Obituary: Joseph Falkiner OP (1934-2024)
Fr Joe Falkiner celebrating Mass and (right) with some of his Dominican brethren, including the late Fr Albert Nolan (top) and with Fr Mark James (right 3rd from top)
Fr Mark James OP remembers his Dominican brother, Fr Joe Falkiner, who lived in deep solidarity with South African workers during the height of the apartheid regime’s oppression against organised trade unions and who continued to struggle with young workers during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis and when work conditions became precarious as flexible labour practices were normalised during the democratic era.
Joseph Falkiner — or Father Joe, as he was affectionately known — was a passionate Dominican priest who passed away on Tuesday evening 2 April 2024 in Pietermaritzburg. He was 89 years old.
He was born Thomas Monsell Falkiner in Springs on May 31, 1934, into a good Catholic home, where his parents Thomas, a miner, and Norah, a school and music teacher, raised him and his late older brother, Daniel, in the faith.
After completing his matriculation certificate at Boksburg CBC, he proceeded to study Geology at the University of the Witwatersrand in the 1950s. While at Wits, he became involved in the Cathsoc group on campus and joined the National Catholic Federation of Students (NCFS), attending some conferences.
He found employment as a geologist with the Anglo American Corporation and was sent to Tanzania and then to Namaqualand in the Cape to prospect for gold, diamonds and other minerals. While prospecting, he became conscious of the working conditions of the black workers who worked under him. He felt that their working conditions were unjust and that Anglo American was more concerned about making money than caring for those they employed.
While in Tanzania, he began to question why he was prospecting for gold and making Anglo rich. Rather than working for Anglo, should he not be working for God instead? After that he was transferred to Namaqualand and on a trip to Cape Town, he met the Dominicans.
One day as he was driving through Namaqualand he had a profound spiritual experience. Pondering the vexing question of whether he should work for Anglo or for God, had experienced a profound sense of warm, contentment and peace coming upon him from the open car window. It lasted a little while and then faded. He turned the car around and drove over the same stretch of road again, hoping that the consolation would return but it never did. However, he was left with a profound sense that he had to serve God rather than Anglo. Joining the Dominicans was his way to serve God. He would do whatever the Dominicans asked of him.
He was considered a late vocation when he did his novitiate in Stellenbosch, taking the religious name Joseph, under Fr Dominic Baldwin in 1963. He was professed in 1964 and commenced his philosophy and theology studies.
Joe felt very much at home in the monastic setting that was Stellenbosch at the time. However, this was during a period of profound change in the Church because of the Second Vatican Council. He was inspired by the new theology emerging from the Council and it challenged his way of thinking of how to be Church and a priest.
It was a tumultuous time, too, because many of the Dominicans who were teaching him were leaving to get married. Many of his fellow students were also leaving but Joe was convinced that he was called to work for God and persisted.
While a student at Stellenbosch, Joe had to find some pastoral apostolate to do and one of the students suggested he work with the Young Christian Workers (YCW). The organisation was running a workshop for YCW leaders in Manzini, Swaziland, for a long weekend and they both decided to hitchhike there and back. The workshop was run by Fr Albert Danker OMI of Durban, a seasoned YCW chaplain. It was the first time that Joe learnt about Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, and the See, Judge, Act (or the Review of Life) Method. It turned Joe’s life around. When he returned to Stellenbosch, he threw himself passionately into YCW work in the Western Cape, establishing and supporting groups all over the region.
Joe was ordained a priest on December 13, 1969, and shortly afterwards was sent to work in Payneville parish, in what was then the Transvaal province, as an assistant priest. Later he joined Fr Benedict Mulder and Fr Gregory Brooke to care for the three parishes of Kristo Inkosi in KwaThema, St David’s of Brakpan, and St Paul’s in Tsakane. As a team they worked together in building up the ward system in these parishes, which later would be called Small Christian Communities. The ward system in KwaThema is still in operation today.
While in KwaThema, Fr Joe worked in starting YCW groups throughout the East Rand. Young workers from townships like KwaThema, Katlehong, Vosloorus and Thokoza met regularly to review their working lives and see how they could mobilise young workers.
This was a time when trade unions were not yet permitted in the workplace.
In 1972, a YCW member in the KwaThema groups and three other women were summarily dismissed from their jobs at Raleigh Cycles in Springs because they wanted to complain to management about grease damaging their clothes. They formed a committee to discuss this with other workers and were fired by management.
Fr Joe made contact with a lawyer who said that the government, in trying to discourage the establishment of trade unions, had passed into law permission for workers to select committees in factories so that grievances could be raised with management. Management initially ignored any attempts by Fr Joe to plead that the women be reemployed. The company was then taken to court for contravening the law. With this threat, the company relented and reemployed the women.
This was the first time that worker grievances in South Africa had been resolved without workers going on strike.
After working in KwaThema, Fr Joe was moved to the Brakpan parish where he ministered in the late 1970s. All the while, he continued with his YCW ministry becoming the regional chaplain on the East Rand.
Fr Joe was a founding member of the new Dominican community of Mayfair that was started with Frs Benedict Mulder, Finbar Synnott and Albert Nolan in 1979. This community was committed to social transformation and simple lifestyle. The YCW established their regional offices in Mayfair and rebaptised the house “Freedom Square”, in contrast to the central police station which was known as ‘John Vorster Square’.
Fr Joe was in Mayfair for a few years before he was asked to take over as national chaplain of the YCW in Durban in 1983. He lived with the national council, sharing a house together with the workers.
In 1985, Fr Joe was asked by the new Dominican provincial, Fr Emil Blaser, to be novice master. Although this was a task that Fr Joe had never thought would befall him, true to his commitment to obedience, he accepted this responsibility without hesitation. He moved to Maseru, Lesotho, later that year and began with his first novitiate group in 1986. In 1987, he went on a formation course to Rome and left the novitiate in the capable hands of Fr Albert Nolan. On his return to South Africa in 1988 he continued with formation work until 1990.
In 1991, Fr Joe remained in Maseru and worked on the programme for the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) to celebrate the centenary of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. It is the encyclical which dealt with the social teachings of the Church and specifically the concerns for workers. Fr Joe travelled all over South Africa to advertise and run this programme.
In 1992, Fr Joe returned to parish work in Kroonstad in the Free State and established YCW groups in Brent Park. In July 1996, he was transferred to Welkom to start a new house for the postulants at St Helena’s and assistant priest for Hani Park and Bronville.
It was during this time that Joe became conscious of the challenge of HIV/Aids and the effect it was having on young workers. There was also a new struggle for workers that many could only find employment as casual workers; they could never get a permanent job. They got piece jobs and took up their cause making people in the church aware of their plight. Many school children and members of YCW were complaining about the corporal punishment being meted out at schools, despite the fact that this was against the law.
In 2000, Fr Joe became the national chaplain of YCW for a second time. He continued in this role until 2002.
In 2001, the Dominican postulancy was moved to the St Louis Bertrand parish in Payneville where Fr Joe had been posted originally in 1970. There was another church in Botleng, near Delmas, 40km away, and he started YCW groups there too. Many of these young people were unemployed and had no prospect of ever finding work. Joe became a great promoter of the Basic Income Grant to assist these young people.
In 2005, Fr Joe moved to the new student house called Emaphethelweni in Pietermaritzburg. He was postulancy master for a year. He took on many responsibilities in the community at one time being the prior, also sub-prior and sacristan. He was a popular preacher and developed a wide network of friends and benefactors around Pietermaritzburg.
While Fr Joe was no longer that involved with the workers’ struggle, he kept in touch with what was happening with workers.
In 2021, Fr Joe published his memoirs, titled A Priest for the Workers (reviewed in The Southern Cross). It was his second book, having published a social history titled The First Dominican Friars in Boksburg, Brakpan and Springs – South Africa (1917-1927) in 2017 as part of the Dominican’s centenary in South Africa.
Fr Joe’s life was severely affected by a stroke he suffered in 2023. He lost the use of his right arm and leg. He remained confined to a wheelchair. His dream to live and die in a community of the brethren was granted when he passed away after a short illness on Tuesday, April 2.
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