Some church leaders in
Swaziland abuse their female congregants, a workshop in the kingdom was told.
They take advantage of
young girls and women and devise ways of making them ‘fall for them’. They also
commit adultery.
A police officer also told
pastors they behaved like ‘monsters’ and beat up their wives.
Pastor Joseph Mazibela
Dlamini told a dialogue facilitated by the Shiselweni Crime Prevention unit and
Nhlangano AIDS Training and Counselling Centre (NATICC) at Bethesda Church that
some pastors, ‘were doing wayward things in the name of being leaders’.
The Swazi Observer reported on Wednesday (11 April 2018), he said, ‘There
are some of us who take advantage of the situation of our church members and
abuse them.’
The newspaper said, ‘Dlamini
said there were church leaders who after noticing a needy member, would come
forward and pretend to save that member when in actual fact, they had hidden
agendas.’
It quoted him saying, ‘We
abuse our members in particular the females. There are some of us who are
failed by our flesh and when we notice a needy female, we pretend to be there
for her when we know very well that we expect that woman to offer herself to
us.
‘There are situations where
young girls in our churches look desperate and then a pastor would think of a
plan to make her fall for him. They approach these women and buy them clothing
and all that. We commit adultery with our members taking advantage of the
situation they are facing.’
Another speaker, Pastor
Jabulani Sikhondze, said church leaders were custodians of the gospel and
should live a clean life. The Observer
reported, ‘He said it was worrying that these days that church leaders were
implicated in scandals with others even ending up in courts.’
At the same meeting
Inspector Fanyana Dlamini, who is in charge of the Domestic Violence and Child
Protection in the Shiselweni region, told the pastors, ‘Some of you are
monsters. There are those of you who are wife bashers in our midst.’
The Swazi Observer reported on Tuesday (10 April 2018) she said ‘Some
of you take to the pulpit knowing very well that they do not live the life they
preach to the congregants. We have dealt with several cases of church leaders
who abuse their wives in different forms. We have attended to cases touching on
church leaders who are of double standards. Some of you are also molesters with
the victims being members of the church.’
Fanyana Dlamini also told
the meeting that the the Shiselweni Domestic Violence and Child Protection
department had attended to 1,025 cases of abuse in just a year. These included
sexual, emotional and financial abuse.
Dlamini said, ‘Some of
those implicated were church leaders. As a department, we often attend to cases
where the pastor is the culprit.’
See also
PASTOR
AND THE PRYING SWAZI PRESS
SWAZI MORALISTS ATTACK WIDOW
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/swazi-moralists-attack-widow.html
