Preacher bashed for stealing a cellphone

A bus preacher narrowly escaped arrest after confessing to stealing a bus driver's cellphone.

The preacher, from Jeppe's Reef in Mpumalanga, could not finish his sermon at the Malalane bus terminus on Tuesday morning.

He was attacked by an angry bus driver who accused him of stealing his cellphone – and passengers decided to join in the beating, sending his Bible flying in the air!

"Beat him!" some of them screamed.

Elliott Zitha, an angry Buscor driver from Matsulu kasi, said his Nokia X2 cellphone was stolen two weeks ago.

"I lost my phone a few days before Good Friday. Some passengers told me they saw the preacher take it while I was out doing some paperwork. Today I saw him catching a bus to Mbombela, so I quickly boarded the bus before it left and found him already preaching. First I asked that he get out of the bus so we could talk - but he refused. That's when I started to pull him out, tearing his Bible in the process," said Elliott.

The bus couldn't leave the terminus until Elliott, who was driving a different bus, pulled the preacher out and dragged him off to Malalane cop shop.

"When some Buscor officials and I took him to the cops, he confessed to stealing the phone and promised to pay for it as he had already sold it. All I want is to have my phone back. Why would a real preacher steal a phone? Everyone trusted him. It's unthinkable that he could do something like this," Elliott said.

Constable Bheki Nkosi said Elliott didn't open a case. "They decided to resolve the matter themselves. There's nothing the police can do unless the driver changes his mind," he said.

Buscor officials, who asked not to be named, said the preacher has been banned from preaching in any of their buses until he returns the phone. Repeated attempts to speak to the preacher were unsuccessful.