VOLUME 13 |ISSUE 3 |2022 19
Author Erika Bornman received the inaugural Info-
Cult/Info-Secte Dianne Casoni Award at the 2022 ICSA
Annual Conference for her memoir, Mission of Malice: My
Exodus from KwaSizabantu.
Erika Bornman was nine when her family joined and
later moved to KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission
in South Africa. Founded on egalitarian values and
touted as nirvana, something sinister lurked below the
mission’s pious veneer.
Life was hard at KwaSizabantu. Christianity was used
to justify harsh punishments, and congregants were
forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical
violence ensured adherence to stringent rules. Parents
were pitted against children, friendships discouraged.
Isolated and alone, Erika lived in constant fear of eternal
damnation.
At 17, her grooming at the hands of a senior mission
counselor began. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu
waged emotional, psychological, and sexual warfare on
her until she managed to break free at 21. Escaping a
restrictive religious community was difficult, but after a
decade of ritual humiliation, brainwashing, and abuse,
rehabilitation into ‘normal’ life proved even more painful.
Unwilling to ignore her knowledge of the grievous
human-rights abuses being committed at
KwaSizabantu, Erika embarked on a quest to expose
the atrocities. With her help, News24 launched a seven-
month investigation, culminating in a podcast that in
2021 won the internationally renowned One World
Media Award for Podcast and Radio.
In Mission of Malice, Erika chronicled her transformation
from a fearful young girl to a fierce activist determined
to do whatever it takes to save future generations and
find personal redemption and self-acceptance.
In her own words:
“When I left KwaSizabantu back in 1993, there was very
little support available to survivors of cultic and coercive
groups. These were pre-Internet days, too, so I was on
my own and really struggled. Books saved me, however.
“Today, it is wonderful to have an entire community
who are creating resources—books and podcasts,
documentaries— to help people heal from what they’ve
experienced (and hopefully help stop others from
joining high-control churches and groups).
“Reading books that other survivors have written
helped me so much to realize that I’m not crazy, I’m not
evil, I’m not bad. This stuff has happened to others as
well. And I am so unbelievably grateful that I’ve been
able to publish my account of what happened to me
and, in so doing, hopefully help aid understanding and
healing in other people.
“Getting this award from an organization dedicated
to raising awareness and helping survivors of cults is a
singular honor.”
Erika Bornman has carved a career for herself in
magazine publishing as a writer and editor, despite her
lack of formal training. Mission of Malice is her first book
and an important element in her quest to make the
world safer for children. She lives in Cape Town, South
Africa, with her two cats. n
Info-Cult/Info-Secte 2022 Dianne Casoni Award
Presented to Erika Bornman

ICSA TODAY 20
Photography/Art
My work is about the loss of feminine agency
that occurred in my youth growing up in the
infamous Unification Church, a religious group
referred to by popular media as “the Moonies”
and as a primary example of a cult, and the
internal landscape resulting from that loss. This
experience had a lasting effect on my psyche and
sense of identity, and it is through writing and
photography that I work through these effects.
Growing up in my insular community of religious
fanaticism and charismatic, dangerous, self-
styled messiahs, I was intimately familiar with
precise, though backwards, logic. My journey
into adulthood saw me plunging headfirst to-
wards confronting those dangerous, faulty forms
and proofs, unraveling the colorful spectacles of
my childhood until only a tired and tattered man-
behind-the-curtain remained.
My photographs are about those transitions and
discoveries. They chronicle moments of fear, of
awakening.
Burdens of a White Dress, the series from which
these photographs are selected, is a set of surreal
self-portraits that reflect being born in a fringe
religious movement. The project’s title refers to
the emphasis placed on a woman’s role in my
childhood. A woman’s value was intrinsically tied
to her purity and virginity after marriage that
value shifted into the realm of motherhood. By
using a square format and a stark palette, violent-
ly splashed with red, I explore the concepts of
shame, of evil, and of the wantonness that was
projected upon me growing up in the Unification
faith.
Because this was my own personal experience
of leaving a repressive religious environment,
I often use myself as a model. My body is then
contorted or manipulated to demonstrate the in-
ternal effects of the struggle that it is to free one’s
mind from a controlling belief system and to
demonstrate the repressed place that femininity
had in my world. n
Burdens of a White Dress
By Jen Kiaba