Mission accused of ruling by fear
Investigators told of rape, child abuse, but church resists probe
● Fortified by the scripture that the truth shall set you free, missionary Peet Botha blew the whistle on alleged financial mismanagement, rape, human-rights violations and child abuse at the KwaSizabantu mission in northern KwaZulu-Natal two years ago — but authorities didn’t listen to him.
He published a blog in 2018 to expose the church, founded in 1970 by Erlo Stegen. A month earlier Botha was banished from the mission where he had worked for 25 years.
Botha, who lived and worked as a pastor and counsellor at the mission’s college since 1994, approached the police and Hawks but it took about nine months before the Hawks began investigating.
KwaSizabantu owns a multimillion-rand farm and bottled-water plant. It became the focus of a fraud and money-laundering investigation in July. The Hawks did not say why they had not investigated Botha’s allegations earlier.
Botha said he began asking Stegen and his brother Friedel questions in 2016, but got nowhere. When he got more information he “decided to speak up”, but was shunned, so he began documenting evidence in a blog in December 2018. Botha said the mission was suing him for defamation.
The Evangelical Alliance believes the pain and tears at a hearing into the church’s conduct this week could have been avoided. The hearing was conducted by the Commission for the Promotion & Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.
The alliance approached Erlo 20 years ago, when similar allegations surfaced. The mission refused to participate in the alliance’s investigation.
This week the mission walked out of the commission’s hearing, citing bias on the part of the chair.
“I think that if there was humility from the leadership [of the mission] to at least get feedback from not only ourselves but feedback from people who were working there, who had first-hand experience of it [this would be different],” said the alliance’s general secretary, Rev Moss Ntlha.
“There was an inability from the leadership to listen. Comparing now and back then, things have got worse. Back then there wasn’t that much evidence of the extent of the abuses that we are hearing now, like rape and the abuse of money.”
Ntlha said that when the mission refused to co-operate, the alliance published a 12page report addressing allegations about the mission ruling through fear, and physical and psychological abuse. But it said it could not take the matter further.
Martus de Wet, a lawyer acting for the mission, said the church would hold its own investigation because the commission was not fair and impartial.
“The panel [appointed by the church] is totally independent and is not associated in any way with the mission or any of its stakeholders,” said De Wet.
“It has unfettered discretion to investigate, involve experts, and make findings.”
He said the panel would consist of Khumbuzile Shazi, a lawyer who had worked with the Scorpions on commercial and sexual crimes, and an attorney, Peter Le Mottée.
The mission denied that it was complicit in or covered up any incidents of rape. It also denied that it had laundered R136m.
De Wet said a complaint of criminal defamation and crimen injuria had been made against Botha about two weeks ago and he had been aware of the blog since 2018. “He had taken his blog down, removed all the content, and then suddenly it resurfaced, probably in line with the exposé.”
He said a complaint of criminal defamation had also been made against a former church member, Koos Greeff. Greeff testified at the commission hearing this week.
De Wet said complaints were being made against a “handful” of other people.
The parliamentary portfolio committee on co-operative governance & traditional affairs said: “The exploitation of religion for nefarious reasons has always been a concern for the committee, hence its insistence that the commission must strengthen implementation of its mandate.” It said it would continue to engage with the commission.