A religious war has broken out between South Africa’s two most popular men of the cloth. Prophet Paseka Mboro Motsoeneng has opened three cases of fraud against his Malawian counterpart prophet Shepherd Bushiri’s disciples.
Mboro, of the Incredible Happenings Church, told Germiston and Alberton police that Bushiri s henchmen stole his identity. The prophet said his good name was used to con unsuspecting members of the public. Bushiri heads the Enlightened Christian Gathering church, based in Pretoria.
Mboro’s cases were opened between September last year and April. But they were later transferred to the Gauteng provincial detective unit for investigation following Mboro’s complaint that cops at the two local stations were dragging their feet on them. Gauteng police spokesman Lungelo Dlamini confirmed the three cases. They are being investigated, but no one has been arrested yet,” said Dlamini.
The imposters allegedly opened a fake Facebook account and impersonated Mboro. They then posted messages purportedly from the prophet, in which they said he was in heaven with angels and saw God with a beautiful Xhosa woman. The imposters also duped congregants into depositing money into a bank account in exchange for divine favours and intervention from God. As soon as people deposit money, the victims are blocked and deleted from the said Facebook page,” read Mboro’s statement.
The prophet confirmed that he asked for police intervention, but declined to comment, saying the matter was subjudice. A police source said investigations were at an advanced stage and arrests were likely to be made before the end of the week. The deep throat, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media, said police had applied for a Section 205 to retrieve the telephone records of those implicated in the alleged offences before making arrests.The truth will be unearthed very soon,” said the tipster. I think the article published by one of the newspapers in Malawi fingering the Bushiri Boys as the people who created the fake account might also be used as a key piece of information to nail the suspects.”
Bushiri could not be reached for comment, despite a request for Sunday World s questions to be forwarded to the church’s media desk.
Source : Sunday World