Mixed blessing: Archbishop Dan Mathe (left) of St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission, and Bishop Junior Moloi (right) pray for Jacob Zuma. Photo: GCIS
Outside the high court in Johannesburg, a supporter once hoisted a homemade crucifix. Where Christ’s face should have been was Jacob Zuma’s, arms outstretched, with the words: “Why are you crucifying Zuma?” Another protester carried a placard declaring, “Zuma is Jesus.” This was no spontaneous street theatre; it was the distilled essence of Zuma’s political theology: the politician as prophet, the accused as martyr and the party as saviour.
South Africa has long known Bible-waving politicians, but Zuma perfected the Pentecostalised spectacle. During his presidency, he proclaimed that the ANC would rule “until Jesus comes back”, that God would bless ANC voters while consigning opponents to hellfire, and that his legal troubles were nothing less than a conspiracy of “dark forces” to crucify him. He was not merely president; he was an honorary pastor, prayed over by megachurch leaders under flashing cameras, and blessed in ways that blurred the line between pulpit and podium.
Zuma’s religiosity was never a quiet faith. It was populist theatre, performed with dance, polygamy and prosperity gospel promises. He wrapped himself in both the cross and the Zulu royal aura, embodying a hybrid sacred legitimacy: Christian messiah on one hand, Zulu patriarch on the other.
That dual halo has not dimmed with his departure from the Union Buildings. It has been reincarnated in the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which now parades itself not merely as a political organisation but as the only spiritually legitimate liberation party. Its rallies sound less like political gatherings and more like revival crusades. At one, supporters hailed Zuma as a “modern-day saviour being crucified”, persecuted by the courts but vindicated by heaven. Traditional healers, too, have pinned their hopes on the party, viewing it as the vessel through which long-denied recognition of African spiritual practices might finally arrive.
The party has been bold enough to say the quiet part out loud. “On the spiritual front,” declared chairperson and former police minister Nathi Nhleko, “it is a divinely sanctioned movement. It channels the mandate of our ancestors and the unseen to liberate the Africans and black people in general from spiritual death and moral decay. Its spiritual programs are designed to cleanse, unify and reawaken African consciousness and cultural values. From a revolutionary perspective it is a people’s army and political movement.”
But if the party is staging a revival, it is one prone to off-key hymns. The party has stumbled over its own choreography: cutting ties with the All Africa Alliance Movement after disagreements, and punishing senior figure Floyd Shivambu for daring to consult the self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri, whose brand of miracle-working was apparently not authorised by the MK party’s liturgical committee. In a party that claims to be heaven’s chosen instrument, it seems some prophets are holier than others.
The contradictions matter less than the performance. Even when distancing itself from particular religious figures, the party continues to lace its speeches with religious fervour, anointing itself as the only authentic custodian of South Africa’s liberation soul. It is a theatre of piety that exploits the innermost beliefs of millions: the longing for deliverance, the need for dignity, the desperate hope for justice.
This is not new. Zuma’s politics thrived on what scholars call the “gospel of holy entitlement”, a prosperity theology that turns wealth and conspicuous consumption into proof of divine favour. To his supporters, his accumulation of riches was not corruption but blessing. Nkandla was not theft; it was testimony. Designer suits and lavish weddings were not evidence of plunder but of God’s abundance. And if critics called it graft, well, they were simply agents of Satan trying to thwart the blessed.
The MK party has inherited this mantle wholesale. Liberation, in its hands, is no longer a programme of policy but a brand of spiritual legitimacy. Competing parties are not rivals; they are heretics. The ballot box becomes an altar call, and voting for the MK party is not civic duty but salvation.
The indignity of this should not be understated. In a country scarred by inequality, unemployment and corruption, the sacred hopes of citizens are being hijacked and weaponised. Faith, that most intimate reservoir of human resilience, is being converted into political capital, its symbols brandished not to heal but to shield leaders from accountability.
South Africa is hardly alone in this trend. Around the world, populist strongmen have fused religion and politics into a toxic brew. President Donald Trump’s evangelical messianism in the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism in India, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamic populism in Turkey. Zuma and the MK party fit neatly into this global procession of political prophets who mistake power for divine right and dissent for blasphemy.
When parties proclaim divine sanction, corruption is sanctified, and justice postponed until the afterlife. South Africa deserves better than to be told that salvation lies not in hospitals, schools or jobs, but in casting a ballot for heaven’s chosen party.
The MK party’s gospel is not liberation; it is illusion. Its theology is not of justice but of justification for excess, for impunity, for betrayal. Behind the incense and crusade songs is a simple fact: this is politics dressed in clerical robes, waving incense over the ashes of the people’s most sacred hopes.
And like all false prophets, it deserves not reverence, but reckoning — before the people’s faith in democracy itself is led to the slaughter.
Lindani Zungu is a Mandela Rhodes scholar pursuing a master’s in political studies and is the editor-in-chief of the youth-oriented publication, Voices of Mzansi.