OP-ED: Multiplying a contested Section 22 Committee process does not subtract from its defects

‍Multiplying a contested Section 22 Committee process does not subtract from its defects

When a public body is challenged for singling out one religious community, extending the same contested process to other faiths is not the answer. Yet that is precisely what the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) has done. Having initiated its section 22 process with the Christian sector (a process whose lawfulness is already being challenged in court), the Commission is now trying to establish parallel committees for other faith communities. However, Christians were singled out at the outset, other faith communities were excluded from shaping a process that may ultimately affect them, and every subsequent committee potentially rests on the same contested legal foundation. This does not cure the original defects. It compounds them.

The story begins in 2025, when the CRL launched a committee under section 22 of its founding CRL Act 2002, directed at the Christian sector. Its task was to examine abuse and harmful practices and to develop a code of conduct and accountability mechanisms, on a basis it called voluntary self-regulation. It was soon challenged. The South African Church Defenders (SACD) brought an application in the Gauteng High Court, and a challenge by the South African Muslim Lawyers Association (SAMLA) has also been reported, on the basis, among others, that singling out Christianity (and excluding other religions) was discriminatory, since any framework produced would apply to every faith.

The CRL’s answer has been to widen the net, announcing a section 22 committee process for African Traditional Religion and launching a Hindu committee in June 2026. On its face, this looks like inclusion. Look closer, and the difficulty appears.

The problem is one of sequence. By the time the later communities were invited, the essential choices had already been made: the problem was defined, the vocabulary of harmful practices framed, peer review proposed as the remedy, legislation raised as a desired outcome, and the Christian committee's terms of reference already in place. Communities entering after all of that are not participating on an equal footing. They are adjusting to a destination and method already chosen without their input. It is arguably not equal treatment or participation to be engaged only after the decisive choices have been made. It is hard to see how it can cure the original underlying defect retrospectively. If anything, it risks entrenching it.

There is also a practical problem that the Commission has not answered satisfactorily. Faith traditions differ profoundly in how they are governed and led, and how they relate to family, culture and community. As such, a code developed for one cannot simply be transplanted to another. If each section 22 committee reaches its own conclusions, as one would expect, the CRL cannot easily merge them into one framework applying to all. The more faith-specific the consultation, the less its findings can support one uniform law. And if the Christian committee's model becomes the template, the later committees will merely be adapting to conclusions reached through the very process alleged to be discriminatory.

Sections 22 and 23 place the relevant powers in the CRL, although it may formally delegate powers or assign duties. The public record does not disclose the CRL’s resolutions or delegations supporting the newer processes. A media announcement is not, by itself, evidence of the CRL’s underlying decision or lawful delegation, and the public is entitled to ask for that evidence. Visibility is not legitimacy. The Hindu committee, the most visible of the newer bodies, has named members and a consultation programme. However, appointment by the CRL creates membership of a CRL committee. It does not give members authority to speak for an entire faith, particularly where established bodies in that community have questioned the process.

Across the sectors examined, the wider process has encountered significant resistance and internal division, and no sector-wide mandate for the CRL’s model has been demonstrated. This is concerning, particularly from a Chapter 9 institution whose constitutional objects include promoting tolerance and national unity among South Africa's cultural, religious and linguistic communities, on the basis of equality and non-discrimination. A process that has instead generated division, resistance and contested representation is difficult to reconcile with that mandate.

The deeper concern is what self-regulation means here. A genuinely self-regulating community creates and owns its own structures. A section 22 committee by definition belongs to the CRL, a State institution, which sets its functions, appoints its leaders and may dissolve it. The Commission says that the framework is voluntary and does not involve State licensing or government oversight. Yet its own media statement has called for a “legal and/or legislated framework”; its terms of reference envisaged legislation providing for a Religious Practice Council, registration of religious institutions and practitioners, and a code of conduct; and the CRL Chairperson has said that this council should have legal powers under an Act of Parliament. Once such an accountability system is created, empowered or enforced through legislation, it is impossible to describe it as voluntary self-regulation. It is a proposal for State-backed regulation administered through a religious-sector council.

That said, none of this excuses genuine wrongdoing. Fraud, assault, sexual abuse, coercion and financial misconduct are serious and must be confronted decisively. But these are already offences. Established Hindu and Jewish bodies have shown, through their own accountability structures, that safeguarding can be strengthened within a faith while cooperating fully with the law. Failures of enforcement are an argument for better awareness and education, policing and prosecution – not for placing religion effectively under State supervision.

Two things should follow. First, Parliament, through the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA PC), should neither rely on, endorse nor consider legislation based on any section 22 committee's outputs until the courts have ruled on the pending challenges. If a court later sets aside their establishment or process, the committee’s outputs would be an unsafe evidential or consultative foundation. In any event, any legislation would require its own constitutionally compliant, inclusive and rational process. Second, the CRL and its Chairperson should be called back before the COGTA PC to answer the serious questions already raised in Parliament. Accountability for how this process has been run falls within Parliament's oversight function and does not depend on the outcome of the litigation.

The Commission's original error lay not simply in beginning with Christianity. The sequence and documentary record raise a reasonable concern that later consultations are being used to adapt or validate a direction substantially chosen in the initial process. Creating more committees does not correct that. It exacerbates it. Before another committee is appointed, or another Rand of tax-payers money spent, Parliament should require the CRL to demonstrate the legality, the necessity, the mandate and the cost of the whole project.