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According to Pauw, author of Profit of Doom, an expose on
Joshua’s church, the preacher once tried to bribe his entire
television crew after he accompanied the late Blue Bulls lock
Wium Basson to Lagos for healing. Basson died in April
2001 aged 25 and here’s Pauw’s Story
Inside Tb Joshua’s Broken Temple
Ruben Kruger, a veteran of 36 tests in the green and
gold, returned after a week in Nigeria and declared that
a Pentecostal preacher he called the Prophet had healed
his brain cancer. Temitope Balogun “TB” Joshua prayed
for him in the Synagogue Church of All Nations
compound while thousands of people sang, danced and
wailed, Kruger said.
As Joshua bent over him and implored the demon to be
gone from his body, Kruger felt the tumour leaving him.
He was cured, Joshua declared, handing him oil to rub
on his head.
“I no longer have to drink my chemo pills,” Kruger said
on his return. “You cannot describe the feeling to
anyone who has not experienced it. It was an
unbelievable – or should I say believable –
experience.”
The floodgates opened and the Prophet’s newest
converts were white, mostly Afrikaans and relatively
conservative. They swopped the NG and Hervormde
churches for a Nigerian “turn-or-burn” approach to
redemption.
It took me some time to understand why the Afrikaner
psyche found Joshua so irresistible. Why were they
prepared to seek salvation in a country they perceived
to be drowning in greed, political rot and economic
decay? Christianity Nigerian-style was worlds apart
from the chains and shackles of Calvinism. Joshua
unchained them. He allowed them to worship with a
gusto and fervour previously thought unseemly. That
the new messiah was black and his church in Africa’s
biggest and maddest metropolis only added to the
allure.
A year or two after Kruger returned from Lagos, I made
the same journey. On the plane was another Springbok
rugby player, 25-year-old lock Wium Basson, who was
dying of liver cancer. He was accompanied by his
mother, Cloeté Geldenhuys, and had to get special
permission from SAA to make the journey.
I was making a TV documentary and my challenge to
Joshua was straightforward: allow me to film how you
heal Basson. If you succeed, I promise I will show it to
the world.
When we arrived at Joshua’s compound, the TV team
and I were in effect incarcerated. For two weeks, we
were forbidden to leave the grounds. We were told we
could not drink or smoke, and had to attend services
and events with the pilgrims.
While I stayed in a dormitory with other pilgrims, Wium
and Cloeté set up camp in a private room. The church
took away the young man’s morphine and pain pills.
During our first interview, a softly spoken, affable
Joshua said it would be easy to heal Wium because he
had nothing but a “little sore” on his liver. At Sunday
sermons, the afflicted lined up with placards stating
what condition they needed healed.
There were lines of people seeking a cure for HIV/Aids,
cancer and heart conditions, business failures,
wandering spouses and dull brains. A festive, almost
joyous atmosphere filled the compound as churchgoers
sang, clapped and danced. Evil spirits were cast out and
those set free by the Prophet writhed in the dirt while
vomiting out the demons. Joshua prayed for every
person in the line and declared them all healed. He
ordered them to stop using any medication and trust in
God.
Among the pilgrims was Capetonian John Rindel, who
was suffering from full-blown Aids and already had
dementia. He had arrived at the church several weeks
before we did, was prayed for by Joshua and declared
completely healed. He had stopped taking his medicine
and showed remarkable improvement. Scientists refer
to this as the “placebo effect” of faith healing. A patient
can experience genuine pain relief and other
symptomatic alleviation after being prayed for. The
relief is short-lived and the patient soon returns to his
original condition.
The internet is filled with reports from organisations like
the American Cancer Society and the British Medical
Journal that found no evidence faith healing can cure
physical ailments.
On my request, Rindel agreed to go for two independent
HIV/Aids tests when he returned to South Africa. Both
showed he was still positive. He died a short while later.
The BBC recently investigated the London branch of the
church and reported that three women had died after
being “healed” and told to stop taking their HIV/Aids
medication. I challenged the pilgrims to provide me with
medical proof that they had been healed. None did.
Ruben Kruger died in 2010 just before his 40th
birthday.
And Wium Basson?
Joshua never prayed for him. He said God had not sent
him a message to do so. The young man left the church
broken, disillusioned and at death’s door. He died a few
days after returning to South Africa.
Before I left the church, Joshua handed me, and the
camera and sound people, thick envelopes full of
hundred dollar notes. He wanted to be sure we’d
produce a positive programme. We gave the envelopes
back.
A year or so after the programme aired – and generated
a massive response from people who called us
accusing Joshua of all sorts of misdeeds – the
preacher produced a video of a 76-year-old South
African man named Moses he said he’d brought back
from the dead. Moses was among a group of South
African pilgrims in Lagos when he had a heart attack in
the dining room. Videos distributed around the world
showed three pilgrims, one a doctor from Bloemfontein,
trying to resuscitate Moses. They failed, the videos
reported, and Moses was carried into another room.
Joshua walked in, bent over him and commanded: “In
the name of Jesus, rise!”
Moses opened his eyes. It later emerged that Moses
had been both alive and breathing when he was carried
from the dining hall. He’d been resuscitated, not
resurrected, and clever editing created a fake miracle.
I understand the despair of terminally ill people and why
they grasp at final straws. My father died of lung cancer
and might well have made the journey to Lagos. I am
just glad he is not here any more to become a victim of
a ravenous tick that feasts on the blood of the ignorant,
gullible and desperate.
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