Durban – Members of the Nazareth Baptist Church, also known as Shembe Church, came out in their numbers to be part of the first annual eThekwini Prayer which was held at Moses Mabhida Stadium on Thursday.
The gathering which began with a procession from King Dinuzulu Park and continued through the city, brought traffic to a standstill for nearly an hour.
The prayer was also attended by senior government leaders including KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube and Economic Development MEC and leader of government business Siboniso Duma and eThekwini Council Speaker Thabani Nyawose.
The government leaders commended Church leader inkosi Mduduzi “Nyazilwezulu” Shembe for hosting such a prayer and urged him to pray for an end to social ills plaguing the province which include gender-based violence, drug and alcohol abuse and many more.
In his address to congregants the leader appealed for people to be responsible and to show a level of maturity especially when there were things they were not happy about.
He slammed service delivery protests in which community members destroyed public infrastructure, saying such actions amounted to backward thinking.
“Let us demonstrate a level of maturity so that when we want water in our areas we should write a memorandum and deliver it to the mayor of eThekwini and allow him to accept it and then give him time to respond to it,” he told the gathering.
He added that the event was a call for peace in KZN.
“Let us pray to the Almighty to bring a spirit of unity in South Africa, especially here in KwaZulu-Natal. Let us love and respect one another because the criminal element such as hijacking is a demonstration of the lack of respect. Why do you take something that does belong to you, because that is a sign of disrespect,” said the Shembe leader.
The Nazareth Baptist Church boasts one of the largest memberships in South Africa.
