Call for churches to be allowed to open at 50% capacity

THE MARCH staged by women on Saturday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria against the lockdown restriction on the number of people attending churches was just the beginning of efforts to put pressure on the government to allow churches to operate at 50% capacity.

This is according to Pastor Thobile Magerman on behalf of the marchers bused to Pretoria from across Gauteng.

Participants were also clad in black attire as a symbol to lament incidences of women subjected to gender-based violence.

They expressed their determination to compel the government to accede to demands to set aside the regulation limiting the number of people in attendance to 250 and to allow churches to operate at 50% capacity.

Magerman said: “Freedom of unfettered religion is the basic and fundamental human right. There is no way we cannot get what we want from the government.

“You can see that everything else is operational, operating on a full-scale – public transport and entertainment centres – and the Covid-19 numbers have gone down drastically.”

Asked about the next move should the government fail to heed their call, she said: “If we don’t get what we want we will have to go back to the drawing board where we started.”

However, she hoped that President Cyril Ramaphosa would lend an ear to their demands and take them into consideration.

Marchers, she said, were frustrated because the churches were restricted despite the fact they were places where “we get healing, solace, counselling and rehabilitation, even for the perpetrators”.