Source: Baptist News Global, November 9, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In South Africa, free analog-broadcast community television stations whose programming caters to low-income majority Black townships are broke. To keep the lights on, they take advertising money from startup Pentecostal pastors who promise bewildering miracles and changes of fortune for jobless audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anele Heli is a 20-something charismatic prophet-pastor in Cape Town, South Africa\u2019s most racially and financially gentrified city. He goes by the moniker Sir Anele, and his weekly TV sermons on Cape Town TV, the largest nonprofit community channel in the city, attract thousands of viewers and thousands more offline. Worshipers are desperate for him to touch their heads and to ease their pain in a country with the world\u2019s highest joblessness rate<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m here to change lives on TV,\u201d Heli said. \u201cMy sermons heal diabetes, restore lost jobs, reverse divorces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearly a dozen dubious South African township TV prophet-pastors are on trial for rape, murder, extortion, immigration fraud, and \u201cfake miracles\u201d stunts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poor, majority Black township residents in South Africa can\u2019t afford high-quality pay-per-view TV or home Internet broadband. Broke community TV stations are their only source of information. Therefore, fraudster prophet-pastors lie in wait for desperate township TV viewers beset by joblessness<\/a>, lack of health insurance, or mental health ailments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Kudakwashe Magezi, a poet and tech critic in Johannesburg, explains] \u201cProphet-pastors recoup their money by performing TV \u2018miracles\u2019 and aggressively requesting cash donations to a bank account. Cellular phone corporations get a cut of the cash revenue from desperate viewers [through] text messages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Baptist News Global, November 9, 2021 In South Africa, free analog-broadcast community television stations whose programming caters to low-income majority Black townships are broke. To keep the lights on, they take advertising money from startup Pentecostal pastors who promise bewildering miracles and changes of fortune for jobless audiences. Anele Heli is a 20-something charismatic … Continue reading In South Africa, Televangelists, TV Stations, and Phone Companies Form an Unholy Alliance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10580,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10579\/revisions\/10580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}