Woes mount for the controversial self-styled popular Malawian prophet Shepherd Bushiri of the Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) Church.
He is in another eye of the storm after explosive details of rape allegations levelled against him by two women of his church emerged and were aired on ETV Channel this Wednesday evening.
Major1, as Bushiri is affectionately known by his followers, has furiously denied the salacious allegations.
He accused the law enforcement agents of extortion and for intimidating women and children to come up with false rape allegations against him and his church members.
As per clips aired on ETV lasts Wednesday, events leading to the unfortunate drama are such that the “Man of God” was in the habit of calling women from his church for private prayers in the hotel and later overpower them with some mystical powers before sleeping with them.
One woman whose name has not been disclosed, claims that the Prophet sent a church elder to ask her to meet at a hotel for private prayers.
Before the incident, she claims the Prophet would stare at her in the church and would sometimes stand next to her during his church sermons.
On the day she was allegedly raped, she claims she was overpowered by supernatural powers she couldn’t comprehend and still hasn’t fully grasped what happened, but only found herself without clothes and raped.
The Prophet gave her R5000 afterwards.
“He insisted on a hug and tried to kiss me. I said no I can’t do this, you’re married. And he said ‘don’t worry about that’. He then touched me here [forehead] and I manifested,” she narrated her story to the channel.
A second victim also came through with almost the same allegations.
This time the controversial prophet asked her to study with her the Bible in a hotel.
She found him naked in the room. She was then asked to take off her clothes after which she was raped.
“He asked me to take off my clothes and then told me to turn around. I was shaking and scared. I didn’t know what to do. After that, he came on to me and everything happened,” she said.
She was also given R5 000 before leaving for home.
However, the church and its prophet have come out strongly against the victims and law enforcement.
They claim that the allegations were manufactured by an extortion syndicate that was led by one unnamed woman, working in cahoots with the police and victims.
“This woman, for the past 3 years, has been running an extortion syndicate against me through sending girls to demand money from us and if we don’t give, she told the girls to go public and accuse us of raping them,” said Bushiri in a statement.
According to Bushiri, the women who came out with claims were allegedly recruited by the enforcement agents together with the said woman. These have been extorting him for the past 3 years.
Bushiri says he even reported the matter to the State Security Agency, Inspector General of Intelligence, police commissioners, and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) back in 2018.
This time around, Bushiri vowed he will not go down without a huge fight. He claims to have recorded all the conversations he had with the law enforcement, the women who accuse him of rape and their ring leader – and a “serious legal suit with all evidence is coming their way”.
“Some of these girls, secretly came to us, demanding various amounts ranging from R50,000 to R2 million to their masters (as aforementioned) in order to stop the story from being aired by ETV. We recorded them.
Well, we told them we are not giving a single coin to them to stop eTV from running this story. eTV must go ahead. We are going to sue you and your extortion cohorts. This time we want to show you the power of money and justice, ” Bushiri is quoted saying.
But the public on social media has already called for arrests following the explosive Bushiri rape allegations. They believe the controversial prophet, “who is in the habit of buying himself out of the problems, ” must finally face the ends of justice.
