Residents disrupt church building project

Mamelodi East residents are disrupting the building of a church where they want a community hall to be built instead.

They are also accusing the church’s pastor of having fraudulent documents.

The construction of the Life Giving Ministries Church at extension 17 was recently disrupted by angry residents, who claimed that the church’s pastor failed to comply with the actual agreement they had when they first “borrowed” the land to the pastor.

Community representative Makgatje Malerotho said they offered the couple, pastor Simon and Emelda Senokoane, the land to temporarily run their church service on back in 2002.

“We explained to the pastor that we have planned to build a community hall and therefore they could not build a permanent structure there.

“We offered to help the pastor with land to run his church there because he was struggling to get a place to run his church,” said Malerotho.

Malerotho said years went by with no problems.

“But then – to our surprise – the church started building a big roof permanent structure in 2018.”

A resident, Rose Sebopa said, “we stopped the construction because that was not the agreement we had with the pastor and his wife”.

“When we approached the couple, they said the land belonged to them and that they have had title deeds to it since 2016,” said Sebopa.

“We, however, suspect the couple might have fraudulent documents because when we visited the deeds office [they said] the land does not belong to the church.

“No church will be built at the site. The only thing that will be built at the site will be a community hall that will benefit everyone in the community.”

Kolobe Phaka said residents were not chasing the pastor away.

“We will still allow the church to use the community hall to run church services on Sundays and other community church programmes,” said Phaka.

“Our demands are simple: all we want is that the stand should be registered as a community hall and not under the church’s name.”

Residents told Record they would “fight to the end” so that no church would be built fraudulently “as the pastor failed to comply with what we told him in the first place”.

Pastor Simon and Emelda Senokoane said they have identified the empty space and approached community leaders for permission to run the church there “since we were struggling to get a permanent place”.

“The community agreed to give us the land,” said Senokoane.

“We later followed the right procedures and applied for the piece of land in 2007 and we were told that we were not the only people who applied for the land.

“Now we are afraid to continue with the construction. We would buy building materials that later disappear or get stolen,” said Emelda.

“The church will benefit everyone and the land is now registered in the church’s name as the Tshwane metro approved our application and the land was granted to the church in 2016.

“We are not taking the land away from the community. The church also offer lots of projects benefiting the community,” said Senokoane.

According to him, the church offers a social worker’s office at the church for the community, a skills development centre, sewing and cooking classes for women, a school holiday programme to keep children busy and a feeding scheme.

Senokoane added that the church is also a voting station.

“We also host community meetings, weddings and funeral services.”

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Wife Emelda said, “we have held a lot of meetings with the community and produced documents and we even involved the police to intervene in this situation but extension 17’s community leaders always fight us”.

Tshwane metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the property in question was donated to the church through the 2013-14 church donations approved by the City of Tshwane’s council.

“The property was transferred to church on February 19, 2016. As required by legislation, the intention to donate the property was also advertised through local newspapers. No objections were received from the community; hence, the subsequent transfer of the property,” said Mashigo.

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