Chilling evidence in CRL mission probe

‘ A man came often at night and molested and raped the girls’

A CHILD was forced to falsely accuse a relative of taking her virginity, and children with parents were presented as orphans to make the Kwasizabantu Mission attractive to international donors, the CRL Commission conducting hearings into serious allegations against the mission heard yesterday.

A woman who arrived at the mission school when she was 6 cried as she recalled being accused of not being a virgin at that age.

“Black girls were subjected to virginity testing. I had not reached puberty, yet I did virginity testing,” she said.

She was traumatised further when told she was no longer a virgin.

“I was locked in a dark room and was only going to be let out if I revealed the name of the boy who had taken my virginity; I did not even know what they were talking about. Another lady came and told me to say the name of any male person I knew and they would let me out of that room, and I gave them my cousin’s name.”

Many girls were raped during the time she was at the mission school, she said.

“A man came often at night and molested and raped the girls. The room would be so dark that we could not see who he was.

“If there is anything I learnt from there, it was to be a good liar because we had to lie to protect ourselves all the time,” she said.

Ex- pastor Sipho Zondi said the directive to register children as orphans to gain donations came from Erlo Stegen, who founded the mission 50 years ago. Stegen allegedly said the church had to have orphans to be accepted by international donors.

Pieter Becker, 47, who left the mission in 2013 after working there from 1995, said people were punished for questioning the church’s teachings, but a rapist who was loyal to the church was protected.

Becker said even after realising that the church’s teachings were wrong, and none of its rules applied to white pupils, he still loved the mission and wanted to help it implement corrective measures instead of kicking out people for wrongdoings.

Girls who fell pregnant were expelled, but the church should have been an institution of forgiveness and given them a second chance, he said.

“I realised the reason pupils wanted nothing to do with the mission is they were rebellious against the teachings of Kwasizabantu.

“I wrote a letter to the mission leaders about what I believed the church was not doing right. I wanted to help the mission because it was hurting people for many years.

“Two days later, I apologised for the things I said in the letter. I said I was sorry that I had listened to people who had left the church. I had no strength to fight this,” Becker said.

They were made to believe that if you left the church mission, you left God and would go straight to hell, he said.

“That is how people lived when I was there; they lived in fear of the leaders. You could not even speak to a friend about this abuse, because it was a sin to keep someone else’s secret,” said Becker.

The brother of the founder, Manfred Stegen, said he, three siblings and his mother left the mission, while three other siblings remained.

“A lot of wrong things happened at the mission, yet no action was ever taken against the wrongdoers. So many people were raped. My brother always said it was the women who were in the wrong,” he said.