Mvume Dandala

Mvumelwano Mvume Dandala (born 26 October 1951 as Mvumelwano Umdandalaza) is a former presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and a former head of the All Africa Conference of Churches. He was the presidential candidate of the COPE in the 2009 South African general elections.

Mvume was born on 26 October 1951, the son of the Reverend Killion Dandala, a Methodist minister in the small village of Dandalaville (named after his great grandfather), in Mount Ayliff in South Africa's Eastern Cape, the last born of four children.

He was a pupil at Ndamase High School, near Umtata before attending the Federal Theological Seminary in Alice where he became the local chairman of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) where he was involved in the exploration of black and liberation theology and in developing programmes to assist communities with basic amenities such as dams, schools and clinics.

He has an MA in Theology from the University of Cambridge. He became a minister of the Methodist Church of southern Africa (MCSA) in Empangeni, KwaZulu-Natal in 1978, a post he held until 1982.

From 1983 to 1985 he was Superintendent Minister of the North Circuit of the Methodist Church in Port Elizabeth, at the time the largest Circuit of the MCSA. In Port Elizabeth he participated in reconciliation ministries among warring political factions. In July 1985 when South Africa declared a state of emergency he was detained without trial.

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