THOUSANDS of people around the world have watched ZIFA boss Cuthbert Dube stand up from his wheelchair and walk at a healing session with a controversial Nigerian preacher who claims to have predicted Michael Jackson’s death.

For the last two years, Dube has battled a chronic inflammation on his right leg which has defied conventional medicines.

Facing questions about his fitness to hold the ZIFA job after his election on March 27, the former Premier Medical Aid Society boss flew to Nigeria last week to attend a healing session at the Synagogue Church of all Nations.

Dube had set a date with Prophet TB Joshua, who claims to have predicted most major international events and disasters -- from the death of Michael Jackson, the Chinese earthquake, the air crash that killed the Polish President and Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa’s death to the passenger plane that crash-landed on the Hudson River in the United States.

More controversially, TB Joshua’s followers say his mother was pregnant with him for 15 months, and the 47-year-old preacher has claimed to have prayed for and healed people with HIV and Aids although the church won’t submit to scientific testing or independent verification of the claims.

Dube arrived at last Sunday’s service in his wheelchair, before Joshua began praying for him. Witnesses who watched him on the church’s Emmanuel TV – which broadcasts the healing sessions live every Sunday on the internet and satellite television -- say the ZIFA boss “suddenly found strength in his leg and emerged from the wheelchair and then walked on his own”.

Still on his feet, Dube told the thousands gathered of his two-year torment with the leg which has been operated several times with no success.

ZIFA CEO Henrietta Rushwaya declined to discuss Dube’s appearance at the healing session.

She told the Herald: "The ZIFA president is away on private business … we are all united, as a board, in wishing him a speedy recovery so that he can start to implement his vision for a new era in Zimbabwean football.”

TB Joshua’s methods don’t impress all Christians, some of whom argue “Satan is capable of both healing and making people sick”, but even his critics admit that “spectacular things” happen in his church.

He counts former Zambian President Fredrick Chiluba and Ghana President Atta Mills among followers of the church which he founded in 1987 after claiming to have fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, at the end of which he received “divine commission to go and carry out the work of the Heavenly Father”.

Imposing ... The Synagogue Church of all Nations in Lagos, Nigeria