How a Nigerian Billy Graham is helping cover up a South African tragedy

GlobalPost

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The story is as strange as the man himself: when a five-story building collapsed at “prophet” TB Joshua’s megachurch, in the megacity of Lagos, Nigeria, for days mysteriously few knew what had happened.

Furious church members chased away the rescue workers who rushed to help. Relatives and diplomats were denied information, and journalists’ cameras smashed.

It wasn’t until four days later that South Africa finally learned the true extent of the disaster, in a rare televised address by President Jacob Zuma. A total of 115 people had died, including 84 South Africans — the most deaths of citizens abroad in recent history.

Shock quickly turned to anger as it emerged that more people could likely have been saved if not for the delays and outright resistance by the church, and a slow response by the Nigerian government. “Blood on their hands,” said a headline in South Africa’s Sunday Times.

The tragedy has drawn attention to the secretive world of TB Joshua and his church, The Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). It has also cast a light on the Pentecostal celebrity preachers, many of them from Nigeria, whose sermons have grown increasingly popular — and profitable — among followers across Africa and the world.

Temitope Balagun Joshua is a charismatic Christian preacher who claims to have spent 15 months in his mother’s womb, and says he can cure everything from AIDS to cancer to Ebola. His weekly sermons to a live audience of 15,000 people are broadcast around the world though his Emmanuel TV station.

Joshua is credited by his followers for having the gift of prophecy, and claims to have foretold the disappearance of Malaysian flight 370, the death of a former Malawian president, and even the death of Michael Jackson. There was, however, no prophesy about the disaster at his own church.

A 2001 documentary called "Faith Healer" chronicled South Africans' pilgrimages to SCOAN.

This type of preaching has found favor with some of Africa’s top political leaders, including the late Ghanaian president John Atta Mills, Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and Julius Malema, an outspoken young South African politician.

Among the thousands making pilgrimages to Joshua’s church in the Ikotun suburb of Lagos are also sports stars and actors. Joshua has been visited by several former members of South Africa’s Springbok rugby team, who sought healing for terminal cancers.  

All of this fanfare and popularity has made him one of the world’s wealthiest religious leaders. Forbes magazine in 2011 estimated his net worth at $10-15 million. This puts him among the upper echelon of wealthy preachers, though behind even bigger figures like US televangelist Billy Graham, reportedly worth $25 million, or David Oyedepo, head of Nigeria’s Winners Chapel, who is said to be worth $150 million.

Joshua’s wealth is an additional source of anger in the church building collapse. Nigeria’s national disaster management team says the collapse was a result of shoddy construction — the building, a guesthouse, was being expanded from two stories to five, and may have lacked a proper permit.

But Joshua has stuck to a rather more bizarre version of what happened on Sept. 12. He claims that a mysterious plane was spotted flying low over the building shortly before it collapsed, and has insinuated that it was militants targeting him in a terror attack. Those who died, Joshua said, were “martyrs.”

“The church views this tragedy as part of an attack on The Synagogue Church Of All Nations and in particular, Prophet TB Joshua,” an official statement said. “In due course, God will reveal the perpetrators of this unfortunate tragedy.”

The building collapse was caught on video security cameras (shown here at 1:54):

Jeff Radebe, South Africa’s minister in the presidency, said the country was “keenly awaiting” an official Nigerian investigation into the cause of the collapse.

Meanwhile, public anger has grown as the full horror of what happened is revealed.

The South African government sent a military transport plane on a rescue mission to bring home the badly injured survivors, among them two toddlers left orphaned. The public interest was such that local broadcasters carried live feeds of the plane’s arrival in Pretoria.

Upon their return, South Africans caught in the collapse have told harrowing tales of being trapped under rubble. One woman, Lindiwe Ndwandwe, said she survived by drinking her own urine for five days.

Joshua has announced a visit to South Africa to comfort his flock. But the youth wing of the ruling African National Congress party is demanding he be denied a visa until the official investigation is complete.

“TB Joshua should not be allowed to come to South Africa until we know what happened to our fellow countrymen at his church,” spokesman Bandile Masuku said in a statement.

Lindiwe Ndwandwe cries as she speaks about how she survived five days under the rubble of the collapsed guesthouse. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP)

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.