A lady at the centre of
a sex scandal involving a prominent South African Pastor has given a shocking
confession at a church in Lagos, Nigeria following her ‘deliverance’.
Olipha Dube, a 34 year old of Zulu origin, revealed
that she had practised as a ‘sangoma’ or witchdoctor for many years,
exposing some eerie secrets behind the mysterious ‘profession’.
“This is the time to
expose the kingdom of darkness and what the devil is doing in so many people’s
lives by deceiving them to believe that witchcraft, witchdoctors, herbalists
and traditional healers have a solution,” Dube
emphatically began after a clip showing her ‘deliverance’ was shown to church
congregants.
The clip showed the pastor praying for Dube, upon
which she violently reacted and an uncanny voice spoke out through her,
identifying itself as ‘the great lion’. “I
have given her too many powers,” the ‘spirit’ confessed. “I make her do anything I send her. I have
given her wisdom to do what I want her to do, to break people’s marriages, to
break homes. She is a witchdoctor.”
Olipha explained that her professional nursing
career inexplicably nosedived, prompting a friend to advise her to seek
‘alternative’ help. Following consultation at a herbalists home, the response
she received from her creepy counsellor was an unexpected one. “He told me I had a gift from the ancestors
and I was supposed to be a sangoma myself,” she recalled. “I agreed. At that time, I thought it was a
solution.”
After going to an ‘initiation school’, incisions
were strategically placed throughout her body with several darkish substances
known as ‘muti’ rubbed in so as to infuse with her blood. “Those charms are to give you powers to see
what other people don’t see, powers to be able to communicate with the
spiritual world,” she explained.
After starting her practice as a traditional
healer, the thirst for deeper knowledge and more advanced powers spurred Olipha
to pass through another ‘initiation’. “I
paid a lot of money and he taught me how to use plants, herbs and trees – to
mix them with animal parts – to produce whatever charms you wanted to,”
she divulged.
Olipha built an altar in her bedroom, as well as
erecting a house in her garden dedicated to paying homage to her ‘ancestors’. “You would use that to store your charms and
for consultation,” she explained. At this stage, her daily life
literally revolved around witchcraft. “Before
I could speak to anyone in the morning, I had to speak to the ancestors at my
altar... They would tell me how my day was going to be like - the challenges I
was going to meet, the people that would come and see me, the charms to use to
be able to succeed through the day.”
Dube said she had to maintain constant connection
with these ‘ancestors’. “I had powers
in my eyes, tongue and all over my body,” she told the shocked
congregation. “If you take a look at
my body now, I have incisions everywhere, even in my private parts.”
She described the services of a witchdoctor as a
‘one-stop-shop’ where you are “expected
to provide solutions for a variety of problems”. However,
everything came with strings attached. “There
is no consultation for free. We would first throw the bones on the floor and
get information we want about the past, present and future. If the person
really wants the problem solved, we would move to the next level where they
would have to pay. The deeper the problem, the more the money.”
Citing an example of a ‘love-charm’ , the former
sangoma explained how she would use plants to create attention and an animal
to produce affection. “In
this case, I would choose a female dog,” she revealed. “We would wait for the time of mating to
capture the dog. At that time, the dog is enraged and uncontrollable. You would
remove the parts you require from that dog, dry them in the sun and mash them.”
According to Dube, if people consulting
witchdoctors knew the contents of the charms given them, most would run for
their dear lives. “When people come,
they just see powder – they don’t know that this is actually an animal. We
would make an incision, put that animal together with other charms in the
person’s body, in their blood. That is going to produce the effect from the
behavior of the dog in that person’s life. When the man she wants to marry sees
her, something will just happen to him and he will lust after her.”
However, there were serious side-effects! In this
particular instance, Dube explained, after a short-lived romance, hatred would
set in leaving the relationship in tatters. “At that stage, that is when people start moving from one witchdoctor to
another because they think maybe your charms are not powerful enough. The more
they go to witchdoctors, they more they use these charms, the more they go
deeper and deeper into their problems,” she revealed.
Explaining the rationale behind this, Olipha
explained, “The aim was to get people
hooked. Once a person gets hooked, it’s impossible to get them out… The more
you hunt for greater power, the more you expose yourself into deeper problems.
You would even get to a level where you would go to those traditional healers
who use human body parts to create charms.”
Revealing more about an increasingly common
complaint in churches today - having sexual encounters in dreams - Olipha
stated, “One of the best ways to
create a problem in a person’s life is to get either a spiritual husband or a
spiritual wife. This was best done in a graveyard, the former
spiritualist sensationally told the stunned crowd.
“If you
wanted to raise a spiritual husband for a woman, you would randomly select any
male grave, looking at the name of the tombstone. Most importantly, you would
have to buy this spirit. I would tell the spirit – ‘As from today, you are
married to ‘so-and-so’. You are going to stay with her and perform all the
duties a husband does to and for his wife.’ Soon afterwards, my client
would come to me and say, ‘I am very happy – their life is in shambles. She
lost her job. Her husband left her.’ ”
However, despite touting herself as a
‘solution-provider’ to others, Olipha was beset by crippling financial
challenges. “I lost my business and
all of my assets. I was very upset, bitter and angry and decided it was time
for me to find something else but I had not made the decision to find God
because of the Christians that were also coming to me for consultation. I saw
all Christians as fake. I went to a lot of other herbalists, traditional
healers and witchdoctors. Instead, my situation got worse and worse until I
lost everything.”
At this point, Dube visited the controversial South
African Pastor Mboro of Incredible Happenings Ministries to seek ‘deliverance’.
However, their relationship soon grew sour as Dube publicly accused him in the
popular South African tabloid newspaper ‘Sunday World’ of abusing her and
‘sexploiting’ her personal problems for his own gratification, resulting in a
contentious court case.
In the midst of this, fear steadily welled up
within Olipha. She wanted to get out but the ethics of her ‘profession’ did not
permit backtracking! “I was living in
constant fear,” she stated. “I
even gave my car away because I was too scared to drive. These spirits were
always telling me that I was going to die. I knew that they were after my
life.”
Growing more desperate and steadily losing hope, it
was at this point that one of her ‘students’ directed her toward a Christian
station called Emmanuel TV. “I was
shocked. I saw people manifesting, talking about the very same things we would
do to other people. I saw Prophet T.B. Joshua commanding the spirits to go out
in one word. I saw people with the same problem that I had being helped and
knew that this was where my solution would come from.”
Resolving to visit The Synagogue, Church Of All
Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos, Nigeria, Olipha had a dramatic experience when she
was prayed for. “As the prophet was
approaching me, I felt this big force that was blowing me. I felt something
deep inside my tummy shifting and shaking my intestines in an uncontrollable
way.” At this point, Dube said a voice within her instructed her to run
as fast as possible away but something inexplicably restricted her movement.
“I just had to surrender
right there. Before I knew it, this lady grabbed me, lifted me up and told me I
was delivered,” she stated. “Since
the deliverance, I have this peace inside of me. I can sleep. I am just
in tranquillity.”
Olipha is packed with advice following her
extensive sojourn in the world of darkness. “I have a lot of advice. Firstly to Christians – ‘If you want to be a
Christian, be a Christian’. People who go to traditional doctors and herbalists
– hear it from me – there is no solution there. You will finish your money and
at the end of the day, it will eat up even things that you did not get through
them. There is no solution through herbalists, traditional healers or
witchdoctors. The only solution is Jesus Christ.”
SOURCE: YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Ihechukwu
Njoku - freelance Nigerian
journalist currently in Johannesburg, South Africa