THE Diakonia Council of Churches has expressed deep concern following the brutal attack at a mosque in Ottawa near Verulam on Thursday.
Nomabelu Mvambo-Dandala, the Executive Director, at Diakonia Council of Churches said they condemned the senseless violence and murder of one of the victims and implored law enforcement agencies, together with community and religious leaders, to offer full support to the Muslim community affected.
“We are shocked by the terrible attack, which disregarded the sanctity of a place of worship. As an ecumenical organisation, which has long worked with the interfaith community for justice and peace, we share the pain of loss and pray full and speedy recovery for the two injured men. To the bereaved family we offer heartfelt condolences on this devastating loss. We are gravely concerned at the prospect of further escalation of violence,” said Mvambo-Dandala.
The organisation is also calling for the full force of the law to bring the perpetrators to justice.
A community dialogue between religious leaders, community leaders, local businesses will be held to help the Muslim community get through this difficult period.
The organisation convened a meeting on Thursday at which it provided feedback to the church leadership in the province on the decisions taken at the national church leaders forum and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) conference held in June last year. A number of resolutions were adopted at the conference and one of them dealt with “State Capture” following the report of the Unburdening Panel.
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“The last time we dealt with the ‘legitimacy of the State,’ was at the height of the struggle against the apartheid regime in the mid-1980s. For me, the spectre of declaring a democratically elected or constituted government morally illegitimate was unimaginable.What was more frightening was that the capture of government had reached a state where parallel institutions outside government were making decisions about the resources of the country. This amounted to surrendering the sovereignty of the State to private individuals and foreign entities. At this stage we could have declared the government as constitutionally illegitimate, but the churches left this to the legal fraternity,” said Rev Mzwandile Molo.
“The other critical decision by the Conference was that the SACC should convene a National Convention to build a new consensus on national values to help South Africa arrive at a common basis for a common, reconciled citizenship; a reconciled social and economic dispensation for the realisation of the post apartheid promise that we worked for,” he said.
“The challenge though is that if leaders are elected within their party on a corrupt basis, there is no reason why they would not try to corrupt the national election. We must do everything possible to defend the 2019 elections in this country. If we fail, we are gone,” he said, adding that this is where the ward or community-based forms of ecumenism comes in. “We need to link up the churches at a local level to develop a strong operational presence to be able to create an effective observer system for the elections at all voting stations,” he said.
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