Televangelist Angus Buchan has told the world, or at least his mainly Afrikaans following that God only made a covenant with Afrikaners and Jews.
Angus Buchan has done nothing different this time, these are the views and comments he has built his multi-million rand ministry on.
What is concerning is that his recent racist rant is at a time when South Africa needs to use religion and faith to unite the nation more than ever.
Buchan's anti-black theology seeks to remind black people of years of apartheid laced theology.
In his conceited view, the Broedebond is the statutory ordained league of God's servants and no one with any darker skin will see the kingdom of heaven.
His proposition that heaven is a chapel designed for only Afrikaners and Jews is insidiously racist but it is also unscriptural and deeply concerning.
Painful as it is to the Christian believer, these views are not new. They have been the basis of black peoples suffering in this continent from the very emergence of colonialism.
I am not saddened that in 2019 another individual uses religion and faith to hide his bigot and racially divisive views, I am more displeased because it is a well-known evangelist who claimed to be uniting South Africa for God.
Besides his flawed biblical and hermetical reprise, any basic theological tutorship would have taught him that it was neither the native Jews nor the Afrikaner’s who made the first blood covenant with God.
The establishing of a blood covenant generally followed the following process:
a) The covenant partners would first face each other to proclaim the blessing and curses over each other.
b) The next step was to sacrifice an animal and cut it in two. The two halves would be placed on the ground and the partners would walk around them in a figure of eight while continuing the blessings.
c) They then planted a tree and the blood of the sacrifice was smeared onto the tree as an everlasting testimony to the covenant. As the tree grew, it would serve as a reminder to the generations that their fathers were in a covenant.
d) They would then slit their hands/palms and strike hands in a pledge, allowing their blood to mingle as they declared themselves blood brothers. Ash or sand was then rubbed into the wound and the resulting scar remained as a testimony and reminder to the covenant.
God made a blood covenant with Abraham. The Abrahamic blessing was in itself designed to unite tribes and nations and not divide them.
As it is, Christianity is targeted by victims of colonialism because the tenets of the religion were used to justify the actions of the colonists. Some still argue that the agenda of colonialism in Africa was similar to that of Christianity.
In one statement, that joins many others, Angus Buchan has set back South Africa's faith and race unity project by at least 50 years.
Is it grievously unacceptable that God loves black people as he loves every other race?
Buchan and his ilk should not be allowed to destroy the difficult work of this democracy, equally, they should not be allowed to continue misrepresenting the word of God.
Galatians 3:28 states that "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
* Sifiso Mahlangu is the Group Head of Politics at Independent Media.