‘Rogue pastors a ticking time bomb’
Commission fears mass suicide
The National Assembly will have to answer for any disaster that may strike people at the hands of religious practitioners from now on.
This was said yesterday by the commission which investigated harmful religious practices.
The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) has released its final report on the commercialisation of religion and abuse of people’s belief systems and is adamant that religious practitioners must be regulated and licensed.
“We don’t have the luxury of time. We were very cautious not to instruct the National Assembly as to how long they have to do this because they have to go through their consultations,” said chairwoman Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva yesterday.
“We believe they are aware of the crisis out there and that it is getting worse. Every delay allows this thing to get out of hand.”
The commission recently tabled the report in parliament and Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said “elected representatives are there to protect the people who voted them in and to make sure that they treat this with the urgency it deserves”.
“We have explained what our fears are. We fear mass suicide in some areas when the funds run dry. Anything happening between now until when the National Assembly adopts the report, we will say to the public ‘we tried. We did everything to stop this thing. Go check with the National Assembly’.”
The investigative study kicked off in August 2015 after media reports exposed several pastors for allegedly feeding people snakes, grass, rats, human hair, as well as petrol.
In reaction to the report, the Freedom of Religion South Africa (Forsa) said: “Their proposal effectively amounts to ‘State capture of religion’.”
Forsa executive director Michael Swain said the commission had ignored “every submission detailing the alternative, viable and well-supported solutions to every issue identified”.
“The process followed by the CRL is deeply flawed and therefore unconstitutional. Importantly, their proposals are not supported by a sound or convincing scientific investigation: only a ‘random sampling’ of 85 religious practitioners and institutions were summonsed and interviewed – a completely inadequate sample size in view of the far-reaching proposals and recommendations in the CRL’s report.”
Over the months it emerged that there were church leaders allegedly pouring boiling water, spraying insecticide or placing congregants in deep freezers or driving a car over them to “demonstrate the power of God”.
Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said these acts would continue if no laws were put in place.
She said there was a huge security gap which allowed for churches to flourish and pastors to continue abusing people’s belief systems.
She said Home Affairs had no effective system to assess work permit applications.
“Anyone can apply for a work permit to become a pastor. We cannot allow that to continue. Social Development has lack of monitoring capacity for registered nonprofit organisations. The Department of Trade and Industry must stop all adverts and sales of products for spiritual, religious and traditional healing.”
SA Council of Churches Gauteng secretary Reverend Gift Moerane welcomed the report.
“Some of the churches that do not want to account may jump and scream [but] that is what we as older churches have been doing all these years – the auditing, reporting of finances and licensing. The churches that give their congregants petrol instead of administering the gospel may have a problem. This will also help govern the ethics of pastors like those who rape children instead of being spiritual leaders and those that come from outside the country to start churches under false pretence. The findings are not prescriptive, they are just trying to help us.” –