Justice closing in on Sandlana amid fraud allegations

JUSTICE is no longer a distant hope for the victims of controversial International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC) Jerusalem faction leader, Michael Bhekumuzi Sandlana.

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After years of swirling allegations, buried dockets, and mounting questions, The Star's investigative team has uncovered damning documents revealing how Sandlana forged the death certificate of his estranged wife - while she was very much alive and under the same roof. It's a story so surreal it borders on fiction: a husband secretly declaring his wife dead, filing for her estate, and transferring her car into his name - all without her knowledge.

But this is not a bizarre oneoff. Rather, it appears to be part of a long-running pattern of fraud, forgery, and deception that has haunted the church and those close to it since the death of its founding leader, Bishop Glayton Modise, in 2016.

A Faked Death and a Chilling Betrayal The Star has irrefutable documents proving that on April 9, 2021, Sandlana applied to the Department of Home Affairs as the bereaved spouse of Benedicta Sandlana, falsely claiming she had died of natural causes in Pretoria weeks earlier, on March 16.

With this fabricated death certificate in hand, he moved swiftly to apply for a letter of executorship positioning himself as the sole beneficiary of her estate. The only problem? Benedicta was still alive. She learned of her "death" in the most jarring way possible when her bank in Sandton informed her that she was, according to government records, deceased.