Honourable Speaker, we have been told on a number of occasions that government does not intend to regulate religious institutions, or to interfere with their beliefs.
It is in this context that I want to reiterate what my colleague, Hon. Steve Swart, said in this House on October the 23rd, that any unconstitutional attempt by the CRL Rights Commission to regulate churches under the guise of self-regulation, will be met with fierce opposition from the ACDP, churches and other religious organisations.
Utterances by the CRL Chairperson, Ms Thoko Mkhwanazi Xaluva, such as “religious practitioners who are not registered with the CRL Rights Commission will be committing an offence by practising without a licence and will therefore go to jail,” are not helpful.
Speaker, the ACDP has been vocal in condemning human rights abuses, including abuse in some churches, and expect existing laws in this country to be used to deal with these abusers and lawbreakers. If criminality is taking place within the Church or other religious institutions, it must be dealt with just as crime is dealt with outside those spheres.
Let me remind this House that the constitutional mandate of the CRL Rights Commission is “to promote respect for the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities, and to promote and develop peace, friendship, humanity, tolerance and national unity among cultural, religious and linguistic communities on the basis of equality, non-discrimination and free association.”
To threatened people with jail is certainly not within their jurisdiction.
