Two other cults flagged as ticking time bombs

Similarity between Ngcobo Seven Angels and Limpopo churches

TWO MORE religious cults have been red flagged as ticking time bombs, a week after members of the Mancoba Seven Angels Ministries Church allegedly massacred five police officers and an off-duty soldier in Ngcobo.

Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, the chairperson of the Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission), warned that two churches in Limpopo displayed the same traits as the infamous Seven Angels.

The Seven Angels Church in Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape was the scene of a gunbattle with police last Friday, when law enforcers raided the place in search of gang members who had executed the officers at the local police station two days earlier.

Police arrested 10 suspects during last week’s blitz, including freeing more than 100 girls and women who were suspected to have been sex slaves at the church, some of whom were as young as 12.

Three of the seven brothers running the church were among the seven people killed by police during the shootout.

Mkhwanazi-Xaluva told The Star that her commission had warned the parliamentary committee on co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) that Seven Angels was “a ticking time bomb waiting to explode”.

But the committee had failed to respond to the warnings.

“We were saying that it was only a matter of time before something horrible happens there.

“We knew that the issue of people sitting there singing and praying the whole day, with no one allowed to go to work or school, and where members cash in their pensions and bring their worldly goods to Seven Angels, was going to become a big problem,” Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said.

She was speaking on the sidelines of a briefing in Joburg yesterday.

She added that the two flagged churches in Limpopo were eerily similar to Seven Angels.

The CRL Rights Commission was monitoring the situation, she said.

“We are told that people are not working, people have given all their worldly goods to the churches, and no one is working.

“So the formula is the same as the Seven Angels Church. The location is different but the methodology looks the same,” she said.

The commission will be approaching the Constitutional Court to obtain a declaratory order in order to get its recommendations deemed constitutional that the religious sector should be regulated.

The Cogta committee had refused to regulate the sector, as it would be “infringing on the rights of people to religious freedom”, said DA MP Kevin Mileham.

Julius Moloi, president of the Christian Ministers Council of Southern Africa, slammed Mkhwanazi-Xaluva and the commission, saying they were on an “anti-Christian mission” for seeking the regulation of religion.

“It is very unfortunate that Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva is using the death of the policemen and criminal activities by some people called Angels from Heaven to vindicate the CRL Rights Commission, by saying Parliament must take responsibility for the incident because they refused to give her the power to regulate the church,” Moloi charged.

“This clearly shows that the commission’s investigation into the commercialisation of religion was a well-orchestrated agenda against the church,” he added.

But Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said they were undeterred.

She said not even the death threats she had received would make her waver. “The attacks prove that we are on the right track,” she said.