Controversial prophet in freezer demo

The day it all finished started out as a very ordinary day. It was December 22, 2001. Martin and I were going to my parents for a drinks party. I made a dessert and went over early to help my mum put chips and dips and nuts into bowls. She had a glass of wine on the kitchen counter and, without thinking, I poured myself one. She looked at me curiously.

“You said you weren’t going to drink until Christmas Day.” I laughed. “It’s near as dammit.” I don’t remember anything else until I got home. I lost six hours. I don’t know what happened. Well, I’ve been told what happened. I’ve been told no one realised I was anything more than a little tipsy. I’ve been told I was the life and soul of the party. I apparently asked the next-door neighbour if he would teach me how to take the top of a champagne bottle off with a sword. I don’t know if he agreed.

The next thing I remember is standing in the driveway of my home, my husband in tears in front of me. We were in front of our cars.

“Do you know you drove home all the way on the righthand side of the road?” he demanded. I didn’t. “Tell me what to do, Sam,” he begged. “Tell me what I can do to help you because you are going to kill yourself.” And possibly someone else. “I can’t go on like this,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t go on worrying about you. I can’t keep fighting you on your drinking. I don’t know what to do! Tell me, Sam, because I will do anything. Anything.”

And in that moment I did know what to do. I knew I had run out of choices. “Take me to AA.” He stopped. “What?” “Take me to AA. I don’t know how… I don’t care how, but I have to go.”

And now I was crying. “I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.”

And I was so sorry. I was sorry for all the hurt. I was sorry for his sleepless nights and his worry and his frustration, and I was sorry I’d put our relationship in jeopardy time after time because I couldn’t stop doing the one thing he hated above all else – getting drunk. And I was sorry he was in so much pain and I had caused it all.

And, as much as I was sorry for him, I was sorry for me too. Because it was over. My best friend, my life support, the gas in the tank, the water in the bath, the food on my plate, the peace in my soul – because that’s how it felt – had to go. And in that moment I didn’t think I could live without it. Or maybe that I could, but not alone. He took me in his arms. “It’s all right, Sam. It’s all right,” he soothed. “Let’s get you in the house and we’ll talk tomorrow… We’ll go and get help tomorrow.” I broke away from him. “No!” I yelled. “It has to be now. It has to be tonight.”

He shook his head. He didn’t understand.

“If I don’t go tonight, Martin, I will never go. By tomorrow it will be too late.”

What would be too late? Why would 12 or 14 or even 24 hours matter? Because it would. Because I might not be this desperate tomorrow. I might decide that today had just been an anomaly, that I hadn’t eaten enough, or that I’d mixed my drinks. And, worse, I might wake up tomorrow feeling okay – the hangover might not be too bad.

No. I had to go there and then. So I couldn’t turn back.

“Please, Martin,” I sobbed. “It has to be now.”

“How do I find them?’ he said, bewildered. “Who should I call?”

“Call Pam,” I said. “She will know what to do.”

Pam was a recovering alcoholic.

She had been sober for eight years at that point. “Are you sure?” he said. But, yes, I was sure. I was sure this couldn’t happen again. And I was tired. I was tired of excuses and hangovers and half-truths and hand tremors. I didn’t know how I would live without drinking, but I knew I couldn’t live with it. “Yes, I’m sure,” I said. And then he did call Pam. And then he put me in his car and we drove to Pam’s house.

“There’s an open meeting up the road,” she said.

And so, later that night, Pam and I sat in a crowded municipal hall, and I listened and cried.

This is an extract from From Whiskey to Water by Samantha Cowen, published by MF Books at a recommended retail price of R240. BAD boy prophet Penuel Mnguni has broken the internet again by posting pictures of people he had locked up inside a chest freezer, to “demonstrate the power of God”.

In pictures posted of his End Times Disciples Ministries, Mnguni gave his instruction to a woman and then a man, who could be seen getting into a freezer.

“The Man of God… while ministering about offences which causes God not to perform, commanded a young lady to enter inside a deep refrigerator that was on a high freezing point,” read a post from last week’s Sunday service.

Mnguni was reported to have commanded both to sleep, and when he opened the freezer 30 minutes later, the two woke up and stepped out of the cold.

“He asked the lady, who had ice on her body, what was happening, and she said it had been very hot inside the refrigerator and she had not felt any ice.”

That was testament of the power of God, Mnguni wrote, but some social media commentators did not take too kindly to it, calling it magic, trickery and playing with people’s minds.