Doreen Premdev
Politician Amichand Rajbansi has called in a ghostbuster to exorcise the demons from his life which he believes has been plagued by strange happenings for more than a decade.
His attempt to exorcise the demons, he believes, may bring back his estranged wife Asha Devi whose separation from him he partly blames on "sinister beings" lurking in his double-storey house in Chatsworth.
Of course this is not the Raj's first attempt to rid his life, family, and house of devils.
In the past, he says, the exorcism failed because a "possessed" Asha Devi "just couldn't rid herself of the damn ghost".
After hearing spiritual healer Wendy Wright on a radio talk show on Thursday, the Raj took up the challenge again this week. He called in Wendy, who immediately on entering the politician's house "smelt something evil".
However, the busy Raj refused to allow the spiritualist to continue the "clean up" as he rushed off for a meeting - but the two agreed on one thing: the 57-year-old is living with a spook - one common in movies such as Nightmare on Elm Street and The Haunted. Wendy is to revisit the Raj next month.
Rajbansi spoke to the Tribune about the "sinister beings" which no ordinary house fumigation could get rid of.
"Six months ago I came home late from a meeting. I parked my car outside my garage and noticed a human figure in my rear view mirror. When I got out of the car there was nobody there. I became suspicious after it happened for the second time two weeks after the first incident."
Rajbansi said he and Asha Devi had heard "strange and spooky noises" in their home just before the 1984 House of Delegates elections.
Asha Devi, an Inkatha Freedom Party member, left their Arena Park home in July 1998 in an acrimonious split between them. She filed for divorce in November 1998.
"Asha and I heard strange and spooky noises in the house, which upset her. She believed she was possessed by evil spirits and in order to appease her I took her to temples, to churches and to a Muslim religious person.
"One day Swami Chiterashwar Das, an Indian priest visiting the Hare Krishna Temple in Chatsworth, drove past my house. He asked the driver to stop the car.
"He told me he had seen a spook in my yard, one that he had not seen in South Africa before. The swami conducted a midnight prayer to get rid of the spook."
Rajbansi said the spook didn't disturb him after the prayer but continued to plague Asha Devi.
"One morning a few years later, Asha and I were talking in our bedroom about the spook problems when the spook 'spoke' to me and threatened to destroy me and my family. I told it to try its luck somewhere else.
"I am a religious man and I don't believe the evil spirits caused our break up, but Asha was tormented by the spook and complained about the voices for about 15 years."
He said he had not spoken to Asha Devi recently. She is living with her sister in Bayview, Chatsworth, but he hoped the exorcism would help bring her back.
Asha had always told journalists her troubles were the work of "evil spirits".