President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet recently approved draft legislation that will radically expand the definition of “national security” and would open the door for the intelligence service to spy on individuals and organisations in South Africa who are involved in lawful political activity, advocacy, protest or dissent.

The “Spy Bill”, officially known as the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill, 2023 – is the latest in a series of laws – including the Anti-Money Laundering Act and Anti-Terrorism Act – which you would think would have nothing to do with religious freedoms. Upon closer inspection, all these laws limit religious freedoms. But the “Spy Bill” is arguably the greatest threat to religious freedom that South Africa has seen yet.

In its current form, the Bill proposes: to allow South Africa’s intelligence agencies – spies – to conduct security competence tests for purposes of issuing a security clearance certificate on anyone who wants to start a religious organisation, the bill proposes to expand the definition of “national security” to not only include threats, but potential threats, opportunities, and even potential opportunities.

It is unclear what these undefined, open-ended, vague and subjective concepts mean. Essentially, they could mean almost anything that can be deemed to have an effect on national security.