What was supposed to be a holy
journey filled with good news from the Bible turned into and aggressive
exchange of derogatory words as commuters told preacher to "stop preaching
lies.''
The exchange took place in a
Putco bus travelling from Sandton to Soweto. What sparked the tension were
words said by the preacher who claimed God is not obliged to respect people as
he quoted his Bible in hand.
“God does not respect us, he
has no obligation to that,” the preacher said before one woman sternly opposed
saying he must stop spreading lies. "He lying, stop lying, there is no
such,” she shouted stubbornly. The preacher confronted the woman and questioned
her faith.
As the woman continued her
protest against the preacher, the young preacher dug deeper in his spiritual
world and eventually started praying for the woman in tongues claiming that a
prophecy that the woman will stop drinking alcohol and will find true love and
a man who will ask for her hand in marriage soon.
A group of other female
commuters joined in defence of the woman questioning the preacher’s faith. As
they pressed harder with questions the preacher could not handle the pressure
and lost his temper then started yelling at the women using the word mfazi.
“You are a woman, you shouldn’t
talk to a man that way,” he shouted to another woman.
One of the women tried to calm
the clearly infuriated preacher down, he did not have any of it as he lost his
cool and repeatedly shout the word “ Mfazi,” “uwumfazi into oyiyo (you are
nothing more but a woman) and you should submit to a man just as the Bible
commands you to do so, you have no respect.''
The word “mfazi” sparked rage
and the women retaliated in kind.
“You are a mistaken child, you
Devil worshipper, your mother never loved you, go back to church and ask your
pastor to teach you how to preach again,” the women shouted at him as they
tried to chase him away.