In an open meeting at Kwasizabantu (KSB) recently, Albu van Eeden (medical doctor turned KSB coworker) purportedly confirmed that Erlo Stegen was “completely sane”.
Around the same date, Erlo Stegen purportedly signed a letter addressed to European KSB leaders who had made it clear the day before that, as a matter of conscience, they were no longer going to hide their doubts about the new KSB South Africa leadership[1]. The gist of the letter attributed to Stegen: “The things that are said are not true, in other words are lies and untruths.”
In short: Lydia Thofozi Dube is taking over.
I have a question for the above-mentioned Europeans.
Many KSB coworkers have left for reasons of conscience over the years. Many of them also “want to seek peace with all” and act in accordance with 1 Thess. 5:21. How about a conference between you and such former coworkers?
It is just an idea for your consideration. To me it seems we have an opportunity here, and that it is incumbant on us not to miss it. And it seems to me that you, standing together as you are, are best positioned to take the initiative.
My point today is to answer the question: by what right does Thofozi govern KSB?
To put it differently: here is why she has no moral right to do so.
Let us
• zoom out for some context, so that we can better
• zoom in on the specific question.
Looking around at some of the governments of our day, one would be forgiven for wondering whether the world would not be better off without them.
Charles G. Finney (1851 edition of his theology, third lecture): “Government must be founded in a good and sufficient reason, or it is not right. No one has a right to prescribe rules for, or control the conduct of, another, unless there is some good reason for his doing so. There must be a necessity for moral government, or the administration of it is tyranny.”
Unfortunately there is no doing without governments. Leave any community alone for a while, and you find they end up with rules those who want to stay on must obey.
We need laws, because we need order. You have no laws, you have chaos. You have chaos, you have misery.
You disagree? How would you then deal with evil people? How could you even deal with differences of opinion among good people, if you have no laws?
The thing is, you get good leaders and you get bad leaders. Good rule-makers and bad rule-makers, that is.
Recently I was discussing corruption in governments with people who understand about law. Corruption is a problem, they agreed. “After all, who wants to be in government if it doesn’t come with power and money?” Nevertheless, they explained, what government calls law must be applied as law.
“And what about Hitler then?” I asked.
You see, even governments are accountable to Higher Law. The atrocities we have witnessed in Communist countries over the past century were possible precisely because their leaders thought they were accountable to nobody.
I take it I don’t need to convince readers here of the fact that God is the moral governor of the universe, and that all governments in our world are accountable to Higher Law, as revealed in Scripture.
To summarise in terms of an easily accessible image: there is also moral North and South, and we fool only ourselves if we try to pretend otherwise during our wanderings in this life.
With that in mind, consider “the new KSB South Africa leadership” again.
If Thofozi is where she is today, it is because Erlo Stegen put her there.
Does Stegen’s backing now mean she has the right to govern KSB?
Well, what right did Stegen have to back her in the first place?
Erlo Stegen’s moral right to promote Thofozi Dube into power extends only as far as his protracted cover-up manoeuvres following her “kidnapping” in 1997 can be justified before God.
Again: Erlo Stegen’s moral right to promote Thofozi into power extends only as far as the pressure he put on Jannie le Roux to retract his earlier confession can be justified before God. To retract his earlier confession … to lie, that is, so as to open the gates for the 2015 Thofozi comeback circus.
Let us zoom out and in again quickly at this point. We humans live in both a moral universe and a physical universe. Both are governed by laws. Moral laws are no less reliable than physical laws. That is why Jesus could say: “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35; Young). Again: both universes are governed by laws; only, the physical universe is governed by laws of necessity, whereas the moral universe is governed by moral laws, adapted to intelligent beings who can choose. Humans for example, created as they are in the image of God. You cannot treat them like cattle, let alone breeding cattle, just because what you always wanted to do was become a farmer and now you run a mission.
Similarly then, Lydia Thofozi Dube’s moral right to govern KSB extends only as far as breach of trust towards a repentant sinner is in harmony with the Gospel of Christ.
As a case in point, consider the plight of Daan van Tonder. In the words of a witness who knows what he is talking about: “It is Kwasizabantu who is taking him to court because he informed us about the millions of rands he had to deliver at night. They now reported all sorts of sins he had confessed to them in trust to the police. Worse sins committed by other members are not reported to the police, because these members do not act against Kwasizabantu.”
What exactly Daan van Tonder confessed is none of my business. The law process in question is also not my business. I am looking at this from the perspective KSB claims to champion: that of the Christian faith.
Sin is transgressing God’s law. Literally “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). To repent, confessing one’s sins, is to move from a state of being at loggerheads with God’s law to a state of being in harmony with it.
In the language of Scripture, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. His sins are cast into the depths of the sea. Though his sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.
Every possible encouragement is brought to bear on the sinner’s mind, so that he might continue in harmony with God’s law.
Think of the prodigal son returning home. “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
Nowhere in the gospels do we find Jesus sinking as sickeningly low as to tell people to make lists of their sins and to then have his disciples file these away for possible later use to intimidate believers who wanted to remain true to their own conscience. Nowhere do we find the disciples treating people like cattle: thrashing when they failed to motivate; or separating people from their loved ones or locking them up or depriving them of food when they failed to persuade.
Why did Erlo Stegen not go to the police 19 years ago, after he had been explicitly informed of the truth behind Thofozi’s “kidnapping”? He would have had all the more reason for doing so: there was no sign of repentance on the horizon.
Where is the law of “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” in Thofozi’s conduct here? Who, between the KSB leadership and Daan van Tonder, is now at loggerheads with that sublime law, and who is in harmony with it? Who is now sowing misery for future generations to reap? Who is setting an example worth following?
What is behind all the millions handed out in the dark? Why did Daan van Tonder not have the right to ask? Why can a completely sane man who has been preaching “walk in the light” for 50 years not answer? What is it that causes a completely sane man who has been preaching “confess” for half a century to be bent on making his son-in-law out to be a criminal before he would confess his own crimes?
Indeed one reason why I write all this is the precedent being set. As future law suits will refer to the case of Kwasizabantu Mission versus Daan van Tonder, so people around the world keep being told about this “Christian” mission with its glorious “revival”.
I knew a man who used to say the older we grow the more we become what we are. It may seem as though Kwa Sizabantu is changing direction. In reality it is merely becoming more and more what it has always been.
Nicoleen Dickinson (at KSB 2006 to 2010) thought Thofozi “knows about something that would destroy uncle Erlo if she ever spoke about it”. I am inclined to believe that Nicoleen Dickinson will sooner or later be proved right.
Kobus du Preez
1 May 2019
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[1] The text forwarded to me contains a letter in both French and English. The source is evidently the French text. One can also understand “changement de direction” to mean “change of direction” / “Richtungwechsel”, but I think the French had the leadership change in mind — the new leader.