The Pastor with a Criminal Mind

By Celimpilo Dladla

A pastor who has been arrested for human and drug trafficking escapes from prison. His escape creates civil unrest and eventually xenophobic attacks. Themba, the pastor's daughter chooses to be on the side of the law and assists the police in apprehending her father.

The search takes her back to the years prior to her father's first arrest, where she found herself in a ship container about to be trafficked to an unknown land. Fortunately she escaped with the help of her mother. Themba later learns that her mother is as involved in human trafficking as her abusive father.

A struggle with religion and trust makes Themba leave her community only to return home in a vehicle driven by her own father, now taking her to work in the drug trafficking business. Themba who hoped her father would change eventually gives up and assists the police to arrest him once again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celimpilo Dladla
• Release date: Apr 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990955945

Celimpilo Dladla

I am a language specialist and work as a translator and reviewer working in English and IsiZulu. Apart from working with these languages, I also write in both languages. The Pastor with a Criminal Mind is my second book. The first book I wrote was published in isiZulu in 2018 and was entitled Usekujuleni Komqondo Wami. The former is also available on Smashwords.

Book preview

Year 2019

Police sirens were all that could be heard from Westville prison to Durban. The search for Innocent Ndonga, who was awaiting his first court appearance the following day on charges of human trafficking, dealing in drugs and kidnapping, was the biggest manhunt that had been seen in years. All available police units had joined in the search. Doubtless he must have had help from one of the prison wardens but who, why and how? That was the biggest question in the minds of the Westville Prison authorities.

While driving around in circles, the police received a tip-off from one of their informants stating that he had been seen in a shack at Cato Manor, a few kilometres from the prison. Police vehicles and helicopters flocked into the impoverished township that had informal settlements lined next to the main road. That section of the township was made up of green, red and silver tiny rusted houses constructed entirely from corrugated. The glass windows were barely secured in decaying wooden frames. The doors were wooden and most of them left a gap between the walls and the door.

Fear overwhelmed local residents as police stormed into yards without warning, kicking all doors that made them suspicious. Inside the shacks were single beds with electric cables criss-crossing the room to provide electricity. The main cable came in through the window, making it difficult to determine which house that paid the electricity bill. The rooms were about three metres across but all housed more than five family members.

As the police searched, in some houses children peeped fearfully from broken windows under tightly closed curtains in broad daylight. Parents pulled their children back inside, hiding them from the police who seemed crazy, like something out of the apartheid era.

Word of Ndonga’s disappearance had not made it to the airwaves therefore no-one knew what was happening. After hours of searching, the police eventually found an abandoned ambulance parked in a bush in Cato Manor. There they found the body of woman. She was still dressed warden's uniform lying there dead in a pool of her own blood. She had been shot in the head. The wound was still fresh. The perpetrator had run off with the weapon. He must still be around! shouted the Warrant Officer Brits.

Brits was a trusted member of the Durban Police Special Task Force. A tall white man very close to retirement. He had dedicated more than thirty years of his life serving the country diligently. He never married or had children. He spent every moment of the day solving some of the province's the toughest criminal cases. Innocent Ndonga’s case was one of his. One that he had been already handling for five years. A case he thought he had closed when Ndonga was sentenced to life imprisonment. But his escape had landed the case back to his desk.

They were a few minutes late. The short, light-skinned African man, Ndonga, had seen the police vehicles heading his way and ran for his life with the firearm tucked in the front of his pants, mostly hidden by a grey shirt that ended just below his buttocks. While on the run he came across a couple who were making out in a red taxi in the veld, far away from the residential area.

Phumani! He yelled to the gentleman in the driver’s seat with his deep voice.

This is not my car, the man cried.

I said, OUT! Do you want to die?

The girl in the car screamed for her life, opened the door and fled. Ndonga fired a shot in the air. The driver raised his hands and slowly pushed the the door open with his elbows all the while staring at the gun Ndonga was spinning with his thump, as if hoping to protect himself. Ndonga looked to the sides to see if he was being followed. Those seconds were enough for the driver to stretch his hand under the seat. You think you are clever? yelled Ndonga.

Cha, No, I… stuttered the poor driver.

He did not get an opportunity to complete the sentence. Ndonga fired just once and the shot caught him in the chest. The man fell onto the seat and his body pushed the door completely open. Then he fell down in a heap. Ndonga now reached his arm under the seat to find the gun the driver must have been reaching for. The only thing he found was a wallet that must have fallen from driver's pocket when he was with his girlfriend a few short minutes back.

Argh, Stupid! Ndonga could not believe that he had shot him for the wrong reason. The guilt disturbed him for only a second. He was on the run. He drove the taxi, leaving the driver lying dead on the ground.

Police attempts to find Ndonga had failed during the first hours. A report filed by his girlfriend about the attack gave the police a good lead however it did not get them very far because when the taxi was eventually found, it was parked at a long-distance taxi rank at the Umngeni market in Durban. There were too many taxis there, heading to various destinations. The police were in the dark, once again.

Running out of clues the search continued with the police leaving no stone unturned hoping to find a clue or anything they could report to make the public believe in them again. Warrant Officer Brits, who had put Ndonga behind bars before his escape, decided to broadcast the story in the media hoping to get assistance from the public. The word of Ndonga’s escape and disappearance made it to the news.

The public from Chesterville, where the church was built, were also outraged by the power he had over them. There was a fraction of the community that were convinced that the practices in the church were more of a cult that a Christian church. The pastor was yet another corrupt pastor who enriched himself from church offerings of naïve believers until the law caught up with him. Pastors of his sort had spread like a disease in big cities throughout the country. People needed a word of hope given the poverty and hopelessness that surrounded them. They need a word from above, they needed a pastor who made them feel loved. Ndonga, a pastor without a qualification had been smart enough to cease the opportunity. He had taken it upon himself to grow his late father’s church into a home for all. That was the name of the church – Home for All Ministries.

When he started the church he was a married to Matima who was the envy of all women in the congregation. Her love for fashion and ideas of living life to the fullest inspired young women to give more offering to the church to get more blessings for the Lord to hopefully somehow be like her someday. She had to look the part as required by her king, pastor Ndonga.

He had two children but with Matima only knew youngest they shared, Themba. She was dark-skinned with short black hair. She took her elegant height from her mother and her flat buttocks from her father. She had a smile that could melt all problems away. But she failed dismally to please her father when it came to her clothes. Her sporty tracksuits and golf-shirts were her favourite things to wear.

Themba worked as a news reporter whose main purpose for taking up investigative journalism as a career was her way to expose the wrongdoers in society. Her father had encouraged her to study law but when university time came she chose journalism instead. With a legal career she would have enjoyed the course well enough, but the thought of the lengthy trail to get justice and all the loopholes and bribes along the way left her disinterested in that career. Her choice in Journalism worked out well for her. She was a respected investigative journalist who reported without fear or favour, with one notable exception. The only story she could not report about for ethical purposes was the story of her father’s arrest and criminal activities.

She had learnt very late in life who her religious father really was and as much as she did not expose him she wished she could draw out every strand of her DNA that matched his. She sometimes felt the same way about her mother who stood by such an unscrupulous man but never spoke ill of them in public. She took it upon herself to bring him to justice. Even if it was going to take the last fibre of her being to put him behind bars, permanently, she would succeed. Her determination would not be shaken.

Her father’s popularity helped him manipulate the congregants to fall for every last trick that he could come up with. Ndonga was a greedy man and believed that every cent the church made belonged to him. The dedicated members of the church regularly made donations to the church maintenance account which covered day to day costs for running the church. This made it easy for the pastor to take all these offerings as his personal salary.

This made him very wealthy and after years and years of accumulating his wealth, the public eventually started asking questions. This pastor had been born on the wrong side of the tracks, at eNsimbini, a rural area in Port Shepstone from a poor family but had miraculously managed to be the wealthiest person in town with nothing more than his title of pastor and no recorded business.

His wife revered him and did all she could to make him happy including relinquishing her career as a GP to devote herself entirely to the needs of her husband and child. Although she spent most of her time at home, there were days when she would go to the harbour to watch the ships sail while some lady congregants took turns to take care of her household duties.

Her trips to the harbour had become a religious act. She would sit there and pray for victims of human trafficking who unwillingly left the harbour monthly to unknown destinations. She would pray and repent for the role her family played in trafficking innocent girls. Her husband’s secrets was safely hidden in her heart.

She had enough time alone with the lord while her husband was well taken of at home. He appreciated the ladies by giving them a few hundred rands to buy groceries. The warm hospitality they received from the pastor made it difficult for church ladies to stomach the arrest of their dear patriarch. His escape was a victory to them contrasting with the trafficked girls who having finally escaped were now never going to sleep peacefully again until Ndonga was found.

One of the escaped girls’ brother was Gatsheni, a community activist who organised marches for every wrong that took place in his neighbourhood. He had learned from the past that seeking help from authorities never seemed to help and took it upon himself to lead protests in his community.

The escape of Ndonga drove Gatsheni to organise another protest. He invited his fellow concerned citizens to a meeting at his house yard with the aim of tearing the city apart searching for Ndonga.

Bafowethu, we cannot have this man taking our children like this. Gatsheni began. What do you suggest we do?

Find him and set him alight! shouted an undistinguished man from the middle of the crowd.

We should show the police what justice is, said a woman who was wearing a checked blue pinafore and red doek who was standing in the front. My daughter escaped by God’s grace, not his god though, my God’s grace. I want to see him sentenced for life.

Gatsheni responded, I understand you. We are angry, my sister had a narrow escape too and she tells me that there are more girls out there who do not know where they are. Some of them are in a ship to an unknown country where they will be sold. SOLD! What is this?

Mabafe! Let them die! The crowd chanted in great anger.

We have to find the rest of them. We have to find the people who work at the harbour. We have to find the girls still on land and rescue them, continued Gatsheni.

My daughter said most of them were not South African, shouted the lady with the doek once more.

I am fully aware of that but we must deal with our own first because they are the ones who lure out children to sell them to outsiders. I propose that we march down the streets tomorrow to show our anger. We are tired of being failed by the government. We have to be ready to be arrested tomorrow because we will not have a permit to march.

The meeting ended and the community members went home to prepare themselves for the next day’s illegal protest. Gatsheni and his friends secretly planned to leave a message for the pastor that evening in his absence.

They began by setting the church alight and afterwards moved on to a school owned by the church. The municipal library was next to the school and unfortunately got caught up in the blaze, with the books giving the fire more power. The security guards who had been there on duty all made narrow escapes.

The police arrived too late and no arrests were made as nobody was willing to say they had witnessed the start of the fires. The following day saw protesters out again in force, blocking the streets with bricks and burning tyres.

CHAPTER 2

With the smell of smoke thick in the air the following morning, the community marched in song to the police station holding placards ‘Arrest Ndonga Today!’, ‘Tired of dirty pastors!’ and ‘Save our children!’

As the protest continued the police commander in charge stood on top of a nyala vehicle with a loud hailer and addressed the protesters. This protest is illegal. Disperse now!

No, no, no what you are doing is illegal. We are fighting for our children! shouted Gatsheni.

I repeat disperse!

The crowd became violent and began throwing stones at the police. The police showered them with water cannon, good for situations such as these. The people ran away and began throwing stones at the shops. Those stones broke down windows which making it easier for them to loot. Like children fighting over sweets, they bumped onto each other grabbing expensive clothes and furniture illegally and ran amok all over the town.

The water had not had the desired effect on the crowd, instead it had resulted in violence. The police were ordered to fire teargas. It was fired and in no time it began to burn eyes of the protesters. They ran like headless chickens struggling to find their way home. The police picked up those who had fallen on the ground and dragged them to the pavement. They even trampled on some as they chased the looters through the streets.

Who set the church alight? asked an angry officer who had grabbed one of the protesters by his blue-checked shirt.

It wasn’t me. Ask Gatsheni! he cried.

Gatsheni was no longer around. He and his closest friend hand taken a car to get to Umhlanga where Ndonga lived. He had a mansion looking over the beach. There were security guards at the gate who stood there with large firearms hung across their chests. Gatsheni parked outside the house. If you know what is good for you, you will drop that gun and run! he said to the man. Without thinking twice, the security personnel all threw down their guns on the ground and ran down the street.

Gatsheni had a petrol bomb in the car. He threw it in the yard and drove off. Within no time the house was on fire.

On his way back to the protest, Gatsheni contacted his comrades in other parts of Durban using the Community Leaders’ Forum chat account on Facebook: My brothers and sisters we have reached the end of the road. Ndonga thinks he is untouchable. This thing is obvious – the police are protecting him. We have set his belongings on fire. I think it is high time, you join us in the struggle. Let the government find him during their time while we find justice. We all know the language that government understands. This bastard took our religious brothers and sisters for fools. We will not sit back and watch. We need your support brothers and sisters. Let us march down the CBD tomorrow.

The message had was well received by the comrades. Together they agreed on taking it to the streets the following day to show their solidarity with the community while Ndonga’s escape was still on the headlines. The news reminded the public about reasons behind Ndonga’s arrest for human trafficking.

The court had exposed the structure of the syndicate but the big question was what role Ndonga’s wife had had in the operation. There was much doubt that there was any way she could not have known of her husband’s crimes. Why was she not putting her house back in order? The public concluded that although things seemed rosy in the church environment, she held onto thorns at home.

Ultimately, she was given the benefit of the doubt that she could be innocent in this whole mess. The focus of the investigation and public opinion was entirely on the husband. Something had to be done about Ndonga. Something had to be done about human traffickers. Something had to be done about bad pastors. Something had to be done about bogus churches

Social media was abuzz. Words doing the rounds were ‘human traffickers, Ndonga, traitor, churches, #OurGirls and many more hashtags. Most of all, people were trapped in a cloud of fear, not knowing if there were other Ndonga’s being controlled remotely by someone more powerful than him.

Workers went to work on the day of the protest in fear of getting leave without pay should they be absent. They discussed the matter during their morning coffee that they always drank before starting work. One employee, Simunye, working for the municipality complained about not being part of the protest. We are also concerned citizens but we have to be here.

His friend and colleague, Tom replied, I fully agree with you, especially now that I have just read a post by this scumbag Ndonga from Facebook

I didn’t know that you were friends with him.

I am not, I just went to his page.

So what did he say?

Read!

Simunye took Tom’s phone and read the post