The preying prophets

What if your papa is actually a phoney?

Joseph Lenga was deported from Zambia in 2018, but he still runs his church from South Africa with many faithful followers.

 

 JACK ZIMBA

SHE called him “papa”, and revered him as a Man of God.

But one day when Barbara was alone with him in his office, the man of God suggested something that made her squirm.
Barbara is a strong evangelical Christian who had become acquainted with a Congolese preacher called Joseph Lenga back in 2011, the year the preacher first arrived in Zambia from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In fact, Barbara had helped Lenga to establish a church called Salvation City International Worldwide.
Within a few years, the church had grown from a home-based church to having hundreds of followers, and had even attracted high-profile figures who poured thousands of Kwacha into the church offering basket every Sunday.
Lenga was charismatic and his preaching spellbinding.
“I thought he was different. He sounded educated and open-minded and nothing struck me as unusual about him,” says Barbara about her first encounter with Lenga.
“I looked up to him as a mentor and spiritual father who could help me,” adds Barbara.
But with hindsight, Barbara now thinks she ignored the first tell-tale signs about the sinister character that lay behind the pious façade of the man she came to call papa.
She says a few months after she met Lenga, he tried to have sex with her at a friend’s house.
But she brushed the incident aside.
“I refused. I didn’t think it was appropriate. But I still thought he was okay,” she says.
But the sexual advancement would happen again months later.
The second time it happened, Barbara had hit rock-bottom in her life, or so she felt. Things just did not seem to work out for her, and so she decided to confide in her pastor and seek his prayers.
“When I went to see him, he started telling me about this strange doctrine about deliverance through sex, but I refused,” says Barbara. “How can I sleep with my spiritual dad?”
According to Barbara, Lenga wanted her to initiate the sexual act. “He asked me to kiss him, but I refused.”
Barbara says Lenga had mentioned a friend of his who was also pastoring a church, who was sleeping with young women in his church in order - as he put it - to deliver them from demons.
Barbara cannot seem to understand how she fell for Lenga’s deception.
“I must admit that I was caught up in something that wasn’t right and I couldn’t see it,” she says.
But she now seems to believe that Lenga used a magic spell on her to control her.
“To be honest I don’t know why I could not gather my courage and stand and say this is wrong,” she says.
But Lenga also used scripture to cover up his own sins.
According to Barbara, Lenga and his wife usually told their followers the account of Noah in the Bible, who got very drunk and lay naked in his tent. When two of his sons learnt about it, they got a blanket and, walking backwards so as to avoid seeing their father’s nakedness, they covered him.
“Children must cover their father’s nakedness,” Lenga’s wife once told Barbara.
But Barbara also blames herself for believing Lenga’s deception. She says she idolised him.
“I had reached a point where everything was about him,” she says.
Barbara says she now wants to come out and speak about what happened in order to save other women from falling prey to fake prophets.
“Maybe if I had spoken out, I would have saved some young girls who were taken advantage of because they wanted spiritual help,” she says ruefully.
She says she heard many stories of women who got sexually abused by Lenga.
Barbara says she knows six women, even married ones, who were sexually abused by the prophet, but are scared to come out.
“I think people are scared to come out and speak, but I have heard that it was during prayers at his office that he would anoint them on their private parts,” says Barbara.
She now advises women to speak out against prophets who violate them sexually.
“Don’t be like me who sat thinking that I was covering up the man of God,” she says. “I’m very careful these days, and when I see the signs I run, and I don’t think I will ever keep quiet again. This ‘covering of your father’s nakedness’ is stupid to some degree.”
But she also wants Government to help stop foreign preachers from taking advantage of Zambian women.
“What upsets me is that most of these prophets are foreigners. We can’t allow people to come from other countries to come and destroy lives here. I think time has come for us to stand up and stop it,” she says.
But it is not just women who were a target of Lenga’s deception.
When Ezekiel’s daughter started having strange visions, he knew it was time to seek divine intervention.
Someone introduced him to Lenga, and then began the deception and manipulation.
Although Ezekiel and his wife were Catholics, they began attending Lenga’s church for the sake of their daughter’s deliverance. He says prayer meetings usually lasted from morning to evening.
Ezekiel’s wife soon became hooked on Lenga’s deception.
Like Barbara, Ezekiel thinks Lenga used black magic to take control of women’s minds so that they could believe whatever he told them.
Ezekiel says he knew one woman who attended the church who sold her car and house and gave the money to Lenga.
“My wife didn’t want me to say anything against the prophet,” he says.
According to Ezekiel, Lenga had asked to keep the girl for some days at his office for prayers.
But Ezekiel now thinks the purpose was to probe the girl about the family wealth.
One morning, Ezekiel found a dead chicken in his yard that had pins and razors attached to it, and the letter “X” drawn on its breast.
Ezekiel’s wife was terrified at the finding.
The family decided to call Lenga for prayers.
But Lenga could not pray before any cash offering.
Ezekiel offered K500, but the prophet refused saying it was too little.
He raised the offering to K2,000, but Lenga’s spirit could still not be moved.
At that point, Ezekiel’s wife mentioned that she had K50,000 insurance in some account and promised to make a bank transfer.
Lenga collected the dead chicken, offered prayers, and burnt it.
But Ezekiel was not moved by the stunt and was convinced it was all staged.
Two days later, he reported Lenga to police, who ordered a reverse of the K50,000 bank transfer.
Ezekiel now believes the dead chicken was thrown into his yard by Lenga himself in order to instil fear in the family.
The case soon attracted the attention of the Immigration Department.
In February 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs deported Lenga on grounds that he had swindled people out of their money, and that he was involved in sexual misconduct with some women in his church.
But even when the deportation order was issued, his church rose up in support of Lenga.
One of the people who fought hard to have the deportation order revoked was Zebron Lungu.
Zebron was introduced to Lenga’s church by his wife and daughter.
He and his wife were members of a traditional church, but when their daughter came across Lenga, she convinced both her parents to join the new church.
“The biggest attraction was prophecy. He was prolific in that, and women like prophecy a lot,” says Zebron.
Although Zebron himself says: “Whatever he prophesied to me, nothing came to pass.”
Like Barbara and Ezekiel, Zebron also believes Lenga was using some form of magical power to manipulate his followers.
“There was a much stronger force behind it than just the words he spoke to us because he could convince everyone. His word was always obeyed without questioning.”
Zebron says he started having doubts about Lenga when he stopped him and others from evangelising to poor communities because they gave little offering.
“His desire for money was very high,” says Zebron.
He says Lenga was always asking his members to give offerings, ranging from as high as K5,000.
Zebron himself usually gave big amounts to the church.
He now thinks of Lenga as a businessman and not a prophet.
But he says about his wife: “She is terribly hurt about Joseph Lenga, she doesn’t even want to hear his name.”
Zebron advises Christians to read the Bible and understand it for themselves.
“Zambians should not be lazy in reading the Bible. We are lazy and very, very lazy,” he says.
Today, Lenga operates from Johannesburg, South Africa, but he still has a hand in the church he established in Zambia.
His postings on Facebook still get many hits of “Amen, I receive it” from his followers.
But Lenga is not the only one who has preyed on his followers, especially women.
When Carol was a college student a few years ago, she was having differences with the father of her children with whom she was cohabiting.
When things got out of hand, she became an emotional wreck and would often cry.
Then a friend of hers told her about a prophet in Mutendere Township who could end her sorrow.
The prophet that Carol was introduced to was called Emmanuel Chika.
“My friend told me that if the prophet prayed for me, my problem with the father of my children would stop,” narrates Carol.
After attending one prayer session, Chika told Carol to return for more prayers because her problem was unique.
Chika told Carol the root-cause of her problem had to do with her private parts.
“I was too desperate to come out of that problem,” says Carol.
The young woman returned one Saturday to see the prophet.
“When I entered the house, I found him alone. He told me that for the problem to end, he needed to touch where the problem was. I got concerned and I asked him what would happen after that. He told me he would have to sleep with me,” she says.
When she refused, Chika told Carol it was wrong for her to say no to the spirit.
“When he told me that I got scared, and so I told him that I needed to prepare myself,” she says.
She says when she narrated the story to her friend, she did not believe her until she sent Chika a text message asking him if they would use a condom.
He replied saying using a condom would not work.
Carol says she heard of many young women who fell prey to the prophet.
Chika’s sexual escapades later became public after he was sued for divorce.
*Some names have been changed.

If you have ever fallen prey to fake prophets and pastors and want to share your story, get in touch.

Jackzimba777@gmail.com