Exactly seven days ago, I wrote a letter of protest to the CRL Commission, not because I had nothing else to do but because I am angry — and I refuse to hide it behind politeness or protocol.
In recent weeks, I’ve watched with disbelief as the CRL Rights Commission unveiled its Section 22 Committee, which reportedly represents 45 million Christians in South Africa. Forty-five million souls — a moral and spiritual constituency larger than most political parties — and yet, when the names were read out, what I saw staring back at me was a familiar and infuriating pattern: men. Rows and rows of men.
What makes this even more disheartening is that the CRL Commission is led by a woman — Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, a leader I once believed understood the struggles of women in faith, the indignities faced in religious institutions, the spiritual violence that too often goes unnamed. I expected her to see the danger in such exclusion.
I expected her to speak up. But instead, we were presented with a male-dominated committee, sanctioned and celebrated under her leadership. How do we reconcile that? How do we explain a structure so skewed under the watch of a woman who, at some point, must have fought these same battles?
Perhaps we missed something. Perhaps this committee was meant to lead a “Men’s Dialogue”, where women are to be spectators rather than participants. Perhaps we are not meant to ask questions about power and gender when religion is involved. Because clearly, when it comes to spiritual governance, the pattern remains unchanged — women are to pray, not preside.
It is baffling. Because the very abuses and violations this committee claims it was established to monitor and regulate — the exploitations in churches, the spiritual grooming, the economic manipulation, the sexual abuse of congregants — are overwhelmingly experienced by women and children. How, then, do you exclude women from the very structure meant to address their pain?
How do you call yourself a “moral custodian” when you reproduce the same injustice you claim to be policing? It is not just tone-deaf. It is dangerous.
And where, I must ask, were the social justice activists, the civil society representatives, the gender equality champions who attended that launch? How did no one raise their voice in protest? How did so many people of conscience sit in that room and not see the glaring imbalance before them? Did they not notice? Did they not care? Or have we become so accustomed to patriarchy dressed in religious respectability that it no longer shocks us?
We cannot allow this silence to stand. Not when women continue to bear the brunt of religious abuse, emotional manipulation, and exclusion from leadership spaces that claim to serve them. Not when our daughters grow up seeing men in pulpits and men on committees while women’s voices are confined to the choir and the kitchen.
To say this is disappointing would be too soft. This is a betrayal — of faith, of feminism, of justice.
The CRL Rights Commission has a constitutional mandate to promote and protect cultural, religious, and linguistic rights — a responsibility grounded in fairness, equality, and human dignity. Yet what we see unfolding is an institution replicating the very hierarchies it should be dismantling. A committee that claims to represent 45 million Christians but excludes half the Christian population is not legitimate — it is a mockery of representation.
To the Commission, and especially to its chairperson: representation matters. Symbolism matters. When you place men — almost exclusively — at the table of national spiritual governance, you send a message that divinity has a gender. You teach the next generation that power and piety are male-coded. You diminish the vast contributions of women who have kept faith communities alive through prayer, service, and sheer resilience.
And to those who will say, “Why make it about gender?” — I say this: everything about this is gender. The imbalance of power. The selective morality. The silence around abuse. The easy forgiveness extended to male clergy while survivors are shamed into silence. It is all gender.
This is not an attack on faith. This is a demand for integrity. The Church, the mosque, the temple — all must be places where justice begins, not where it ends. If the CRL Rights Commission truly wishes to serve its mandate, it must urgently review and reform the composition of this committee to reflect the people it claims to represent — women, children, youth, survivors, and those silenced by spiritual abuse.
Because until that happens, this committee is not a council of the faithful — it is a club of gatekeepers.
I therefore urge all of us not be silent while the moral guardians of our nation choose patriarchy over progress.
We are watching. We are speaking. And we will not stop until the table of faith in this country has room for everyone — not just men in suits quoting scripture, but women who live it every single day.
Below is a link to a petition, help us share and grow this petition and demand for gender justice in the RCL Commitee.
https://c.org/hKmhPvk66h
