South African Journalist Jacques Pauw Says TB Joshua Tried to Bribe Him

An Investigative journalist and author, Jacques Pauw, has described the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and "Prophet" TB Joshua as one of Africa's most influential men, who tried to bribe him during an interview. According to Pauw, author of Profit of Doom, an expose on Joshua's church, the preacher once tried to bribe his entire television crew after he accompanied the late Blue Bulls lock Wium Basson to Lagos for healing. Basson died in April 2001 aged 25 and here's Pauw's story. 

Ruben Kruger, a veteran of 36 tests in the green and gold, returned after a week in Nigeria and declared that a Pentecostal preacher he called the Prophet had healed his brain cancer. Temitope Balogun “TB” Joshua prayed for him in the Synagogue Church of All Nations compound while thousands of people sang, danced and wailed, Kruger said. 

As Joshua bent over him and implored the demon to be gone from his body, Kruger felt the tumour leaving him. He was cured, Joshua declared, handing him oil to rub on his head. 

“I no longer have to drink my chemo pills,” Kruger said on his return. “You cannot describe the feeling to anyone who has not experienced it. It was an unbelievable – or should I say believable – experience." 

The floodgates opened and the Prophet’s newest converts were white, mostly Afrikaans and relatively conservative. They swopped the NG and Hervormde churches for a Nigerian “turn-or-burn” approach to redemption. 

It took me some time to understand why the ­Afrikaner psyche found Joshua so irresistible. Why were they prepared to seek salvation in a ­country they perceived to be drowning in greed, ­political rot and economic decay? Christianity Nigerian-style was worlds apart from the chains and shackles of Calvinism. Joshua unchained them. He allowed them to worship with a gusto and fervour previously thought unseemly. That the new messiah was black and his church in Africa’s biggest and maddest metropolis only added to the allure. 

A year or two after Kruger returned from Lagos, I made the same journey. On the plane was another Springbok rugby ­player, 25-year-old lock Wium Basson, who was dying of liver cancer. He was accompanied by his mother, Cloeté Geldenhuys, and had to get special permission from SAA to make the journey. 

I was making a TV documentary and my challenge to Joshua was straightforward: allow me to film how you heal Basson. If you succeed, I promise I will show it to the world. 

When we arrived at Joshua’s compound, the TV team and I were in effect incarcerated. For two weeks, we were forbidden to leave the grounds. We were told we could not drink or smoke, and had to attend services and events with the pilgrims. 

While I stayed in a dormitory with other pilgrims, Wium and Cloeté set up camp in a private room. The church took away the young man’s morphine and pain pills. 

During our first interview, a softly spoken, affable Joshua said it would be easy to heal Wium because he had nothing but a “little sore” on his liver. At Sunday sermons, the afflicted lined up with placards stating what condition they needed healed.