The Government of Botswana has closed down the church of controversial self-styled prophet Shepherd Bushiri, Botswana media as well as the BBC reported yesterday.
\nThe Government of Botswana confirmed the closure of Bushiri\u2019s Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG)Church in Gaborone, reportedly due to concerns over the so-called \u201cmiracle money\u201d.
\nThe Botswana Gazette, a leading weekly Botswana newspaper, reported that Bushiri had failed to submit annual returns as demanded by the country\u2019s laws.
\nAccording to the newspaper, in a letter dated December 6 2017, the Registrar of Societies Michael Mokgausti said the church\u2019s operations were revoked in terms of Section 11 (3) of that country\u2019s Societies Act.
\n\u201cI have this day cancelled your registration under the said act on the following grounds. Your society has not responded to the notice of the 10th November 2017 in which it was required to show reasons why it should not be cancelled,\u201d Mokgausti said in the letter.
\nOn November 10 last year, the church was asked to submit audited annual returns.
\n\u201cIn accordance with the Societies Act Chapter 18:01, Section 16 (1) as read with regulation 15 of the Act, your society was to submit to the Registrar of Societies annual returns by the 31 August 2017, which your society failed to do,\u201d reads the notice in part.
\nLast year in April, a Botswana minister Edwin Batshu asked Bushiri \u2013 who now lives in South Africa \u2013 to apply for a visa to enter Botswana, despite Malawians not usually needing one.
\nWhen asked for a response yesterday, Bushiri\u2019s spokesperson, Ephraim Nyondo, said he would issue a statement today.
\nBushiri now runs churches from Ghana to South Africa. He claims to have cured people of HIV and brought people back from the dead as well as walking on air.
\nLast year, he sparked outrage when he went public and claimed that he could solve Malawi\u2019s electricity crisis in a matter of days if given a chance.
\nHis claims of miracles and flashy lifestyle has made him very popular on social media commanding a following of more than 2.3 million likes on Facebook alone.
\nHe came under fire last year after it emerged he was charging between 1,000 and 25,000 rands ($80 and 2,000; \u00a360 and 1,500) to attend a gala dinner with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Government of Botswana has closed down the church of controversial self-styled prophet Shepherd Bushiri, Botswana media as well as the BBC reported yesterday. The Government of Botswana confirmed the closure of Bushiri\u2019s Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG)Church in Gaborone, reportedly due to concerns over the so-called \u201cmiracle money\u201d. The Botswana Gazette, a leading weekly Botswana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58910,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58905\/revisions\/58910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}