SIU report exposes sins of foreign pastors

Bribery, fraud, shady meetings in a fast-food restaurant and the misuse of religious contributions by foreign pastors in South Africa are highlighted in the full interim report on a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) investigation into the Department of Home Affairs sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Though highlighting the unit’s findings on two well-known foreign pastors who have since left the country, Shepherd Bushiri and Timothy Omotoso, the report also shows how other foreign pastors managed to unlawfully obtain permits to stay and work in SA.

Cases uncovered by the SIU showed that these pastors paid South African women to marry them so they could stay in the country, and in one case there was a false claim by a Zambian pastor who insisted that he was born in SA.

The report details the sins of the pastors, but it also exposes that they were helped by officials inside Home Affairs, as well as other South African professionals who were members of their churches.

Prophet Shepherd Bushiri

The report, made public on 13 April 2026, finds that Bushiri’s permanent residence permit was approved by an adjudicator who was a member of his church, Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) Ministries. This is a clear conflict of interest. Bushiri’s application was supported by a fraudulent letter of financial independence, signed by a chartered accountant who admitted he had been paid merely for his signature.

Bushiri, a self-proclaimed “prophet”, also claimed proof of an aircraft purchase as evidence of financial independence. Investigations revealed that $1.2-million in cash was paid from his non-profit organisation at Lanseria Airport. This raised serious concerns about money laundering and the misuse of religious donations, the report continues.

According to the report, Bushiri owned four properties in Pretoria and also held directorships in 14 companies, paid for by donations to his church.

The SIU probe further found that Bushiri held three bank accounts, with Capitec, First National Bank and Nedbank, and that the members of his church played a central role in facilitating fraudulent applications.

“Associates drafted and submitted documentation, while donations were rerouted into personal accounts,” the SIU report states, adding that this was done under the guise of “tithes” and “seed money”. Some transactions with private companies were called “crossover t-shirts”.

One such transaction, identified by the Financial Intelligence Centre, totalled R5.9-million in a Nedbank account and was marked “seed”.

Investigators further found that a second pastor in Bushiri’s church, whom the SIU has not yet identified, was a central facilitator for applications to Home Affairs by other foreign nationals. Both this pastor and his wife were found to have fraudulent visas.

The investigation found that foreign pastors were paying South African women to marry them. In one case, the pastor met his prospective wife at the Chicken Licken close to the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court, where he took her identity document and requested that she sign some papers. She was paid R400. The same pastor obtained citizenship through naturalisation by marrying another South African woman – but when the SIU investigated, it discovered she was dead.

Bushiri has denied all allegations of wrongdoing in his dealings with Home Affairs, as well as those contained in the SIU report.

Pastor Timothy Omotoso

The report also makes damning findings against Omotoso, who was declared an undesirable person in April last year as he was leaving SA of his own accord. This means he is not allowed to return to SA for five years. Shortly before his departure, he was acquitted of a series of sexual assault charges after a trial that ran for years.

The SIU found that Omotoso used fraud and misrepresentation to gain entry into, and subsequent residence in, SA. His initial entry was secured through a fraudulently obtained work permit, issued in a country where he was not a citizen, based on an unauthorised directive.

“This pattern of deception continued as he consistently provided conflicting information about his travel history and residency, submitted affidavits claiming lost documents to avoid producing verified credentials, and used the initial fraudulent permit to support subsequent, more permanent, immigration applications,” the report states.

“As his status was repeatedly questioned, his method evolved to exploit administrative and procedural vulnerabilities within Home Affairs. When his visa renewal was denied for non-compliance with regulations, he sought to bypass these requirements by petitioning for a ministerial waiver.

“The investigation revealed that this waiver was unlawfully granted by an official without the necessary delegated authority, highlighting a strategy of leveraging administrative gaps to override lawful rejections and perpetuate his stay in the country,” the SIU found.

Daily Maverick’s attempts to get hold of Omotoso through his lawyers were unsuccessful as they say they haven’t heard from him in recent months.

Pastors under investigation

Another Zambian-born pastor, not yet named by the SIU, managed to convince Home Affairs to provide him with a late registration of birth, falsely claiming that his parents were South African. The SIU investigation found that the parents he named had no connection to him.

A Nigerian pastor, according to the report, picked up a woman in a Pretoria nightclub and promised to pay her if she married him. He eventually paid her R4,000, and when the SIU spoke to her she did not know where the pastor was. The SIU found that several documents submitted to Home Affairs by this pastor were “an obvious forgery”.

SA’s 2024-2028 National Security Strategy, released in July 2025, officially classifies the “mushrooming of charismatic churches” as a high-level threat to national security in SA.

“The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) in 2017 confirmed allegations of the mushrooming of charismatic churches commercialising religion and exploiting people’s belief systems. These churches violated the constitutional rights of congregants and broke the laws of the country. There are gross unethical practices among churches in SA, both regarding the human rights and dignity of congregants, financial integrity and adherence to the laws of the country,” this document reads.

The release of the full interim SIU report comes as litigation between the South African Church Defenders (SACD), a Christian advocacy movement that promotes spiritual and constitutional freedoms, and the CRL Rights Commission is heading for a hearing. The SACD is resisting the commission’s efforts to regulate churches and register pastors in SA.

In a statement issued in response to the SIU report, the commission welcomed the report and said: “The CRL Rights Commission reiterates that the SIU report reinforces its call for accountability in the religious sector. The commission has maintained that these problems could have been avoided through a self-regulation mechanism that involves the registration of pastors, vetting as required by the Children’s Act 38 of 2005, and adherence to a code of conduct.

“The commission maintains that, as with professions such as doctors (HPCSA), lawyers (LPC), nurses (SANC), social workers (SACSSP), and traditional healers (THPCSA), etc, which are overseen by regulatory councils, the religious sector also requires a [self-regulatory] council to ensure accountability and ethical conduct.

“In that regard, if a Christian council was in place, the Department of Home Affairs would have had a body from which to source guidance and advice. Consequently, it would not have been approving illegal foreign nationals who falsely claimed to be bringing scarce skills into the country.”

As long ago as 2017, the CRL Rights Commission highlighted in one of its reports that immigration violations were a concern with regard to independent charismatic churches, describing them as “significant” and linked to foreign leadership in these churches.

But leaders in the church community were outraged by the CRL Rights Commission’s quick response to the SIU report. They complained that the commission had responded to the unit’s report “within hours” and was using it to persist in its contentious call for the registration of pastors and the creation of a regulatory body.

“The SIU report exposes corruption inside Home Affairs,” said Michael Swain, executive director of Freedom of Religion South Africa. “It does not expose a structural failure of religion. The solution to corruption in Home Affairs is to fix Home Affairs – not to place faith under state control.

“The SIU found state corruption – not a religious governance crisis. The corruption described by the SIU occurred within the Department of Home Affairs. It involved officials abusing their positions, syndicates manipulating internal systems, and serious failures in verification and oversight,” Swain continued.

“The SIU’s recommendations are directed at strengthening Home Affairs systems: vetting officials, improving system integration, enhancing verification processes and tightening compliance enforcement.

“Nowhere does the SIU recommend regulating religion. Nowhere does it call for licensing pastors. Nowhere does it suggest that a professional body for clergy would have prevented bribery inside the department. The institutional failure identified is one of public administration, not religious governance,” he added.

Bert Pretorius, founder of the South African Community of Faith-based Fraternals and Federations, said in a statement that faith leaders did not defend corruption or criminality. How the SIU uncovering these issues at Home Affairs could lead to an argument for the regulation of churches was a question that had to be asked, he said.

Pretorius added that freedom of religion could never become a shield against the prosecution of pastors who committed crimes.

“The presence of criminals does not mean South African churches need to be licensed. It means criminals must be prosecuted… When a Home Affairs official abuses power, we reform the department.”

He said the proposal to treat pastors like doctors and lawyers was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion was, and a faith calling could not be conferred by the state.

“The church must not be made a scapegoat for the failures of governance or corruption within state institutions,” he said, adding that it was clear that pastors who committed crime had to be held accountable.

Pretorius further argued that accountability already existed in established church structures. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.