A Blog by Doreen Loubser
The recent resignation of Riaan Swiegelaar from the Satanic Church of South Africa has sent shockwaves through the Satanic community and is a setback to the church.
This is according to the former Gauteng Reverend of the Satanic Church Tristan Kapp who says the conversion discredits all the progress they have made so far.
Kapp reached out to me following an article I published on Wednesday to announce Swiegelaar's resignation from the church.
The self-confessed anarchist, who has rebranded himself as the "friendly Satanist", joined the church in 2020 while doing his Masters in Religion Studies, to help the church brave the hate speech and discrimination against them.
He is now busy completing his PhD in Occultism and other related topics.
Another academic article he wrote was on "Satanic Panic" and its global rise in the 1980s. This was something I remember and could relate to 100%.
As someone who lived through the satanic panic era, it was rather strange to have an email conversation with an actual Satanist - my 13-year-old self would have run for the hills.
Many conservative white Afrikaners will remember the era as a time where one was told that everything was related to the occult, men wearing earrings, women wearing ankle bracelets, people who wore black clothes and all who listened to rock music were told that they opened up their lives to the occult.
A demon was around every corner and even hiding inside mood rings.
Children might also remember author Rodney Seale who wrote a book about Rock music to warn teenagers about subliminal messages that can possess us.
I specifically remember being told that if you played Queen's "We will rock you" backwards you would hear them singing that it was nice to smoke marijuana.
As a teenager, and to this day a massive Queen fan, I was more puzzled as to why you would even want to listen to a record backwards.
Movies like Exorcism were banned in South Africa at the time and were purportedly the gateway into Satanism.
We were told that most people who watched this film would be taunted by demons until they have no other choice but to join the organisation.
Satanists were also very active in the then Port Elizabeth and were blamed for many suicides at the Van Staden's Bridge.
If any individual still questions the impact of satanic panic then the documentary Devilsdorp will rock you to the core.
Kapp says all of this formed part of propaganda, but if so then why did the SAPS establish an occult unit in 1992? I asked.
He responded by referring me to Dr Nicky Falkoff (Wits University) and journalist Karl Kemp who both said that the Unit was founded under Kobus Jonker at the behest of former Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok during the last days of apartheid.
Kapp added that the Unit was conflated with the then National Party's Apartheid rhetoric.
Jonker, who lived in Port Elizabeth at the time, became famous and was often referred to as an expert and the go-to person when it came to anything related to the occult.
I asked Kapp why he referred to himself as the former reverend of the Satanic church, to which he explained that his views did not align with that of Swiegelaar.
"Swiegelaar exclusively wanted to target conservative white Afrikaners, while I had ambitions to include all South Africans into the religion by posting in all 11 official languages, starting with Zulu and seSotho," said Kapp.
He added that Swiegelaar's focus was to translate the Satanic Bible into Afrikaans.
Kapp felt that the Satanic church failed in its attempt to get back at conservative Christians as they were born out of a trauma response from a staunchly religious upbringing.
In Swiegelaar's video, where he shared his testimony, he told the public that he joined Satanism as he was a broken person - something all Satanists have in common.
Kapp called this statement tyrannical and narcissistic.
"We are not 'broken', we are not 'angry with god' we just don't believe in his existence," he said.
Kapp acknowledged, however, that religion needed to be regulated in South Africa as freedom of religion means virtually anything as there are no laws drawing boundaries aside from the Bill of Rights.
This, he says, is the reason pastors can get away with feeding their congregants toxic materials, like petrol and grass.
While engaging with Kapp he struck me as an intellectual with strong opinions who advocates for the right to express his beliefs freely.
I, therefore, feel comfortable respectfully disagreeing with the philosophy of the Satanic church because I too have the freedom to do so.
