Church urged to lay charges against cops suspected of interfering in its succession battle
|Published
Disgruntled International Holiness Pentecost Church faction led by “Comforter” Michael Sandlana has been urged to lay formal charges against police officers accused of interfering in its succession battle. Picture: Bhekikhaya Mabaso/African News Agency
Johannesburg - The disgruntled International Holiness Pentecost Church (IPHC) faction led by “Comforter” Michael Sandlana has been urged to lay formal charges against police officers accused of interfering in its succession battle.
There is a long-running legal battle to succeed the late leader Bishop Glayton Modise, who died in 2016.
The Pretoria-based faction of the IPHC held a media briefing on Friday, where it lamented the alleged use of certain members of the SAPS to “wantonly open criminal cases and to intimidate” members of the faction through arbitrary arrests.
Reacting to the IPHC allegations, Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo, spokesperson for national police commissioner General Khehla Sitole, said the allegations levelled against the certain police officers were “serious”.
“We have noted the allegations and view them as serious and therefore want to urge the complainant to lay a formal complaint for urgent investigation,” said Naidoo.
“Their complaint may either be in the form of a criminal case opened at a nearest police station and/or a formal complaint against police to the SAPS ComplaintsNodalPoint@sap.gov.za.”
Addressing journalists in Pretoria on Friday, IPHC national spokesperson priest Vusi Ndala lamented “an ongoing sinister plan” which allegedly includes members of the police and the courts in an apparent campaign to discredit their faction in the multimillion-rand long-running legal wrangle to succeed the late leader Modise.
Ndala said Sandlana’s personal matters, including the ongoing divorce from one of his wives, Benedicta Magalane, was now being used as a weapon to elbow him out of the fight for the IPHC leadership.
“We have previously pronounced that the persistent leadership battle of the IPHC took a new form through deliberate twists, where His Grace, Successor MG Sandlana’s personal affairs are being used to discredit him, in a bid to dethrone him,” said Ndala at a televised briefing.
“Meanwhile, as has become the norm, the strategy has since shifted to the use of law-enforcement officers who wantonly initiate prosecutions and persecute His Grace, Successor MG Sandlana. This is part of the long-running bid to silence, isolate and intimidate the Jerusalem division of IPHC.
“The mission by those orchestrating the plot to dethrone him is nothing other than to use humiliation and embarrassment by seeking influence in the court of public opinion.”
Sandlana and several of his lieutenants have recently been arrested on several occasions and released on bail. The arrests follow different cases of fraud, opened with police by the estranged wife, Benedicta.
“On every untested claim or allegation made, members of the IPHC Jerusalem, including Comforter Sandlana himself, are hastily arrested, detained in police cells where pictures are unreservedly shot, even by police officers, and widely shared on social media platforms through fake accounts. It is from these same impersonator accounts that content is dragged to the courts, while specific media houses are pre-informed and arranged to subjectively feed the public gallery with the intention of embarrassment, ridicule and intimidation,” Ndala told journalists. |
The Star