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’.
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.”
Ihechukwu Njoku - freelance Nigerian journalist currently in Johannesburg, South Africa
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