HE was in the room with 10 armed men believed to be part of the vicious copper cable theft syndicate.
The pastor could either come out injured or dead.
He had been kidnapped on 1 July to reveal the codes of the storage rooms where copper cables were kept at the company he worked for in Brakpan, Ekurhuleni.
To force the codes out of him, his kidnappers assaulted him with a golf club and throttled him.
The pastor in his 50s from Katlehong in Ekurhuleni said during all this torture, he was praying so loudly, he irritated his kidnappers.
But it was those prayers that saved his life.
“We are not at church, stop irritating us with your prayers,” one kidnapper apparently told him.
He said after telling the kidnappers he did not know the codes, they sent two armed men to his house, promising to kill his family.
The pastor said that made him pray even harder and amazingly, the men didn’t carry out their plan.
But the thugs still went to the company to rob it.
He said: “I’m told 22 men arrived in two Iveco buses and tied the securities and started breaking the doors to gain entry to steal copper.”
The thugs got away with copper cables worth a fortune. He was released after 10 hours of torture and dumped in Kempton Park.
“I walked to the police to relate my horror.”
He said as the robbery was taking place, he was being kept in the room in Kempton Park with both his hands and feet tied, guarded by ten men.
He said Kempton Park police then drove him to Actonville Police Station to open a case.
“The kidnappers told me they often kill the kidnap victim but there was something that was stopping them from killing and they didn’t understand what it was,” he said.
The pastor believed the thugs were working with people at his workplace. “My kidnappers knew everything about me,” he said. and where I’m staying and the division I work in,’ he said.
He said a car came to his work and the foreign occupants lied about wanting to donate food and clothes to his church’s charity drive. “They drove me after they had misled me, saying we were going to collect the charity goods.”
He said upon joining the N12, they covered his head with a sack. “I was afraid and sandwiched between them and I started praying to God to save me.”
Sergeant Godin Nyathi said a case of business robbery and kidnapping was opened. “The copper was found in Newlands, Joburg, and cops are still investigating.”
