A Johannesburg pastor who claims to be the illegitimate son of the late Rashaad Staggie has landed in trouble with the slain gang boss’ family, who have outed him as a liar.
The angry daughter of the former leader of the Hard Livings claims Pastor Rafeeq Ferguson from the Khuluma Ed-ediction drug recovery centre is conning his followers in order to score donations.
Ferguson made his claims in a sermon where he shares his “life story” of being a son of Rashaad and claims to have witnessed his father’s death in 1996.
Rashaad and his twin brother, Rashied, were known as “the untouchables” and started the Hard Livings gang in Manenberg in the 1970s.
In 1996, the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) marched to their home in London Road, Salt River.
During the confrontation, a petrol bomb was thrown at Rashaad, and while burning, he was shot dead.
Twenty-three years after his death, Rashied died in a hail of bullets in the same street in front of their home.
A video posted on YouTube on 18 April shows Ferguson becoming emotional as he claims to have been conceived in 1975 when Rashaad allegedly had an affair with his mother.
“I wanna take this back to the summer of 1975 when a man from the Cape Flats met an Indian woman from Johannesburg. They met and they had an affair and relationships and the spawn thereof was a young man,” he said.
He claimed to have witnessed Rashaad cutting off the fingers of people who owed him money, describing him as a “mean man who only loved himself”.
Ferguson also said as a teen he witnessed Rashaad’s death: “He got that call from his own brother and that call said come and meet with me.
“We turned into London Road that evening and all I could see was just people.
“They had scarves around their mouths and I could hear them screaming.
Pastor Rafeeq Ferguson in YouTube video
“He instructed me to get out of the car and I stood on the corner and my heart was racing.
“I remember he had a brown leather jacket on and I can still smell the leather.
“He pulled in with his Nissan Sani and I can remember them shouting and swearing.
“He was screaming for them to stop and they wouldn’t stop beating him.
“I see the men stand around him and I just see a bright light. That night changed my life.
“I swear I could smell the flesh. I swear I could hear the flesh melting off the bone.”
Pastor Rafeeq Ferguson in YouTube video
But his claims have been rubbished by Rashaad’s eldest daughter, Chantal Schnell, 44, who says a relative learnt about the video and then shared it with them.
Speaking to the Daily Voice from her home in Texas, USA, Chantal says her father had nine children and they have never heard about Ferguson until the video surfaced.
“At first we were indifferent, but after watching the video and hearing him spew false allegations we were angry and hurt,” she says.
“We have tried via social media but all requests were blocked. My sister and brother called and texted him, but he simply swore at them and also blocked them.”
She says Ferguson fabricated the affair that “spawned” him.
“There was no such affair. We are a very close-knit family, and as the eldest, I know all of my siblings.
“In the video, Rafeeq Ferguson claimed that he was the product of a love affair in the ‘summer of 1975’.
“Assuming this to be true, he would’ve been born in 1976, yet he claimed to have been 14 years old at the time of my father’s murder in 1996.
“One can easily see that these two statements are contradictory with simple arithmetic.
“He also claimed he was separated from his mother at a young age. From this statement and the rest of the video, one can deduce that he henceforth lived with my father. None of this is true.”
In the video, Ferguson talks about his drug recovery centre and encourages viewers to donate, but Chantal says the Staggie family believe he is using these liegstories to get money.
“We are very disturbed at the fact that a person, let alone a pastor, is using our pain for monetary gain, and not to mention all the innocent people he has been extorting money from.”
“I do not believe he is Rashaad’s son and he can provide a DNA test affirming his claims.
“If he truly was a child of Rashaad, then he would have never been exposed to such atrocities. Rafeeq’s descriptions of my father contradicts all of his actual children’s experiences; to us he was a father in every sense of the word.
“We have come forward to stop this pastor from extorting any more money from innocent people.”
She says after confronting Ferguson on social media, he deactivated his accounts.
The Daily Voice tried to contact Ferguson via the numbers provided as well as his centre, but he did not respond to queries.
Watch the full video here: