Resistance Is Futile

Thinking about all the gay-hating homophobic and transphobic groups infesting our fair country today, and masquerading as religious or even educational or even civil institutions - I counted the big boys. 

 

Right at the top of the list of lunatics, there's the "Christian Action Network" (CAN), a vocal umbrella body which appears to operate like a sort of sanctuary for the crazies - a haven for smaller independently created activist bodies set up around a seemingly shared or common (I mean, really common) ideology of Christo-fascism. Together, they share the limelight from whatever local press will be desperate enough to give them attention, resources, and of course, rotate their talking heads to address rallies, meets and whatever these people get up to in their spare time.

 

After occasionally stirring up all sorts of drama over "blasphemy" in student magazines, publishing perverse false "expose's" on homosexuality, and whipping the minority of religious conservatives in South Africa into a froth about "moral" issues like abortion and the "Sexpo" in Cape Town, this body - which I would eagerly describe as a nest of domestic terrorists, has fallen remarkably quiescent of late. 

 

In the meantime, other, newer associated groups which haven't been around the political stage quite long enough to lose their veneer of public respectability yet, have emerged to take their shared repugnant anti human rights agenda into the halls of South Africa's government.

Rhema Church is one such group, and a committee-like body it created - the NILC, seems by its level of involvement with the ANC and Parliament to be virtually employed by the ruling party to achieve their aim of policing the morality of South Africans. 

 

Who can forget their apt and fitting moniker, "Zuma's God Squad"? Yes, I can picture them driving black squad-cars and paddy-wagons around town, mowing down pedestrians and arriving in the nick of time to block a child-endangering Pride march, or to haul same sex couples off to jail for threatening "the family" with public displays of affection and bits of paper legitimizing their unsanitary unions.

Aside from the derogatory comments and snide remarks espoused by other similar groups in this country who have vested interests in actual politics (such as the ACDP, CDA, PACYL and other comic relief efforts masquerading as serious politicians - I'm often tempted to think they only exist solely to dilute the vote), these are the biggest religious fundamentalist bodies muscling in on political matters surrounding the civil rights of whole sectors of South African society, if not as a whole.

I stopped for a moment to take stock of some of the newer religious right wing groups surfacing in South Africa. At the top of the list is Erroll Naidoo's Family Policy Institute (FPI). Based in Cape Town, this group is supported directly by the US religious right wing group the Family Research Council. The FRC, as I've reported before, is a recognized hate-group in the USA. Who do they hate? Well, probably everybody who isn't a Christian fundamentalist with extremist views on abortion, secularism, evolution, home-schooling, gun laws or homosexuality - and that's just to start with. Naidoo hates gay people - in fact, he even bragged about it in an interview - and he has spent at least 15 years proving it by taking action to oppose or try to undo every single human or civil rights gain our community has made since 1992. Currently he is still working on overturning marriage equality, but seems to be warming up on prostitution and pornography first.

An interesting new arrival on the scene in South Africa is the so-called "GODLY GOVERNANCE NETWORK". There is more to the GGN than meets the eye - they seem to be birds of a feather with the same principles as the FPI, ACDP and CAN - and I wouldn't be surprised if there is actual ACDP involvement and connections to the Family Policy Institute or CAN  in there too. Looking on their website, I found just what I was looking for - posted articles by Peter Hammond (CAN), Steve Swart (ACDP) and Erroll Naidoo (FPI) - and all of them dyed-in-the-wool and outspoken homophobes. The GGN is in my opinion, just another head of the same right wing "great commissionist" hydra monster which is currently raising head after head in local politics almost as fast as we can cut them off.

It seems to me that like the CAN, FPI and any other group which uses the words "salt and light" as mystical symbols of Christianity, the GGN are, firstly, totally ignorant of the origin of this symbolism - in what they derogatorily refer to as "the occult" and magickal practice - and secondly, yet another US religious right supported group which should be avoided by anyone actually looking for a church that will actually teach them Christianity, except perhaps in terms of opposites.

Then there is the JASA, or rather poorly named "Justice Alliance of SA". This group is fronted by a man who brands himself as "John Smyth QC" - the QC is for "Queens Council", which is an English law practitioner, and incidentally not of any relevance in South Africa. Mr. Smyth also brands himself as an expert in constitutional law - and chiefly in the context of finding ways to defeat or subvert it in order to advance his religious fundamentalist agenda, which is of course, virulently homophobic.

During the court battle for gay marriage equality in 2005-6, Mr. Smyth was a "friend of the court" on the side against marriage equality. Mr. Smyth is also neck-deep in that other pig-pit called "Doctors For Life" - a group of fakers pretending to be bona fide medical experts, banded together to push religious fundamentalist clap-trap as medical and scientific fact intended to malign GLBT people's humanity. DFL's chief concern was (and still is) gay rights, gay marriage, and peddles a plethora of slanderous and manufactured lies surrounding health risks and gay sex, HIV, and naturally, abortion. In the "world view" of groups of this ilk, ALL life is sacred - unless of course, if it is gay.

According to Mr. Smyth's personal website, "In 1984 John and Anne Smyth moved with their family to Zimbabwe to do mission work. After two years with African Enterprise they founded Zambesi Ministries which they directed for the next 15 years until John reached 60. Anne and John now make their home in Cape Town. John is available as a consultant in constitutional law and serves Doctors for Life International and the Justice Alliance of South Africa."

African Enterprise, I might point out, was a supposedly Christian missionary organization that became heavily involved in the fight to deprive gay people of the right to marriage equality in South Africa in 2005-6. Their fearless leader, Michael Cassidy (yet another homophobic American evangelist living here and heading up their multinational operation) was also leading another group called the Marriage Alliance of SA (MASA), a splinter group of SACLA 2 (circa 2003 or so) - the religious right wing extremist organization which declared open war on homosexuality in 2003-5 during the lead-up to the court case. Both Cassidy and Naidoo made spectacles by grandstanding in the press, and making slanderous remarks about the Pink Community and relying upon whatever credibility pretending to be clergy could bring them. Nowadays Cassidy seems to be exploiting ways to unite all the charismatic churches into one ecumenical movement, and supporting that other champion of the Patriarchy and cave-man lifestyle - that "pray-away-the-gay" wing nut and misogynistic potato prophet, Angus Buchan.

In my experience, the deeper you dig into this tar pit of dark ambition and fascist fervor, the more worms you will find squirming and wriggling around in the daylight, and the more narrow-minded little people you will find with links to multiple small two-man crew fundamentalist organizations and back-yard or basement groups, each conspiring in their own zealous little way to bring about their religious fundamentalist revolution to live up to their "kingdom now" theological ambitions.

You may find some people who lead one little group, sitting over drinks (non-alcoholic of course) with buddies who run similar organizations, and you will find them sitting on the same Boards or Interest Groups of other bodies together, having fingers in the pie in several Community Based Organizations or Non Profit Organizations, often with links - of one kind or another, to people in government. Naturally they will all be respected members of high-flying charismatic churches, and raking in the money to do "God's work", building a better mouse-trap and looking up hopefully every time they hear a 'snap'.

It is very strange to me now, thinking back to when I was a kid - when people spoke of conservative churches, I used to think in terms of what people wore to church and what kind of music they played there. The "conservative" churches forced people to wear suits or neat prim dresses and Sunday hats - and sang songs you could slit your wrists to with a smile - except that smiling was frowned upon, and so was getting blood in the carpet. The "nicer" - or what I used to think were the nicer churches, used to let you wear a nice pair of jeans or a smart short or skirt and a t-shirt and sneakers - and had ministers that led worship with a guitar - and sometimes you used to laugh out loud and clap without anyone thinking twice about it.

These days, I notice a HUGE paradox at play. It seems to me that it's the churches full of youths clad in jeans, t-shirts and gym-shoes, with live bands and multimedia displays and flashing RGB strobe lights and even TV channels of their own, who are the conservative ones. Why conservative? Because while the music may be easier on the ear, the message isn't the inclusiveness of God's love - it's the message of otherness - or rather of othering others - and of CONTROL and DOMINION they want to extend over every part of every person's life, whether they are Christian or not. 

 

In fact, the whole machine doesn't even seem to compute that there is such a divergence from the original path, or even a question that the one they're on is the right, or only path at all. If you're not a Christian, the mindset dictates, resistance is futile - you WILL be assimilated. And you WILL obey. Or you will be destroyed. 

 

Suddenly, the old folks with their formality and suits and Sunday hats don't seem quite so terrifying anymore, do they?

Conservatives. Religious fundamentalists. Extremists. They are to my mind, a bunch of people whose asses are so tight, if they were to fart, only a dog could hear it.

It is alarming to me to see an increasing number of these religious fundamentalist organizations whose entire existence seems focused on politics, government and on getting into it - with clear intentions of turning the country into a theocratic state or theonomy. If they seem obsessed with government, politics and power - and getting into it as soon as possible, it's because they ARE. I have to ask myself, how long will it take before they succeed? Or will the moderate, inert majority that makes up society, slow them down and frustrate them until they weary of their fervor, zealotry and fanaticism? I hope so.

And what is with Cape Town anyway? Of all the groups I have found so far that have founded themselves on homophobic notions, paranoia, extremism and hysteria in this country - most of them are based in the Cape Town area! Is it something in the water? Is it the close proximity to the nuclear power station? Is it, like, the mountain, man? What?

Christian Action Network (and most of it's hundred-plus affiliates, including Africa Christian Action, Gospel Defence League and Frontline Fellowship), Family Policy Institute, Doctors For Life, and Nurses For Life (the last two of which also have offices in Holland alongside ACA's) are only the tip of the iceberg. There are also at least four different "ex-gay" so-called "ministries" in Cape Town now, with sub-branches and representatives and "cell-groups" around the country, with a steady supply of fresh victims being referred to them by local churches who believe it is possible to pray away the gay - or torture it out of you. 

 

The most striking, underlying fact evident to me about all of this nightmarish religious totalitarianism, is that ALL of these groups, up to and including their insane, wide-eyed Christo-fascist puritanical "dominionist" ideology, are foreign imports originating from the United States, with much of their support - whether financial, ideological or logistical, also coming from there.

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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.

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