PRIOR
The Most Revd Dr Thabo Cecil Makgoba KStJ
PhD (UCT), HD, MEd, BSc (WITS)
The Most Revd. Dr. Thabo Cecil Makgoba is the Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
He was born and spent his early years in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, and then – after his family was forcibly removed under apartheid laws – spent the rest of his childhood in Soweto. After his schooling at Orlando High, he graduated with a BSc at the University of the Witwatersrand, then trained as a priest at St. Paul’s College in Grahamstown, where he earned a Diploma in Theology.
After ordination, he served in various positions in Johannesburg, including at St Mary’s Cathedral and the Church of Christ the King in Sophiatown, and as Anglican chaplain at the University of the Witwatersrand. During this time he also graduated at Wits with a BA (Honours) in Applied Psychology and an M Ed in Educational Psychology, and lectured at Wits and at the Wits College of Education, where he was Dean of Knockando Residence.
He was elected Bishop Suffragan of Grahamstown in 2002, serving as Bishop of Queenstown, then as Bishop of Grahamstown from 2004 and as Archbishop from 2008. He pioneered the concept of indaba in the worldwide Anglican Communion as a means of getting to grips with difference and was decorated by the Archbishop of Canterbury with the Cross of St Augustine for his role in the Communion. He is a former chair of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network and of the Anglican Communion Science Commission. He has also served as President of the South African Council of Churches and as a Board Member of a number of NGOs and ecumenical and interfaith bodies.
In 2018, he was installed as Prior of the Order of St John in South Africa by HRH Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, Grand Prior of the Order. Since 2012, he has served as Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape and has been an Adjunct Professor at the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
He is also the recipient of awards and honors including the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Scholarship and a Procter Fellowship at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
His PhD was awarded by the University of Cape Town for a thesis on Spirituality in the South African Mining Workplace. He has also received honorary doctorates from the General Theological Seminary, New York (2009); Huron University College, Ontario (2013); the University of the South, Tennessee (2015); the University of the Witwatersrand (2016); Stellenbosch University (2018); Rhodes University (2024); and the University of the Free State (2024).
He has taught MBA students at the University of Cape Town on Ethical Leadership and Stewardship, and has also been an Executive in Residence at the Wits Business School. He served as a Commissioner for the Press Freedom Commission under Justice Pius Langa and has been a panelist and discussion leader at various World Economic Forum meetings in Davos.
He has published three books: an autobiographical account, Connectedness (2005); Workplace Spirituality in a South African Mining Context (2012); and Faith and Courage: Praying with Mandela (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2017; London: SPCK, 2019; and Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 2019).
He is married to Lungi Manona and they have two children, Nyakallo and Paballo. He loves walking, nature and reading.