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OFFICIAL LETTER OF PETITION FOR TRANSMISSION TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL
ASSEMBLY, GIVEN TO THE PORT ELIZABETH TRANSITIONAL LOCAL COUNCIL
ON SATURDAY 27
MAY 1995 BY THE ORGANISERS OF THE MARCH FOR MORALITY AT A PRAYER RALLY HELD
OUTSIDE THE PORT ELIZABETH TOWN HALL
We, the Christian Community of Port
Elizabeth hereby wish to lodge this as a letter of petition against the
following issues which
we absolutely object to and view a infringement of the
rights of the citizens of South Africa.
The issues are:
1. THE
LEGALISATION OF ABORTION ON DEMAND
We as the Christians of Port Elizabeth
totally reject the Ministry of Health’s proposed plans to legalise
Abortion on demand.
We hereby declare that abortion is murder and should be
seen as a criminal offence. We also refute as blatant manipulation, the
statistics released by the department of Health as grossly over exaggerated. We
call for an end to abortions being performed on
mothers who are HIV positive as
medically proven statistics show that 3 out of 4 children born of HIV positive
mothers do not have
the virus. Those performing such abortions are acting
outside of the present law. We suggest that the Church, partly funded by
the
government could assist with the teenage pregnancy problem. Please solve the
adoption problem by stopping abortion on demand.
2. PROPOSAL FOR SOUTH
AFRICA TO BECOME A SECULAR STATE
Chapter 3 of the Constitution, the Bill
of Human Rights, guarantees the freedom of religion and not freedom from
religion. We hereby
object to the proposal that South Africa become a Secular
State, in which all religious groups would be banned from using state buildings
for their activities, and all religious leaders would be banned from any state
or government post. This is nothing more than blatant
and immoral
discrimination against Christianity. In South Africa 70% of people are
Christian (SABC statistics). If South Africa
became a Secular State, this would
destroy the ministry of Youth For Christ, Scripture Union, Student Christian
Ministries (SCM's),
Student Christian Associations (SCA's) and Christelike
Studente Verenegings (CSV's), as they will no longer have access to state
schools. This will take God out of the schools. We object to this. We demand
that the rights of the majority of Christians in
South Africa be respected and
that the clause "In humble submission to Almighty God be included in the New
Constitution." This is
our sincere request. (What has happened to Majority Rule
Democracy?)
3. PORNOGRAPHY
We, as the Christians of Port
Elizabeth, reject the proposed new pornography legislation being proposed by the
Ministry of Home Affairs,
which will legalise every form of pornography
including bestiality, Paedophilia and incest etc. We challenge the governments
proposed
new rating system as being nothing more than pathetic justification for
allowing moral degradation and we question it's validity
as they are unable to
enforce the current rating system. We also demand that the government take
cognisance of the direct link between
pornography and violent crime such as
Rape, Incest, and Paedophilia.
Pornography is an infringement on Women's
Rights and leads to women being treated as sex objects and not as valuable
equals in society.
We reject all pornography as a social evil and disease and
ask for it's removal. Please consider the following facts as evidence
to
support our call:
* Since the present proliferation of pornography in South Africa was allowed,
reported cases of child abuse have increased by over
50% a year!
(UCANEWS, April 1993)
* American serial killer, Ted Bundy, declared in an interview given on the
night before his execution that pornography was the common
factor between all
the serial killers and violent criminals that he had come into contact with
during his eight years in jail. And
Bundy warned that the pornography that had
led him on the addictive path to becoming a mass murderer was mild compared to
the material
now available.
* Pornography is a $20-billion-a-year industry world-wide, which is 85%
controlled by organised crime.
* Testimony presented to the US Attorney
General's Commission on
Pornography led them to unanimously declare that hard core pornography is a
“manual of rape".
* 2 444 cases of rape (under the age of 14) were reported to the police
during the first six months of 1993 in South Africa. Compared
to 3 639 for the
whole of 1992. Of the 2 444 cases, 420 were reported in the Western Cape,
making the Peninsula the worst rape area
of the country. The national figure
has been rising steadily since 1988 (i.e. Since porn became widely available in
SA). The 639
cases in 1992 represented a 114% increase in four
years.
(Argus, 27/9/93)
* In an experimental clamp-down in Oklahoma City between 1983 and 1989, 150
of 163 sexually related businesses were closed down.
During, that period, the
rape decreased by 27% in this city while increasing by 19% in the state overall
where this legislation was
not being enforced. Robert Macy, chief lawyer said:
"The only thing we did different was to enforce the laws against pornography."
This report Macy, led to the prevention of over 1 000 rapes!
* The SA police statistics report that the number of rapes reported totalled
up to 27 056 in 1993. This was 3 000 more than in 1992
and nearly doubled the
1986 statistics. The police estimated that for every rape reported another 35
go unreported, which could
bring the total number of rapes to as high as 950
000
* According to predictions in South Africa, 1 in 3 women would expect to be
raped, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys to be sexually molested.
4.
CRIME AND VIOLENCE
We, the Christians of Port Elizabeth, seriously
question the Government's ineffective attempts to stamp out crime and violence.
We
also demand that politically motivated crime be treated as crime and that
politics not be used as an excuse for violence. We condemn
the violence in
KwaZulu Natal, as well as the taxi violence and call for strong handed
intervention. We call for the government
not to allow the Legal System to be
compromised by the Human Rights Culture, and call for the reinstatement of
Biblically based law
and call for strong determined leadership from President
Mandela to ensure this. Minister Dullah Omar's recent statement in favour
of
automatic amnesty for all liberation fighters is nothing more than blatant
discrimination and is a poor reflection on the governments
desire for
transparency in the truth and reconciliation commission.
5. SEXUAL
ORIENTATION
We call on the Government to remove the clause in the Interim
Constitution which guarantees equality of sexual orientation. We ask
for this
clause to be excluded form the Final Constitution. We do not accept the
granting of Special Rights to protect persons involved
in immoral practice such
as Homosexual Practice, Sodomy, Bestiality, Incest and Paedophilia. We ask the
that Government expose the
evils of the organisations such as Playboy
International, and the Rene Guyon Organisations (Motto : Eight is too late
advocating
sodomy), which we as the Christians believe to be behind the move to
get the Sexual Orientation Clause included in the Constitution.(Reismann,
Judith
A, Soft Porn plays Hard Ball, 1991)
6. SOCIAL
INJUSTICE
We, as the Christians of Port Elizabeth, demand that the
government deal with the problems of economic and social oppression which
the
people of South Africa are currently experiencing. The Government’s
getting the country into huge foreign debt and 29%
of the budget is still being
spent on paying the interest of that debt. The Reconstruction and Development
Programme should not
be used by any party as a political tool to gain votes.
All parties should be allowed access to funds so that all people can get
involved in the RDP. The needs of all communities need to be addressed. To the
Port Elizabeth Town Council, we ask "Why is it not
made public that the R72
million given by Central Government is less than one third of the R300 million
needed for RDP Projects for
the next year? If the city of Port Elizabeth has to
make up the R228 million shortfall, as said by TLC Chairman, Nceba Faku
recently.
We object to the deception of the people of South Africa by the
government which is also effectively just another 'gravy train'
7.
RACIALISM
Racism in any form is wrong and we strongly condemn this as an
evil which must be irradiated from society. Any act which discriminated
against
a person because of their race should be outlawed.
8.
SATANISM
We are very concerned about the detrimental increase of Satanism
in South Africa and in particular in the Eastern Cape. We are under
no
illusions that attempts will be made to legalise Satanism by declaring it a
formal religion. We totally reject this happening
as it is an anti-religion
(anti-Christianity). Satanism should be outlawed because of it's known
association with murder, drug,
pushing, rape and sodomy. We believe that our
children should be protected. Freedom of rights is not licence.
9.
GAMBLING
We totally reject lotteries and the like as a cheap immoral way
of funding government spending. Gambling is a rampant scourge on
society where
one man's gain is another man's loss. Gambling becomes an addiction that
cripples families and individuals and worsens
poverty and crime. We believe
that the majority of the population do not want gambling legalise.
10.
DRUGS
We call on the government to enforce stricter penalties on
gangsterism and particularly on those who are bringing all sorts of illegal
drugs into this country. We reject the NACOSA plans proposals that the drug
laws should be relaxed and that South Africa should
decriminalise drug use along
the lines of the Dutch model. We further call for stronger customs
controls.
We thank God for the good changes that have and are happening
in our country. Our concern is that we in our New Constitution would
not in any
way wilfully shut God out by blatantly secularising our nation, We would
challenge the government to hold a referendum
on all these issues. We look
forward to a public response on these matters. We will continue to pray that
God would grant the government
wisdom as they govern our nation in this period
of transition.
Signed at Port Elizabeth on this the 27th day of May
by:
CHAIRMAN’S SIGNATURE AND FOUR OTHER
SIGNATURES
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