South Africa is a country based on the rules and principles of God, said ANC president Jacob Zuma in Kempton Park on Thursday.
The preamble of the constitution "calls upon God to help us" said Zuma at the National Presidential Religious Leaders conference.
"When all of us take office in government... we raise our right hand and indeed pronounce... so help me God. I believe no-one can argue South Africa is not based on the principles of God," said Zuma.
Zuma addressed hundreds of delegates dressed in a sea of clerical collars, African traditional outfits, Islamic skull caps and even a Jesus baseball cap.
Sylvia Browne .
It's a name which causes strong reactions in a lot of people.
To her fans, who believe that she is a "true psychic medium," she is a down-to-earth, spiritually deep woman who, with the help of her "spirit guide" Francine, can see the future, diagnose illnesses, find lost children, and communicate with the dead.
To skeptics, who believe that she has not proven any of her purported abilities, she is almost certainly a fraud, using stage tricks such as "cold reading" to simulate psychic abilities, preying on the grieving, the ill, and the spiritually needy.
Who is right?
Click on Sylvia Browne to find out...
Mary is a pretty five-year-old girl with big brown eyes and a father who kicked her out onto the streets in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Her crime: the local priest had denounced her as a witch and blamed her "evil powers" for causing her mother's death.Ostracised, vulnerable and frightened, she wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, sleeping rough, struggling to stay alive.Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been branded witches, blamed for all their family's woes, and abandoned. Before being pushed out of their homes many were beaten or slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull.
Yet Mary and the others at the shelter are the lucky ones for they, at least, are alive. Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.The devil's children are "identified" by powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have combined to produce a deep-rooted belief in, and fear of, witchcraft. The priests spread the message that child-witches bring destruction, disease and death to their families. And they say that, once possessed, children can cast spells and contaminate others.
