CRL sets up all-Pentacostal Church council to oversee Christian practices

South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) launched the Christian Sector Section 22 Committee at Rhema Bible Church in Randburg, a move to bolster self-regulation among the country’s 45 million Christians.

This initiative, led by Professor Musa Xulu, aims to draft a voluntary code of conduct to curb financial exploitation, sexual abuse, and “rogue” practices in churches. The closed-door event, attended by figures like Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane of the Zion Christian Church and Inkosi Phakama Shembe of the Nazareth Baptist Church, signals renewed momentum for oversight in a sector long plagued by scandals.

The CRL, being a Chapter 9 constitutional body, their inquiry was initiated in 2015 which led to its 2017 report, The Commercialisation of Religion and Abuse of People’s Belief Systems. Sparked by exposés of pastors feeding congregants snakes, grass, or petrol, and charging for “miracles,” the report followed nationwide hearings and subpoenas of over 85 leaders. It revealed rampant commercialization such as churches installing card machines for tithes and unregulated foreign preachers linked to fraud. 

In 2017, the CRL proposed sweeping reforms: mandatory registration of leaders with vetting of qualifications and criminal records, shifting oversight from the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) to the CRL, and creating a legislated “peer-review council” to issue licenses and enforce codes. Foreign leaders would face work permit quotas, and SARS would tax church revenues. In 2018, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) reviewed these proposals. While some MPs backed intervention to protect vulnerable congregants, opposition from religious groups, including the South African Council of Churches (SACC), stalled progress. The committee rejected mandatory regulation, citing risks to constitutional freedoms of religion (Section 15) and association (Section 31), and urged voluntary self-regulation instead. No bill was tabled, rendering the effort “failed legislation,” as FOR SA’s Michael Swain later described it.

Critics, including the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the nonprofit Christian organization Freedom of Religion South Africa, and the International Institute for Religious Freedom, naturally opposed these intrusive policies, which threaten to establish state control of Christian worship, much like the British Empire did through its deployment of loyal imperialists into the Dutch Reformed Church at the turn of the 20th century. Today, Freedom of Religion South Africa (FOR SA), decry the new initiative as a veiled attempt to revive a failed 2017 regulatory push, raising constitutional concerns. While the CRL denies that they are directly regulating Christian practices, they are in effect selecting an oversight body to police the activities of Christian denominations, and have selected the most powerful and moneyed Pentacostal churches to lead the enforcement of the programme’s agenda.

The abuses discussed are a serious concern, and many are extreme and criminal in nature. But the CRL’s focus is selective, and its choice of leaders chosen to implement these changes is somewhat misguided.

Legislation

The CRL launched their attempt to regulate and control the country’s religions (described tellingly as the “religious sector”, as if it were an economic activity like mining or tourism). The draft bill, as outlined in the 2017 report and subsequent discussions, included

The Committee

The October 2025 launch of the Section 22 Committee marks a pivot to sector-led governance, led by Professor Musa Xulu, who has no religious or theological background, having studied ethnomusicology and tourism at UKZN. His biggest claim to fame so far is a recent spat with the Zulu monarchy, in which the King challenged him to a traditional stick fight over his derogatory remarks about traditional institutions.

Comprising 19 members from major denominations and chaired by Xulu, the Committee is hosted at the Rhema Bible Church in Randburg. Its members include nine from the Nazareth Baptist Church (aka the “Shembe” church), three from the ZCC (two from the St Engenas branch), one from the Council of African Independent Churches, one from the Evangelical Alliance,  one from the Great Commission Western Cape, one from the Moral Regeneration Movement, and of course, Joshua McCauley of Rhema.

This selection was by invitation only, and only includes Pentacostal churches. It excludes all traditional churches including Anglicans, Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, Ethiopians and Orthodox. It is also notable that the Pentacostal churches selected were all supportive of the government’s COVID policies. The Moral Regeneration Movement itself was the first state-sponsored attempt to align South African Churches with ANC political doctrines, so it is only natural the CRL would invite them to the panel.

The Committee will draft “ethical guidelines”, focusing on accountability “without state control”. The CRL frames it as a “national conversation” to protect congregants, particularly women and children, while “preserving religious autonomy”.

The bulk of these major churches are strongly tied to one another both doctrinally and structurally. The Rhema Bible Church is itself based in Oklahoma, and is transparently an American export. The ZCC is less obviously so, but is partnered with the US-based Zion Evangelical Ministries of Africa (ZEMA), which sends missionaries from the U.S. and other countries to train ZCC leaders in “true Zion teachings” (biblical literacy and purification rites) across southern Africa. ZEMA, connected to the original Zion Church of John Alexander Dowie, which converted and trained the ZCC’s founder Engenas Lekganyane, facilitates workshops and discipleship for amaZioni groups, including ZCC, to counter syncretism.

Other partners include the Nazareth Baptist Church, or “Shembe” churches, who are also controlled by ZEMA, and were also founded by Dowie. While the ZCC has 5-10 million adherents, the Shembe are also very large, at 4-5 million.

What is striking about the selection of these partners is that these churches are some of the most visibly scandalised organisations in South Africa, with Ray McCauley’s Rhema Bible Church being infamous for using its congregation as a cash cow for its church hierarchy, McCauley having been infamous for his excessively lavish lifestyle, but over the years, numerous members have been found to be exploiting their congregants with at least tacit approval of the leadership.

A July 2022 report accused Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane and his son Edward of “scamming” members via the Kganya Benefit Fund Trust (underwritten by Sanlam), imposing mandatory burial and accident insurance to enrich church leaders. The 1948 split after the death of their founder (“main” ZCC vs. St. Engenas branch) involved power struggles, with Edward Lekganyane’s flamboyant style and creation of the militaristic Mokhukhu group criticized as authoritarian. Anecdotal evidence (including some this author has heard firsthand) suggests at least occasional violence against apostates.

In 2016, a blog post by John Nel and a testimony by a woman called Victoria Ngake alleged strange practices including the deification of their leaders (taught to view Lekganyane as a “living god”), the use of witchcraft practices in church, and cult-like controlling behaviour, in addition to widespread financial exploitation of what is broadly speaking a rather impoverished congregation. Even the CRL has had reports of corporal punishment for congregants submitted in 2017, just after their big report, after a pastor beat a choir boy for poor performance in a traditional dance performance. The CRL did not do anything meaningful about this, and trusted the ZCC to handle it internally. This matter remains unresolved.

US State Department observation

The US State Department has been monitoring the CRL’s progress these last nine years through annual reports, available on its website (the latest available here). The State Department has been in regular engagement with the CRL over its latest initiatives, though their efforts appear to predominantly be for information-gathering purposes.

In the latest report, they break down the numbers of the various denominations as follows:

“[…] approximately 82 percent of the population is Christian, 7 percent follows Indigenous beliefs, 6 percent is atheist or agnostic, and 2.4 percent is Hindu. Muslims constitute 1.7 percent of the population, of whom a great majority are Sunni. Shia religious leaders estimate not more than 3 percent of the Muslim population is Shia. Other religious groups include Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, and those following Chinese religions. Many Indigenous persons adhere to a belief system combining Christian and Indigenous religious practices. The Church of Scientology estimates it has approximately 100,000 members. Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary’s 2020 World Christian Database estimates 28 percent of the Christian population is Protestant, 8 percent Roman Catholic, and less than 1 percent Orthodox. Adherents of African Independent Churches constitute 51 percent, including the Zion Christian Church, Apostolic Faith Mission, and charismatic groups. The Nazareth Baptist Church states it has 8 million followers, predominantly among Zulu-speaking communities in KwaZulu-Natal Province. The Zion Christian Church has up to 6 million followers […] the Jewish population is 52,000, with the majority living in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The World Jewish Congress cited the Jewish population in South Africa as the largest in Africa and the eleventh largest in the world.”

They devote a small portion to discussion of the 700 deaths due to botched Xhosa circumcision rituals between 2006-21, as well as an enumeration of antisemitic incidents. They list the following organisations has receiving regular engagement from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development, and the Office of the Presidency: the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Methodist Church of Southern Africa, Hindu community, Tibetan Buddhist community, Nizamiye Mosque, Muslim Judicial Council, FORSA, SABJD, Pretoria Hebrew Congregation, Gardens Synagogue, Inner Circle (a Muslim LGBTQI+ organization), Hindu Maha Sabha, the Christian Coalition, Christian Social Services, American Jewish Committee, SAJBD, South African Secular Society, Freedom of Religion South Africa, and the Atheist Movement of South Africa.

Notably, there is zero overlap between this list and the list on the CRL’s Committee panel, suggesting politicaly motivated avoidance of Western influence. While in a certain sense that may be theoretically justified, it  also demonstrates that some political thought has gone into this.