Johannesburg - If you were a foreigner whose entry to South Africa could be denied, what would be your strategy to get into the country?
Well, if you’re the infamous “kill-the-gays” pastor, Steven Anderson, you would make a YouTube video verbally attacking the one who will eventually decide: Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba.
The American pastor’s plans to come to the country in mid-September on a “soul-winning” mission have been scuppered in recent months after LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) groups managed to secure 60 000 signature petitions asking the Department of Home Affairs to deny him entry into the country.
Gigaba met with gay rights representatives on Monday about barring his entry.
After widespread media reports emerged this week about the meeting, Anderson could not withhold his anger, and released a scathing nine-minute YouTube video on Tuesday where he labelled Gigaba as “a joke”, “wicked” and “politically backwards”.
The video, which appears to be filmed in Anderson’s car while he drives a group of children around, proclaims that Gigaba (pronounced “Jigaba” by the pastor) is simply using political rhetoric and false promises to calm down “the sodomites”.
“If he was gonna ban me, he would have done it months ago ... (It’s) just to string them along and get them off his back,” said Anderson.
He claimed that he never planned to preach against homosexuals during his trip to South Africa, but then said: “It’s so funny how this minister Gigaba said that my views, my Christian views, my biblical views, he said they’re backward views. You’re the one that’s backward, Gigaba. You’re the one who thinks that a dude should be intimate with another dude. That’s ass-backwards, okay. It’s this sodomite agenda that’s completely backward.”
The Arizona-based preacher and Holocaust denier initially achieved online notoriety in 2014 after calling for gay people to be executed.
He again brought negative attention to himself this year when, a day after 49 people were gunned down in the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, he said: “The good news is that there’s 50 less paedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and paedophiles.”
Attempts to contact the Department of Home Affairs for comment on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
The Star