Message from the church could spell trouble for the ANC

Any South African activist during apartheid knew the importance of Regina Mundi Church in Soweto.

This Roman Catholic Church was home to anti-apartheid activists, often seeking refuge from apartheid’s security forces.

From 1977, every June 16 anniversary was commemorated in that church, fittingly so because many hid there as police guns mowed pupils down during the student uprising in 1976.

The meetings that dealt with the Struggle against apartheid were held in the church.

Today, the bullet holes left by the trigger-happy apartheid-era police have been preserved to bear testimony to the fact that apartheid enforcers were not ashamed to kill – even in church.

There was no mistaking the potent symbolism of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) using Regina Mundi last Thursday when it released its state capture report which contained alpeople legations of corruption by the Jacob Zuma government.

Based on the testimony of whistleblowers to the SACC, the report warned that the country may just be a few inches away from the throes of a Mafia state from where there might be no return.

The SACC’s decision to establish a panel so that those with information on corruption in government could come forward was as a result of the public protector’s report titled State of Capture. The report points fingers at Zuma and those close to him, alleging that they are aware of corruption and yet allow it because they too are benefitting from it.

The ANC failed to put together an independent panel to deal with the matter. Now the church has stepped into the void.

The SACC’s report is going to be preached at churches and it will be translated into languages that members of the churches can understand. Churches have a wide reach and they speak directly to the and their communities.

South Africans are a deeply religious society, with the SACC-affiliated churches estimated to have more than three million members. The churches include African Catholic Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Southern Africa, AFM International and Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa.

So the anti-corruption message from the SACC pulpits will find fertile ground and could have devastating consequences for the ANC – pushing the people to support other political parties that have been vocal about corruption and poor leadership in government.

During the Struggle, churches fought on the side of the oppressed against the evil of apartheid. That enemy was defeated. The enemy today is graft and mismanagement, generally represented by the Zuma administration.

Regina Mundi is again the symbolic battlefield where the SACC is making a stand against the evil of the state. Just like in the past when many sought its shelter to nurse the physical pain inflicted by apartheid, today they’ll seek to nurse a pain of a different nature but pain nonetheless, visited on them by people who should know better.

The SACC’s is a poignant message pointing out that those who were oppressed are being betrayed by what is happening today.

Corruption may not be the same thing as oppression but its effects can be just as devastating.

Could this be the time to heed Nelson Mandela’s advice? “If the ANC does to you what the apartheid government did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to the apartheid government.”

Regina Mundi is a symbolic battlefield where the SACC is making a stand again