Cults are a sensitive topic, but also a worthy rabbit hole that should be explored with a bright and critical spotlight. The average cult lures their believers with the promise of enlightenment or faith, but provides a bait-and-switch that instead traps its followers through isolation, fear and often mental or physical abuse.
Religion asks for faith, while cults manipulate their followers into absolute belief without question. Cults are a dangerous facet of society, and many people trapped in their throes might not realise that they’re victims of abuse or trafficking. Here’s a journey through the rabbit hole of South African cults.
What’s a cult, exactly?
According to Britannica, a cult is defined as “a small group devoted to a person, idea or philosophy”. Devotion is key to the success of any cult, whether the followers’ devotion is to Jim Jones or Cecelia Steyn. Cults have serious repercussions for anyone going against the group’s strict, often psychologically damaging rules.
Followers forming part of a cult don’t necessarily realise the fact, or they are deliberately discouraged from communicating with outsiders. Isolation from the outside world is a common feature of cults, only adding to their potential danger. A clear line is drawn between those within the cult and everyone else. This makes cults a difficult topic for law enforcement agencies, who might arrive at someone’s residence just to hear a victim say that everything is fine. Without obvious illegality in plain sight, cults can stay well under the radar and can, as a result, be tough to investigate.
A cult might look horrible or ridiculous to an outsider. However, that’s not the perspective anyone in the cult is watching from. Victims sometimes join cults because they’re offered something in return for their faith: enlightenment, experience or comfort. By the time someone might realise they don’t want to be there, it’s too late (or too dangerous) to leave, and in many cases victims are part of a cult from their birth. Cults use intimidation, threats, isolation and deliberate manipulation to make sure followers stay complacent.
From Bulhoek to blue dresses
Nguni cattle (Photograph: Peter Holmes | Pixabay)
The Xhosa prophetess Nongqawuse is one of the earliest examples of faith gone too far, beginning with the apparent revelation that cattle had to be slaughtered. Nongqawuse claimed that spirits had revealed a plan for the land’s restoration. However, certain criteria had to be met, including the killing of cattle and the abandoning of adultery. The spirits would restore the soil and provide followers with abundant resources after the sacrifices had been made. Those who didn’t comply with the prophecy were shunned as outsiders or nonbelievers. Unfortunately, this led to the killing of between 300 000 and 400 000 cows and resulted in large-scale famine during 1856 and 1857.
The difference between religions and cults are defined by how far their followers are willing to go for their beliefs. Cult-based beliefs are often radical and might revolve around a central figure or idea – dead or alive.
Enoch Mgijima founded his own congregation in 1912, naming them Israelites – unrelated to references that might be found throughout Rastafari and other mainstream religions. In May 1921, a gathering of Israelites were confronted by the police force and refused to disperse. Police opened fire on the group, triggering what’s known as the Bulhoek massacre and killing approximately 200 people. The Bulhoek massacre presents one of the most gruesome mass killings in South African history – a clash of different beliefs to the extreme.
If you’ve spent long enough in conversation with conservative Afrikaners, you might have heard of the Blourokke (Blue Dresses). The religious group was started in 1927 by Martha Maria Fraser, tracing its origin to Benoni. The group is somewhat famous for their orthodox beliefs and for their characteristic blue dresses. However, according to research, the Latter Rain are classified as a Pentecostal church – appearing a little weird to outsiders at best, however not necessarily radical enough to be classified as a cult.
From far-right cults to the Krugersdorp cult killings
A cult isn’t always obvious, even though the danger signs might be obvious to someone standing outside its circle of influence.
The Times reported in 2004 that far-right cults were on the rise in southern Africa. Groups that prepare for the end times, while arming their followers to the teeth and teaching their children all the wrong things about racial segregation, are fairly enough classified as cults – isolation, fearmongering and illegalities checked.
There’s danger anywhere where a group’s followers are asked to act without question or blindly obey instructions. The Krugersdorp cult killings resulted in 11 deaths, orchestrated by Cecelia Steyn for a group she called Electus per Deus (Chosen by God). Followers were lured with pseudo-occult themes and kept compliant by sheer manipulation. Steyn’s elaborate scheme spawned a documentary called Devilsdorp (2021) and several books, including The Krugersdorp cult killings by Jana Marx.
Cults deliberately blur moral lines for a superior form of control over their followers. If someone will do anything for their faith or leader, the line between religion and cult has been crossed.
The Satanic Panic and Rodney Seale
The Satanic Panic was the name given to a cultural phenomenon where misinformation and false interviews gained wings and tails through radical pastors and wide media coverage. If you lived through the eighties or nineties, you might have lived through the hellfire and brimstone that came with the supposed Satanic Panic (or you may have been alive at just the right time to be scorched by its embers). The Satanic Panic was triggered by radical Christian groups, claiming that Satanic cults were everywhere – and hidden in everything from The Smurfs to Dungeons & Dragons. Parents who took the panic seriously would stamp their beliefs on the household.
Wearing black, playing board games or listening to heavy metal music were considered taboo. Albums were burned, and many children (adults today) have memories of being told that it’s wrong to be different from radical Christianity. Media coverage added fuel to the fire, increasing paranoia in the average household. Parents banned The Simpsons, The Smurfs and Masters of the universe, to mention only three targets of the widespread hysteria.
South Africans will remember the name Rodney Seale, a central figure in the local panic and the man who brought the idea of backmasking into the home. It wasn’t enough to throw out (burn or bury) your Buddha figurines. Households also had to throw out most good music albums, which supposedly played messages from the devil when played backwards. Eventually, many artists included deliberate back-to-front messages in their work, just to screw with people. It worked.
The Satanic Panic itself is an example of faith distorted into cult-like beliefs. Radicalised Christian groups perpetuating the fear had become more dangerous than the supposed groups they feared. Question anything that asks for absolute belief over faith.
Religion or cult?
Religious freedom covers faith, but shouldn’t extend the umbrella further than anything the law allows for. Cult leaders manipulate, whereas religious leaders are expected to guide – a respectful endeavour, whether I can say that I believe in someone’s deity or not.
Prophet Lethebo Rabalago made headlines when spraying insecticide on congregants, an event which blessed him with the nickname of the Doom Pastor. It reminds one of the “snake-handling churches” found in the United States, where one case resulted in the death of Jamie Coots from Kentucky in 2014, and this was not an isolated incident.
Modern times are becoming much less tolerant of cults, and law enforcement frameworks to investigate and charge cults seem to be improving. The Doom Pastor has been held accountable, and more cults are being flushed out of society every day. More people have the courage to leave, and an increasing number of victims are becoming survivors – but in each case, it takes the strength of one person to file a report or speak up.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or Osho) is one such recent case, evident from a 2024 feature in The Guardian. Once he was hailed as a great international guru, but many of his followers have attested to years of abuse within Osho communes. A cult is always an imbalanced power dynamic, where beliefs are forced instead of taught. Search for local news related to recent arrests in your town, and you might discover that cults are closer to home than you could have imagined. Results will almost always be a revelation of just how much horror hides in plain sight.
Yet, when alleged cults are investigated, one needs to be aware that powerful people may want to protect them, and the resulting media frenzy may begin to sound like a conspiracy theory. One fine example is the KwaSizabantu Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. To many, especially casual visitors, it represents everything a solid faith-based institution should be. Those who have managed to escape from living there, tell a different story. News24 wrote in-depth articles about the mission. Erika Bornman scooped up a major international award for the book she wrote about her life at and escape from KwaSizabantu. An-Mari do Carmo scooped up a major prize for Christian literature for her fictional account of a young woman’s escape from KwaSizabantu. And yet, should you follow the news regarding this mission, you will know that very little has come from a supposed investigation which has cost the tax payer a pretty penny.
Why? That is a question many people have asked in the past and will ask again in the future. Cults are hard to define. In future, you might be more prepared to recognise and report radical beliefs.
See also:
Major international award for Erika Bornman, author of Mission of malice
Toe als groen was deur An-Mari do Carmo – resensie en onderhoud
Hoe verklaar jy dit? Met Jana Marx en Stefaans Coetzee by Momentum Beleggings Aardklop 2023
