ZANU PF vs Nigerian Evangelist

Last week I noted that the death of Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika in April had occurred just days after he had laughed off a prophecy by Nigerian mega-pastor TB Joshua that an African president would shortly die. Joshua reportedly followed up on this a few weeks later; Bulawayo 24 reports:

Another old African president will fall critically ill, hospitalised but will be saved from death, popular Nigerian prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua (TB Joshua), left, has reportedly said.

In his most recent prophecy this week, the popular prophet reportedly said the Africa president, whom he did not name, would miss death by a whisker.

Once again, no name is given, but SW Radio Africa now reports that:

These prophecies are not going down well with ZANU PF given Mugabe’s health and surrounding speculation.

Joshua has reportedly been invited to Zimbabwe by Morgan Tsvangirai to speak at the National Day of Prayer, although event organisers have denied this. Either way, the prospect of Joshua showing up has provoked something of a backlash:

The campaign took an unusual turn on Wednesday when senior police officers were shown a video that allegedly exposes TB Joshua as a womaniser and sorcerer…

Zimbabwe Republic Police Commissioner-General responsible for crime, Josephine Shambare and Senior Assistant Commissioner Nonkosi Ncube, were some of the senior officers that attended the screening of the video titled “TB Joshua’s evil doings finally revealed.”

The screening was done at the Police General Headquarters in Harare and Ncube told journalists the video was screened because “people must be aware of false prophets.”

As the police were watching the video, ex-communicated Anglican bishop and fierce Zanu (PF) supporter Nolbert Kunonga was launching an unprovoked attack on the Nigerian at his offices in Harare. He said TB Joshua’s prophecies were driven by Satanism and were “diabolic.”

I’ve blogged on Kunonga previously; in return for describing the dictator as “more merciful than God” in the run-up to the 2002 election, he was rewarded with two farms that had been appropriated by Mugabe’s militia, and which were susequently reportedly being mismanaged). Kunonga also boasts of baptising children “in the Zanu-PF way”.

The anti-Joshua video appeared in 2009; TB Joshua’s evil doings finally revealed is the YouTube title, but the documentary is actually called Deception of the Age.  Online Nigeria has some background:

…produced by Nollywood star,Paul Adams with fiery Pastor Ladi Thompson as the executive director… [it] offers chilling accounts of human right abuses, manipulations, deceptions and sexual escapades perpetrated by the prophet, which were based on the confessions of his former devotees…

With vivid accounts of the prophet’s atrocities as supplied by Bisola Johnson, a former studio worker who was a close disciple of Joshua for 14 years and Paul Agomoh, the first indigenously ordained prophet in the church, who also left after 10 years, the documentary is best described as a highly-damaging piece.

Joshua’s church (the Synagogue Church of All Nations) responded with a counter-video in which individuals who had attacked Joshua confessed to dishonesty; one case was that of “Mukaila Bello, a man who confessed he lied that he buried an eight-month old pregnant woman in the church and produced hundreds of cassettes of such fabrications which he sold to make tons of money”.