Bishop Zondo’s marathon sex trial postponed yet again
RIVERS of Living Waters Church leader Bishop Bafana Stephen Zondo briefly appeared in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria yesterday, where his sex trial was postponed to July 17.
The next stint of the trial has been set down for two weeks and is to run until July 28.
The trial was on Friday postponed to early in July, but the dates were changed yesterday as Zondo’s advocate, Piet Pistorius, had other commitments early in July.
The prosecution will call its last few witnesses during the next session,
whereafter the defence is expected to present its case. It is not known at this stage whether Zondo will be called to testify in his defence.
Zondo’s brief appearance yesterday was once again in the courtroom where proceedings are usually conducted, in spite of an elusive rat.
Proceedings were at the end of last week moved to another courtroom after an interpreter saw a rat running past him as he waited for the case to start.
But calm was restored yesterday, with other court staff inside the courtroom saying that they did not see the rat while they were there. They only heard about the rodent’s presence. Zondo is facing 10 charges, mostly of a sexual nature, following complaints by women – mostly members of his flock – who claimed he either raped them or sexually violated them.
The bishop vehemently denied the allegations from the start and Pistorius accused some of the witnesses of concocting the charges as they knew Zondo was a rich man and wanted money from him.
Other complainants were accused by the defence of trying to sow division within Zondo’s highly lucrative church because they wanted to break away and start their own church. Pistorius said they wanted to cast Zondo in a bad light so that other members would join their new church.
All these allegations were denied by the complainants, as well as by the witnesses called by the prosecution.
It is expected that the group of Zondo’s followers, who have been singing and dancing outside court since the start of his trial, will be back in July. They carried placards declaring “Hands off our bishop”.
The group relentlessly sang and prayed outside while the court proceedings were under way, cheering and praying even louder on the occasions when Zondo left the court building to join them for a few minutes.
The charismatic bishop also has a different group of followers who have, without fail, been attending his trial since it started in November 2021.