JOHANNESBURG – Paseka "Mboro" Motsoeneng, a controversial self-described prophet, is currently dealing with additional legal issues due to his inability to repay an R600,000 loan from a former member of his Incredible Happenings Ministry. The Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, has dismissed Mboro's application to overturn a default judgment ordering him to pay R470,000 plus interest to Khulu Radebe, a former member of his church.
In June 2012, Motsoeneng verbally agreed to a loan of R600,000 from Radebe, whose wife served as the church's treasurer. In terms of their agreement, Motsoeneng would pay back R100,000 from July 2012 but failed to effect payments, and Radebe confronted him. The two men then agreed that Motsoeneng would pay R10,000 from August 2015 and continued until August the following year, by which time he had paid R130,000. Motsoeneng still owed R470,000 and in January 2017 Radebe sent him a letter of demand, in which he demanded that he settle the amount within 14 days, but no payment was ever received.
Motsoeneng has denied entering into an oral agreement with Radebe. Instead, he stated that Radebe and his wife, who was Incredible Happenings Ministry’s treasurer, were responsible for his and the church’s financial affairs. According to Motsoeneng, the church was doing well financially and could never have borrowed money from an individual. He stated that his relationship with Radebe and his wife ended in 2016 due to mismanagement of the church’s finances by the now former treasurer.
Responding to Mboro’s denial of the loan, Radebe produced bank statements showing R600,000 that was debited from his account in June 2012 and R10,000 monthly payments between August 2015 and October 2016 indicating that they were from the Incredible Happenings Ministry. Mboro also argued that should the court find that he concluded a loan agreement with Radebe in June 2012 then the debt prescribed after three years in June 2015 despite agreeing and starting to pay R10,000 a month in August 2015.
Judge Motsamai Makume found that in August 2015 Mboro and Radebe entered into a new contract. “The applicant (Mboro) breached the agreement that was concluded in August 2015, not the 2012 agreement. When the applicant commenced payment of R10,000 in August 2015, it was in satisfaction of a new agreement and that was never meant to revive the 2012 agreement,” Judge Makume ruled last month. He said an application for rescission of a judgment must demonstrate a bona fide (in good faith) defence or a triable issue, which Mboro has failed to do and instead relied on a technical defence of prescription. “He had no bona fide defence and must accordingly fail,” stated Judge Makume in dismissing Mboro’s application for rescission of the default judgment with costs.
Meanwhile, Mboro is also facing kidnapping, possession of dangerous weapons and assault charges over a 2024 incident over which he was arrested after he stormed a primary school in Katlehong to demand the release of his grandchildren.
