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

In the future, your pastor might need to obtain a government license in order to preach. where the “acceptability” of your church’s teachings is determined by a state-appointed committee. where your congregation may be shut down by a bureaucrat for failing to submit the necessary paperwork or pay the required fees.

Sounds like something out of a dystopian novel, right?
Wrong. It’s happening right now in South Africa.

A new body called the “Section 22 Committee,” chaired by Prof Musa Xulu and quietly set up under the CRL Rights Commission, is busy laying the groundwork to regulate religion in this country. exactly the same idea Parliament rejected in 2018.

Back then, after years of hearings, the CRL Commission tried to convince Parliament that the only way to stop abusive “fly-by-night” churches was to let the state license religious practitioners, inspect doctrines, and set up government-approved “peer review committees” with the power to fire pastors and shut down 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.”

Fast-forward to 2025. Using the recent high-profile (and controversial) acquittal of Timothy Omotoso as a pretext, they’ve dusted off the exact same plan and rebranded it as an “independent” Section 22 Committee. Same goal: state control of religion, just through the back door.

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.

We’ve seen this movie before in Africa. Rwanda closed more than 5 600 churches in 2024 for failing state “standards.” Angola, Kenya, Uganda, and Namibia have all introduced similar laws. The pattern is always the same: start with “protecting people from abuse,” end with silencing voices the government doesn’t like.

Let’s be crystal clear: abuse is real, and it must be stopped. But abuse is already a crime. Fraud is fraud, assault is assault, rape is rape – whether committed in a church, a mosque, a sangoma’s hut, or Parliament itself. We don’t need new religious police; we need the existing police to do their job.

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.”

The South African Constitution protects even beliefs that seem “bizarre, irrational or illogical” to others (that’s settled law). The moment the state starts deciding which religious beliefs are legitimate, we’ve crossed a line from which there is no return.

This isn’t just a Christian issue. It isn’t just a Muslim or Jewish or Hindu issue. When the state can license one faith, it can license , or de-license, them all.

Every South African who values freedom should be worried. Very worried.

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