Zuma impeachment highlights secularism as a necessary ingredient to fighting corruption

Over Easter I read several of our politicians invoking the divine and saying we needed more religion in our political system.

The gist of these speeches was that religion would help counter corruption.

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This is normally a bad thing – particularly if you aren't a member of the majority religion, or if you are a member of a group that the majority religion would oppress.

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As an atheist, I don't like what more religion in their politics has done for the Middle East. More religion in politics tends to equal less rights for the non-religious.

It also tends to equal laws prohibiting homosexuality, as can be seen in the rest of Africa, and laws that increase risks to women's health, as can be seen in places like Ireland.

We have had experience with hyper-religious politics in the past, and it was called Apartheid. We don't need more of that.

But there is another problem as well, and that problem was highlighted by ANC MP Pule Mabe during the debate over whether we should impeach President Jacob Zuma.

Mabe pushed the idea that the Bible says we should forgive those who have confessed their sins – and thus we should forgive President Jacob Zuma.

Mabe gave us a concrete example of how religion can increase corruption in government rather than reduce it.

Of course this call for forgiveness always seems to be strongest for the powerful rather than the powerless. I don't think that those people who mugged mayor Parks Tau's wife in Sandton are going to be let off if they just say 'sorry'.

Forgiveness tends to be for the powerful, for everyone else there is jail. And yes I know that is part of what happened with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that the rich oppressor got to say sorry and attain 'forgiveness'.

It was the wrong move in the long term – because it didn't really fix what Apartheid had done. We couldn't call it water under the bridge, because the bridge was still broken.

The EFF's Mbuyiseni Ndlozi won a lot of respect from me in that debate, because he was the only one who really spoke up for secularism in governance.

He asked what the Bible had to do with the debate – and he was right to ask. The fact is that while you may personally forgive the president for his transgressions, if you're a minister in Parliament you have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution.

And that means your personal feelings have to be shunted aside and you have to do your job otherwise you yourself are forsworn. Mabe illustrated that more religion in government can mean less of a willingness by government to hold leaders to account.

Ndlozi meanwhile represented the highest of ideals, in doing his job as a Parliamentarian. He deserves more praise than he'll get for that.

We need more of that in all of the political parties, more of that focus on the actual job at hand, because so long as we don't have that, we'll continue to have a president who could eat a baby on live TV and still get the backing of the ruling party.

And we will continue to have a government that finds excuses in its servitude to God, to fail in its duty to serve the people.​