Caps United visit Mabvuku prophet

AFTER local soccer giants Caps United were crowned champions last season, some of the club's management officials and players visited a fast-rising Mabvuku prophet thanking him for his prayers and prophecies during the season.

Grace Harvest Ministries International founder Tawanda Bondera (30) is famed for predicting that the Green Machine team was going to win the championship, something which came true.

Bondera's prophecies have catapulted him to fame, with his ministry expanding rapidly in and outside the high density suburb. This paper established that the church that conducts its services near Kamunhu shopping centre has been hosting prominent people especially in the soccer and music fraternities who all come for prayers.

Makepekepe's forwards Leonard Tsipa and Simba Nhivi, and assistant coach Mark Mathe are some of the team's personnel who visited the church after being crowned champions.

NewsDay Weekender recently caught up with Bondera at the ministry's offices in Mabvuku where he shed light on how God began using him is soccer-related prophecies.

"I haven't been interested in soccer since childhood. As people heard, last year, it came as a coincidence, soccer players heard of how God had been using me and they came. Fortunately, I gave them some prophetic words. The whole of last year all of them were coming to church, I led them, as a prophet God gave me the messages to give them and all the messages I gave them came to pass. This is until they got the championship," Bondera said.

At the ministry's offices, it was clear that Bondera had a busy day ahead as scores of people, from the young to the old, lined up in anticipation to meet the faith healer who has taken the area by storm.

Bondera said it is no secret that after Makepepe victory, a number of soccer players and other team officials visited him for prayers.

"When they came, when I gave them some prophetic messages of what was going to happen, in fact, everything that I would speak to them it was to come to pass. They consistently came to the church, every time before a match I would pray for their uniforms, I would tell them what was going to happen.

"By so doing, we started attracting many players from football clubs like Harare City and Dynamos and even up to today they are consistently coming," he said.

The soft-spoken man of the cloth said he has powers to predict scorelines and champions. He said he is currently praying to God that He reveals to him what will happen this season as far as soccer is concerned.

"I am still praying to God, because last year He did it, He used me and people heard about what happened. And now, this year I am praying to God over it. Like I said earlier, I wasn't interested in soccer, but because of this am now into it. I am prepared and will be ready to prophesy what is going to happen this year," he said.

Apart from soccer-related prophecies, Bondera also conducts healing sessions, deliverances and prophecies at the church headquarters as well as Harare CBD offices.

This paper also established that his ministry is supporting a Mabvuku-based orphanage that houses 36 children drawn from the poverty-stricken suburb.

During the interview, Bondera said his presence in Mabvuku has resulted in the decline of social vices as he often prays to God to "cleanse the city".

"I realised that in Mabvuku there was high death rate and high crime rate like prostitution and so on. As a man of God, who is also learned there many times that I sit down and calculate, I do a research and I found out that the time I came to Mabvuku/Tafara what I used to hear about the city is totally different to what is happening now.

"Some of the things I saw them, I heard them. Various offices are aware that there is a man of God in the area. The statistics I got from the research I did, I found out that the graph had really gone down because of the healing, deliverance as well as people receiving the Word. The crime rate has gone down, death rate has gone down too," he said.