The role of faith-based organisations in South Africa's social landscape

Dr Mabila Mathebula is an author, ghostwriter and life coach, and has a PhD in Construction Management.

When my sage and mentor had a one-on-one annual meeting with all his mentees, I looked at our diversity mix and proclaimed, “What a motley crew!” I plied him with a plethora of questions ranging from collective behaviour to state regulation.

As a product of instant gratification, my patience was exhausted when he solicitously prepared his rock-solid answers. He said: “There are two antecedents to collective behaviour: people have either a common enemy or a common goal. The glue that holds the group together is their motive.” When it came to the question of state regulation, he was laconic: “Son, do not regulate common sense.”

What immediately came to my mind were two powerful movements in South Africa led by the right-brain thinkers – the March and March Movement (MMM) and the South African Church Defenders (SACD). Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma leads the former, and Pastor Mukhuba leads the latter. I have great respect for the two warriors who are steering the revolutionary stew in South Africa while the men are pushing the ramrods.

The MMM should instill compliance values in our society; foreign nations will respect our laws when citizens respect the prescriptive laws of the land and treat them as sacrosanct. South Africans seem to have a fractured sense of history.

South Africa was also a proscriptive society like Japan. For example, the Publication and Entertainment Act, No. 26 of 1963 was a proscriptive piece of legislation. That law established a Publication Control Board; the material submitted by authors or artists was either approved or rejected by the board.

On August 10, Professor Mukhuba handed over a memorandum to the authorities in Polokwane. The erudite professor impressed upon the marchers that SACD was an organisation that accommodated everyone irrespective of colour or denomination.

I thought that the role of the SACD would go beyond the fight for self-regulation and venture into other areas that affected the smooth running of faith-based organisations. The right to worship is protected by our much-vaunted Constitution; however, the SACD falls into a state of temporary mutism on the subject of the mental injury directed against African Independent Churches (AIC).

There is no defence when some faiths are attacked by some rogue elements. These churches were once the victims of polygenesis during the dark days. The theory of polygenesis established the innate and irremediable inferiority of black races. Currently, these churches are victims of black self-hate due to our colonial mentality.

I have seen pastors damagingly prophesying about the Zion Christian Church (Z.C.C), the Nazareth Baptist Church, the International Holiness Pentecostal Church, the St John Church of Prophecy, and all the Apostolic and Zionist formations.

Some churches have a devilish nerve to give their members a platform to testify against other faiths, and some say unsavoury things about AICs.