; a new river, buoyant to support me in this trouble. It must have flowed from your heart into mine.’

That night he slept as a babe on a pallet of peace.

With St. Paul he knew something of the meaning of those words:

Christ! I am Christ’s! and let the name suffice you

Ay, for me too He greatly hath sufficed;

Lo, with no winning words I would entice you

Paul has no honor and no friend but Christ.

—F.W.H. Myers

In Duma’s words, "Uncle had a fever of God; he was mad with a first joy, the name of Jesus was ever on his lips. Each dawn saw him climbing to a spot he made his prayerhome. Visiting neighbors on the hillsides and in the valleys, his story poured over his lips like a river overflowing. The air began to be filled with unaccustomed gossip about a strange new subject.

"Professor J.S. Stewart says, ‘As for most of us, we have heard of God from our earliest days and our mother’s arms. One name above all glorious names has thrust itself upon us all down the journey of the years.’

But, for my mother and uncle this was not so. For them the thrust of His name was late in time—for me, a boy, it pressed piercingly nearer.

2

God’s Action in the

Lives of Others

"How true it is that man begins to feel his need when

he is exposed to God’s action in the lives of others."

—William Duma

DUMA NEVER CEASED to thank God that his initial exposure to redemption’s power, apart from his mother, was the glowing life of his unlettered, ordinary uncle, Vika. His young impressionable heart had been lamentably shocked at the collision between the family and Uncle over ancestor worship. His boyish mind feared that, perhaps, Uncle’s new way of life would fade away. He dreaded lest he see him lose the raiment of light in which he appeared to be clothed. The unusual child hoped that the fever of God which irradiated his life and made other lives look so cheap, would not fade.

Vika immediately built a new home for himself and Duma’s mother