May 23, 2013Produced by Richelle Seton-Rogers (video will not be uploaded for now – apologies)
Informal churches and ministries are popping up every week in South Africa and they can be started by anyone. Religious organisations are loosely regulated because of the right to freedom of religion enshrined in The Constitution. They are however required to register with SARS or the Departments of Home Affairs or Social Development. But a lot of the informal churches are not doing so, and because there are so many of them, they are not being clamped down on.
Through our investigations, Special Assignment has discovered that all these factors have opened up opportunities for unscrupulous characters to use the church as a guise to commit criminal activities. A seemingly common criminal activity in areas in and around Johannesburg, is for pastors to be involved in drug dealing. We found numerous individuals who knew of different pastors from different churches, who were either involved in drug dealing or manufacturing drugs. We interviewed some of these sources and got them to go undercover, and filmed pastors without their knowledge while they implicate themselves.
The congregations of these churches have no idea that they are being led by a drug lord pastor and the sources say that these pastors are so convincing when they preach, that no one would ever suspect them of being involved in drug businesses. The very nature of churches receiving anonymous offerings, of which no one but the pastors know how much, opens the doors for them to launder money and mix criminal money with church money. They can also say that they spent the money on helping poor people and uplifting communities, when in fact the money is being pocketed and used for their own gain. Who is monitoring these churches’ activities?
SARS and the Hawks say they are monitoring churches to a certain extent, but they are clearly not doing enough to curb this growing trend. In the meantime innocent people who just want to attend a place of worship are being unwittingly pulled into the plots of these criminal pastors. Instead of praising their Lord, they are praising the drug lord.
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