FCC to give registered churches reprieve
Pini Bothoko | Wednesday April 9, 2014 12:48
Francistown Mayor James Kgalajwe disclosured that they were hell-bent on demolishing illegal church structures around the city in the quest to make Francistown an attractive destination for investors.
Apparently, there has been an exponential increase in the number of squatting churches in Francistown, and this has worried FCC who feared the numbers would soon skyrocket out of control.
Kgalajwe said that members of the public have been complaining that some churches were noisy at night and that they also wanted to consider other citizen’s rights. He said that they intend to move them to the outskirts of their locations.
He said that some church leadership visited them in his office pleading not to be evicted because their churches did not make money and as such did not have the money to tender for industrial plots like other churches. He went on to say that this operation will not stop their intention to raid illegal churches in the city. Currently they are waiting for a court order to evict unregistered and squatting churches around the city.
“We have been going around churches giving them summons to sign and we will be sending them to court for return of services and wait for a court order to evict them,” Kgalajwe said. “Yes, there are some churches who applied for plots some time back. We have failed to give them the plots. These are the churches that we will be giving temporary places of worship,” said Kgalajwe.
Reached for comment Bishop John Maphosa of Old Church of Christ who is also the chairperson of a church committee established to speak on behalf of all the churches, conceded that of recent FCC visited churches. He said that they were asking them details of their churches and promising to give them temporary places of worship.
Maphosa said that on Sunday, FCC officers visited their churches with papers of enquiry on church names and names of church leaders with promises to find them proper temporary place of worship.
“They are still to allocate us plots. We are patiently waiting for that move and cannot object,” he said. Another Bishop Brown Khupe, the founder of the New Bethesda Church of Christ also said that they visited their church on Sunday, wrote details of the church and promised to give them a temporary place of worship very soon.
“They told us there was a mistake they did and want to write the details of our church so that they can be in the position to give us temporary places of worship. We really hope it will bring peace between us,” said Khupe.