Pastor Alph Lukau. (Twitter)
The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) is set to investigate the “resurrection” pastor who claimed to have brought a man back from the dead over the weekend.
Pastor Alph Lukau of the Alleluia International Ministries church in Sandton, Johannesburg, faces a summons from the CRL Rights Commission after a video of him supposedly performing a resurrection in front of his congregation went viral.
Commission chairperson Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva announced that the organisation would issue a summons to compel Lukau to make a statement under oath.
“We think it’s problematic that people are said to be dead or half dead and then brought back to life,” Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
“Under normal circumstances, with all the allegations against him, by this time, in any other profession, he would have been suspended,” she said.
In the video, Lukau was seen placing his hands over a man in a white suit lying in a coffin who then sat up.
Congregants who had converged to watch the event were awed by the performance.
A case has been opened at Jeppe police station to investigate how the coffin and hearse were obtained. Kings and Queens Real Funerals, who provided the hearse, said that it had been misled along with two other funeral parlours. The parlours allege that the family of the supposedly dead man and the church had been involved in the performance. The coffin was obtained from Kingdom Blue.
“The funeral parlours herein were used individually and separately through various forms of misrepresentations to suit a particular outcome which at the time was unknown to the funeral parlours,” Kings and Queens’ advocate Prince Mafu said in a statement on Tuesday.
“We wish to reiterate and assure the nation that we remain professional and legitimate in our operations and the events of the weekend have been reported to Jeppe police station for further investigations and our legal team is in the process of handling the matter appropriately.”
The CRL Rights Commission, meanwhile, has urged Parliament to begin a process to formulate legislation that will help regulate the sector so that “problematic churches” can be dealt with.
“Over the next five years we will push for the regulation of religious practitioners… Parliament must do what it needs to do. There must be some control,” Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said.