Deputy President Paul Mashatile of the ANC stood before the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) congregation, greeting them “in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” recounting his bishop father, his Sunday-school days, and quoting Matthew on servant leadership. He spoke of the Cross as a symbol of renewal, sacrifice leading to redemption, families at the foot of the Cross, and the urgent need for ethical renewal in government. He even urged the church to pray for the nation and named corruption as one of the evils to confront.
It would be moving—if it weren’t so bitterly ironic.
The same ANC that has presided over decades of state capture, cadre deployment, and tenderpreneurship now wants to “carry over the Word of God” as if the Bible is just another manifesto chapter. The same leaders who have watched billions vanish into luxury cars, overseas trips, and loyalist pockets suddenly discover the Gospel of humility and service. Mashatile’s speech is not an isolated Easter photo-op. President Cyril Ramaphosa has issued warm Resurrection messages about hope and renewal. The DA has wished Christians a “blessed Easter” of renewal. And while EFF and MK may not have been at the UCKG podium today, their leaders have never been shy about invoking divine justice when it suits a rally or a tweet. All of them, on this holiest of weekends, want you to believe they are carrying the torch of faith.
Let us be brutally honest: this is not piety. It is performance. It is the political class treating the Word of God like a rented choir—something to borrow for moral cover while their real altar is stacked with cash.
The ANC’s record is infamous: the Zuma-era looting, the endless “investigations” that go nowhere, the local-government collapse that Mashatile himself admitted is in crisis. Yet here he stands, Bible in one hand, government renewal plan in the other, as if the Cross erases the smell of sulphur from state capture. The EFF rails against “wh monopoly capital” while its top figures were dragged through the VBS scandal—millions allegedly siphoned while preaching radical economic transformation. The MK Party, born from Zuma’s faction, wraps itself in revolutionary rhetoric and traditional values, yet remains tethered to the very man whose corruption trials became a national soap opera. Even the DA, which loves to brand itself as the clean alternative, has been caught in coalition compromises and internal scandals that make its Easter wishes ring hollow. None of them are innocent.
Because here is the uncomfortable truth these parties refuse to preach from their own pulpits: you cannot serve both God and money. The Bible they selectively quote calls corruption theft from the poor, idolatry of the worst kind. It condemns leaders who devour widows’ houses while making long prayers for the cameras. On Good Friday—the day the innocent Christ was crucified by a corrupt religious-political establishment—these parties strut into churches and stadiums talking “renewal” while their actions scream that the real idols are tenders, kickbacks, and votes bought with looted public funds.
It feels like mockery precisely because it is. Easter is about sacrifice, truth-telling, and resurrection after death—not spinning the same old lies in fancier spiritual packaging. When a deputy president whose party has been accused of turning government into a self-enrichment scheme starts quoting the Gospel of Matthew on servant leadership, it is not inspiration. It is insult. It reduces the most profound story in Christian history to a cheap campaign prop.
South Africans are not fools. We see the luxury lifestyles, the unaccounted billions, the families still without water and electricity while politicians preach from the foot of the Cross. The real renewal this country needs will not come from another Easter address or another prayer breakfast. It will come when leaders stop treating God as a useful prop and start fearing the actual judgment their actions invite.
Until then, spare us the hymns. The hypocrisy is loud enough.
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