FROM eating snakes, to drinking petrol; South Africans have had to take long steps to illustrate their faith to religious leaders.
These are some of the findings made by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission).
CRL will later on today release its findings of a study into commercialisation of religion after it summoned religious to appear before the commission in a bid to investigate the abuse of people’s belief systems.
“Over and above those Leaders who were summoned, the CRL Rights Commission further organized a number of engagements with religious organisations in order to explain the purpose, objectives, process and expected outcomes of this investigative study,” the commission said in a statement.
CRL Rights Commission convened a panel of experts including psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, social workers, etc, to discuss and critique the state of the nation’s psyche and how it affects the religious sector. It said one of the questions that came out strongly from the study is the issue of what makes members of our society so gullible to an extent of believing everything that they are told and especially where some were seen performing acts such as:
snake eating; grass eating; hair eating; petrol drinking; flower eating; doom spraying; putting people into a freezer; making people eat washing powder; drinking of jeyes fluid and dettol; eating of rattex; drinking of car engine cleaning fluid; driving of cars over congregants and and the giving away of hard earned money including retirement or pension to pastors.
“The draft report was then made available to religious leaders and organizations for their comments or inputs. The final report has now been presented to the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs portfolio committee in parliament,” the commission added.
In 2014, Pastor Lesego Daniel of Rabboni Center Ministries ordered followers to eat grass at his Garankuwa ministry, claiming that it will bring them closer to God.
In 2015, Prophet Penuel Mnguni of the End Times Disciples Ministries in Soshanguve ordered his congregants to eat snakes. Mnguni was later arrested after the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals laid charges against for the act.
In 2016, Lethabo Rabalago of the Mount Zion General Assembly in Limpopo, posted pictures of him spraying congregants with Doom Super Multi Insect Killer, claiming it cured numerous ailments.
In 2017, Pastor Light Mpnyeki of Grace Living Hope Ministries offered his congregants a concoction of Rattex and water to "cure" them.