Faith communities must be regulated

IT seems extraordinary that the one body which may have had the wherewithal to prevent a bloodbath, which it had even suspected might be coming, feels powerless to execute its task.

It may have warned parliamentarians about a disturbing Eastern Cape cult, but the concerns of the commission charged with protecting the rights of religious communities apparently fell on deaf ears.

Now the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural‚ Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) wants the Constitutional Court to tell it what it can and cannot do in the wake of the carnage that befell the Ngcobo community and its police officers carried out by killers with alleged links to a sinister sect masquerading as a church.

The commission says it saw there was a crisis about to happen and made it widely known. It is tragic that that was as far as it went.

Its fears were realised in a heinous massacre, which it could not have even imagined.

For CRL chairwoman Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, it is quite simple. If the commission’s recommendations are being challenged – on whatever grounds in the name of religious freedom – then what is the point of its existence? She hints that it may as well then be disbanded. It is a valid argument. Having investigated the commercialisation and abuse of people’s beliefs‚ it was the CRL’s view that every religious practitioner must be registered and answerable to an umbrella organisation.

This must surely be the logical route to take – especially in a country with such diverse spiritual groupings.

A regulatory framework is the only way to prevent those who may have a following among a community, but whose objectives are questionable, from leading a faithful congregation down an ominous path.

The CRL has come under fire from some quarters for not doing enough to prevent the Ngcobo murders.

But that criticism is misplaced. It is essential the commission be given the power to create the fabric to ensure religious freedoms are guaranteed as well as protected against those who would use sensitivity and emotive debate around the entire issue to undermine them.