Published in August 2021 by Penguin Random House
I have always held a fascination for the power of religion. It’s such a clever construct; you almost have to admire the first people who decided to use the promise of fear and/or an array of rewards in the afterlife as a means to gain control over their fellow man. What is surprising is that people allow themselves to be indoctrinated so easily and get swept up in all manner of bizarre and extreme dogma. Even more astonishing is how seemingly intelligent people (even today) allow themselves to get caught up in the peculiar and frightening realm of cult life.
In her memoir, Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika Bornman recounts how her family joined and later moved to the KwaZulu-Natal-based Christian mission, KwaSizabantu in the 1980s. KwaSizabantu is touted as a nirvana founded on egalitarian values but something sinister lurks beneath ‘the place where people are helped’. Bornman’s book logs her journey from when she is a fearful young girl to the fierce activist she eventually becomes, determined to do whatever it takes to save future generations and, at the same time, find personal redemption and self-acceptance.
It is an important book. Not only for Bornman’s own sake, but to educate the general public against such organisations bent on making money off the backs of vulnerable souls, and committing ghastly human-rights abuses in the process, all in the name of serving God and earning eternal salvation. A place where threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children; families are fragmented; and trust is eroded.
It is here where Bornman and her two older siblings are left by her parents and where she finds herself isolated and alone, living in constant fear of professed eternal damnation. A defenceless child, she is forced to watch brutal public beatings of children with plastic pipes, often to within an inch of their lives. She is not allowed to look away or cry, because if she does, she will be next.
In his foreword to the book, editor-in-chief of News24, Adriaan Basson, writes that 16 years of investigative and crime reporting could not have prepared him for what he was about to hear when Bornman started telling him her story. He says that although Bornman was vilified by her family and other believers for speaking out (and disowned by her mother), she persisted, driven by her burning passion for justice.
While absolutely necessary reading, it doesn’t make for easy reading. As a child, Bornman spends more than 13 years at KwaSizabantu where she is, from age 17, sexually molested by a senior mission counsellor to whom she has to report weekly for her confessions. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu wages emotional, psychological and sexual warfare on her until, finally, she manages to break free and walk away at the age of 21.
Reading what life was like for her as young child growing up with so little warmth and acceptance – not something many of us can relate with – was at times so upsetting that I wanted to put the book down. Even more horrifying was the fear that was instilled in these young children. She believes it is because of fear that so many others who have managed to escape KwaSizabantu remained silent about the place. She, however, decided to speak out, not because she had conquered her fear, but in spite of it.
It is one thing to escape from a restrictive religious community, but what is often not taken into account is the painful process of rehabilitation back into ‘normal life’ after a decade of humiliation, abuse, brainwashing and being told you’re ‘from the devil’. As the years passed, she realised that she could no longer ignore her knowledge of what is really going on at KwaSizabantu and how children, in particular, are abused at the mission. Consequently, she has spent more than 20 years endeavouring to expose the atrocities.
Indeed, Bornman’s years spent as brave activist are some of the most fascinating chapters of her extraordinary life story. In February 2000, Femina published an article which she had submitted as part of a competition. There was an immediate response when it hit the stands with the Natal Witness reporting that ‘her article has opened a hornet’s nest with stories emerging of split families, alleged physical and psychological abuse, excommunications and suggestions of sinister business dealings’.
Even more revealing was the fact that The Sunday Times followed suit with a front-page article under the heading: ‘Mission of malice’ with a report on ‘startling allegations linking a controversial Christian mission station with the shady activities of apartheid’s military intelligence structure’. And therein, as they say, lies a whole other tale. I’d hate to divulge too many spoilers, and I’d much rather implore you to read Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu. It really is frightening how some of the most startling – and horrifying – things often happen right under our noses, until brave whistle-blowers break their silence.
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