Mozambique will soon have a new law to register and regulate the activity of religious denominations, in a proposal that establishes a minimum number of signatures for the registration of a church. However, what worries Christians is that churches will now be obliged to pay taxes.
In the proposed revision of the Religion Law, which the government recently submitted to Parliament, the set of reforms aimed at “bringing order to the sector”, led the Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs to say that the new law “will bring new order”, given a scenario of proliferation of churches throughout the country.
“The law comes to define, exactly, what are the procedures for the creation of a religious denomination, where they should operate and who should have the quality of leading those denominations,” summarizes Minister Helena Kida.
In official terms, Mozambique currently has a total of 900 registered religious denominations, but the numbers may be inaccurate.
One of the novelties in the proposal is in the registration, with the need for two thousand signatures to legalize a church.
“When we started the debate we had a proposal of 60,000 signatures, and we had to understand what the sensibility of the confessions themselves was, we were reducing until we found a middle ground,” explains Kida.
According to VOA Africa agency, the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM) approves most of the lines contained in the future law and says it is opportune to purify the ranks. “What the government wants is to bring an order. We participated in the debates and, unfortunately, because they took place in a phase of Covid-19 restrictions, there may not have been the desired scope, however, most of what is proposed we consider opportune”, recognizes Felicidade Chirindza, president of CCM.
However, there is an aspect that worries the Christian community in the new legislation: It is that churches will now be taxed, a situation that takes the association by surprise. “It’s an aspect that was talked about, but we didn’t reach any consensus, but the government understood that it should go ahead with the tax collection”.
