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Christian author and activist Joseph Ruiters says his new book, We Need God: A Prophetic Call to South Africa, challenges the nation to confront inequality, religious hatred and its unfinished journey towards dignity, justice and freedom.
By YASEEN BARDIEN
For Joseph Ruiters, the starting point for We Need God: A Prophetic Call to South Africa was a question that troubled him for years: how could a country with immense potential, abundant resources and extraordinary human talent still be burdened by inequalities that persist more than three decades after apartheid?
The Christian author and activist said his faith was central to the book.
“My faith is not something that I added into the book afterwards. It is the reason the book exists,” Ruiters told Muslim Views.
Ruiters said the biblical account of the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt was a key lens through which he examined South Africa’s own journey.
“Liberation for me was not merely about removing the chains. It is also confronting what had been taken, what had been denied, and what people require to rebuild their lives with dignity,” he said.
He said South Africans should question whether the country had achieved genuine freedom after more than three decades of democracy.
“We need to be able to ask ourselves: ‘Have we progressed? Have we genuinely made progress and are we free?’”
Ruiters said genuine liberation must go beyond political freedom to include dignity, opportunity and the ability for people to build a future for themselves and their children.
The book, launched on August 1, is written from a Christian perspective, but its message is not limited to Christians.
“Although the book emerges from my Christian faith, the national question it raises belongs to all South Africans,” he said.
Poverty, unemployment and corruption affect people regardless of their religious beliefs, Ruiters said.
“Poverty does not ask whether you are Christian or Muslim. Unemployment does not distinguish between believers and non-believers.”
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He said the desire for dignity, justice, good leadership, peace and opportunities for children was shared across religious communities.
Ruiters said he hoped readers from other faiths, as well as those who do not follow a religion, could engage with the questions raised in the book even if they did not agree with his theology.
He said We Need God was not a book about religion, but about the deeper issues South Africa needs to confront. Ruiters stressed that the book’s call for South Africa to “need God” was not a call for a religious state.
“I’m not saying that we need a particular political party to become religious, nor am I advocating a theocracy,” he said.
“I am saying that we need to recover those things that transcend political power.”
These include truth, justice, compassion, integrity, humility and recognition of the dignity of every person, he said.
Asked about Islamophobic rhetoric, particularly on social media, Ruiters said he was “deeply concerned” about rhetoric that reduces people to stereotypes, suspicion or hatred because of their faith.
“South Africa, of all countries, should understand where the language of us and them can eventually lead.”
“A Muslim neighbour should never have to prove that he or she belongs in South Africa.”
Ruiters said his Christian faith compelled him to oppose religious hatred.
“Christianity, as I understand it, cannot be used as an instrument for domination, hatred or exclusion,” he said.
“At the centre of my faith is the command to love God and to love my neighbour, whether he’s white, black, Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu etc.”
He said religious tolerance did not require people to agree on theology.
Ruiters said South Africa’s diversity should be regarded as a strength.
“We do not have to become identical in order to become unified. Unity is not uniformity,” he said.
He said the country needed to confront its history and consider whether it had genuinely moved beyond the divisions of the past.
For Ruiters, the book’s ultimate message is about how South Africans treat one another.
“If there’s one contribution I hope this book, We Need God: A Prophetic Call to South Africa, makes to the national conversation, it is to remind us that the renewal begins when we recover our humanity towards one another,” he said.
The author
Joseph ‘Joe’ Ruiters is an entrepreneur and business strategist with more than 25 years of corporate and business experience. He is the founder and CEO of The Business Associate, established in 2008. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Honours in Business Administration and an MBA from Stellenbosch University. His experience spans strategy, finance and tax management, supply chain management, environmental, social and governance issues, and enterprise and supplier development.
- For book purchases contact the author via email: joeruiters@icloud.com
