South Africa remains a safe place for religious beliefs and practices

South Africa has got many things right since 1994, when that unjust and quite vicious system was abandoned. While many ills that have beset the country since that epochal year began to take shape in the womb of that era, the democratic polity has had to nurture and nurse those ills with varying degrees of success. 

With good reason, the chattering class has been loath to praise anything positive. Reporters and commentators are traditionally averse to sunshine journalism – and this is a good thing. Across society city citizens have weighed up progress, such as it is, on the basis of material gains and losses, and on this score the results show stark imbalances. South Africa is a shockingly unequal society. This is consistent with global trends where governments are bracing for massive advances in new technology, and trying to “keep increases in inequality within acceptable bounds”. 

You can throw a stick in any direction and hit one of the many things that have gone wrong in South Africa. It’s a small mercy that the state has kept systemic threats to religious expression out of the democratic-era polity. By systemic threats is meant state-sponsored or state-sanctioned violence against religions, including the destruction of the cultural landscape of religious groups. Among the most destructive (domestic or sub-national) forces in the world today are Hindu nationalism in India, Jewish nationalism in Israel and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar. These vary ideationally and in application, but the results are similar; in each case the state or government effectively sanctions religious violence and/or religious exceptionalism as a force for exclusion and erasure.

Among the successes, one of the good things about democratic South Africa is that the country is free from systemic threats against particular religions, where the lines between the state and predominant religious groups have been blurred. There may be sporadic anti-Indian violence in places like Canada, fears of “brown people taking over Britain”, and hysteria about white people being replaced by dark-skinned others in the US. 

In India, Hindu nationalists have been destroying Christian places of worship and forcing Christians to “revert” to Hinduism as their original religion. There is a drive, among loyalists to the Indian ruling party, to force “ghar wapsi” – a forced “homecoming” and reclamation of ancient identity. The overriding belief is that people were born Hindus, and Christians have simply been led astray.

In Israel, Christian and Muslim places of worship are being destroyed as part of broadening and deepening the Jewish state. In recent years the state of Israel has bombed or attacked the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius; the Catholic Holy Family Church; church-affiliated institutions such as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital; the Christian village of Taybeh; the Orthodox Arab Cultural and Social Centre; frozen Orthodox Patriarchate accounts in Jerusalem; imposed heavy taxes on church properties; and seized Armenian church properties. This erasure of the Christian, or non-Jewish (Muslim), cultural landscape and religious iconography was part of the initial (late 1940s) violence against non-Jewish groups, such as the killing of 25 Palestinian Christians in Semiramis Hotel during the 1948 bombing by the Haganah, and has been described as “an unprecedented assault threatening their historic presence and continued mission in the Holy Land.”

There have also been reports of Christian graves being ripped up or destroyed in Israel. For what it’s worth, in Muslim-majority Malaysia the last resting place of the very small minority of Jews who arrived in that country from Baghdad is protected and preserved. The “Penang kaddish” is a small reference in the manuscript on Malaysia I am working on. The synagogue in Mumbai is also a protected heritage site. Because of an interest in vernacular architecture I have visited the Neve Shalom Synagogue, the Ahrida Synagogue and the Ashkenazi Synagogue in Istanbul. 

In Myanmar, the state and Buddhism have become “intertwined”. When I first visited Myanmar in 2012 there was already evidence of a lethal Buddhist nationalism, which specifically targeted Muslims in that country. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been celebrated in the West for her stance on human rights, has been increasingly quiet, since my first visit, about what has been described as “Buddhist anti-Muslim nationalism”. 

Already during the year after my first visit, the Washington Post, pointed to the silence of Aung San Suu Kyi. She has also been accused of complicity in the “Rohingya ‘ethnic cleansing’”. (I have since that visit taught displaced Karen children and Christian children, and spent time in refugee settlements on the Thai-Myanmar border).

In India, Hindu nationalism (anti-Christian and anti-Muslim nationalism) has been rising steadily over the past decade or more. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has given a nod to what one of its legislators in Madhya Pradesh called for: “Chadar Mukt, Father Mukt Bharat” (an India free of veil-wearing Muslims and Christian priests).

India also passed the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, which was ostensibly aimed at controlling immigration and refugees, but specifically excludes Muslim refugees. This is consistent with the ideal of creating “an India free of veil-wearing Muslims”.

In each of the three examples there is a state-endorsed, systemic threat against religions other than the “official” religion. This is not to say that there are not attacks on Christians or Jews or Muslims in countries around the world. In fact, the fear of “replacement” in the US is driven by anti-Semitism. A belief among white nationalists in that country is that “the Jews” are leading a conspiracy against whites. In Pakistan you can get stoned (or killed) for alleged blasphemy, and there have been attacks on Christians, but there is no state-sanctioned nor a systemic threat against Christianity. In Saudi Arabia there are heavy restrictions on public non-Muslim gatherings, but there is no official policy, nor a systemic threat against Christian institutions and the cultural landscape of Christianity. The Vatican City is considered a country; it is a country that is a Christian preserve – a bit/a lot like Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The caprices of fashion expect stock-phrase criticism of Iran, Russia and China. In Iran, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians have shared the land for centuries, notwithstanding clashes over these centuries. For instance, when Israel attacked Iran earlier this year, Iranians across society gathered in solidarity. In Moscow, Vladimir Putin opened the Cathedral Mosque, one of the largest mosques in Europe, a decade ago, and non-orthodox Christian groups flourish across that country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a religious revival across Russia, according to the Oxford Handbook of Global Religions. In China, the Niujie Mosque mosque has been rebuilt by successive Chinese regimes over more than 1,000 years. Today, the mosque, founded in 966 CE, serves a large, stable and prosperous Muslim community in China. 

The point here is that India, Myanmar and Israel are three examples where the state is actively involved in, or complicit in the erasure of “other” religions. These processes are not (yet) complete, but the fingerprints of the state are evident in these three countries. None of this suggests that Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Sikh places of worship have all been safe spaces. Christians, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs (among others) face serious threats to their person. In some places it has been subtle and clever; Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew insisted that a Sikh temple did not pay the rent, but a commercial enterprise would.

He was quite firm about the replacement of places of worship with liberal capitalist enterprises; “it is not possible,” he said “to govern this place with its teeming population without taking some firm and even unpleasant measures”. (See the report “Why Shrine Must be Moved” published in the Straits Times of 3 November 1965). 

For what it’s worth, the only “teeming population” was the Chinese settlers that the British brought to the island, specifically, to “replace” native people of the Island since the 1800s. That’s another story.

There are, no doubt, racists and bigots, ethno-nationalists or ethno-supremacists in South Africa. We should not traduce the feelings of persecution among religious groups. Notwithstanding all of this, there is no organised, state-sponsored or systemic threat against religious groups in South Africa – and that’s a good thing. DM