Colin Winter

For George & John - a collection of children's stories ; year 1973; publisher Southern African Christian Alliance (Texas)

In December 1971, most of the Ovambo contract workers in Namibia went on strike. After a week most of the strikers went home to Ovamboland, and a state of emergency was declared there, with meetings banned. Most people in Ovamboland did not read the government gazette, and did not know of the ban and its implications. On 30 January 1972, South African security forces shot members of the congregation of St Luke's Church, Epinga, on the Angolan border, when they were going home from church. Four were killed and two wounded, but the incident was reported in the South African press as a skirmish with "terrorists". Winter gathered information on the shootings and on 7 February released to the world press a "Statement on the Epinga Shootings" in which he described "[a] peaceful crowd of Ovambo Anglicans, many carrying prayer and hymn books" on whom the police opened fire.

Several of the strike leaders were arrested and charged with various offences, and Winter offered to try to help them to pay for their defence. At first they were reluctant, but eventually they agreed, and advocate Brian O'Linn was engaged to represent them when the trial began on 25 January 1972.

During 1971, the Nationalist-supporting newspaper Die Suidwester launched a series of attacks on the Anglican Church in general, and Winter in particular. In January 1971 the attacks were related to Winter's tolling of the cathedral bell with special lunchtime prayers following the arrest of the Anglican dean of Johannesburg, Gonville Aubie ffrench-Beytagh.

He was elected Bishop of Damaraland (Namibia) in 1968, following the deportation of his predecessor, Bob Mize by the South African government. Most of the Anglicans in Namibia lived in Ovamboland, where the South African government was trying to apply its "homelands" policy, and this caused tensions in the church. A vocal opponent of South Africa's racial separation policies, Winter took a strong stand on behalf of migrant workers in his diocese, who included many Anglicans from Ovamboland.

In 1964, Winter became Dean of St George's Cathedral in Windhoek in what was then known as South West Africa, a former German colony controlled by South Africa, later known as Namibia.

Born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, Winter was educated at Loughborough College, Lincoln College, Oxford and Ely Theological College. He was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1956 and became curate of St Andrew's Church in Eastbourne. He was ordained priest in 1957 and married Mary Jackson Winter in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1953.

Colin O'Brien Winter (10 October 1928 – 17 November 1981), was an English Anglican bishop, who served as Bishop of Damaraland, a diocese of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa) coextensive with the territory of what is now Namibia during the apartheid era.