Regulation of religion — SA must tackle religious abuse without restricting freedom of belief

International Religious Freedom Day is observed annually on 27 October. Although the day originated in the United States with the signing of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 by then US president Bill Clinton, the human right it calls us to promote and protect remains universally and historically significant. 

Religious freedom was first institutionalised as a universal human right in 1948, in the wake of World War 2, through Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” 

Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, several legally binding international documents, including in Africa, have recognised the right to religious freedom. Article 8 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights reads: “Freedom of conscience, the profession and free practice of religion shall be guaranteed. No one may, subject to law and order, be submitted to measures restricting the exercise of these freedoms.” 

Can one justify limitations on religious freedom? 

Importantly, looking specifically to the state’s role in upholding the right to religious freedom, Article 18(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights reads: “Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.” 

Therefore, for limitations on religious freedom to be justified, it isn’t sufficient that they merely be prescribed by law. For any law limiting religious freedom to be justifiable, it must fulfil the above-mentioned conditions. 

To avoid abuses and protect human rights, who defines public safety, order, health, or morals, how they define it, and with what intentions, ought to be carefully scrutinised when deciding whether the conditions for limitations on religious freedom are met. 

Religious persecution in the world today

Religious persecution, the antithesis of religious freedom, is a historical and contemporary reality, and the reason why religious freedom was codified as a universal human right in the first place. 

What Pew Research Center, “a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy [sic] fact tank”, refers to as “harassment of religious groups” became more widespread over the period 2007 to 2023. In 2023, religious groups in 192 of the world’s 198 countries faced harassment. 

This religious persecution can occur at the hands of state and/or private actors, and, according to Pew Research findings, can be categorised as “physical” or “verbal and other nonphysical” forms. 

The former category “includes damage to property, detentions, assaults, displacements and killings”, and the latter, “insults or other hate-filled, biased remarks (either oral or written) that denigrate religious individuals or groups, as well as government policies that make religious practice more difficult”.  

The last example is most relevant to South Africa’s current context. More than ever in the country’s post-1994 history, religious adherents, collectively, face a real threat to their religious freedom, from an institution whose authority ultimately rests with the state and its designated representatives.      

The Chapter 9 institution threatening religious freedom

South Africa’s Constitution reinforces, most explicitly in Article 15(1), the religious freedom protections evident in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion.” 

Nevertheless, beginning in 2015, and arguably with a focus primarily, if not exclusively, on the country’s Christian sector, South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (also known as the CRL Commission) has persisted in efforts that stand to undermine religious freedom in South Africa.  

This is ironic for two related reasons. Firstly, as one of South Africa’s six Chapter 9 institutions, the CRL Commission is charged with strengthening constitutional democracy, of which religious freedom is a fundamental feature. Secondly, as the commission’s name indicates, it ought to discharge its constitutional mandate by, among other things, promoting and protecting the rights of religious communities. 

In 2015, the CRL Commission chairperson, Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, announced the launch of the commission’s investigations into “the commercialisation of religion and the abuse of people’s belief systems” in South Africa. 

Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, first appointed to her post in 2014 by then president Jacob Zuma, is known, among other things, for her “combative tone” and her comment that people who claim they can talk to God must “go to the psychiatric ward”. 

Why the concern over ‘commercialisation’ and ‘abuse’? 

Among the cases that probably caught the commission’s attention and motivated its investigations beginning in 2015 were the so-called “churches” where congregants ate grass, hair and cloth, and drank petrol.

Since the commission’s investigations began, several more prominent South African cases have arisen, including the drinking of an unknown liquid called “holy juice”, Dettol, and engine cleaning fluid. 

News outlets have also reported on the “Prophet of Doom” who sprayed his congregants with a household insecticide, and on churchgoers eating snake, rat and dog meat. 

This is to say nothing of Malawian Shepherd Bushiri, and Nigerian Timothy Omotoso, both of whom are alleged to have entered South Africa illegally to fleece their adherents of money and human dignity. 

Bushiri, who has been fighting extradition to South Africa, is suspected of money laundering involving millions of rand, while Omotoso, shortly before he departed from South Africa in 2025, was acquitted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and human trafficking. The judge presiding over his case ruled that “prosecutorial misconduct had severely compromised” the weight of the evidence against the accused. 

Proposed ‘self-regulatory’ framework for Christian sector 

This short commentary doesn’t allow for a comprehensive account and critical analysis of everything that has transpired since 2015, involving the CRL Commission, its chairperson, advocates for religious freedom, and other stakeholders, including Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta).

Key among the developments pointing to a growing threat to religious freedom in South Africa is the CRL Commission’s appointment of a Section 22 Ad Hoc Committee for the Christian Sector, and, more specifically, the committee’s publication in December 2025 of a “Draft Self-Regulatory Framework for the Christian Sector in the Republic of South Africa”, intended to prevent the sorts of abuses noted earlier. 

While the framework is purportedly self-regulatory, it proposes a “legislative framework” that will provide, among other things, for the registration of Christian sector institutions and practitioners. 

This proposal follows on from and reinforces Mkhwanazi-Xaluva’s previously stated belief that abuses by “church” leaders “cannot be remedied without a legislative framework that controls the [Christian] sector”.   

While hosting public hearings across South Africa’s provinces to consult with church leaders or their representatives, the Section 22 Committee has worked hard to place the proposed framework in a positive light, as something drafted by and for the Church in South Africa. I attended one of the hearings held in the Eastern Cape, and have been tracking them since.  

Irrespective of how the Section 22 Committee frames the proposal while engaging Christian audiences on its nationwide tour, any regulatory framework involving or rooted in legislation ultimately depends on state authority for its implementation. 

By implication, such a regulatory framework, one that would require the registration of religious actors (at this stage, only of the Christian faith), with potentially negative implications for those who choose not to, cannot but involve state regulation of religion and, therefore, violation of the right to religious freedom.  

The fact that the original chairperson of the Section 22 Committee, Reverend Professor Musa Xulu, resigned from his position earlier this year, describing the Section 22 Committee as a “front to disguise a predetermined agenda of State control of religion, driven in part by personal hostility toward particular Christian faith and traditions”, is noteworthy. 

Why it matters

In the words of a spokesperson for the US-based Religious Freedom Institute: “Religious freedom is important because religion is important, and religion is important because… human beings… [are] not happy, they’re not satisfied, unless they ask ultimate questions and then act in accord with the answers to those questions.” 

History teaches that where religious adherents in South Africa and elsewhere have acted in accordance with the answers to their ultimate questions, and with respect for human dignity, they have promoted human development and flourishing. 

State regulation of religion violates the right to religious freedom, the human rights that intersect with this right (the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of assembly and association, for example), and undermines the potential and existing development work that rests on the protection of these rights.  

There is no denying that the abuses reported in the news media, and that happen to have occurred in institutions identifying as “churches” and/or at the hands of leaders claiming to be pastors, are concerning and deserving of investigation by the relevant state authorities. Victims of abuse deserve justice. 

The founder of the South African Community of Faith-based Fraternals and Federations, Bert Pretorius, has rightly said that religious freedom should “never become a shield against the prosecution of pastors who committed crimes”. 

It is equally true that religious freedom shouldn’t be violated to protect against abuses that existing laws are already designed to curb and punish. 

Where existing legislation proves insufficient, the state can make amendments or create new legislation targeting would-be culprits, regardless of their religious beliefs, and without regulating South Africa’s religious sector. DM