It’s a shameless new trend, faith leaders say. It was not usual for armed criminals to storm faith services, rob churches and mosques in South Africa — until now.
“There is no holy cow anymore,” said Pastor Drewmore Sikhosana, a Pentecostal leader in Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital. He spoke of how churches, mosques, temples, barely defended, are now the newest soft targets for robbers.
Poverty in South Africa has soared in the last 10 years and fed into a vortex of runaway crime, which has led to a frightening 7,000 residents murdered in just the last three months of 2022 and 6,000 carjackings in the same period.
As criminals widen their nets, Pastor Sikhosana says, “there’s a growing perception among South Africa’s organized crime gangs that churches and mosques are outliers. They possess lavish amounts of money from tithes and donors in the U.S., Europe and the wealthy Arabic countries.”
“There’s a growing perception among South Africa’s organized crime gangs that churches and mosques … possess lavish amounts of money from tithes and donors in the U.S., Europe and the wealthy Arabic countries.”
“It was unheard of even for hardcore criminals in South Africa to storm a pulpit with a rifle and coerce everybody, at least here in the west of South Africa,” said Sylvester Moyo of the Africanist Zion Christian Church. His congregation was robbed by men in balaclavas while on an Easter vigil in 2022.
“Adventists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Muslims — no faith is increasingly spared in an increasingly lawless South Africa,” he reported.
Police, Christian and Muslim leaders are alarmed and outraged as a spate of brazen armed robbers hit places with increasing regularity.
In outrageous scenes captured on video, Nov. 27, a gang walked into services in a Johannesburg church, threatened worshippers with firearms before fleecing them of their belongings.
In a particularly chilling incident in October 2022, a pastor was murdered by firearms while standing at the pulpit as his flock gazed, thus leaving his followers too traumatized to attend church.
Muslim faith activities in South Africa have not been spared the horror either. In November again, armed thugs entered a mosque during Salaah congregational prayers and robbed worshippers.
“It’s a tip of the iceberg, these robberies,” said Abdul Jaheem, a Muslim cleric in Johannesburg. “Many robberies on mosques are going on around the country and don’t get reported. It’s pure criminality with no conscience.”
For Pastor Sikhosana, this “insane” new phenomenon of criminals zeroing in on faith groups makes him feel “not even Colombia’s bandits in the troubled 1990s did this.” He says he is anguished particularly by a callous daylight criminal raid on an Adventist church service in December.
If armed robbers continue to trample on the sanctity of faith centers, a dangerous phenomenon would emerge in South Africa where some churches, temples and mosques will increasingly arm themselves to defend their property and worshippers, fears Pastor Moyo of the South Africa Council of Churches.
In January this year, armed robbers tried a daring raid at a mosque in Johannesburg. Two robbers were gunned down and died on the spot when worshippers returned fire.
“I don’t want to pass wrong or right judgment, but those Muslim worshippers could have lost their lives if the criminals got their way,” Pastor Moyo said.
Desire Vala, an independent criminologist and a former detective in the South African police force, said while poverty is now rampant in South Africa, it harder for criminals to bomb or hold up banks due to sophisticated technology and armed escorts. So new, softer targets must be found.
“The criminal underworld in South Africa suspects that churches and mosques are lightly defended and are the last bastion of lucrative money because of tithes and huge donations from the West and Gulf Arab Muslim nations,” Vala said.
It also doesn’t help that South Africa, while gripped by a high crime rate, is seeing gradual failure of effective policing, Vala added. New data released last year found the ability of South African police to solve murder cases has plummeted by an unthinkable 55% since 2011.
“We need a specialized police unit that cracks down on church, mosque or any other faith robberies,” Jaheem said. “We faith leaders are the last standing conscience of South Africa.”
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