Political Activism in Pentecostal Charismatic Evangelical Churches and the 2019 Elections in South Africa - Brill
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Journal of Religion in Africa 49 (2019) 312–336
brill.com/jra
Political Activism in Pentecostal Charismatic
Evangelical Churches and the 2019 Elections
in South Africa
Maria Frahm-Arp
Department of Religion Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg,
South Africa
mariafa@uj.ac.za
Abstract
This article examines the public messages of the leaders of six Pentecostal Charismatic
Evangelical Churches (PCE) in South Africa during the six months leading up to the
2019 presidential elections in that country. All six leaders presented themselves as
knowledgeable about politics and as having solutions to ‘fix’ the political corruption
and the failing economy that plagued South Africa in 2019. In this analysis it becomes
apparent that the leaders had different attitudes to and understanding of politics and
political activism. Some strongly advocated political activism among their members,
others merely encouraged their members to vote on election day, while a third group
did not directly mention politics or voting and did not endorse any form of politi-
cal activism among the members of their churches. Four reasons explain these differ-
ences: (a) the theology of the different churches and their respective understandings
of the relationship between faith/spirituality and politics, (b) the PCE leader’s per-
sonal perceptions of politics in South Africa, (c) the leaders’ own status as a South
African citizen or foreign national, and (d) the socioeconomic situation of the differ-
ent churches and their members.
Keywords
Pentecostalism – Christianity – politics – South Africa – elections – Facebook
© Maria Frahm-Arp, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700666-12340171
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded
license. from Brill.com10/10/2021 07:36:04PM
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1 Introduction
The sixth presidential election in the inclusive democratic setting of post-
apartheid South Africa was held on 8 May 2019. It demonstrated voter disil-
lusionment with politics, evidenced by a remarkable drop in voter turnout,
which had been 88 percent in 1994, but fell to 65.3 percent in 2019.1 Voters also
showed their disillusionment with the two main parties, the ANC (African
National Congress) and the DA (Democratic Alliance), which both lost seats.
The votes lost by these two parties led to an increase in the number of votes
for smaller parties such as the Economic Freedom Front (EFF) and the African
Democratic Christian Alliance (ADCA), as well as newly formed parties like
the GOOD party and the Muslim party Al Jama-ah.2 It has been argued that
the overall voter disillusionment stems from the perception of high levels
of corruption in government, South Africa’s failing economy, and growing
levels of unemployment.3 Moreover, the 2019 elections came at a watershed
moment in South Africa’s new democracy as they were held in the light of
state-capture reports.4
This article examines the rhetoric of various Pentecostal-Charismatic-
Evangelical (PCE5) leaders in encouraging political activism among their mem-
bers through the posting of articles and sermons on the official Facebook pages
of their churches. It does not analyse memes, moving images, photographs,
emojis, or GIFs on the Facebook pages since there were none that engaged
with political issues directly or indirectly. Political activism is the organising
principle of this paper because, as outlined above, South Africa in 2019 was
a country in political and economic crisis. In light of this crisis, an important
question is what the churches on the ground that had traditionally played a
significant role in political activism in South Africa were doing in response to
this crisis. Political activism can be studied in multiple ways but in this arti-
cle is understood in the terms used by political theorists Norris and Inglehart
(2011). These theorists were used because their categories of civic-oriented and
cause-oriented political activism echoes the understanding of political activ-
ism expressed by the leaders of the churches during apartheid and those in
this study. The aim of this study was to ask if given the political and economic
crisis of South Africa were the civic and later cause-oriented political activism
seen before in South Africa apparent during this watershed election.
For much of the twentieth century political activism was understood as
civic engagement in which citizens engaged in various modes of political par-
ticipation (Verba, Nie and Kim 1971; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). These
modes included belonging to a political party and paying party membership
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fees, voting, participating in party rallies, protests, and strike action. In this
form of political activism churches often played a central role in encouraging
congregants to participate in political activities, such as the German Christian
Democrats (Norris 2002). Toward the end of the twentieth century seismic
political shifts such as the collapse of the cold war and the end of apartheid
resulted in a change in the nature of political activism, moving away from civic-
oriented politics toward cause-oriented politics (Norris 2002). Cause-oriented
politics often attracts younger people and tends to focus on lifestyle and
global issues such as debt reduction, ecology, and antiwar movements through
decentralised, fluid, loose networks of coalitions that people join for a while
(Norris 2002). Norris and Inglehart (2011) argue that in most developed coun-
tries where existential peace of mind is secure at a social, political, and eco-
nomic level, society becomes more secular and the younger generations tend
to be involved in cause-oriented politics rather than civic-oriented politics.
Simultaneously, due to the demographics in developing countries ‘the world
as a whole has more traditional religious views’ (Norris and Inglehart 2011, 25).
Norris and Inglehart argue that in developing countries where people expe-
rience existential insecurities or ‘radical uncertainties’ (Mbembe 2007, 153),
religious institutions ‘foster social networks, associational activism and civic
engagement’ (Norris and Inglehart 2011, 22). According to them, ‘there are good
reasons to believe that regular religious participation, particularly collective
acts at services of worship, will probably encourage political and social engage-
ment’ and continue to play an important role in citizen-oriented politics in
developing countries (Norris and Inglehart 2011, 22).
This article shows that in the months leading up to the presidential elec-
tions the leaders in the churches I studied focused on citizen-oriented politi-
cal activism,6 if they engaged with politics at all. This study is limited to an
analysis of the rhetoric of the leaders of six PCE churches and does not exam-
ine what congregants actually did with this teaching or whether it motivated
them toward a particular course of action. Norris and Inglehart’s (2011) the-
ory, echoed by Buckley (2016) and Burgess (2008), that in existentially inse-
cure countries religion plays an important role in civic-oriented political
activism may hold true in the countries they studied, but it does not hold for
PCE churches in South Africa. This study shows that leaders from the same
Christian movement spoke very differently about political issues and political
engagement. We thus cannot say that in a developing country like South Africa
all religious leaders preach the same political message in the same Christian
movement or teach political activism to their members. Contrary to Norris and
Inglehart’s (2011) argument that the more existentially insecure a community
is, the more likely it is to be religious and participate in civic-oriented politics,
this study shows that the poorest congregations were led by pastors who did
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not engage with politics or encourage any form of political activism among
their members.
Leaders in this study understood political activism as civic-oriented politi-
cal activism. During the period of this study they did not mention or encour-
age cause-oriented political activism. Political activism was understood as
involvement in politics in the sense of learning how democracy in South Africa
works, understanding what the different parties stood for, assessing the char-
acter and track record of the people who led these parties, and voting in the
elections. Leaders did not suggest that people should become members of
political parties, pay party membership fees, attend protests, or participate in
political rallies.
Content analysis of the Facebook postings of six PCE leaders was selected
as the research method because it allows a partial view of the attitudes of
PCE leaders toward South African politics as publicly expressed via the mes-
sages they sent (or did not send) to their followers with respect to becoming
politically active, according to the abovementioned criteria. This analysis
aims to explain why there was such a divergence in attitudes among PCE lead-
ers toward politics and political activism in particular, given that South Africa
was in a political and economic crisis. This point is important because during
the time of study PCE churches were largely understood in the South Africa
media as a collective unit, an idea that Zuma and his media campaign propa-
gated in order to give his status as a PCE pastor the impression of having more
far-reaching impact.
I argue that four reasons can be identified that explain these differences.
The first concerns the theology of the different churches and their understand-
ing of the relationship between faith/spirituality and politics. Those churches
that articulated a this-worldly prosperity-gospel theology in which the role of
Christians is to deliberately influence and change the world advocated politi-
cal activism. By contrast, those that expressed the idea that developments in
the world are, for the most part, shaped not by human beings but by spiritual
powers placed little or no importance on political activism, arguing instead
that worldly politics can be changed through prayer. The churches with a
prophetic-deliverance narrative played little or no direct attention to politics.
Those churches with a prosperity gospel narrative were far more focused on
political matters and encouraged political activism. The second reason relates
to the PCE leaders’ varied perceptions of politics in South Africa. Some PCE
leaders echoed the disillusionment with the government felt by many in South
Africa at this time.7 Others expressed hope that the elections would usher in
a new, ethical, and economically progressive government. Yet another group
ignored the upcoming elections and made no comment on the political land-
scape of the country. The third reason is connected to the leaders’ own status as
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South African citizens or foreign nationals. At the time of the 2019 elections
there was heightened xenophobia in South Africa that silenced most foreign
nationals, including those PCE leaders who did not have a South African pass-
port, and prevented them from voicing their political opinions. By contrast,
PCE leaders who were South African citizens enjoyed the freedom to pub-
licly express their political views. Finally, the fourth reason has to do with the
socioeconomic situation of the different churches and their members. Voters
in economically poor areas, particularly those under the age of 30, were far
less engaged in political activism than people in wealthier, middle-class
areas.8 Related to this, PCE leaders in more affluent areas encouraged politi-
cal activism among their members, for example by interrogating the mes-
sages of the different political parties. However, leaders in poor, peri-urban
areas did not advocate any form of political activism among their members.
Prophetic-deliverance and prosperity-gospel churches in impoverished areas
paid far less attention to politics than churches with similar theologies in
middle-class areas. It is therefore not possible to classify or predict the church
leaders’ political messages based on their theological positions.
The publicly voiced encouragement of political activism among church
leaders, or notable lack thereof, as pursued by some PCE leaders in South Africa
is particularly important given the country’s history. During the antiapartheid
struggle mainline church leaders were at the forefront of mobilizing political
activism, while Pentecostal and Charismatic type churches were largely silent or
neutral (Balcomb 2007; Kuperus 2011). Surprisingly, since the end of apartheid
mainline churches have been on the decline while PCE churches have grown
in popularity (Egan 2007).9 The media have continued to see Pentecostal- and
Charismatic-type churches as having a unified political stance as they did
under apartheid. This paper shows that this is no longer the case.
Given the popularity of these churches, we therefore need to understand
the political engagement and messages that they promote. To this end,
the article is divided into three parts. I start with a brief description of the
role of Christianity in South African politics before 2019. I then outline my
research methodology before moving on to an analysis of the political mes-
sages that PCE leaders conveyed to their followers in the months leading up
to the 8 May 2019 presidential elections. In the conclusion I draw attention
to the varied nature of political activism that the leaders of the six churches
in this study promoted. Taken together, this article explores the diverse forms
of political activism that different PCE churches in South Africa promoted.
I argue that, as in other parts of Africa (Gifford 1998, 2015), PCE leaders in
South Africa have multiple political opinions and advocate varied styles and
degrees of religious activism.
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2 Christian Leaders and Politics in South Africa: A Brief
Historical Overview
As Bayart (1981) argues, politics in Africa is not always performed in the con-
ventional, formally organised Western sense. For example, politics in Africa
is often performed through religious organisations at the grassroots level
(Bompani and Frahm-Arp 2010). Regarding South Africa, politics, religion,
and specifically PCE Christianity can be said to be intertwined in three inter-
related ways (Jensen 2012). The first is the existence of religious spaces where
people are encouraged to ‘talk, teach and perform politics’ (Bompani 2008,
665; Patterson 2014). Second, in PCE discourses on politics in South Africa
the power of spiritual forces to bring about good or bad effects in the world
is central to all churches involved in this study. As highlighted in the work of
Meyer (1995, 1998), Ellis and Ter Haar (2001), and the Comaroffs (2000), politi-
cal discourses are often infused with religious ideas of spiritual power and, at
least within PCE churches, African Independent Churches (AIC), and African
Traditional Religions (ATR), spiritual powers are commonly understood to
influence worldly politics (Van Dijk 2000). The third, overly optimistic argu-
ment concerning the relationship between religion and politics in Africa is
that religion can generally be attributed to the power ‘to lift us out of the par-
ticular and the negative, and to imagine a future that is based on common
human recognition and love, and to do this through a power other than ratio-
nal and democratic debate’ (Piper 2010, 79). This normative and uncritical
view has promoted the idea that religious leaders in Africa are often expected
to be at the forefront of helping to develop fledgling democracies because it is
assumed that Christianity and Islam advocate justice, peace, and social devel-
opment (Turner 1972; Joseph 1993; Diamond 1993; Haynes 1995; Peel 1984).
Concerning PCEs, scholars have shown that in the 1990s and 2000s these
churches have played some part in helping their members in various sub-
Saharan countries to become upwardly mobile as these countries tried to
become democratic, modern, capitalist, and globally connected (Martin 2002;
Meyer 1998; Maxwell 2006; Frahm-Arp 2010). Gifford (1998, 2015) cautions
that while empowering individuals with a liberalising socioeconomic ethos of
modernity, PCEs have had limited impact on the governance of countries. For
example, it has been suggested with respect to contemporary Nigerian politics
this limited impact is due to the fact that ‘the Pentecostal movement [is] diverse
in composition and contains its own hierarchical structures, … the different
features and characteristics of the movement flow out of different goals and
produce results that are equally diverse’ (Kolapo 2016, 371). This article shows
that while some PCE church leaders have become noticeably more politically
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engaged over the last decade, South African PCEs have also become more
varied. PCE churches cannot be viewed as a unified group or always understood
as helping to establish or maintain modernity and democracy in a country.
Politics and religion have been bound up with one another in the his-
tory of apartheid (Chidester 1992; Elphick and Davenport 1997) and post-
apartheid South Africa in numerous and complex ways (Piper 2010; Kuperus
2017). During apartheid a certain strand of Christianity, the Nederduitse
Gereformeerde Kerk /Dutch Reformed Churches (NGK), with its theological
and ideological endorsement of racism underpinned the apartheid project
that the National Party enforced (Ritner 1967; Nelson 2003; Loubser 1987).
Beginning in the early 1970s other forms of Christianity, such as the Anglican,
Catholic, and Methodist churches, began to fight against apartheid on both
political and theological grounds (Ross 2008). During the apartheid years
churches were one of the few spaces in which black people could gather,
and many mainline churches became central places of political activism and
mobilisation (Gurney 2009; Ross 2008). In contrast, during this period most
black and white Pentecostal-type churches claimed to be apolitical and were
largely disengaged from politics. In the early years of the ‘new South Africa’ a
secular constitution was drafted under President Mandela. Unlike the previ-
ous apartheid government, Mandela did not use religion to draw crowds, and
he did not associate himself directly with churches to strengthen his politi-
cal position. Instead, he presented himself and his government as a secular
institution unmotivated by any particular religious commitment (Egan 2007).
At the same time, however, President Mandela appointed Anglican Emeritus
Archbishop Desmond Tutu to establish and run the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC). Archbishop Tutu drew on the theology and language
of Christianity as a means of negotiating a process of healing through which
the victims of apartheid injustices, and the country as a whole, could express
pain, work through grief, and receive some form of symbolic compensation
(Van der Merwe 2003). By framing it in this way, the TRC relied to some degree
on the Christian understanding that victims’ forgiveness of their perpetrators
would help de-escalate racial tensions and encourage the society to reconcile
and move forward (Shore 2013). Christianity both assisted and undermined
the TRC project that ended in 1997 (ibid.). The commission has variously been
praised for helping South Africa negotiate its way through a tense political situ-
ation, while others have accused it of not going far enough, not offering victims
adequate compensation, and using the Christian ideal of forgiveness to allow
perpetrators of violence to go free (Van der Merwe 2003).
Around the time when Archbishop Tutu was heading the TRC, political
power slipped out of the hands of the South African Council of Churches
(SACC) (Piper 2010), an organisation that had been central in the fight against
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apartheid particularly during the 1980s and early 1990s. This was because first,
many leaders of the mainline churches left the ministry to move into political
positions. Second, as noted above, the Mandela and later Mbeki governments
stressed that, unlike the apartheid regime that was justified by the theology
of the NGK, their governments were based on secular ideals of democracy
and equality. Third, the central mission of the SACC for the past two decades,
namely to bring down the apartheid regime, had been achieved. The SACC sub-
sequently found itself struggling to reshape its identity and mandate. In 1995
the National Religious Leaders Council (NRLC) was established and chaired by
Pastor Ray McCauley, the leader of Rhema, one of the largest and oldest mega
PCE churches in South Africa. It was made up of various Christian denomina-
tions including PCE churches, African Traditional leaders, and representatives
from other faiths. This body was the first multifaith religious organisation in
South Africa to have a political voice. This was PCE churches’ first meaningful
step onto the political stage. During apartheid PCE churches had been politi-
cally neutral and rather uninvolved (Balcomb 2007; Kuperus 2011; Verryn 1983;
Moran and Schlemmer 1984), with a few exceptions such as the Concerned
Evangelicals, who openly opposed the apartheid regime (Balcomb 1993;
Walker 1993).
President Mandela was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008), who
focused on consolidating the secular constitution of South Africa and estab-
lishing a political landscape in which religion did not play a role. However,
Mbeki’s presidency was a troubled one, and he lost the support of key mem-
bers of the ANC party. Consequently, on 24 September 2008, Mbeki resigned
as the head of the ruling party and as president of the country before a vote
of no confidence could be held against him. The charismatic Jacob Zuma
subsequently became the leader of the ANC and stood in the 2009 presiden-
tial elections.
In 2007 Zuma had become a pastor of the PCE eThekweni Community
Church in Kwa-Zulu Natal, his home province.10 As a result, many pastors
of other PCE churches pledged their support to him (De Waal 2012). Zuma
also aligned himself closely with Ray McCauley and the NRLC. For instance,
in the run-up to the 2009 elections he spoke at Rhema Church, and Pastor
McCauley publicly endorsed Zuma (Frahm-Arp 2015). Moreover, Zuma often
visited churches on the campaign trail. While Mbeki had tended to shun reli-
gion, Zuma embraced religious organisations, particularly PCEs and African
Independent Christian (AIC) churches. Under Zuma, the language and ideas of
religion began to merge with those of politics. For example, using a Christian
discourse Zuma referred to himself as the ‘saviour of South Africa’ and as being
‘ordained by God’ to lead the country. In one of his most famous statements he
claimed that he would rule until Jesus came again. Zuma also told followers
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that the ANC was chosen by God. When addressing a rally in Khayelitsha in
2008 he claimed that the ANC was the ordinary person’s ‘ticket to heaven’. Ace
Magashule, one of his strongest supporters who at that time was the ANC leader
of the Free State, told the newspaper Volksblad that Zuma was the modern-day
Jesus. At a rally in Mthatha in 2011 Zuma told the crowd that if they did not vote
for the ANC they would go to hell.11
In the run-up to the 2014 elections religion and politics were once again
closely intertwined in South Africa. Various PCE churches, both large and
small, invited numerous political leaders to speak to their congregations on
Sunday mornings (Frahm-Arp 2015). During the years of the Zuma govern-
ment PCE members were appointed to various political positions in the coun-
try. Most noticeable was Chief Justice Mogoeng, a pastor in the Redeemed
Christian Church of God, who became the country’s chief justice minister.
Mogoeng claimed that the principles of his faith guided his professional life. In
2015 Mmusi Maimane, a PCE pastor in the Liberty Church, was elected as the
first black leader of the DA, the main opposition party to the ANC.12
After months of corruption allegations, Zuma resigned as president on
14 February 2018 before a vote of no confidence could be held against him.
On 15 February 2018, Cyril Ramaphosa was elected unopposed as the interim
president of South Africa. President Ramaphosa worked hard to bring some
stability to the economy, which had begun to spiral into a negative freefall.
Although President Ramaphosa does not overtly engage with religion in his
politics, he did thank Chief Justice Mogoeng for praying publicly in parlia-
ment before swearing in his new cabinet, which was an unprecedented act in
South African history.
3 Parameters of the Study
It is important to note that the following analysis is a snapshot of PCE
Christianity and its various relationships with politics in South Africa at a
particular moment in time. As the history of the Pentecostal, Charismatic,
and Evangelical movements and their various mergers, transformations, and
adaptations have shown, PCE Christianity is fluid, rapidly changing, and con-
tinuously being reimagined. In the Habermasian (2005) sense of the public-
political, Facebook is an important new social space in which various forms
of political activism are debated, taught, or encouraged in PCE circles. The
decision to analyse the official Facebook sites of the six churches explored in
this article rather than other social media platforms is based on the observa-
tion that all churches had similarly active Facebook pages and used Facebook
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rather than Twitter or Instagram to communicate complex messages and
ideas (Twitter and Instagram were primarily used to advertise events). While
Facebook cannot tell us how people act politically it is increasingly under-
stood as an important platform for mobilising political activism (Eltantawy
and Wiest 2011; Chiluwa and Ifukor 2015). This has been shown in studies that
examine the role of Facebook in the Tunisian uprising in 2011 (Hamrita 2016),
the Egyptian uprising in 2011 (Russell 2011), and the Nigerian protests in 2012
(Chiluwa 2015). As studies of these political events show, to understand the
political engagement of followers it is important to examine the political mes-
sages of their leaders.
The parameters and context of this study focus on Facebook postings by
the leaders of the churches in this study in South Africa from December 2018
to June 2019, after the new cabinet was appointed. The elections were held on
8 May 2019. The study is limited to written articles on or about politics posted
on the official Facebook sites of the churches and sermons streamed on these
sites that refer to politics or political activism of some sort. The Facebook post-
ings analysed in this study therefore include both written texts and audio-
visual recordings of sermons and services. The postings of followers of the
churches and their leaders were not analysed. The comments of the Facebook
followers of the church leaders are not dealt with here, largely because there is
no way of gauging from the comments alone what impact the leaders’ teaching
has had on the lives of believers or of assessing what followers did after hearing
their leaders’ messages.
Purposive sampling was employed for the selection of the churches in this
study to ensure that the churches would meet certain criteria, allowing for a
contrasting comparison. First, with the current proliferation of PCE churches
led by non-South Africans, a mix of churches led by South Africans and foreign-
ers was necessary. Second, for the study to reflect an economic cross-section of
South African society, the churches had to be located in different socioeconomic
locations. Third, as Frahm-Arp (2018) shows, there is a wide spectrum of PCE
theologies preached in South Africa. Consequently, a sample that represents a
range of churches that hold a variety of theological positions was chosen. The
six churches were: Grace Bible Church (Grace); Every Nation (EN); Acts of Faith
Harvesters (AFH); Rhema Family Church (Rhema); Rabboni; and Enlightened
Christian Gathering (ECG). Four of these churches—Grace,13 Rhema,14 EN,15
and ECG16—are large megachurches with branches located in urban areas
in various cities in South Africa. While Rhema, ECG, and EN are multiracial,
Grace, Rabboni, and AHF do not attract white members. Rhema, EN, Grace,
and ECG have members of all ages and economic groups. At the time of the
study Rabboni17 and AFH18 were both peri-urban churches with a congregation
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of fewer than 3,500 people, most of whom were either unemployed or worked
in minimum wage jobs. A high percentage of church members were younger
than 35 years of age.
This article is part of a broader study exploring how we analyse the mes-
saging of PCE churches on Facebook. The official Facebook pages of these six
churches were analysed using critical discourse analysis (CDA), discourse
analysis, and content analysis. Content analysis focuses on the ‘systematic
examination of communicative material’, particularly material in the public
domain in the form of mass media (Mayring 2004, 159). Discourse analysis is
focused on the role of language in shaping institutions, power, and ideology,
thereby influencing how people live in and understand their social situated-
ness (Parker 1992). CDA explores language used in a given social context, focus-
ing on the message of those who have the power, opportunity, and means to
use it (Van Dijk 1993). As such, CDA conceptualises language as ‘social practice’
(Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 258). Moreover, this article follows Halliday’s
(1978) argument that language should be understood as a system of options.
In other words, grammar and words are not seen as having fixed meanings, but
rather as having multiple meaning potentials depending on the social contexts
of the speakers and the views they wish to convey. The findings discussed in
this article focus primarily on the content analysis of the sermons and written
articles that the leaders posted. Content analysis (Mayring 2004) enables us
to identify categories within texts that each have clear definitions, examples,
and coding rules. This type of analysis brought to the fore the different forms
of political ideology and activism that the leaders of the churches in this study
promoted. To a limited degree, some of the findings from CDA were brought
into this study with particular reference to the various strategies used in dis-
course that Van Dijk identifies (1993), and used by people wanting to establish
themselves as leaders with the power to influence others. These include self-
identity descriptions, negative lexicalisation, hyperbole, negative comparison,
generalisation, concretisation, warning, vagueness, and irony/sarcasm. In a
limited way, I identify some of the above linguistic strategies that the leaders
of these churches used to establish particular discourses in their communities
and promote certain political ideologies, and the motivations for congregants
to either engage or to disengage with political activism.
4 The Context of the 2019 South African Elections
The demographic and socioeconomic context of South Africa in the time before
the 2019 elections is important when analysing the content and context of the
Facebook messages of PCE church leaders. According to STATS SA, 65 percent
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of the South African population lives in urban and peri-urban areas,19 and
30 percent of South Africa’s youth20 live in the province of Gauteng.21 Election
analyses evinced that voter turnout was particularly low in peri-urban areas
and small towns in South Africa.22 A study on youth voting patterns (Graham,
Stuart, Zulu and Mthembu 2017) finds that young people did not trust formal
politics and the party leaders who, in their perception, ‘promise everything
and deliver nothing’. The interlocutors of this study said they felt alienated by
politics as it is currently playing out in South Africa. ‘Most worrying is that reg-
istration [for voting] was lowest among younger citizens [in the 18-29-year-old
category], and that this recorded a sharp drop from 58% in 2014 to 49% in 2019’
(Southall 2019). Moreover, during the first quarter of 2019 STATS SA noted that
‘youth aged 15–24 years are the most vulnerable in the South African labour
market as the unemployment rate among this age group was 55.2 per cent in
the 1st quarter of 2019. Among graduates in this age group, the unemployment
rate was 31.0 per cent during this period’ (Southall 2019).
In this study the six church leaders and their political messages can be
divided into three groups. The first group, which includes Pastor McCauley
from Rhema and the leaders of EN, encouraged their members to become
politically active and informed in the months leading up to the elections.
The second group, who made little direct reference to politics but encour-
aged their members to vote on election day, were Bishop Sono from Grace and
Prophet Bushiri from ECG. The third group was Prophet Daniels from Rabboni
and Prophet Dladla from AFH, both of whom made no mention of the elec-
tions or any direct reference to politics in the months over which this study
was conducted.
5 Church Leaders Who Engaged with Politics and the
Upcoming Elections
The leaders of EN and Rhema, who both broadly support a prosperity gos-
pel theology, viewed their role as offering criticism of the government and
to mobilise their followers to political activism to address the general disil-
lusionment many South Africans felt toward the government in early 2019
(Southall 2019). Both churches attract young and old people in suburban areas
and have congregations of more than 50,000 people. Many of the members
are employed and connected in some way to the broader economic and social
wheels of power in the country.
Generally, the leaders of EN and Rhema preached what Ruth Marshall
(2009) refers to as ‘political spiritualities’, a term that broadens the concept
of politics from the focus on the state to the politics of the individual using
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a Foucauldian analysis of power. Marshall highlights the role of PCE as a
space of fashioning and refashioning the self to develop a ‘moral subjectiva-
tion’ whereby churches and believers see their role to be a kind of moral and
social watchdog of the state. Similar to what Bompani (2008: 666) finds in
other South African churches, EN and Rhema strongly encourage followers to
be ‘good citizens’ and embrace their human rights, which, according to them,
includes taking part in presidential elections. All of the discussions on politics
in their Facebook posts centred on the role of Christians to call a corrupt and
broken government to account.
The leaders of these two churches styled themselves as politically knowl-
edgeable, informed experts whose role was to educate their followers on
South African politics. Pastor McCauley of Rhema did this by writing monthly
opinion pieces, published in The Star newspaper and posted on the Rhema
Facebook page. In them he expressed his belief that Christians should be
engaged in the country’s politics. He outrightly condemned the government,
particularly in a piece posted on the 28 March 2019 titled ‘Are we in a Mess or
What?’23 In the title alone he uses a discourse of hyperbole, sarcasm, and nega-
tive lexicalisation. The article calls for South Africans to vote in a new political
leadership. Although South Africa was facing various political and economic
challenges it was still a functioning country with a functioning democracy and
not the terrible ‘mess’ that McCauley’s title implies. Messages like these were
intended to shift power from political parties toward himself, a church leader,
as the political voice of reason and authority. In a post on 24 March 2019,
Pastor McCauley said: ‘We have allowed our country to live on borrowed time
and are now paying the price of wrong decisions. I am not an engineer but
I know enough about the consequences of lack of maintenance and under-
investment into our infrastructure sectors’. His post is vague about what
‘borrowed time’ means; it overgeneralises and warns of impending doom.
While McCauley admits that he is not an engineer, throughout the post he
writes as if he is an expert on the subject of power outages in South Africa.
By doing so, he establishes a discourse that styles himself as a knowledgeable
leader who has the answers to South Africa’s problems. Pastor McCauley is
forthright in his calling for the government to reform and to play its role as the
enforcer of law and justice, social development, job creation, and economic
growth. He clearly supported Cyril Ramaphosa in his opinion pieces and
called him ‘brave to acknowledge the corruption of the state and mismanage-
ment of state-owned-enterprises’.24
The leaders of EN educated their followers through a series of sermons
given at the Cape Town church and posted on the EN Facebook page. Like
Rhema, their discursive strategy is one of generalisation and vagueness while
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also purporting to make important political claims, thus styling the leaders
as knowledgeable political experts whom members ought to listen to. In one
of these sermons (5 May 2019), Pastor Hunter from EN said: ‘Our faith does
not rest in political security, peace, success or wealth. Therefore, a failing gov-
ernment is not God’s failure’.25 Hunter uses generalisations and negative com-
parisons to affirm that people should not lose faith in God because the state
was corrupt and the economy failing. He is arguing that Christian voters are
different from other, less knowledgeable voters who think that people are in
control of politics when, according to him, God is. In the messaging both from
McCauley and the EN leaders, no mention was made of which political party
people should vote for, but in his support of Ramaphosa McCauley made it
clear that he supported the ANC.
Moreover, both Rhema and EN likened South Africans to the Israelites, who
were redeemed from slavery in Egypt by God but then wandered in the desert
before entering the promised land. South Africa, they argued, was wandering
in the wilderness of corruption and economic failure, having been saved by
God from apartheid.26 This also meant that as a nation, South Africans were
still looking for the promised land. Similar to the above description, this is
a discourse of hyperbole and self-identification where the leaders of these
churches style the members as God’s chosen people and themselves as having
divine insight into politics.
The theopolitical ideology constructed in the rhetoric of EN and Rhema
leaders explained that the role of the state is limited and ‘good Christians’ must
become politically active to ensure that ‘trustworthy, unbribable, ethical and
God-fearing’27 people are elected to positions of power. In these statements
and in their other articles and sermons on the Facebook sites I reviewed, dis-
course was being used as ‘a system of statements that construct an object’, to
use Parker’s (1992, 6) terminology. By choosing a particular language these
church leaders constructed South Africa as a failing state that could only be
saved through their prayers, teaching, and political intervention. Their central
theology was that God is in control of every country’s politics. God saved South
Africa from apartheid, not Nelson Mandela or any other political leader. For
too long South Africans had according to Pastor Gareth Seed (EN), ‘glorified
the State’ and that ‘the government has become a surrogate parent because the
family has broken down so badly’.28 According to these leaders, the role of the
government is only to ensure justice and the rule of law. Their theology of per-
sonal agency meant that ordinary Christian citizens need to be at the forefront
of social and economic change by, for example, running a successful business
that employs others and developing a strong economy. The leaders of these two
churches saw it as part of their role to help people negotiate the complexities
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of democracy, capitalism, and modernity in South Africa, echoing the findings
of Martin (2002), Meyer (1998), and Maxwell (2006) that PCE churches could
play a positive role in political and social development. The shared this-world
theology of the wealth gospel narrative, and the middle-class status of mem-
bers may explain to some degree the shared focus on political activism that
these leaders promoted.
6 Church Leaders Who Engaged with the 2019 Elections
in a Limited Way
Bishop Sono, the leader of Grace, a large prosperity-gospel megachurch in the
township of Soweto with over 23 branch churches throughout South Africa,
and Prophet Bushiri, the leader of ECG, a large prophetic-deliverance mega-
church that mainly uses sports stadiums in Pretoria to host services, both gave
limited attention to politics. Each made only one Facebook post just before
the elections encouraging their members to vote. But here is where the simi-
larity ends. They developed very different discourses of ‘political spiritualities’
(Marshall 2009) in their teaching, which are unpacked in this section.
Bishop Sono (Grace) expressed his disillusionment with the government by
telling people that, ultimately, their problems could only be solved through
God. This was a significant change from his rhetoric around the 2014 elec-
tions, when he went to great lengths to politically activate this congregation
and invited various political leaders from different parties to speak at various
services (Frahm-Arp 2015). These political speeches were marketed as Grace
educating its members so that they could better understand political processes
and democracy.
In the run-up to the 2019 elections Bishop Sono made little mention of poli-
tics. His posting on election day read: ‘One of our mandates as the church of
Jesus Christ is to pray for God’s intervention in the affairs of our nation. So
today, as we go out to vote, let us pray for a peaceful day and allow ourselves to
be led by the Spirit’.29 The tone and language of this call are markedly different
from the messages of EN and Rhema discussed above. Sono gives no educa-
tional lessons on political matters, nor does he generalise about South Africa’s
politics. He does identify what it means to be a Christian and he tells his follow-
ers what to do on election day—vote and pray for peace. He also proposes that
Christians can bring about peace during the elections if they pray. He is more
concerned with peace than with political justice or retribution for corruption.
Sono expressed a theopolitical message that God was the source of change and
hope, not the government. The ‘moral subjectivity’ (Marshall 2009) that he is
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encouraging his followers to develop is that of obedient, peace-seeking citi-
zens who do not participate in crime or violent political or municipal protests.
Like Bishop Sono, Prophet Bushiri, the leader of the prophetic-deliverance
ECG church, did not engage directly with political issues other than to encour-
age his followers to vote. Bushiri is the only leader in this study who is not a
South African citizen. At the time of the elections he was facing his own battles
with state authorities as they accused him of fraud, money laundering, and
gross negligence regarding the safety of his congregation. On 5 May 2019, he
stated, ‘As your spiritual leader, I encourage you to go and vote for the party of
your choice. It is your democratic right and please make sure you exercise it’.30
Given the accusations that the state had made against him, this pronounce-
ment can be interpreted as a desperate public attempt to appear to support the
government. This was the only direct reference that he made to politics. In the
months leading up to the elections, his sermons and Facebook posts echoed a
general theme of doom. He often began services with words like ‘Somewhere,
there is someone who is about to lose their business deal’.31 In line with his
prophetic-deliverance theology, this discourse is overwhelmingly one of warn-
ing, impending doom, negative comparisons, generalisation, and vagueness,
all meant to draw people into the prophet’s worldview and make them view
him as their saviour.
For Bushiri politics, like everything else in life, was ultimately controlled by
spiritual forces. As a ‘Man of God’ with prophetic abilities, he believed he could
pray for people and alter their lives by healing them, making them wealthy
and helping them find love. In almost every service he emphasised that peo-
ple should not look to earthly powers such as governments for wealth, health,
and security, but rather to God, who, through a prophet like himself, grants
people all they need and desire. He claimed that the poverty, illness, and suf-
fering of ordinary people had little to do with government and much more
to do with evil forces that needed to be exorcised by a ‘Man of God’ such as
himself. Mbembe (2007) argues that people are attracted to a message like this
that understands politics in terms of the spiritual rather than the rational, as
people struggle to understand the multiple ‘radical uncertainties’ (Mbembe
2007: 153) of daily existence that they face.
7 Church Leaders Who Did Not Mention the Upcoming Elections
Similarly, Prophet Dladla, the leader of AFH,32 and Prophet Daniels, the leader
of Rabboni,33 also preached that change, be it personal, economic, or social,
could only be effected through God. Prophet Dladla and Prophet Daniels both
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preached a message of prophetic-deliverance theology and worked in peri-
urban, impoverished communities. They were both disillusioned with the gov-
ernment and did not see politics and voting as a mechanism that Christians
could use to improve South Africa. Their understanding of politics was that it
was ineffective in catalysing change in people’s lives. According to these lead-
ers, people’s problems could only be solved through God, not the government.
Both AFH and Rabboni were relatively small churches with congregations of
about 3,500 members or less, and in which a large portion of the congregation
was young and unemployed. Their messages of hope for the dispossessed34
appealed to the disenfranchised members of society who were outside the
political, economic, or social axes of power. During the six months of this
study politics and the state of South Africa were not mentioned in any of
their official Facebook postings. For example, in the livestreamed services
leading up to the elections at the end of April 2019, Prophet Daniels (Rabboni)
held a communion service in which parts of a holy tree were given to followers
to eat, as well as a holy oil service where people were anointed with oil. The ser-
vices focused on healing and made no reference to politics. This silence around
the elections echoes Graham, Stuart, Zulu, and Mthembu’s (2017) study, cited
earlier, that revealed that the peri-urban youth of South Africa were disinter-
ested in the 2019 elections and politics more generally.
Both Dladla and Daniels held that all political powers are subject to spiri-
tual forces. For example, Prophet Dladla explained that ‘as long as there is an
Accuser (Satan) there are things that are being prevented’.35 What he means
is that the different struggles that people experience are because Satan is
preventing them from receiving God’s blessings and gifts. Similarly, Prophet
Daniels36 (Rabboni) declared, ‘Nothing will prosper however torment … you
will have your testimony’. The term ‘testimony’ here refers to the destruction of
evil forces and evil spirits, while ‘torment’ refers to the struggles a person might
go through. In other words, Christians will prosper when the evil in their lives
is destroyed, and will then be able to testify to their deliverance. These proph-
ets attributed the difficulties people in peri-urban areas faced to the work of
Satan, and not poor governance or political corruption that had led to high
unemployment rates and a failing economy. All the difficulties people expe-
rienced could be vanquished by these ‘Men of God’ through their prophecies.
The peculiar language of this discourse of evil echoes Parker’s (1992) and
Van Dijk’s (1993) caution that different discourses are understood differently by
the various audiences that encounter them. According to Daniels and Dladla,
the future of South Africa will be determined by the power of Christian prayers
to fight witchcraft and overcome evil, not by individual political leaders like
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Zuma or Ramaphosa. In contrast to the findings of Norris and Inglehart
(2011) the leaders of people in impoverished circumstances did not support
the claim that they were more engaged in political activism than leaders in
wealthier areas.
The varied nature of the relationship that the leaders in this study have with
politics and political activism resonates to some degree with Freston’s (2001)
point that the relationship to politics in PCE churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America is often localised, haphazard, and decentralised.
8 Conclusions
In conclusion, I argue that in South Africa PCE church leaders have varied
understandings of politics and the relationship between faith and politics. It
is therefore problematic to speak of PCE leaders in South Africa as one coher-
ent theopolitical group or to suggest that because they are all PCE Christians
they advocate for a particular style of religious activism, as the media in
South Africa were doing at the time of the elections. These variations in politi-
cal activism or political engagement of the leaders is due in large part to the
socioeconomic realities of the different congregations, the relationship that
leaders have with political organisations, and the nationality and theologies
of the leaders. While theology may provide a neat way to explain political dif-
ferences, it is not the only variable and must be seen together with economic
factors. Overall, this study found that leaders promoting prosperity-theology
narratives in middle-class communities tended to advocate for political activ-
ism, while prophetic-deliverance prophets in poor areas did not engage with
political issues or advocate political activism.
The 2019 presidential elections in South Africa took place in a time of politi-
cal and economic crisis when heightened political activism could have been
expected. While the relationship between politics and religion has a long his-
tory of shaping South Africa, in 2019, when PCE churches were more popu-
lar and politically engaged than ever before, the majority of PCE leaders in
this study did not encourage political activism. In conclusion, the most eco-
nomically insecure religious communities were led by men who preached a
message of prophetic deliverance, made no mention of politics, and did not
encourage their members to become politically active either in civic-oriented
or cause-oriented ways. We therefore cannot claim that in developing countries
religious leaders always encourage political activism among their congregants,
nor that economic insecurity is directly linked to Christian leaders encouraging
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congregants toward high levels of civic-oriented political activism, as Norris
and Inglehart (2011) suggest. The reason for the lack of political rhetoric and
political activism that these leaders voiced appears to be a combination of the
disengagement of South Africa’s underemployed youth in the 2019 elections
and the prophetic-deliverance theology of the leaders. This theology focused
on spiritual explanations for the economic hardship faced by individuals while
ignoring the larger this-worldly sociopolitical and economic realities.
Acknowledgement
Many sincere thanks to Rijk van Dijk and Thomas Kirsch for their close reading
of draft versions of this paper and their invaluable comments.
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