Religious call to end graft

INLSA

The Rev Nomvuyo Mhlongo, left, and Archbishop Thabo Makgoba signs the register committing themselves to the Anti-Corruption Campaign

Neo Maditla

STAFF REPORTER

Religious leaders have launched an anti-corruption campaign in Khayelitsha and made a call on ordinary South Africans to step up the effort against the scourge.

Pastor Xola Skhosana of the Way of Life Church in Khayelitsha said the call for the end of corruption should not be framed by elitist concerns, but in a way that includes the concerns of those who are living in poverty as a result of corruption.

Skhosana said discourse needed to go deeper than just people speaking from the comfort of their homes and boardrooms. “I want someone in Nkanini [an informal settlement in Khayelitsha] to say he is speaking about me. He is representing me.”

Skhosana said “a call to end corruption was also a call to end informal settlements”.

Also present at yesterday’s launch were Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town Stephen Brislin, Imam Rashied Omar and Rabbi Warren Goldstein.

Goldstein said that no society can survive without firm moral principles and that people needed to help fight corruption because it ate away at everything from education to health to other areas.

Mokgoba said corruption threatened to destroy the nation and he called on every individual to get involved.

“We should encourage other communities beyond the Western Cape to join… We are learning as the religious community to speak truth to power, but we are afraid to speak truth to our friends who are in power,” he said.

Brislin said that silence was not the solution to ending corruption and that the religious community needed to take the lead and promote a more ethical way of living. “We need not only reconciliation, but healing.”

Omar said the initiative by the religious community would include education and advocacy and that there were more events planned for December 9, which is Anti-Corruption Day.

neo.maditla@inl.co.za