Millionaire Preacher Skips Bail in South Africa, Fueling International Dispute

Shepherd Bushiri, the founder of a megachurch in South Africa, fled to his home country, Malawi, amid fraud and money laundering charges, leaving the two nations to argue over his fate.

Monica Mark
New York Times
November 19, 2020

JOHANNESBURG — Shepherd Bushiri, a multimillionaire pastor with a network of churches across Africa, has claimed he can walk on air and harness the power of God to cure people of H.I.V.

This past week, Mr. Bushiri, 37, appeared to perform another remarkable feat: spiriting himself out of South Africa, where he faces charges of fraud and money laundering, and back to his home country of Malawi, without a passport and undetected by law enforcement officials.

His disappearance has set off a power struggle between the governments of South Africa and Malawi, the small southern African country to which he fled, and which is now facing political pressure to turn him in. In South Africa, it has left ministers scrambling to explain how such a high-profile figure was able to abscond, and exposed serious lapses in the ability of officials to monitor the country’s borders.

Mr. Bushiri amassed tremendous wealth after founding the Enlightened Christian Gathering Church in South Africa’s capital of Pretoria. The megachurch, which he says has at least a million followers in South Africa alone, is one of the fastest-growing churches on the continent, and has branches in several other African countries.

He preaches to congregants, many impoverished and disillusioned, that if they give money to his churches, God will bless them with wealth and health — a brand of Pentecostal Christianity known as “prosperity gospel.” He has attracted attention for his penchant for ostentatious gold jewelry and expensive-looking suits, and for his jet-setting lifestyle traveling between his congregations in a private plane.

Mr. Bushiri has also built up a business empire, with an investment company with interests in mining and real estate. He has tried to use his money to influence politics in his Malawi, and at least one politician from the governing African National Congress in South Africa credits his career to Mr. Bushiri’s blessings.

The case against Mr. Bushiri, his wife, Mary, and two co-defendants involves what prosecutors called a fraudulent “investment scheme” that had allegedly raked in some $6.6 million. But the prosecutors have never released details of the case. The Bushiris were first arrested in connection with the allegations in February 2019 by South Africa’s elite crime-fighting unit, known as the Hawks.

Mr. Bushiri has denied the charges and after skipping bail, posted a statement on Twitter saying that he and his wife fled after years of threats to their lives. He said that his requests for state protection had gone ignored, and that the case against him was “persecution NOT prosecution.”

“Our coming to Malawi, hence, is a tactical withdrawal from the Republic of South Africa solely meant to preserve our lives,” he said. His spokesman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Bushiris had been released on bail this month after a hearing in which supporters chanted and prayed outside the courtroom. Bail conditions included remaining in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg, where they live, and handing over five passports they each have, according to Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s home affairs minister, speaking in Parliament on Tuesday.

Still, without a single passport in his possession, Mr. Bushiri turned up in his home country of Malawi last weekend, and from there launched an online tirade against South African officials.

The Bushiri affair has now reached the highest levels of government in both countries. On Tuesday, lawmakers in the South African Parliament grilled Mr. Motsoaledi, the minister of home affairs, about the lapses — or, as one suggested, the complicity — that had allowed the flamboyant pastor to flee, saying the blunder exposed flaws in national security.

In Malawi, members of the government were angry that South African officials seemed to suspect that the entourage of the Malawian president, Lazarus Chakwera, had been trying to smuggle the pastor out of South Africa last weekend on a plane belonging to the president’s entourage. The Malawian government released a statement complaining that the presidential entourage was held up for hours at the airport in South Africa.

On Wednesday, Mr. Bushiri and his wife handed themselves in to a police station in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. A police statement, referring to Mr. Bushiri as “the Prophet,” said the pastor and his wife would be interviewed and would then face “a competent court of law in accordance with the prescriptions of law.” After detaining the Bushiris for one night, the authorities released the couple on bail, without requiring them to post a bond.

South Africa wants them extradited. Phumla Williams, a South African government spokeswoman, said in an interview on Wednesday, “We are currently preparing the paperwork to hand over to Malawi.”

Mr. Bushiri and his wife, Mary, in court in Pretoria, South Africa, during a bail application last month. The couple were first arrested in connection with fraud and money laundering allegations in February 2019.

It was unclear whether Malawi would hand over the pastor. Under a regional extradition treaty signed by both countries, any decision to surrender Mr. Bushiri would need to be made by the Malawian Ministry of Justice and approved by President Chakwera, a prominent Pentecostal church leader, who was elected in June of this year.

Returning Mr. Bushiri would risk riling his huge following in Malawi. Tens of thousands flocked to a football stadium there in 2018 to give him a hero’s welcome, with a marching band and security officials escorting him. At that event, Samuel Tembenu, the Malawian minister of justice, gave a speech praising Mr. Bushiri on behalf of the man who was then country’s president, Peter Mutharika.

Gospel Kazako, Malawi’s minister of information, said in an interview, “We are governed by laws, and if the law allows us to send him back we will do so as law.”

Gary Eisenberg, a lawyer based in Cape Town who specializes in immigration and extradition, said, “It really becomes a political question at the end of the day. This is not a South African case any longer, it’s a Malawian case.”

Other legal experts said that another sticking point was that Mr. Bushiri has repeatedly claimed that he will not be guaranteed a fair trial in South Africa — a key requirement of the extradition treaty.

In 2018, Mr. Bushiri lodged his own case against the police, alleging that they had tried to extort him in the course of investigating him on separate, allegations of rape, for which he has not been charged.

Mr. Eisenberg said the pastor appeared to be setting the grounds for his case to be dismissed: “He’s tipping everybody off — he’s saying, listen to me, even the police who investigated me in South Africa are corrupt. So how can the process be unblemished by corruption?”

In 2017, he allegedly promoted a get-rich-quick program to church members, promising a 50 percent profit within a month if they pledged about $6,500 or more to his “commodity investment opportunity,” South African news media reported.

Many who poured their savings into the plan claim they lost their money, while others were advised to deposit their investments with Rising Estates, a company run by close associates of Mr. Bushiri. Police later opened an investigation into the program.

Mr. Bushiri, defending his opulent lifestyle, has said that part of his mission is to enable his congregants to likewise acquire such wealth, and that the church offers what it calls “entrepreneurial programmes and skills development.”

“There is this perception that men of God are not supposed to be rich,” Mr. Bushiri said in an interview on his church website. But, he added: “If you read the Bible, you will note that men of God were rich, including Abraham.”

Ralph Mweninguwe contributed to this story from Lilongwe, Malawi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/world/africa/south-africa-malawi-shepherd-bushiri.html

'South Africans like charismatic churches'

KGOPI MABOTJA

Independent Online
FEBRUARY 12, 2019

The main feature of cult-like charismatic churches is that they thrive on people’s suffering and disillusionment about the state of their lives.

This is according to Professor Maria Frahm-Arp, of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Johannesburg.

Frahm-Arp said the preachings by leaders of charismatic cult-like churches promising “people miracles” that they would receive jobs, promotion at work or financial prosperity resonated with South Africans.

“We have an unemployment rate of 42% in this country. People are desperate. That is why they fall for anything without asking many questions.”

She said most people did not want to accept the reality of their lives. “So this message that there is evil and that there is Satan who is making things bad appeals to people. It gives them hope.

“People eat snakes because they believe they are demonstrating how strong their faith is and expect some form of reward, they expect that their life circumstances would change,” she said.

Even educated people easily fell for such messages, she said.

Frahm-Arp added that leaders of such churches won the confidence of people as they were often well-spoken.

“They can articulate themselves very well. The good public speaking coupled with powerful praise and worship gives them credibility. If you speak to many congregants at this churches they would tell you how powerful is the praise and worship, they do it very well.”

She said churches that sought to indoctrinate members in a cult would ensure that they cut ties with their family members and communities .

“It becomes all about church. Most of them stop supporting their families and take everything to church.”

Ordinary church members would not have easy access to the leaders and would be required to pay a certain amount for prayers, she said.

Such cult practices were prevalent in South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria and many other African countries, said Frahm-Arp said.

However,she cautioned that a cult, by its nature, was a complex practice that was not easily identifiable.

“In some churches people twist scripture, some come up with their own version of the Bible. It is very tricky.”

The Saturday Star

https://www.iol.co.za/saturday-star/south-africans-like-charismatic-churches-19256247

Africa's 'Miracle Pastors' Must Be Held Accountable

Leo Igwe
Modern Ghana
January 14, 2018

Botswana has reportedly closed down the Enlightened Christian Gathering Church of the Malawian self-acclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri, citing concerns over 'miracle money' claims. Bushiri's church taught its members that they could make money through acts of magic. The government stated that this teaching violated the laws of the country. This is just one incident among many – recently, there have been many reported cases of abuses and controversial claims by Africa's self-styled pastors, priests, prophets, men and women of God.

In this piece, I discuss why African governments are cracking down on fraudulent miracle pastors and their churches. Their bogus claims and promises deceive, fracture, and extort vulnerable Africans, many of them already in precarious situations that cannot tolerate superstition as the prescription to ameliorate them.

Reckless and irresponsible Claims

Miracle pastors make bogus and absurd claims to demonstrate their divine anointment and supernatural powers. They get their Christian devotees to believe that their counterintuitive declarations are actually direct revelations from God or forms of infallible prophetic verbiage. Despite no medical training, many pastors claim to know the cause and cure of diseases, of death and other misfortunes. They release prophecies pretending to know or predict the future. For instance, Bushiri once claimed that he cured people of HIV and brought the dead back to life. In one of his most notorious acts, Shepherd Bushiri released a video where he supposedly walked on air.

Pastor T.B Joshua and Reverend Enoch Adeboye of Nigeria have made faith healing claims as well as releasing prophetic declarations on the outcome of elections and football matches, aviation accidents and the death of presidents. A Zimbabwean prophet, Paul Sanyangore said he had a direct phone number to Heaven that he used to talk to God. Another pastor claimed that he had taken a selfie with the angels, visited hell and killed Satan. Many African pastors openly and publicly declare that God had spoken to them or that God sent them a message to deliver to their church members.

Drama and Deception

African pastors do not stop at making baseless and unfounded propositions. They dramatize, stage-manage and create scenes that make people believe that their claims are real and factual. The miracle pastors indulge in manipulative and fraudulent schemes to demonstrate the presence of God, their supposedly divine anointing and supernatural powers. Pastors fake being in conversation with God or in communication with the angels or holy spirit. They literally and habitually lie to the face of their congregants. Pastors organize 'faith healing' more accurately described at fake healing sessions. At these events, persons who have been previously briefed or bribed pretend to be blind or lame and subsequently 'receive' healing.

These fraudulent men and women of God organize sessions of exorcism where they fake the expulsion of demons in the form of reptiles or insects from the bodies of their members. One of the aims of these deceptive schemes is to obtain and dispossess gullible folks by trick.

Extortion and Exploitation

Miracle pastors in Africa peddle schemes that make people believe that they can make money through miraculous means. They extort money from their members by marketing 'miracle' money narratives in exchange for cash. For instance, Nigerian pastors have a miracle money scheme known as 'sowing a seed'. These pastors urge their members to 'sow a seed' by giving money to God. They make their church members, most of whom are living on less than $1 a day, believe that the money that they give to God has a multiplier effect. The more they give to God, the pastors claim, the more they will get in return. Furthermore, pastors publish in their bulletins names and testimonies of people who sowed seeds, gave money to God and had returns in proportion to the money, the seeds, that they had sown.

Motivated by these miracle money schemes, church members sometimes go to any length to get money to 'sow a seed' in their churches. They borrow money from friends and family members. People take loans to sow a seed and expect returns that will never come. There have been cases where people used money that was meant to take care of their families, some public funds or money that belong to their workplaces to sow a seed in their churches.

In addition, African pastors market all sorts of materials, water, handkerchiefs, olive oil, and soap. They designate them as holy and by so doing invest them with extra market value. Pastors compel their members to purchase and use these worthless and sometimes harmful 'holy' materials in order to receive divine healing or to enhance their fortune and luck. The time has come for African governments to investigate and shut down these illegal businesses.

Confusion, Division and Conflict in Families

Miracle pastors cause an incredible amount of disruption among African families and communities. They use their prophecies to fuel hatred, suspicion, mistrust, division, and conflict, turning family and community members against each other. African pastors use their so-called prophetic powers to point out those who are responsible for poverty, lack of progress, illness and death in families and communities. Those so identified are often attacked or killed in instances of mob violence.

In one particular case a few years ago, a Nigerian Catholic priest popularly known as Father 'No Nonsense' visited a community in Ihitteafoukwu, in Mbaise in Southern Nigeria. The youths invited this miracle pastor to conduct prayers against unemployment and lack of progress. During the prayer, Fr. No Nonsense claimed that demons preventing the youths in the community from making progress resided in nearby trees. He pointed out some of the trees that hosted these demons and instructed that they should be cut down. Some youths went around felling trees that they believed could be harbouring evil spirits. The demon-tree cutting exercise turned into an opportunity for some youths in the community to settle scores. They felled the trees of neighbours that they hated or envied.

In another case, a member of the community protested after some youth relatives felled a tree in his compound. The youths attacked him with a machete and he shot one of them in the leg. Subsequently, a mob of youths invaded the man's apartment, looted his property and burnt down his house. Such mayhem linked to the prophecies of miracle pastors is a frequent occurrence. African prophets poison family relationships. They instigate quarrels and disputes that linger in various communities.

Abusive and Dehumanizing Treatment

Miracle pastors also subject their members to inhuman and degrading treatment. Pastors abuse and humiliate their congregants publicly and privately, while claiming to be praying for them, or when they are 'exorcising demons'. There have been reports of pastors who ordered their church members to eat grass . Some pastors have told their congregants to drink gasoline or bleach. Other pastors have sprayed insecticide on churchgoers. Another pastor ordered female members to strip naked and he marched on them. The same pastor declared a snake had become chocolate and gave it to the members of his church to eat. A Ghanaian Bishop who claims that he could enlarge the male private organ has been caught in videos caressing the penises of men. Finally, a South African prophet allegedly expelled demons by inserting his hands into the vagina of the congregants.

Death and Health Damage

The activities of some African miracle pastors have also been linked to the deaths or illness of church members. Many churchgoers who are HIV positive died after they discontinued their antiretroviral treatment following instruction from their pastors. Recently, a sick child died at prophet Mboro's church in South Africa. The mother of the child took the girl to prophet Mboro to be healed. The girl eventually died, having not been treated with conventional medicine.

A Nigerian community banished a prophet after a woman who came to seek spiritual help from him died. She died from health complications after the prophet poured a liquid substance on her genitals. Many Africans continue to die or suffer serious illnesses as a result of deceptive miracle pastors. The pastors present themselves as medical doctors, as health experts, and their churches as hospitals. Unfortunately, African governments have done little to address these fraudulent acts.

As a result of the aforementioned factors, miracle pastors are wreaking havoc in families and communities across the region. They peddle falsehoods and propagate baseless and absurd claims. Prophets extort money from their church members using all manner of shady schemes. Miracle pastors fuel hatred, division, and confusion in the society. They perpetrate criminal atrocious acts that damage the health of their church members or lead to their death. Other African governments should emulate the government of Botswana by tackling miracle pastors and shutting down their churches and illegal businesses. Governments should expose the fraudulent schemes of these charlatans and make them accountable for their crimes.

https://www.modernghana.com/news/828355/africas-miracle-pastors-must-be-held-accountable.html