As posted on the Alternative Religions Forum on October 13, 2020:
The Citizen newspaper on October 12, 2020 printed an article entitled "Threats against Satanic Church reverend's life and family".
The article describes how Reverend Tristan Kapp - pictured in the accompanying photograph, has endured death threats on social media - extending also to members of his family, and how individuals - ostensibly supporters of the "Farmer's Lives Matter" movement - have gone as far as sharing videos of the entrance gates of his home on TikTok.
The matter came to ARF's attention on the 12th, when calls for transcripts of the article were seen on Facebook, since the Citizen has reserved the full article for paying subscribers only.
On the morning of October 13, a post by Reverend Riaan Swiegelaar, one of the founders of the SA Satanic Church, clarified the nature of these attacks.
To break this down succinctly, a man who's committed no crime and who has done no harm or injury to others is being threatened with being burned alive, and his sister raped - by people calling themselves Christians and using Christian dogma and historically institutional hatred for Satanism to support their hatred - apparently just because he's openly a clergyman in a legally registered South African religious organization called the South African Satanic Church - an atheistic body.
It's very telling how the people issuing threats of violence and justifying this abhorrent behavior with religion while saying "read the bible" are the same people who conveniently seem to have not read the parts telling them to be kind, tolerant, forgiving and above all, loving and non-violent... which as virtually every Satanist will tell you, is why there are Satanists.
As Gandhi said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
The comments on the article on the Citizen's FB page also reveals a startling level of ignorance about Satanism as a belief system - and about the legal separation of religion and state. This is not "a Christian country" as they assert - it's a secular country. The Constitution says so.
Christians appear to be supporting those who issued these threats, often blindly - while those who make the threats also quite openly claim to be Christians.
This, in a country where freedom of religion - and FROM religion - are constitutionally guaranteed? It's not illegal to be a Satanist in South Africa, or to practice one's religion, nor to identify publicly as a Satanist - just as it's not a crime to be a Christian or to identify or to practice as such, though it seems that equality with others is not enough for some.
The victim is being stalked, with hostile people posting videos of his residence on social media. It appears there may be very real concerns for the safety of Rev Kapp and his family.
This is totally unacceptable.
There must be legal consequences for making these threats against someone's life and well-being. For the law to tolerate or ignore this sort of violent, terrorist behavior would set a dangerous social precedent which could only lead to escalation.
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