The latest warrant of arrest issued by a South African court against self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri over the alleged rape of three women are designed “to tarnish my image,” the preacher said on Tuesday.
Responding to media reports that the Pretoria Magistrate Court had issued the new arrest warrants against him, Bushiri said he was not “shocked or surprised” with this new development.
He alleged that five white police officers in the Hawks – South Africa’s crack police unit –were behind his mounting legal troubles. They allegedly tried to extort US$667,000 in “protection money” from him in 2018, he said.
“At the time, they were not diffident and on record saying that ‘failure to pay the US$667,000 would result in making my life hell’,” Bushiri said in a statement issued in Malawi.
He said he opened extortion and corruption cases against the police officers in 2018.
Despite confirming that cases were opened against the white police officers, the South African authorities did not take any relevant steps to bring to book the white cops, Bushiri charged.
“Instead, these officers are let loose, riding on the back of state resources, and embarked on a crusade to cover up their crimes by launching and issuing numerous warrants of crimes against me,” he alleged.
Bushiri said that the white officers who arrested him in February 2019, months after filing extortion and corruption charges in court against them, are the same white officers who arrested him in October 2020 to slap fraud, theft and money laundering charges against him.
The current warrants of arrest on alleged rape charges were a fabrication by the same officers, Bushiri claimed, adding that the rape accusations cited in the court documents were meant to tarnish his image.
“That is why these fresh warrants of arrest are neither a shock nor surprise to me but a mere confirmation of every detail I shared with regard to spates of injustice I left in South Africa,” Bushiri said.
NM/jn/APA