Snake pastor says he is doing God's work, insists serpants become chocolates

"CONGREGANTS did not eat snakes, they ate chocolates!

Those were the words of a pastor popularly known as the "Snake Pastor".

He was answering a question from the CRL Rights Commission, which was held at their Braamfontein offices in Joburg.

The pastor said what appears to be a snake in ordinary people's eyes is actually food and in the eyes of God it is clean.

"I did not feed people snakes. I fed them chocolate. It's a demonstration of God's faith in me.

"A normal person cannot eat snakes – you must be spiritual. To show that God was with me, no one has died," Pastor Penuel Mnguni said.

He emphasised that whoever has faith is able to eat anything. When asked why he jumped and trampled on his congregants, he said they did not feel pain because they were in a trance because of the spirit of God.

"When I jump on somebody today and trample on them, tomorrow they get a job," Mnguni said.

The chairperson of the commission, Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva, told the pastor and his lawyer it was the SA Council of Churches that laid a complaint against their church.

The complaint was that their church had brought Christianity into disrepute.

The chairperson congratulated the pastor on his vast knowledge of the Bible and told him to use it to benefit others.