A nation that forgot to say the name of God

There is a line in the Preamble of our own Constitution that most South Africans have never read aloud: “May God protect our people. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso. God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.” The men who wrote it did not think acknowledging God was an optional flourish. They put it in the founding document of the Republic, in four languages, in the same breath as the promise that the country would heal.

That was not sentiment. It was a statement of where authority comes from — and every serious political question in this country since has been an argument about what happens when we forget it.

Scripture is blunt about the sequence. When Israel asked for a king to rule over them “like all the nations,” God said to Samuel: “it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7). And the consequence of that rejection is recorded in a single line: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). A nation that refuses to answer to God does not end up free. It ends up governed by whoever happens to be strongest that month, with every citizen left to make their own private morality in a vacuum. That is not freedom. It is abandonment.

So the question for 4 November is not whether the parties differ on service delivery or on the budget. They do, and the arguments about those things are legitimate. The prior question is the one that decides the rest: does this country still believe there is something above the ballot box? A party that will not say whether God exists, and what His law requires of a government, has not told you what it intends to do with your money, your children, or your neighbour. It has only told you what it intends to do with your vote.

This is not a sectarian question, and it does not belong to any one party. The Bible nowhere asks a nation to have one official religion. It asks rulers to be “God-fearing, trustworthy… averse to dishonest gain” (Exodus 18:21) — a standard that any government of any conviction can meet, and that the Government of National Unity’s own Foundational Principles aspired to when they promised “Integrity, good governance and accountable leadership” and “A professional, merit-based, non-partisan, developmental public service that puts people first.” What the last two and a half years have shown is what happens when a government adopts the letter of those promises and quietly drops the part that made them mean anything. When the people who rule can take without accounting, the nation that groans is not surprised: “When the righteous flourish, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2).

And the reason to vote your values here is not that a pious government performs better. It is that the values are the claim. “He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). A government that does not recognise a standard above its own preferences has no reason to restrain itself in any of them. One that does has a reason to restrain itself in all of them.

So read the manifestos of the parties on your ballot, and read them properly. Look for the sentence that tells you whether this country is still a country that answers to God. Look for whether the party will defend the family’s freedom to worship and to teach its children in faith, will protect the Church’s right to speak, will keep the constitutional promise of religious freedom, and will acknowledge God in the nation’s public life rather than only in the private one. If a party cannot manage one sentence on that, then it has told you what you need to know about what it will do with the rest.

And if you are a Christian, the responsibility is heavier than it is for anyone else. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). That is not a promise of a comfortable country. It is a promise that the country is not the thing that matters most — and therefore that a Christian may vote without worshipping the result, and may serve a government that is not the government he would have chosen, and may hold the winning party to a standard the winning party will not thank him for. “May He incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways” (1 Kings 8:58) is a prayer for a nation whose government may not love it.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. On 4 November, you can break the cycle. Vote for the party that acknowledges God, and hold it to every word.

Mark the tick if this analysis holds. And in the comments: which party on your ballot mentions God in its manifestos — and did you have to search for it?