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For anyone who has followed the news in our country this week, some profound questions emerge that must force us to confront the spectre we, as a society, appear to have become.
We are forced to ask whether we, as a collective nation, have lost our way.
We are compelled to question whether we are so broken a society, whether we live in such a suffocating moral vacuum, that we are willing to be duped by religious charlatans who, among other fakeries, claim they are able to bring people back from the dead.
While the public ridicule at the absurdity of Pastor Alph Lukau bringing to life a man in a coffin appears rational to the rational-minded, the church is rich and has many who have faith in him and continue to pay money to hear him preach.
This is just the latest in a series of religious quackery that this country’s citizens blindly and zealously follow.
Eating grass, being sprayed with insect poison, drinking petrol. In some churches accusations of human trafficking, abuse and rape are being investigated.
Others are under scrutiny for defrauding congregants who handed over hard-earned and not-so-meagre monies in the hope of a quick return that did not materialise.
While the congregants lose money in blind faith, these so-called pastors have private jets and drive multi-million rand cars.
Surely this is not religion? Surely this is not faith? How can this be spirituality? How can this be Christianity?
As these churches take root and flourish in our country we must question what profound levels of desperation drive scores to worship at them.
We must acknowledge that this is fraud and manipulation. It is coercion and abuse.
It should not be tolerated and, while the state must intervene and act, as a society we must engage in some brutally honest introspection about how we worship and what shape that worship should take.
Read: Show me proof and I will stand with you, Mboro tells Lukau
VIOLENCE
As we ask hard questions about our faith, so too we must ask if we are so broken, so far removed from an understanding of our collective responsibility, that our youth, in this instance teenagers, think little to nothing of beating a man to death on the streets of a city.
Thoriso Themane’s brutal murder in Polokwane, caught on video and sent around the world, is a damning indictment of the erosion of our social fabric.
One of the teens arrested in connection with his death boasted on video that he was untouchable because his father is a policeman.
In the Western Cape gang violence in Bonteheuwel has claimed 18 lives so far this year.
In North West this week, in one case among many, a 17-year-old was sentenced for stabbing his teacher to death.
And in KwaZulu-Natal, several youngsters were arrested for repeatedly raping a 90-year-old relative.
What’s worse is that the family reported them to the police only after the young men had defied reprimands and continued raping the granny.
Has the violence in our homes, in our schools, on our streets become so fundamentally pervasive that taking human life is common place?
What compels these so-called future leaders to engage in such violent behaviour and kill other humans?
Nationally, the commission of inquiry into state capture keeps us riveted daily with revelations of cash handouts, bags, booze and security systems for our politicians.
It continues to open corruption’s can of worms.
It continues to expose the rot at the head of our nation. It shows that we are a society that is not happy with what we get paid to do.
As a result, we engage in corrupt and fraudulent acts to earn extra money at the expense of the services expected to be rendered to the citizens, often the poor and needy.
If those elected to lead our country are exposed as corrupt, or revealed to be alleged rapists and women abusers, where law enforcement appears complicit in preventing or hampering investigations, then what real hope do we have?
As dark as all this appears, there must be light at the end. We must stand up against charlatans. We must resist violence.
We are compelled to develop our society, to rid it of superstition, to help our neighbours, to uplift our youth, to reduce inequality and poverty.
We need more than just political will to do this.
We need a personal, individual shift that creates a collective good. We need to do it for ourselves.
This is our country; we cannot allow it to wither and die in the shadow of our ignorance and complacency. Wake up South Africa, before we are swallowed and lost.
