South Africa has barred Pastor Steven
Anderson from visiting the nation.
Malusi Gigaba, South Africa's home
affairs minister, said that the government denied visas to Anderson
and members of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
because they promote hate speech and “social violence.”
Anderson had been invited by a local
church to host a “soul-winning marathon” in Johannesburg on
Sunday.
Anderson gained national headlines in
2014 when he posted video of a sermon he gave in which he claimed to
have discovered “the cure for AIDS.”
“[W]e can have an AIDS-free world by
Christmas,” he said. “Because if you execute the homos like God
recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant.”
More recently, Anderson cheered the
June mass shooting in an Orlando gay nightclub that left 49 people
dead and wounded dozens.
“The good news is that at least fifty
of these pedophiles are not going to be harming children anymore. The
bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so
they’re going to continue to molest children and recruit people
into their filthy homosexual lifestyle,” he
said.
(Related: Anti-gay
pastor Steven Anderson prays for God to rip out Caitlyn Jenner's
heart.)
Anderson criticized the decision in a
Facebook post, adding that he still plans to attend a September 25
event in Botswana.
“I feel sorry for people who live in
South Africa, but thank God we sill have a wide open door in
Botswana,” he wrote. “Stand by for reports of MULTITUDES saved
in Botswana, where religious freedom still exists.”
LGBT activists who had urged the
government to act cheered the news.
“We've seen how U.S. religious
extremists have fueled violence and hate against LGBT people in other
parts of Africa,” Matt Beard, executive director of All Out, said
in a statement. “It's inspiring to see that the South African
Government has made a stand for human rights and for the protection
of their hate speech laws and constitution.”