South Africa eases restrictions on religious gatherings

South Africa has softened its coronavirus restrictions on houses of worship, with President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing Tuesday night that religious gatherings will now be allowed under strict conditions.

Ramaphosa also announced a national day of prayer for Sunday, the day before restrictions are expected to ease across much of the country. While the nation’s influential religious leaders have greeted the move with rapturous approval, not everyone agrees with it.   

"Go ahead and pray — it’s okay." Ramaphosa said.

The announcement softens the government’s hard stance prohibiting all religious gatherings, which medical experts identified as high-risk for transmission of the infectious coronavirus. Ramaphosa said that faith trumped those concerns.  

“As a nation, we have a responsibility to respond to this aspect of the pandemic with as much effort and urgency as we have responded to the health crisis, and as we have acted to relieve the economic and social effects on our people. We have a responsibility to also take care of the spiritual, psychological and emotional well-being of all South Africans,” he said.

Under the new regulations, houses of worship must keep facilities clean and sanitized, limit congregations to fewer than 50 people and require participants to wear face masks and maintain social distancing.    

Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, general secretary of the influential South African Council of Churches, told VOA that the group’s member churches came up with the new guidelines, giving him the assurance that they can follow them. He said heads of member churches meet weekly — online — to discuss their anti-coronavirus strategy, and want to include other faiths in their discussions.  

The bishop stressed that for millions of lower-income South Africans, who don’t have the means to watch virtual services, the physical structure is a lifeline.  

“For several months, including times of major festivals in their churches or even in their mosques and synagogues, they've been unable to get in touch with their spirituality because there's a total shutdown. It is not appropriate to say that they can only be able to do that next year, when we get to level one. But it says to me that we need to now look at how differently to be church in COVID times, because COVID is not going away," he said. 

Fortunately, he said, churches are familiar with the challenges posed by plagues. To that end, the council plans to widen churches’ range of social services, including academic support for students who have suffered from school closures.  

But not everyone believes this is a good idea. Rick Raubenheimer is president of the South African Secular Society, a group of atheists, skeptics and agnostics that, since the pandemic began, has met only virtually. They do not plan to resume actual meetings, although technically, he told VOA, they could argue that they qualify under the new rules. 

“We think it's a bad idea, from several points of view. Firstly, the president has to date largely followed the science, and the science says that you need to practice social distancing, not have large gatherings, take precautions against transmission and so on. And a lot of these would be very problematic in religious gatherings, which is why the prohibition on religious gatherings, just like any other recreational gathering, has been a good idea to date. He is now making an exception for a particular community, so he is in fact going against the Constitution, which says that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion or belief,” he said.

A legal challenge seems unlikely, as 80 per cent of South Africans identify as Christian. Mpumlwana said houses of worship now have to take the lead in showing how to live — and thrive — amid the coronavirus.  

“We are a society, and we are as churches, a community that saves lives," he said. "We should not be, and cannot be, that this place of worship becomes a gateway to the grave. And for that reason, we will do everything we can, and we are encouraging everyone. The reason I wear a mask is not because I fear you will contaminate me. I wear a mask because I fear I might contaminate you, and I do not know if I'm a carrier or not. It is an act of love that I would not shake your hand. It is an act of love that I'll be distant from you. It is an act of love to make sure that all of us survive beyond this.”  

Ramaphosa has declared Sunday, May 31 a national day of prayer across the Rainbow Nation. More than 520 South Africans have died of the virus since March.