The fact that they’ve twice wrongly predicted the end of the world has not swayed the members of an Eastern Cape cult from their beliefs Thebe Mabanga and Peter Dickson For the second time this year, the world did not end as they had hoped. But the 70 members of the Church of God, an Umtata- based cult, remain undeterred and continue to prepare for imminent rapture and the return of Jesus Christ, an event that they predicted would happen on the last day of the 1900s, and then on July 31. The cult was established and is still led by Nokulunga Fiphaza, a middle-aged, overbearing woman, who worked as a nurse at a clinic in Port Elizabeth and was a lay preacher at the Motherwell branch of the Apostolic Faith Church before her “ordainment”.
She believes herself to be a God-ordained prophet named Noah and Abraham. To start the cult, she claims to have engaged in three fasting spells lasting for 40, then 30 and finally 20 days. She commands fearful loyalty from her followers, some of whom have donated their worldly belongings to her cause. Her earlier attempts to establish similar groups were met with rejection by communities in places like Queenstown and Empindweni, which the current group left for its base at Mandela Park.
Mandela Park is an informal settlement that forms part of a series that lines the R61 highway on the way to Umtata. According to members of the local community policing forum (CPF), the group undertook its trek from Empindweni in 1995. The congregants started out as hand-made furniture merchants, but in 1997 turned their backs on carpentry to prepare for the second coming. They have minimal interaction with the community, with the teenagers in the group occasionally leaving the commune to fetch water or buy food. The group exudes a humble and industrious work ethic. Their commune consists of not more than 10 rooms. Most of it is brick- built and has fresh, creamy white paint, with a corrugated iron and tarpaulin shack as well as a makeshift toilet sharing the site. The garden is well kept and the premises are the most pristine in the vicinity.
When the Mail & Guardian visited this week, three men in their middle to late 30s were in attendance. They were dressed in clean but frayed clothes: woolen trousers in shades of gray, navy blue and pencil stripe complemented by shirts, decorated ties and worn, sleeveless cardigans. All three refused to divulge any information. They were enforcing a directive issued by Fiphaza not to talk to the media due to the gross misrepresentation they claim to have suffered. Later on, Sisize Nokwali, unknowingly overstepped the directive and explained the inner workings of the cult. In Nokwali, Fiphaza has a willing and able assistant: a well-built, immaculate man in his early 30s – a charismatic and gifted orator who, like Fiphaza herself, claims to get visions from God. He is a teacher by profession and speaks with remarkable conviction.
Nokwali’s doctrine is biblical, but essentially conspiracy theory. For instance, he believes that the use of animal motifs in the new South African notes – compared to Jan van Riebeck’s face under the old order – is a sign of the beast described in Revelations as preceding the end of the world.
He also lays claim to having foreseen, in 1990, Nelson Mandela’s subsequent ascension to power and how – Mandela’s noble intentions notwithstanding – the government would be corrupt; hence his decision to abstain from voting in 1994 and 1999. Nokwali strongly denies media reports that the church set the day of the second coming at July 31. The locals maintain this is the case. On one occasion, they say, the prediction was made to an audience that included Nambitha Stofile, the wife of Eastern Cape Premier Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile.
Nokwali does insist that the end is close enough to render long-term planning futile. Since 1997, for example, no birth has been reported at the commune, owing to a ban on sexual activity, even between married couples.
The 70 members range in age from five to 75, most unemployed even before they joined the cult. Families are split up with mothers, fathers and their children all living in separate quarters, since Fiphaza believes family ties to be unnecessary as individuals can only share their souls with God. They live on a strict regimen that consists of fasting spells that last between 20 and 30 days for the leaders and up to two weeks for members.
On some days, for up to five times a day, starting at 5am and ending at 6pm, they writhe and convulse to the strains of their cacophonic signature tune. None of the children attend school. “This is because we do not want our children to mix with people who have not prepared themselves,” says Nokwali, who teaches at the nearby Dalubuhle Junior Secondary School.
So effective has been the food-deprived dogma that the neatly dressed, Bible- clutching followers describe life at the commune as “wonderful” and deem school to be “satanic” and “teaching fornication”. Nokwali says all workers – perhaps five in the entire settlement – donate a tenth of their salaries and any other money received to the church to sustain the group. Not so, says a former cult member who spoke on condition of anonymity. The employed few donate every cent of their earnings. She recounts, with a tinge of regret, her one- year stint at the commune. She was chased away in June 1997, soon after she and her husband had resigned from their jobs. The problem started when Fiphaza declared all marriages that took place after 1990 to be null and void – an instruction from God – and accused her of witchcraft, then expelled her with Nokwali’s wife – a development Nokwali does not discuss. When asked if anyone had left since 1995, he firmly stated that it was “only those we were told by God are wrong” and created the impression that he was happily married.
Yet a rescued follower, Nomaefese Salelo (19), told Umtata police that a hole in the centre of the temple was the focus of attention during worship and had the effect of making worshippers quiver and “lose their minds”.
Her anxious family forcibly retrieved her. The locals give eyewitness accounts of how, at certain times, the cult greets natural phenomena such as heavy rain clouds or a cloudless, starry night with paranoia, enthusiastically performing prayer rituals, believing the moment of truth to have finally arrived. Time too has stopped since the world is about to end. Before the media ban was imposed, the hosts turned a visitor’s watch back on entry into the worship area, where a tin-foil cut-out declares: “Jesus is coming, the Ark is leaving for Heaven.” “These prosperity cults thrive because they respond to an economic reality. Members say to themselves, ‘if heaven is portrayed as blissful, we would rather be there [sooner] than remain on Earth’,” says Reverend Lehlohonolo Bookholane, a lecturer in the department of religious studies at the University of Transkei. Bookholane places the cult in the same league as institutions like the Rhema Church and the recent headline-making pyramid scheme Miracle 2000, which entice with a promise of improved economic circumstances. He believes that the cult offers a viable escape route from the economic hardships the members face. A concern he raises is the economic benefit that accrues to the leader and a selected few around her. He does not rule out the possibility that a scenario like this could have a tragic end, such as mass suicide. The members might appear forlorn and sometimes hungry, but they are convinced of their Lord’s imminent return.