SAPS urges disgruntled IPHC church faction to report ’bad cops’

The IPHC Jerusalem claims that on every untested claim or allegation made, its members were hastily arrested and detained in police cells, where pictures were “unreservedly shot, even by police officers”.

PRETORIA, June 28 (ANA) – The South African Police Service (SAPS) has urged the disgruntled IPHC church faction led by “Comforter” Michael Sandlana to lay formal charges against certain police officers accused of interfering in the long-running legal battle to succeed the late leader, Bishop Glayton Modise, who died in 2016.

The Pretoria-based faction of the International Holiness Pentecost Church (IPHC) held a media briefing, where it lamented the alleged use of certain members of the SAPS to “wantonly open criminal cases and to intimidate” members of the faction through arbitrary arrests.

Reacting to the IPHC allegations, Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo, spokesperson for national police commissioner Khehla Sitole, said the allegations levelled against the certain police officers were “serious”.

“We have noted the allegations and view them as serious and therefore want to urge the complainant to lay a formal complaint for urgent investigation,” said Naidoo.

“Their complaint may either be in the form of a criminal case opened at a nearest police station and/or a formal complaint against police to the SAPS [email protected].”

Addressing journalists in Pretoria on Friday, IPHC national spokesperson Priest Vusi Ndala lamented “an ongoing sinister plan” which allegedly includes members of the police and the courts in an apparent campaign to discredit their faction in the multimillion-rand long-running legal wrangle to succeed the late leader Bishop Glayton Modise.

Ndala said Sandlana’s personal matters, including the ongoing divorce from one of his wives, Benedicta Magalane, was now being used as a weapon to elbow him out of the fight for the IPHC leadership race.

“We have previously pronounced that the persistent leadership battle of the IPHC took a new form through deliberate twists, where His Grace, Successor MG Sandlana’s personal affairs are being used to discredit him, in a bid to dethrone him,” said Ndala at a televised briefing.

“Meanwhile, as has become the norm, the strategy has since shifted to the use of law-enforcement officers who wantonly initiate prosecutions and persecute His Grace, Successor MG Sandlana. This is part of the long-running bid to silence, isolate and intimidate the Jerusalem division of IPHC. The mission by those orchestrating the plot to dethrone him is nothing other than to use humiliation and embarrassment by seeking influence in the court of public opinion.”

Sandlana and several of his lieutenants have recently been arrested on several occasions and released on bail. The arrests follow different cases of fraud, opened with police by the estranged wife, Benedicta.

“On every untested claim or allegation made, members of the IPHC Jerusalem, including Comforter Sandlana himself, are hastily arrested, detained into police cells where pictures are unreservedly shot, even by police officers, and widely shared on social media platforms through fake accounts. It is from these same impersonator accounts that content is dragged to the courts, while specific media houses are pre-informed and arranged to subjectively feed the public gallery with the intention of embarrassment, ridicule and intimidation,” Ndala told journalists.

Tshepo Phuthi, Sandlana’s personal spokesperson, said the IPHC has been plunged into the fray because the estranged wife is demanding church assets as part of the divorce settlement.

“There has been a lot of media coverage and the characterisation that he has been made out to be. He (Sandlana) has been called a cheat, a liar, and through that entire characterisation, he has elected not to speak to the media around those accusations at all. It is cultural within our institution that we do not deal with personal matters in the media space. Those are private issues,” said Phuthi.

He said Sandlana does not oppose the divorce, “but there are restraining factors” because the estranged wife’s settlement includes church property.

“We are only asking that we give the courts a chance because these cases are now before the courts. There was a fraud charge also laid against me. There is also a fraud case laid against our father (Sandlana). The same modus operandi is followed,” said Phuthi.

“The core message from our father is that he cannot settle the divorce with church assets. His appeal is that church members should not be included in this matter, which is personal, but let the matter be handled by institutions and we will finish it there.”

The well-known church, which boasts a three-million-strong membership in South Africa and neighbouring countries, has been engulfed in a bitter three-way conflict to succeed Glayton Modise, who inherited it from his father and founder, Frederick Samuel Modise, in 1998.

There are three main contenders, namely Glayton Modise’s two sons Frederick Leonard Goitsemang and Tshepiso, and Sandlana – reportedly Glayton Modise’s son out of wedlock.

Leonard Modise leads the IPHC group based in Zuurbekom, while Sandlana leads the Pretoria faction, and Tshepiso runs the third splinter group.

Sandlana reportedly leads about 90% of the church branches and has the support of most IPHC priests on the church council.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher