Devilsdorp - An Objective Review From A Truth-telling Perspective

Last night, as an "assignment" to aid in formulating the outline of content for my upcoming doctoral thesis for next year, I watched all 4 episodes of "Devilsdorp", and took notes. I found it a very interesting show. Here are my thoughts in brief:

Devilsdorp was based on a book by Jana Marx - a qualified theologian/journalist - which I still have to also read for my thesis - is a symbolic confluence of several bad faith actors that grew out of South Africa's "Satanic Panic" of the 1990s, who have proselytized Christian evangelicalism while in the pursuit of social relevance and influence for themselves for decades. 

Firstly, let me say that I was very impressed by the quality of the series as a documentary - I've watched a lot of true crime shows in the past, mostly from Netflix, and a lot on YouTube as well, and in terms of production quality and presentation, it stands out very nicely as a South African production. The production didn't really take an overpowering angle where it overtly agreed with Marx and the personalities involved on their religious views of Christianity and Satanism - which to be frank - are pretty obsessive, fanatical and very narrowminded indeed - and frighteningly so. More could have been done though, to provide a more balanced, factual take on the supernatural claims presented.

There are subtitles, although I will probably have to confirm the spellings of various names of personalities involved if I need to refer to them later.

We saw Kobus Jonker - the retired policeman and witch hunter most of us who "dabbled in the occult" as he put it (laughing out loud here at the absurdity) during the last 30 years or so, will recognize - both as a Christian zealot with a badge who still presents himself as an "expert on Satanism and the occult" while knowing extremely little about serious occult beliefs and practices. F.H. Havenga, one of Jonker's understudies at the ORC, a former operative, and occasional "media expert" on Satanism clearly, also made several appearances. Havenga seemed to try very hard to not sound like the religious fanatic and anti-Satanist activist we know he is - making a living running a spiritual warfare ministry that sees "satanists" hiding behind bushes in the Free State, where for decades now, the SAPS has been operating on misinformation that pretends the violent youth "666 gangs" there are a "unique form of satanism" (Engela, C. 2021), in a way that still has scholars in certain academic fields confused and bewildered and even at odds with others on the topic of Satanism as a new religious movement. 

Jonker and his decades of advocacy have left a lasting legacy of moral panic and blatant ignorance about Satanism and occult beliefs still operating throughout the South African Police Service (SAPS), the media, and local religious organizations that wage "spiritual war" on anything and everything they believe isn't Christian - and therefore "satanic". ...Which is pretty much where wack-job extremist religious groups like "Overcomers Through Christ" - and it's deadly off-shoot "Electus Per Deus" originated.

You see, these sort of people operate under the impression - to varying degrees - that what they describe as Satanism and Satanists who fit into that understanding, are the real deal. I'm not denying that there are people that go around kidnapping and killing cats and the like, or committing murders in their supplications to the dark lord etc. What I AM saying, is that these people aren't really Satanists - they're pseudo-Satanists, people who believe the Christian warnings of what Satanism is supposed to be, and went off to start or join little groups based on those Christian beliefs of what Satanism is. They're not Satanists, they're "reverse Christians".

To clarify, no religion allows its own beliefs, rituals and practices to be defined by external religions - this is true for both atheistic and theistic/deistic forms of religious Satanism - but not in the case of pseudo-Satanism, because it while it diverges completely from the beliefs, practices and rituals of other forms of religious Satanism, it toes-the-line to what Christianity says Satanism is, believes and does.

The punchline about this whole debate is that the entire Christian moral panic about these fake "satanists" centers around an identity which was created by Christianity itself.

The truly damning indictment of people like Jonker and Havinga (and any number and examples of so-called Christian "experts on Satanism" you could provide) - who were thoroughly immersed in evangelicalist Christian indoctrination of what Satanism is - from a Christian point of view - is that they spent the last 40+ years building their professional careers on their complete and utter failure to realize and grasp this fact. Some "experts", right? 

The scary part of it all is, these little groups and crackpot individuals do occur - as evidenced by the case that is the focus of this documentary - but they're seldom identified for what they really are, even by people that are consulted as supposed "experts" in the field - who clearly aren't the right experts, in the right field, or who know anything relevant about the subject.

While EPD didn't identify as "Satanist" (the members all clearly identified as Christian), their beliefs centered around the claims of Cecilia Steyn being an "ex-Satanist" and refugee hiding from the "Satanic Church" - and I don't mean the one that operated out of Century City between 2020 and 2022, fronted by that pair of fraudulent kooks who made a huge social media production of their "miraculous conversion to Christianity" when it went under (Engela, C. 2023) - but some sort of nebulous, hidden, underground organization that fell right out of a conspiracy theory - and which does not exist outside of Steyn's imagination.

That said, none of these people, who identified as Christian, appeared to have any compunctions about murdering helpless people in the most brutal ways imaginable.

Considering the trend presented in the documentary, of Steyn's habit of living off the proceeds obtained from people that were killed for their money, it wouldn't surprise me that if she were in hiding at all, the reason she was in hiding (ostensibly from Satanists) was more than likely based on her avoiding being seen by people she had scammed or otherwise harmed prior to the start of the bloody reign of this cult group. But that's just a personal observation based on conjecture which I have no real evidence for, though it's a strong gut feeling.

Throughout the series it is explained how Steyn used her considerable general knowledge about Satanism and pseudo-satanism to wriggle into the Overcomers Through Christ group and gain the support of its leader, Ria Grunewald - as a manipulative grift to elicit emotional and financial support from the group. The group's focus was to convert supposed Satanists into Christians (and so, presumably they dealt with pseudo-satanists only, who all shared the same delusions of what does or does not constitute Satanism) Grunewald is said to have developed a course titled "Know Your Enemy" based on Steyn as a "case study" and her own input on what Satanism is, what it does, and how the "Satanic Church" operates. Frankly, the whole thing reminds me a little of Phil Botha's "miraculous escape" from "Satanism" in Durban back in the 1960s, and the only thing missing is the bizarre claims of time travel and levitation. 

I did try to find a downloadable copy of this course booklet, but it's not available anywhere. I was pretty sure someone who had a physical copy might have understood its scholarly value and uploaded it somewhere, but sadly this isn't the case. Either way, given the sort of presentation of "Satanism" by Grunewald and OTC - and the fact that Steyn, as a very skilled manipulator who even used fake blood capsules to dramatize regular "exorcisms" performed on her by her gullible followers - would've told her exactly what she wanted to hear, I have no doubts whatsoever that it would've mirrored the same sort of Christian anti-Satanist activist nonsense that has no relationship to religious Satanism at all, which you can find all over the internet.

The most visible part where I found the series lacking, was in presenting a more convincing opposing view for balance. While the producers did include a psychologist in the mix, to give a balanced response to metaphysical and supernatural claims and beliefs, and the rural policemen who seemed to be a little out of their depth, frankly - and he did a fairly good job of articulating these - they used someone whom I've never even heard of in the context of the moral panic in South Africa. Apparently, Louis Awerbuck, a clinical psychologist also worked for the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the 1990s, so perhaps that's why - but that nevertheless presents something of a definite bias in my view. They could instead have included someone like Dr. Gavin Ivey for example, who is widely known for a plethora of psychological papers skeptical of the issues surrounding claims of Satanism from the 1990s onwards, even though his papers have occasionally been used to support some of these. Who knows why the producers went this route? Perhaps Marx consulted Awerbuck for her book, leading to him being interviewed for the show? If so, why didn't she consult Ivey instead? Did keeping the entire set of references she consulted (at least as far as presented by the series) in-house to the SAPS and its "Occult Related Crimes" unit suit her biases? As I said, I still need to read the book, so I guess I'll find out then what the reason for this was.

At the end of the day - my future opinion of the book itself notwithstanding - the motives of Steyn, Electus Per Deus and her followers were not "Satanism", or psychopathy, but to kill for money, and to intimidate. They operated on an inane footing of supplication to Steyn, who had manipulated them into willingly submitting to her control, using religious beliefs to achieve this - as most religions have done throughout the centuries - even being willing to brutally murder on command. As for the motives of Marx for presenting the story in such a one-sided light, I can only assume that this suits her theological approach, which has clearly influenced her journalistic impartiality.

Ironically, it was another journalist who was mentioned in the series, as having lost her job when it was discovered that she had "fallen in love" with Le Roux, one of the youths convicted and jailed for murdering some of the victims of Electus Per Deus. On reflection, I cannot really understand why - she at least did not allow her personal feelings to influence her journalistic ethics.

To conclude, Electus Per Deus was a cult, and it was a criminal gang - and although initially described as "satanic", it was not the case, it was a cult-like criminal gang that used Christianity as its theme, not Satanism or Satan worship - which it only used as a justification.

In the Free State, the SAPS, basing their understanding of the "666 gangs" on outdated legacy guidelines and misinformation, and identify them as criminal "Satanist" gangs, even though these gangs trade criminally in muti body parts in respect of beliefs rooted in African traditional beliefs, not Satanism, and employ symbols and ideas taken from a variety of religions, including Buddhism and Satanism (Engela, C. 2021). This practice, in the perception of any scholar, would (or should) indicate that they are syncretic identities - that is, religous or cultural identities formed by the mixing or merging of two or more other unique identities. The resulting identity cannot be claimed to be either one or the other, but is a new identity in its own right. The fact is, these criminal gangs that occasionaly refer to Christian-based lore about Satanism while not even identifying as Satanist themselves, are no more related in any way to religious Satanism (Engela, C. 2021) than was Electus Per Deus.

At the root of it all, the only marked difference between "Electus Per Deus" and the "666 Gangs" as gangs with a cult foundation, is cultural context - and race.

Interesting.

___________

References:

Devilsdorp series, Showmax.

Engela, C. (February 21, 2021). Devil’s Advocate - The 666 Gangs – Why They Aren’t Satanists, How They Distorted South African Law Enforcement’s Perception Of Occult Religions, & The Consequences.

Engela, C. (March 13, 2023). What Happened To The South African Satanic Church – And Other Unanswered Questions.