Matter of fact

LAST week in “Insults, death threats for bling pastor’s critic”, we asked Alleluia Ministries International and pastor Alph Lukau to respond to an allegation that employees of the pastor had intimidated Solomon and Nomathamsanqa Ashoms at a police station.

However, we failed to publish the response, for which we apologise. We also retract our description of Lukau as a selfproclaimed billionaire.

Nomathamsanqa Ashoms claimed she had received a call from a man who ordered her to go to the Sandton police station. When she and her husband arrived, they were taken to a room with three men and a police officer, who wanted to know their telephone numbers and address.

The unpublished response from the church and Lukau was that no instruction was made or given to the employees to instruct Mrs Ashoms to go to the police station. The employees wanted to meet Mr Ashoms at his home to “ascertain why the church and pastor Lukau were being subjected to what are clearly unlawful and wrongful attacks”.

“Before going to Mr Ashoms’s residence, they went to the Sandton police station to obtain a police escort, because they feared that Mr Ashoms would attempt to utilise the visit as a propaganda tool in his campaign against the church and pastor Lukau . . . Mr Ashoms was not at home, but they managed to telephonically contact Mr Ashoms and schedule a meeting at the Sandton SAPS.”

The church also denied that it or pastor Lukau are in any way involved in any harassment or intimidation of Mr Ashoms and his family.