FIKILE-NTSIKELELO MOYA | Hopelessness leads people to tragedies of varied nature

The tragedy of 15 people being swept away by rapidly rising river water has become one of those tragedies we might as well expect at least once a year, like accepting the inevitability of some boys dying at initiation schools in the Eastern Cape.

Some of the most repeated remarks such as in the aftermath of the tragic drowning of individuals partaking in a cleansing ritual in the Jukskei River in Johannesburg have been of disbelief in people’s gullibility.

Those who deny the existence of gods and the supernatural point to events such as these as evidence for why humanity must desist from all primitive superstitions.

Some have gone as far as to suggest that the person – for his title is still unclear – who performed the cleansing ritual that some have described as a baptism, is shady because he disappeared after the incident and has not given the police and the families a proper account of what happened.

Reports in the Sowetan suggested that the man had something of a stellar reputation as some kind of shaman and had for many years helped those who knocked at his door.

I affirm everyone’s right to believe or not to believe. It is not up to us to decide whether their beliefs are “rational”. It is also not for us to assume that those who don’t share our faith are somehow less moral than we are.

The desire to believe in a higher or transcendent power by whatever name or form is embedded in the human psyche. There is archaeological evidence suggesting that humans from a wide variety of locations have for tens of thousands of years organised what may be loosely classified as religious practices.

This is not to dispute that there are many charlatan preachers out there taking advantage of the gullible and the desperate.

While there is not much one can do about the gullible, desperation is a symptom of a social sin.

Instead of being harsh on those who fall prey to these shysters, it might be prudent to first ask ourselves why is it that in a country so endowed with wealth there would be men and women so desperate for some kind of respite that they become handy for wolves in sheep clothing?

Each time the crooks take advantage of the poor and the desperate, we are bound to hear Karl Marx’s famous line about religion being the opiate of the masses.

It is often forgotten or appreciated that when Marx wrote the line, opium was used as an anaesthetic and not a recreational drug. This means that he would not have meant that those who seek refuge in religion, do so out of an attempt to wish away their reality.

The opiate of religion was to enable them to go through the inevitable turmoil that their human existence visited upon them.

Religion is once again, the opiate of the masses who have nothing else to hold on to. Just like the other opiates of our times – nyaope, heroin, tik, whoonga and others – it is a symptom of the hopelessness that envelopes our communities and in particular, the youth who bear the brunt of unemployment.

So, instead of rushing to condemn those we regard as fools for allowing themselves to be taken advantage of, we might do well to work towards a society where religious impostors are irrelevant because the material conditions are in place.

While I may not have evidence of the correlation, it must say something that religious quacks are more likely to be found among the poorest and most desperate than among those who don’t need to worry about where their next meal will come from.

For as long as young people cannot understand why they cannot find work, sometimes with credible academic certificates; until mothers have no reasonable fear that their babies will die as toddlers on their backs, expect that the crook pastors will stay in business.

We have a pandemic of hopelessness in our country.

The religious fraternity, just like the lottery companies and sports betting companies, tend to emerge as the antidote for times such as these. All three industries sell a much-needed commodity: hope.

What happened on the banks of the Jukskei was by all means a tragedy. A greater tragedy though is that nearly 30 years after democracy, we have become a people so desperate for hope that we are willing to risk everything, including death, to have something to hold on to for tomorrow.