Out of the Black Shadows

Stephen Lungu was the oldest son of a teenage mother, married off by her parents to a much older man and living near Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). When he was three his mother ran away, leaving him and his younger brother and sister in the reluctant care of an aunt. By 11 Stephen too had run away, preferring life on the streets. He slept under bridges and scavenged from white folks' dustbins. As a teenager he was recruited into an urban gangs, the Black Shadows, which burgled and mugged with a half-focused dream of revolution. When an evangelist came to town, Stephen was sent to fire bomb the event, carrying his bag of bombs and mingling with the crowd. Instead he stayed to listen ... Today Stephen is Africa's Billy Graham, an international evangelist who regularly speaks in UK, US and Europe.