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Newsmaker: ‘We will hold religious leaders to account’

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Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva. Picture: Lucky Nxumalo
Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva. Picture: Lucky Nxumalo

Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva looks colourful and energetic as she meets us inside her modest office at the headquarters of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.

She smiles warmly as she introduces herself.

“I don’t have much time, but I’m sure we will have a good talk,” she says as she ushers us to a boardroom next to her office.

At the far end of the long boardroom table are two colourful tote bags. She goes through them briefly, trying to find something, until her hand emerges with a blue file she places in front of herself.

“These bags contain my whole life. I move around with them wherever I go,” she says.

The bags are as colourful and Afro-chic as her outfit: a lemon blazer with a black camisole, black trousers, a yellow headscarf and a matching scarf to complete the ensemble.

Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, who heads the commission that has churches hot under the collar after its demand that they open their books to scrutiny, jokes: “In times like these, you need to wear bright colours that make you bold and set you apart from the rest.”

Down the corridor, tensions are running high at hearings to which pastors have been summoned and ordered to lay bare their books, including all the finances of their centres of worship.

One would expect Mkhwanazi-Xaluva to be agitated, considering the pressure and hostile reactions she received from some of the pastors, who feel she is overstepping her mark and has no authority over their churches, which are registered as not-for-profit organisations.

She remains calm and composed as she talks about the dramatic events that have unfolded since the start of the hearings.

On Tuesday, some of the religious leaders and their followers marched to her Braamfontein, Joburg, offices demanding that the hearings be cancelled.

Mkhwanazi-Xaluva says she expected this kind of panicked reaction from the clergy.

“When you ask people to do what they have never done, there will be some resistance. This is exactly what we saw as they protested outside the offices.”

But that’s exactly the mandate Mkhwanazi-Xaluva gave herself when she first took the job.

When she came into office in April last year, she vowed to deal with critical issues such as traditional circumcision and ukuthwala (a cultural practice where girls and young women are abducted and forced into marriage).

She immediately faced resistance from traditional leaders who didn’t understand how a woman could order them to stop this age-old custom from being practised in their villages.

She says this resistance made her grow a thick skin.

“I learnt to demand respect by sticking to the rules of the chapter 9 institutions. I would tell them this is what the act says and we are going to implement it.”

Mkhwanazi-Xaluva has used the same tactic with religious leaders.

Despite stiff resistance from churches and threats of legal action, the hearings are continuing.

She wasn’t fazed by their reaction. In fact, it propelled her to want to know more about why some religious leaders were dead set on keeping their finances a secret.

“What I can tell you is that we are not backing down, irrespective of what resistance we face.

“We will continue with the course and churches will show us their financial statements.

“We want to see how much they receive from tithes, offerings and donations.

“They must show us how the money is used because they are not supposed to be making a profit,” she says.

A practising Christian who is a regular congregant at her local Methodist church, Mkhwanazi-Xaluva says the blatant enrichment of pastors and some of the disturbing practices in a few of the churches appalls her.

“It’s embarrassing that as a nation we have come to this.

“Religion has become a show in South Africa where some leaders abuse people’s beliefs.

“It scares me when I think about the power some of the pastors have on people.

“To make congregants do things they would normally not do means they are controlling their minds.”

She does not name the pastors or churches whose practices she finds “appalling”.

But it’s widely known that the hearings were prompted by the exposé of a pastor in Soshanguve who made his congregants eat rodents and snakes.

“As a country, we are at a crossroads and need to do something fast,” she says.


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