Daughter of stampede victim wants answers from Shepherd Bushiri

The daughter of one of three women killed in a stampede at Shepherd Bhushiri’s Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) church says she found her mother in a filthy mortuary days after she died.

“We struggled to find my mother. It was smelling there [at the mortuary]. I found her on Monday morning,” said Deborah Mahlala, whose mother Sarah Mahlala and two other women died during a stampede at Bushiri’s church on December 28.

At a hearing into the incident called by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (known as the CRL Rights Commission), Bushiri explained that the stampede was caused by people who wanted to enter one of the overflow halls used by the church to house extra congregants.

He said people pushed through to enter into the hall out of panic as there was a heavy storm on the day.

However, the families of the deceased still have questions they want Bushiri to answer regarding the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their loved ones.

Mahlala said her mother was taken to the mortuary like a piece of “trash”.

“Where was the human dignity? You call yourself man of God. My mother loved that church. She believed in whoever conducted that church, but the way she died - we still ask ourselves what happened,” she said.

“I want to ask Bushiri himself: how [do] you continue with a church service when people had died? You were supposed to mourn!”

Bushiri told the hearing that he conducted the service on the day of the incident because his advisers had told him he could do so.

She said she wanted Bushiri to explain how her mother died and whether she was certified dead at the scene or at the mortuary. “Who certified her dead? Who had the right to take her to that mortuary?” she asked.

Mahlala said when she went to the church to look for her mother, she was sent from pillar to post. “No one was able to help me. “The one thing that made me realise that those people don't care about human dignity is when they asked me, 'How do we know that your mother was the member of the church?'

“If it was not for the handbag belonging to our mother that we found, we would have been looking for her until today,” she said.

“I need to know from [Bushiri]: you are the father of the house, there is an incident, you were informed... [so] why didn't you close the church and mourn?

"Not even one of them came to our house for condolences."