Durban - Manfred Stegen, the brother of the founder of KwaSizabantu (KSB) in Kranskop, likened the secrecy of the organisation to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany when he testified regarding allegations of rape and abuse at the rural mission in Durban yesterday.
Stegen was testifying at hearings that have seen several victims, workers and pastors testifying about allegations of rape and gross human rights abuses at the mission before the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic (CRL) Communities.
Responding to the allegations in a statement on Monday, some which relate to alleged incidents more than 20 years ago, KwaSizabantu representative Ruth Combrink said the process the commission had followed had been “fatally flawed” and that the mission had been co-operating with the police.
Stegen testified that women had been raped at the mission and then blamed for the crime when they reported it.
He said his children, aged 4 and 6, had been beaten as “punishment” for no reason.
He described his brother, Erlo, the founder of the mission, as “an upright man” that the family had respected.
However, he said the family had been “split in half” when he started questioning things at the mission, and three siblings and their mother had decided to leave with him.
He said a co-worker at the mission station had been told to leave his wife and children there and go back to Zimbabwe after he questioned the leadership. A week later he committed suicide.
“From the beginning there was something that disturbed me, and that was secrecy, things happened and the congregation never knew why I am old enough to say, it was one of the strong points of Hitler, secrecy. It was one of the strong points of our previous government, nobody knew what was being done and it was only later when things came to light and one was shocked,” he said.
Pieter Becker, 47, who arrived at the mission in 1995 when he was 7 years old, told the commission that he endured physical abuse for years.
He claimed women were not allowed to wear trousers, and black women were not permitted to have long hair.
“If you were part of the mission, you were immediately told to break with your relatives who were not part of it. They have been hurting people for many years,” Becker said.
Another witness claimed that she now hates and doesn’t want anything to do with the church, God and the Bible after the trauma she endured.
“Where we slept, there was a man that used to come in whenever the lights were off. We were raped, repeatedly. We had nowhere to run,” she said.
Combrink said in the statement that it was as if the commission had already decided that KSB was guilty, yet it had immediately sent its response to the allegations raised in a media video titled Exodus to the SAPS when they came to light.
“KSB sent its response to the allegations about multiple ongoing rapes to the SAPS entreating them to investigate as a matter of urgency. The truth is that such an investigation will be quick, as there is not a shred of evidence to support these outrageous allegations by the two ‘star’ witnesses of the video,” she said.
The Mercury