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elcome to 2014, optimists are calling it “20-for-me”.
Scrutator hopes 2014 will bring good tidings her way. In anticipation of the good things of life, Scrutator made a New Year resolution: She is not taking any alcohol, until month-end, at least.
There is simply too much “month” in her wallet at the moment; it’s called “January disease”.
We need not talk more about that malady which affects nearly everyone this time of the year.
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here were no takers for the coveted Mampara of the Year trophy this past year. Like Scrutator said in the last instalment in December, there were far too many contestants than anticipated and there was hardly any time to even make a short list in time for Christmas.
Another New Year resolution is to ensure that by September, Scrutator would have narrowed down the list to not more than three so that come year-end, there would only be a single winner.
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crutator believes the Almighty is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
At the same time, Scrutator finds it disturbing that there is now an army of charlatans, wolves in sheep skin, who have apportioned for themselves a position right next to God and hoodwink thousands of desperate miracle-seeking faithful into believing they can perform extraordinary feats.
True, miracles exist. That’s why we have that word in the first place, but the extent to which some fraudulent “Men of God” attribute their dark arts to the Almighty cannot go unchallenged.
A pastor in north Gauteng, South Africa, last week instructed congregation members to eat grass so that they can “be closer to God,” according to media reports.
Lesekgo Daniels, who is oftentimes referred to as a “miracle man”, reportedly made his congregation of about a 1 000 eat grass as part of a ritual to show that humans can be controlled by God’s spirit.
After the sheepish church members had finished eating grass, literally grazing, a few claimed they were cured of their ills.
One woman, a 21-year-old law student, claimed she had suffered from a sore throat for an entire year. Once the young woman ingested the grass, she swore it healed her malady, telling the media that the preacher “turned me into a sheep and instructed me to eat grass. Yes, we eat grass and we’re proud of it because it demonstrates that, with God’s power we can do anything,” the young congregant enthused.
Another follower said she suffered a stroke two years ago that left her paralysed and unable to walk; yet, after she obeyed her pastor’s wishes, it resulted in a cure.
“I could not walk, but soon after eating the grass, as the pastor had ordered, I started gaining strength, and an hour later, I could walk again,” she said. As the obedient ministry followers ate the grass, the pastor was allegedly witnessed walking on top of his congregants as they were spread out across a lawn.
But not everyone was cured of their ailments. Instead, many reportedly received more than they bargained for when they became violently ill after ingesting the grass: Throngs of followers wound up vomiting.
Daniels allegedly put a few congregants to sleep then ordered them to slap and trample on one another.
On Facebook, the pastor reportedly boasted about his ability to put people to sleep and went as far as saying that he could do so even to arresting officers.
“You can leave them like this for six months. I love this. I don’t want to be bored. You can even make police go to sleep when they come to arrest you,” he said in a Facebook posting.
These are indeed bad times we are living in. Anything is possible in the rat race for the ever-elusive rand.
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his week Scrutator is focusing on strange men of the cloth. Walking on water is not easy. Not too many people have the ability.
Let’s see, there’s Jesus, and well, that’s about it.
Unfortunately for one pastor from West Africa, his attempt to become the second man to make this impossible feat a reality cost him his life.
A few weeks ago, Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he was capable of reenacting the very miracles of Jesus Christ.
He decided to make it clear through a demonstration on Gabon’s beach in the capital city, Libreville.
Quoting Matthew 14:22-33, Kabele said that he received a revelation which told him that with enough faith he could achieve what Jesus was able to.
According to an eyewitness, Kabele took his congregation out to the beach. He told them he would cross the Kombo estuary by foot, which is normally a 20-minute boat ride. Sadly, by the second step into the water Kabele found himself completely submerged. He never returned.
This is not the first incident of this nature in Africa. At Ibadan zoo in south-west Nigeria, a self-proclaimed prophet claimed to be able to do what the Daniel of the bible did by walking into a den full of lions.
Though he was warned several times by zoo keepers, according to news reports, the prophet thought of them as nothing more than enemies of progress. With a crowd of people watching, he put on a long red robe and proceeded to enter the cage full of the feline beast.
Within seconds of opening the cage, the lions transformed the prophet from flesh to bone.
These celebrity pastors should attach a health warning to their histrionics: “Don’t try this at your secular home.”
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crutator expects the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) to make lasting resolutions and not to work by fits and starts.
The ad hoc manner in which somebody at LMPS suddenly woke up after Christmas and decided to ban the use of fire-crackers is a blunder that should not be repeated.
I can assure our esteemed law enforcement agents they are not the only ones who get miffed by the noisy fire-crackers.
Even Scrutator cannot put up with them sometimes, but her reason is different. They say to a carpenter it seems every problem can be solved by a hammer.
To people who frequently hear the sound of gunshots in their line of duty, every crackling sound seems like a gunshot.
In a country notorious for abuse of unlicensed firearms, Scrutator clearly understands where our police are coming from.
But then, there are processes to be followed when one intends to change the law, legal processes which cannot be by-passed.
Scrutator need not remind our law enforcement agents that we have a vibrant parliament up Mpilo Hill and any law banning frivolous nuisance such as firecrackers would have to come from parliament.
Still the reasons police presented for the need to ban these innocuous noises are not convincing.
Police said in the past, that criminals have simultaneously killed innocent people taking advantage of the din of sounds from firecrackers to muffle the sounds of gunshots.
Scrutator understands their concern but would such a worry warrant a wholesale ban on firecrackers?
Police did not give us the statistics that can allow us to measure the extent of such occurrences in order for us to see whether or not the ban is warranted.
Scrutator has a gut feeling such instances are too few and far between to warrant such draconian action.
People, mostly children, look forward to popping the firecrackers to welcome the New Year, like the rest of the world. Abuse of guns could be rife in Lesotho but that does not make Lesotho the Las Vegas or Mexico of the globe.
Ironically, even the most notorious gun-capitals of the world would not go so far as banning largely harmless fun-filled firecrackers.
The second reason police gave was there were a few cases of freak accidents in which people were injured or lost limbs after detonating the explosive crackers.
Scrutator’s simple answer is almost everything can cause harm and even death.
We ride cars daily despite the carnage on the roads everywhere, all the time. Must we ban cars, planes, etc?
Ache!
scrutatorqacha@gmail.com
