A rights commission has been granted a permanent protection order against Pastor Paseka "Mboro'' Motsoeneng after he allegedly threatened the life of its chairperson Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.
The order granted to the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CLR Commission) will be effective until 2022. This follows the violation of an interim order against him earlier this year.
The interim order was granted shortly after Mboro said on his television show and other platforms that Mkhwanazi-Xaluva should clean his church "and kneel and beg and cry for forgiveness and polish his shoes", said Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.
She said that at one time Mboro arrived at her office with eight cars and armed bodyguards.
"When you deal with crazy people, you need to do unusual things to protect yourself." Mkhwanazi-Xaluva told HuffPost SA on Thursday.
"What he does is to incite people, on TV, telling them to do all sorts of scary things. He said that I must come to his church, apologise to him, clean his church, get on my hands and knees, or else... So I decided to do the right thing, and protect myself and those around me from this dangerous man."
But Mboro was not aware of any protection order and told HuffPost SA that he will believe it when he sees the papers.
"I'm tired of these lies. The problem is, I never spoke against Thoko, I never intimidated her, I never threatened her, I never insulted her," said Mboro.
"I don't know why I am supposed to be persecuted the way I am, because this will affect not just me, but the whole country."
God, the pastor says, will protect him.
"There are millions of people who will have questions, what crime could this man have done? If I go to jail, it must be because of a crime that I have done, beyond reasonable doubt. As far as I know there is no way prophet Mboro can go to jail, because he does not do crime. Either way, if I go to jail, God will fight for me."
Commercialisation of Religion
The CRL Commission said it would be launching a study into the commercialisation of religion.
"We are launching an investigative study on the commercialisation of religion and the abuse of people's belief systems in terms of when these institutions are being run, how are they being run, what is their funding going into, who collects how much and what do they do with the money, where does the money eventually go to, what are the governing principles that are there," said Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.
The commission released a report recommending that religious leaders are regulated in the country to protect the abuse of people's belief systems, and requested that Mboro hand over his financial records.
But Mboro hit back, saying: "The commission is biased and they are acting outside of their jurisdiction and boundaries in this particular instance."