The Cradock ”apostle” who last year predicted his own death, but carried on living anyway, is now offering what he claims is a cure for Aids and a range of other illnesses.
Freddie Isaacs said the cure, a plant he knew by the Afrikaans name ”sonneblom” — not to be confused with the sunflower — had already reversed one woman’s HIV status and ”completely healed” a cancer sufferer.
”If it can heal Aids then automatically it can heal any other thing,” he said on Monday.
He said the plant, which has thick low leaves and a strong root, was revealed by ”the ancestors” through the medium of his four-year-old grandson Nathan Tukani, a prophet.
”Last year somewhere after June, I met several people in my dreams that died of Aids.
”They pleaded to me and said to me, we know that you are the chosen one that will do something to end the virus.”
Though the plant grew all over South Africa, it had to be prepared in a particular way, and had to be used along with a secret ”key word”.
Isaacs attracted national attention last year when as an apostle of the Reformed Apostolic Church predicted his own death and then took to bed in preparation for the event — which never happened.
He said he was now a ”comforter” in the church, a translation of the name ”Garau-uhu-eie” which he had been given by the people ”on the other side”.
He said he was not charging for the ”sonneblom” treatments.
”I don’t look at money at this stage … I don’t even think of enriching myself.”
He had sent messages to President Thabo Mbeki, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and provincial health MECs, saying he would like to talk to them about the sonneblom, but had had no reply yet.
”Normally you find that people are very sceptical,” he said.
However he had dreamed that they discussed the matter with their medical and technical teams. He himself was sceptical about medical science.
”With all their understanding, their wise ideas, they couldn’t even heal one person, one baby. Here it’s a stupid old man, the madman of Cradock.”
Director of the South African Aids Vaccine Initiative’s community mobilisation project Dr Ashraf Grimwood said the fact that people came up with ”interesting solutions” to HIV/Aids reflected the desperate times that the pandemic had brought about.
He warned however that the consequences of using substances that were not adequately tested could be catastrophic.
Before any claim of a cure could be substantiated, it had to undergo rigorous scientific evaluation and re-evaluation. – Sapa