South Africans have been warned against joining cult-like organisations in the name of religion, after a round-table discussion on cults, sects and the church in Johannesburg.
The discussion comes in the wake of the fatal shooting at Seven Angels Ministry, where police officers and some leaders of the church were killed in eNgcobo in the Eastern Cape.
Dr Saths Cooper from the International Union of Psychological Science says cults aren’t limited to religion but politics as well.
He says it usually revolves around a charismatic individual with immense power and wealth.
Cooper says, “Zuma comes in, COPE breaks away, Malema gets disciplined and expelled, EFF is formed… Don’t we have cultivar personality in those circles? Did we not see for some 10 years the oldest living liberation movement in the world being besotted by its leader, unable to critically engage? So what about us mere mortals the ladies and gentlemen of the cloth?”
