Prayer sessions before 4am
The students told the MEC the pastor had visited them at their request and they had willingly contributed money for him to visit.
“When the MEC told them that he was a student, who also believed in God, and never neglected his studies, they told him that he was not committed enough.
“The students raised a lot of issues such as being lonely because of being away from home ” he said.
When the Sunday Tribune telephonically interviewed the student, it was before 4am in Havana, and yet we could hear the members starting up their prayer sessions in the residence.
“This is what they do even on campus and it has been happening for a long time because when I arrived here two years ago it was already happening.“
Another student, Siphamandla Qwabe, denied students were neglecting their studies for church activities.
“That is not true. Most of the students don’t go to church. I heard the pastor was here, but I didn’t see him. I doubt anybody would pay for the pastor, because the money we get is not enough.
“More than 700 students are doing their third year, out of 850 from the group that came in 2012, so how can somebody say we spend time praying instead of studying? It doesn’t make sense,” said Qwabe.
The church disputes the comments from the Department of Health, saying there was no way a pastor’s two-day visit influenced the behaviour of the students.
The church said the students had long-standing issues since the inception of the programme. These included pregnancies, chaotic partying, drunken brawls and sexual immorality.
The pastor was invited by the students last year to pray with them and offer words of encouragement.
Threshing Floor spokesman Ntokozo Biyela said the church had raised R60 000 to send the pastor abroad.
“The contribution from the students was out of free will, students might have paid for the food and accommodation as a gesture since they invited our pastor,” said Biyela.
A postgraduate medical student who wanted to remain anonymous and studied in Cuba until 2014 said the environment in Cuba was not conducive to studying.
Cubans partied and drank a lot – clubs were always open, she said, which tempted students.
Health Department spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said they had not heard from the team in Cuba. GIVEN the way the year has started with racism scandals at the heart of national debate, you’d be forgiven for expecting the matter to dominate the ANC’s January 8 statement.
What better way to lead than to wade in on the national discourse about race, prejudice and the legacy of hate bequeathed by apartheid.
Yet ANC president Jacob Zuma skirted over the issue. What time he spent on it was dedicated to reiterating the ANC’s long-standing commitment to “non-racialism” and an appeal to its branches to be leaders in defining what nonracialism meant and what it was to be South African.
These are not debates that happen at branch level.
But there is perhaps a rea-