In The News provided by Koinonia House

Cape Town - The trial of a church bookkeeper accused of stealing more than R2m was postponed in the George Regional Court on Wednesday, Western Cape police said.

Gwendoline Leyd, 45, was warned to appear again on February 28, Captain Bernadine Steyn said.

Leyd faces 10 charges of theft for alleged offences committed between January 2006 and October 2009, when she was employed by a church in York Street in George.

"During this period, money was transferred from the church's account into the suspect's personal bank account, medical expenses were claimed and received, internet payments were made into her personal bank accounts, [and] allowances were claimed and received," Steyn said.

"Extra salary was allegedly received over the period by the suspect, money was paid to her personal insurance, two sunglasses were claimed, [and] fictitious beneficiaries were paid via the internet."

Steyn said Leyd also stood accused of using money paid into her brother's bank account.

The total amount being claimed by the church was about R2.3m.

Johannesburg - The Limpopo pastor accused of raping three members of his church was released on R1 500 bail by the Polokwane Magistrate's Court on Wednesday.

Magistrate Janine Ungerer said the state failed to convince the court why the accused should not be released on bail.

She also said people should understand that bail was not a punishment.

The 50-year-old pastor of the Devine Deliverance Church in Seshego is facing three charges of rape - one in the Seshego Magistrate's Court and two in Polokwane.

He was arrested on New Year's Eve after a 20-year-old woman opened a rape case against him at the Seshego police station.

Shortly after he was released on R2 000 bail, two girls, 14 and 18-years-old, opened cases against him in Polokwane.

The man's lawyer, J Papule, wanted the Polokwane charges to be withdrawn as the State did not have a medical report to support their case.

During the bail application, Papule told the court that charges against his client were a conspiracy to discredit him in society.

He argued that one of the victims was in fact not a minor, as had been claimed after the alleged rape.

The case was postponed to February 29 for further investigation.

Cape Town - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has called on the media and public to stop calling Limpopo rape and murder accused Johan Kotzé the "Modimolle monster", saying that despite his alleged crimes, he is still a child of God.

Kotzé is accused of hiring three men to gang-rape and mutilate his estranged wife, and of killing her 19-year-old son.

Tutu wrote a letter to The Star, in which he condemned what had happened, but also expressed his concern that the widespread outrage over Kotzé's alleged actions had led to him being dubbed a monster.

'Capacity to become a saint'

"He may indeed be guilty of inhuman, ghastly and monstrous deeds, but he is not a monster. We are actually letting him off lightly by calling him a monster because monsters have no moral sense of right and wrong - and therefore cannot be held morally culpable, cannot be regarded as morally blameworthy," Tutu wrote.

He added that Kotzé "remains a child of God with the capacity to become a saint. This may shock some of us".

"We should condemn ghastly acts of awful cruelty but we must, as they say, hate the sin and love the sinner, or hope that he may change for the better."

He said this was in many ways the basis of the Truth and Reconciliation process.

"We heard bloodcurdling stories of how people had been murdered brutally and yet we saw some extraordinary scenes of magnanimity when perpetrator and victim or relative of victim embraced publicly.

"If it were true that once a murderer always a murderer, then we should have had to shut up shop straightaway. But we believed then, and I hope we still do, that it was possible for people to change for the better, that the worst criminal could become a good and virtuous person."

Appalled

Tutu was not defending Kotzé's alleged acts, saying decent people are rightly appalled at what had happened, and that it was quite right to condemn the "dastardly, barbaric and monstrous" deeds.

He expressed his deep sympathy and condolences to Kotzé's estranged wife and pleaded that people stop calling him a monster.

However, The Star quoted criminologist Dr Jackie de Wet, from the University of Fort Hare, as saying that the chances of someone like Kotzé being rehabilitated and becoming a good and virtuous person - if he did indeed commit the crimes he is charged with - are "very, very slim, almost minuscule".

ANC Women's League protesters outside the Modimolle Magistrate's Court during his appearance last Friday dubbed him a monster. "No human being can do such a thing," said ANCWL Waterberg treasurer Joy Matshoge.