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Prophet Shepherd Bushiri and his wife Mary appear in Pretoria Magistrates Court on November 4, 2020 (Photo: Gallo Images / Frennie Shivambu)
But the legal process could take months or even years to complete.
The network is slowly narrowing around fugitive Malawian televangelist Shepherd Bushiri and his wife, Mary, after the Malawian government agreed to South Africa’s request to extradite them to face trial in South Africa.
Malawian Attorney General Chikosa Silungwe has recommended extradition and National Security Minister Richard Chimwendo Banda has supported this decision, Malawian government spokesman Gospel Kazako confirmed. Daily maverick.
However, Kazako also strongly emphasized that it would be up to the courts to make the final decision on whether they should be arrested and sent back to South Africa. “Our courts are totally independent,” he declared. Some experts believe that it could take years to extradite the couple if they use all the legal remedies available to them.
It is not entirely clear whether the Bushiris will be arrested pending a court decision on whether to extradite them. They surrendered to the police in November after Interpol issued an arrest warrant, but a Lilongwe magistrate ordered their release because the Malawian authorities had not ordered their arrest. The Malawian government appealed the magistrate’s decision to the higher court, which on Monday reserved its judgment on the case until December 22.
Some sources in Malawi said that if the high court overturned the magistrates court’s order for the release of the Bushiris on December 22, they would be arrested again that day. But Kazako said the government’s decision to request extradition had outgrown the higher court issue and suggested that the Bushiris would now only be arrested if the courts decided that as part of the extradition process.
Bushiri, leader of the Illustrated Christian Gathering Church (ECG), and his wife, Mary, jumped bail of 200,000 rand each and fled South Africa in November to avoid charges of theft, fraud and money laundering stemming from an investment scheme. .
The relationship between Bushiri and the Malawian government has sparked considerable speculation, largely based on the belief that wealthy Bushiris helped finance Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera’s 2020 election campaign. Rumors spread last month that the Bushiris had escaped from South Africa on Chakwera’s presidential plane when he returned home from an official visit to South Africa on Friday, November 13.
South Africa Independent Sunday He went so far as to report this as fact and said that the South African government, and particularly the Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, had helped organize the escape.
Pretoria flatly denied this, and Pandor told a press conference in Pretoria on Monday that this was “a total lie and I deny it with the contempt it deserves.”
There have also been reports in Malawi that Chakwera is a Bushiri follower and will be attending the Bushiri ECG Grand Church Crossing Evening Service at Bingu National Stadium on December 31. The event, previously held at the 90,000-capacity FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, was expected to attract tens of thousands of devotees from across southern Africa and beyond.
But a Malawian journalist said Daily maverick it was not true that Chakwera had intended to attend the service. He noted that, instead, he believed the government was behind last week’s decision to prevent Bushiri from performing the service at the stadium.
On Friday, the stadium administration wrote to the Bushiri church revoking its previous permission for the church to hold the service. Management said it had changed its mind because the event was likely to attract a number of people beyond the stadium’s normal capacity. “This will contravene the prevention measures for the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Management also stated that the stadium would be undergoing maintenance in preparation for an inspection by the African Football Confederation (CAF) in early January 2021.
However, many Malawians suspect that the government pressured the stadium management to deny use of the stadium to Bushiri, who in any case could now be under arrest on December 31. DM
