1744: Rick Raubenheimer on Secularism in South Africa
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/08/19
“I’ve wanted it for some time as something that would be useful to display our identity and also, when we have Meetups in public places, make it easy for people to find us because they would be able to look for a large banner, and see that it says South African Secular Society, and then that way find us more easily.”
“The intention is to put a flag outside the venue and a banner inside, typically. That’s all we could afford now because we got six printed for different parts around different Meetups around the country. Probably, when we’re flusher with funds, we’ll duplicate that and do another teardrop banner and X-banner for the Meetups.”
“Let’s talk about our experience with the Department of Home Affairs in trying to register as an organization that can designate marriage officers. We originally were prompted by one of our members who wanted to become a marriage officer.”
“So, we inquired of Home Affairs. They said that they wanted a list of 250 members with their signatures to prove that we were an existing organization. The fact that we were a non-profit organization registered with the Department of Social Development didn’t cut any ice for them.”
“We say very early on, ‘Do you support the SASS mission and ethos?’ The only choice is, ‘Yes.’ We say, ‘Are you prepared to do marriage ceremonies free of supernatural content?’ The only answer is, ‘Yes.’”
“So, it is puzzling where his head was. Maybe, it is a case of the idea of being secular and not believing in God was so far out of his frame of reference; that it didn’t feature anywhere in his consciousness.”
“Some people do, yes. For instance, we have turned down people where it was clear that they did not follow any established religion, but then they were practicing Reiki and crystal healing. That’s why I mention it explicitly.”
“So far, where we have not picked up any red flags from the application, we seem to have picked them up during the interview. Wynand, Wilhelm, Jani and Judith have been most dedicated in helping with the online interviews, which can take up to an hour each.”
“Our main opposition, although they don’t oppose us directly, would probably be the ironically-named ‘Freedom of Religion South Africa’, which gives them the catchy acronym of ‘FOR-South Africa’. They are actually a right-wing Christian organisation, opposing secularism, abortion, same-sex marriage, and so on.”
“Amusingly, they ran a few ‘surveys’ on their website on their issues. Various atheist Facebook groups I participate in directed members to those surveys, and we roundly outvoted them on their own site, even though they worded things deceptively.”
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