Episode 5: The Community Leader

Spiwo Xapile worked as a priest at JL Zwane Memorial Church in Gugulethu, Cape Town for 35 years, and now dedicates himself to community and leadership development. He helps change narratives to change lives, including his own...

Spiwo is a self-described ‘victim of exposure’, and perhaps because of it, a deeply critical thinker. He’s insightful about the anomalies thrown up by Christianity in the context of Apartheid, and reconciling his faith with a powerful set of black South African traditional rites and beliefs relating to death and dying.

He’s also a man who has been both excited and a little frustrated by life, but whose eloquence, like the gentle path of water, seems to finds it’s way toward peace and understanding. This is a rare conversation, frank and humane, not to be missed.