Overview:

• Recognition and registration are amalgamated rather than ideally differentiated; there exists provisions for the latter as legal registration yet few to none for the former as existential recognition; registration entails financial benefits, tax reductions and exemptions, as well as “recognition” although what the latter entails remains ambiguous and does not necessarily equate to the same recognition referred to throughout recognitionist theory.

• Procedures for religious group registration, specifically for property tax exemption, look to be amalgamated with procedures for secular entities which is not advisable as distinct procedures for these two types of entities is preferred.

Positive elements:

• Freedom of religion or belief is broadly upheld in practice by the government.

Recommendations:

• To become receptive, establish a reorganised recognition system that has the capacity to provide both existential recognition as well as legal registration to all belief systems and their derivatives and at multiple levels of activity.

• To be classified as dynamic, establish a recognition agency that works independently of the government to manage the reorganised recognition system; to vest its authority within the agency, the government can establish it but then the government must relinquish its control of the agency afterwards to ensure the agency’s autonomy from government and thereby from politicisation.