Johannesburg - Following the dissolution of a seven-year protracted legal battle for the seat of the head of the International Pentecost Holiness Church (IPHC), the church has urged its supporters not to be swayed by sensational propaganda as it charts the path ahead.
The High Court, Pretoria, on Monday saw a dramatic turn of events when the clashing Modise brothers reunited and withdrew the court battle to settle the succession dispute of the church that erupted after the death of its leader, Bishop Glayton Modise, in 2016.
Modise had inherited the top seat from his late father and founder of the church, Frederick Samuel Modise. He left a vast estate worth almost R400 million, without a valid will and a clear succession plan for the popular church, throwing the congregation and his family into a feisty legal tussle.
Tthe Modise brothers, Tshepiso and Leonard, each believed they should be allowed to be the church's new leader, resulting in a war of factions, alongside another contender Michael Sandlana, whose own faction also believed he should run the church.
Leonard leads the IPHC group in Zuurbekom, while Sandlana leads the Pretoria faction, and Tshepiso runs the third splinter group. A court battle ensued to interdict the succession process in which Sandlana was expected to be elected as leader.
During a briefing at the church’s headquarters yesterday, the church wasted no time in making a few key decisions as it planned to move forward from the negative publicity it had gained in recent years as a result of the court battle.
The church said that following the withdrawal of the succession battle, a Joint Council and Executive Committee had convened a special meeting on Tuesday with a number of resolutions taken to that effect.
The leadership indicated that all individuals or groups currently occupying any of its registered properties were requested to vacate them within 14 days starting from Tuesday.
All properties purchased on behalf of the church that were either registered in the names of individuals or placed in trusts had to be transferred back to the church.
"No person regardless of his or her position and status in society other than His Grace Successor MG Sandlana shall call himself a leader of the IPHC. The claim to the leadership of the church was renounced by those contesting the leaders. The IPHC remains with the only person whom the congregants recognised as the spiritual leader in the name of His Grace.
"Successor MG Sandlana went through a process that was formally organised in accordance with the traditions and customs of the IPHC, chosen on November 3, 2018. Any person or group of persons found to act contrary to, or who resists abiding by these resolutions, will face consequences, and where it is deemed appropriate, be sued."
In that same vein, the church pleaded not only with its members but with South Africans not to be swayed as it had finally got to the moment they had all been waiting for.
"This is the moment we have been waiting for for over seven years. Remain unshaken! You are IPHC. To the South African society, we urge you not to be misled by sensational propaganda and disingenuity driven by polemicists, orators, theorists, opportunists and philosophers of doom whose purpose is none other than to create ill-gotten gains and benefit at the expense of the unassuming church congregants in the name of the IPHC. We are not saying this out of being spiteful or to pass the time," the church said.
The Star