Lying in a leaking dog’s kennel in the rain, still high on drugs, he called out to God for help. But this was not the lowest point in his life.
Drugs, prostitution, gangsterism, prison, robbery and murder is not the life’s story you associate with a pastor, but for Leon Jacobs, this is the road that leads to the salvation of thousands.
“Growing up in Tafelsig, I started school like any normal child would. I was growing up in an environment where there are five boys raised by a single mother. The pressure of seeing my mother struggle to survive always gave me the idea to look outside the house, to the notorious gang member on the street. I started to envy those guys, because I’m seeing money, I am seeing rings, chains and all these things. I am thinking, if I could just make a decision, it could change the dynamic in the house,” he says.
He was forced to leave school in Grade 9, after impregnating a girl. While out of school, the thing he admired and envied became a reality, falling into a life of gangsterism.
“I was out of school, the dynamics in the house did not change and I began to realise, in order to change all these things, I needed to join a gang. In becoming a gangster, I needed to fully commit myself to my decision,” he says. “While I was in the gang structure, a heavy gang war broke out between us and a rival gang and they could not get access to me. I was in their way, they wanted me gone.”
During this time, he was appearing in court for a drug possession charge. Not able to give full attention to his girlfriend at the time, she was kidnapped by the rival gang, brutally gang-raped and murdered. She was stabbed 42 times, raped with a broomstick and further a broomstick was pushed down her throat. This was horrific.
Having paid people to say they had seen Jacobs commit the vicious crime, he was arrested and imprisoned without bail based on the severity of the murder.
Serving two years and eight months in Pollsmoor Prison awaiting trial for this crime, he was finally acquitted based on a lack of linking evidence.
“I was regarded as a danger to the community based on this crime,” he says. “After being released, I was very happy to be out, but I was also angry and had hate in my heart for being falsely accused and imprisoned for someone else’s crime.”
Having developed a criminal mindset while in prison, he wanted to get his hands on money again. Meeting a tavern worker one night, he decided that he would rob the owner, taking R250 000 in cash. Not killing the owner, an eyewitness testified against him in the armed robbery case.
Back behind bars
Just one month out of prison, Jacobs found himself back in custody. He was sentenced to eight years, serving six years before being released.
“In these six years, I met with notorious gangs in prison and they roped me in telling me they would be my supplier when I got out,” he says.
Leaving prison, he found a girlfriend in Parow, moved into her flat, got her hooked on drugs and turned her into a prostitute.
In a moment his life changed.
Dealing in cocaine, tik and ecstasy he was making serious profit.
“I had a great lifestyle. For a boy who came from eating tinned fish and 50c chips, I now had a lifestyle of ‘keep the change’,” he says.
With an underworld transaction gone wrong which affected drug supply, a gang war broke out. In a leadership position at the time, the stress of this war drove him to using his own product, abusing tik and cocaine.
“It was a massive war, many people were being shot dead. There was a bounty on my head, because I needed to get out of the way,” he says.
Having recruited more young girls into prostitution to move his product, when a truce was finally called, he was hooked on drugs.
Leaving the gang
On a whim, he decided to leave the gang lifestyle behind him. With R942 in his pocket, he turned his back on the gangs.
“Not even R1 000 in my pocket, I turned my back, and I was involved with millions in the underworld. That Monday I left Parow and moved back in with my mother,” he says.
His twin brother Deon, also heavily addicted to tik and Mandrax was living at home at the time.
On 10 January 2009, while high on drugs eating an apple with a knife, his son complained of Deon snubbing a cigarette on his leg.
“As he showed me his thigh, I got so angry, everything went black. Something told me to show him who I was. I came down the stairs, grabbed him and started stabbing. He started to fall and there was blood everywhere. He screamed for my mother and when she came he took her hand and said to her ‘tell Leon everything will be okay’. Remember, I am doing the crime, but he is not talking to me. All this while I am still stabbing him. I watched him take his last breath and I came back to my senses,” he says.
“I called the police and told them I just killed my brother. They came and arrested me.”
He was detained at Mitchells Plain Police Station with many other suspects.
“A captain told the officers to move me, he called me a psychopath because I killed my brother. When I was moved to a single cell, I burst out crying. The reality set in.”
“I was raised that tigers don’t cry, but in that moment when I was alone I called out ‘God help me’. Not converted yet, but I called out to God.”
After making his appearance in court, he was granted free bail. But now the real test began.
Facing reality
He recalls having to return home where he just killed his brother. Walking past the scene where his brother took his last breath at his own hands, was the worst part.
“I had to face my demons. I was now back at the scene,” he says. “A week later, it is the funeral. You feel condemned, like an outcast.”
Having to face judgement made it difficult to fully mourn this loss at the funeral, feeling all eyes and whispers were about how he was the cause of this death.
“This alone pushes you to a place where you are suicidal. But that isn’t the worst part. The worst is after the funeral. In the lead up to the funeral, there is a lot of support, always surrounded by people. The day after the funeral, everyone walks their own ways. Then your journey as a family begins,” he says.
It was hell, he says, expressing how he tried to commit suicide five months after the murder.
“I couldn’t sleep, when I closed my eyes I would see the murder. I did not get trauma counselling,” he says. “I felt no one cared about me. There were people who would say ‘here he comes, he killed his brother’. If I would walk down the road, an aunty would grab her child because here comes a murderer. I got a real cold shoulder.”
With all this going on around him, unable to sleep, he would use drugs for days straight to pass out and get a rest.
Coming off his high, being hungry, he recalls feeling worthless and small. Not wanting to disturb anyone, he would walk down the stairs of their maisonette in the dark, having to pass the scene over and over again.
“I could still smell the blood,” he says.
One of his lowest points was being asked by his nephew where his father was.
“I didn’t know what to say. I did not want to have that conversation with him, knowing I killed his father,” he says.
God’s intervention
One Saturday in May that year, his uncle sat and spoke to him. Inviting him to church, which he agreed to.
Later that same day, while doing tik with a friend, he told him he was going to church.
“He laughed, saying the devil was going to church,” says Jacobs.
He had asked his mother to iron clothes for him to wear to church.
“My mother told me ‘you can play with anyone, but don’t play with God’,” he says. And this was profound.
Still high on drugs, he felt moved by God in that service.
“I said everyone has given up on me, if God gives up on me, then there is nothing left,” he says.
Having been awake on a drug high for three days, in a moment of clarity, Jacobs gave up on drugs and followed a new path.
When asked if he would change anything about his journey, he says: “Everything that happened in my life was for a reason. The devil was busy with me, because he could see I was a pastor in the making, before I even knew it.”
Jacobs was eventually given a five years suspended sentence for the murder.
Working to save others
Currently living in Kuils River, he founded Kingdom Christian Church in Mitchells Plain and has worked across the entire country with the Leon Jacobs Foundation – established in 2018.
“I realised years later how prophetic that moment was and why my brother said to my mother that everything would be okay. It was a Divine moment,” he says.
In his life as a pastor, he has had a hand in the salvation of thousands across the country – including many notorious gangsters and dealers – even including the friend who mocked his decision to go to church.
Recalling his role in ending a demonic gang war in then Port Elizabeth, where rivals would decapitate each other and deliver severed heads to families, putting an end to it was where he saw the hand of God.
But, his greatest testimony to date was converting one of the biggest drug merchants.
“God gave me a message for her. I delivered it. A short time later, the merchant’s niece was killed and I was called to host a memorial service. I agreed. Surrounded by her guards, I did the service. Today, that merchant is my wife, Natalene,” he says with a broad smile.
Together, they have helped save more notorious gangsters and drug addicts. His open air services draw thousands and his testimony is well known.
Wanting to do More
As a psychological first responder, with the ability to analyze crime, he has worked across the country, with his own family no stranger to tragedy.
“Today our communities look like this because there is no empathy. They shoot you in the face. I want to take that guts and turn them into soldiers for God,” he says.
It’s about planting seeds, not about a church building.
With all the good that has followed, there is still more he would like to do.
An evangelist at heart, he carries his story to help change the lives of others.
“With the foundation, we do what we can, but when I see a little boy running and there isn’t a packet left for him, it breaks my heart. It doesn’t matter about the thousands I could give, that one hurts. My next step is to call on these businesses. Those loaves of bread don’t need to get old and stale, we can still make it happen and feed the community,” he says.
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