South Africa’s minister of police has spoken out about the Bushiris case saying the leader of the Enlighten Christian Gathering (ECG) church and his wife Mary should not have been granted bail.
The minister said some of the bail conditions imposed on the couple were too lenient., South African local publication Eye Witness reports.
“It would have been better if they did not get bail. But I remember very well that the police and the Hawks, even the prosecution, said (he must not be granted bail). Even the conditions were not strict enough,” Cele said in an interview with eNCA on Sunday, 15 November 2020.
The couple are officially fugitives from justice after fleeing South Africa to their native country Malawi on Wednesday, 11 November 2020.
‘Major One’, as he is known to his followers made a statement on Saturday, 14 November, that he and his family were now in Malawi.
The move was in contravention of their bail conditions.
They were each released on R200 000 bail by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court after being in police custody for more than two weeks.
The Bushiris along with three co-accused face charges of fraud and money laundering to the tune of R102 million.
Some of their bail conditions included that they hand in their passports and report to their nearest police station on Mondays and Fridays between 6am and 6pm.
There are currently more questions than answers as to how they managed to skip the country, which Cele said government was investigating.
“We need to know how they left the country. We have spoken to Dr Motsoaledi (Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi), all of us will have to briefed on what exactly happened,”
Bushiri insisted that he was not running away from his trial, but that he was living in fear for his life. He said he would be instructing his lawyers to make an urgent application in the local courts that his bail must not be revoked.
There was speculation that the couple had left for Malawi with President Lazarus Chakwera and his delegation, who was coincidentally in South Africa at the time.
Both South African government and Malawi government have refuted the claims.
