Why South Africans should be concerned when the state begins granting licenses to churches

Your pastor may eventually need to get a government license in order to preach. where a committee appointed by the state determines the “acceptability” of the teachings of your church.

Where a bureaucrat may close your congregation for not submitting the required documentation or paying the required fees.

It sounds like something from a dystopian novel, but it’s not. In South Africa, it is currently taking place.

The “Section 22 Committee,” a new organization secretly established under the CRL Rights Commission and led by Prof. Musa Xulu, is hard at work establishing the framework for religious regulation in this nation. The same concept was rejected by Parliament in 2018.

After years of hearings, the CRL Commission attempted to persuade Parliament that allowing the state to license religious practitioners, examine doctrines, and establish government-approved “peer review committees” with the authority to dismiss pastors and close churches was the only way to put an end to abusive “fly-by-night” churches.

Parliament said no. Loudly.

Instead, they told the religious community to sort itself out through voluntary self-regulation. The result? A Code of Conduct signed by organisations representing more than 20 million South Africans of faith. Problem solved, without touching our constitutional right to freedom of religion.

But the CRL never accepted the word “no.”

Let’s jump ahead to 2025. Under the guise of Timothy Omotoso’s recent high-profile (and contentious) acquittal, they have rebranded the same plan as an “independent” Section 22 Committee. The same objective state control over religion through covert means.

If this committee gets its way, here’s what we’re looking at:

1. Churches will have to register and be licensed by the state.
2. Doctrines and practices will be vetted for “acceptability.”
3. Pastors and imams and rabbis could be struck off a government roll for teaching something the committee dislikes.
4. Small independent congregations, especially charismatic and Pentecostal ones will be the first in the firing line.

In Africa, we’ve already seen this film. In 2024, Rwanda closed over 5,600 churches for not meeting state “standards.”. Similar laws have been introduced in Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, and Angola. The pattern is consistent: it begins with “protecting people from abuse” and concludes with the silencing of voices that the government finds objectionable.

To be clear, abuse exists and needs to be prevented. Abuse, however, is already illegal. Whether it occurs in a church, a mosque, a sangoma’s hut, or Parliament itself, fraud is fraud, assault is assault, and rape is rape. We need the current police to perform their duties; we don’t need new religious police.

As Michael Swain of FOR SA rightly says: “Faith is not a profession like medicine or law where there’s a
set body of knowledge and compulsory qualifications. Faith is a fundamental human right.”

Even opinions that others find “bizarre, irrational, or illogical” are protected by the South African Constitution (that’s settled law). We’ve crossed a line from which there is no turning back when the state begins to determine what religions are acceptable.

This is not solely a Christian problem. It’s not just a Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu problem. The state has the authority to license or de-license all religions when it can license one. Every South African who respects freedom ought to be concerned. Very concerned.

The fight is on. The South African Church Defenders have already launched a High Court application to stop the CRL’s overreach. The rest of us need to speak up too, before the right to worship freely becomes just another government permission slip.

Because once the state starts licensing churches, no one’s freedom is safe.

Michael Swain