ANTHONY BUTLER: The ANC has the edge in changing spiritual landscape

African independent churches, evangelical bodies and ‘prosperity churches’ are now centre of faith

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

05 APRIL 2024

The Easter weekend offered a useful reminder that SA society is changing in ways that might leave some of our political parties behind. 

This remains a predominantly Christian society. The 2022 census suggested that a full 85% of South Africans consider themselves Christian, with fewer than one in 10 describing their beliefs as “traditional African”. No other religion reaches even 2%. 

Of course, Christianity played a major role in both white Afrikaner politics and the formation and evolution of the ANC. The Dutch Reformed Church was famously described as the National Party at prayer.

The ANC’s founders were primarily converts to the optimistic Protestant faiths taught in mission schools. Anglicanism and Methodism encouraged temperance, and the celebration of commerce and good works, as an avenue for civilisation.

Local variants of liberation theology that emerged in the late 1960s helped shape the black consciousness ideology that mobilised the youth in the 1970s — including our president, Cyril Ramaphosa. In the 1980s and early 1990s many churches played a central role in the United Democratic Front — though of course many did not. 

After 1994, under the leadership of the secret Methodist Nelson Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, the ANC tried to remake SA as a modern and secular country. However, such leaders and their churches were becoming increasingly unrepresentative of Christianity in the wider society.

Today about 5% of Christians are Methodists, and a similar number are Anglicans or Reformed Church members. They are dwarfed by enormous African independent churches and fast-growing Pentecostal and evangelical bodies. 

For independent churches, political affairs are a distraction from the demands of spiritual health. Change comes about not by means of good works but with the return of the Kingdom of God, after the existing social order has been destroyed by Armageddon. 

Many fast-expanding churches are “prosperity churches”, which assert that God grants material prosperity to believers who have enough faith. They foster an entrepreneurial attitude, generous tithing and life improvement strategies.

In now predominant churches, economic problems are blamed on the work of the devil rather than on government incompetence. Unemployment and stagnation are attributed to the collective sin of the nation rather than to ANC policy failure or corruption. 

Pastors encourage congregations to pray for leaders to mend their ways, rather than agitating for their removal. They also argue that Christians — or people who say they are Christians — should be in positions of leadership in the country to promote moral regeneration. 

The ANC has adapted to this changing spiritual landscape far better than most opposition parties. Jacob Zuma tapped into the currents early and adroitly, becoming pastor of the Full Gospel Church, the eThekwini Community Church and the Miracles Gospel Church in advance of the Polokwane conference that brought him to power. 

Zuma’s ANC established a pattern in which ANC leaders use the Easter weekend on election years to visit the full range of denominations. Last weekend, for example, Ramaphosa attended a Free State church and a Methodist service in Eastern Cape, and joined EFF president Julius Malema at the annual Easter pilgrimage to St Engenas Zion Christian Church in Moria. 

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula noted this past weekend that ANC leaders were “not pure”. Their souls needed to be enriched because “they too can make mistakes … That is why we place the church at the centre of the work that we do.”

While this may not amount to a winning strategy, it is likely to reduce the scale of the ANC’s electoral decline. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.