What type of Christian nation are we building?
By Editor
Tue 27 Aug. 2013, 14:00 CAT
SEEING what is going on in our country - corruption, greed, vanity, divisions, injustice, unfairness - one wonders what kind of society we are trying to build in this country that has declared itself Christian.
But then we remember what Jesus said: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." And from this, we learn that spirituality is a way of living life according to the spirit.
For a society to be fair, just and humane and to consider itself truly Christian, it needs to treat everybody equally, promote solidarity among its people, serve the needs of all and it must conform to God's vision or dream for the world.
If we return again to that popular symbol of justice, we see that it is blind. The underlying idea is that it will give each person her due or his rights equally, impartially. But we seem to live in a society, in a country where justice has become a tradable commodity. It is either on offer only to the highest bidder or it can be obstructed only by the most powerful. If it serves only the needs of the rich and powerful, then it is not social justice as we know it.
The notion of solidarity is rather common currency in many aspects of our social life. And many of us, individually or as a community, pray incessantly for the grace of solidarity with a category of people we sometimes refer to as "the less fortunate".
But this solidarity then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.
Solidarity helps us to see the "other" not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as a our "neighbour", a "helper" to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which we all are equally invited by God.
Solidarity means choosing to walk in the shoes of those who hurt the most. And we do it not because we derive some pleasure from the pain and comfort, but because we wish to see a change, a radical transformation of our community , our society as we know it; that is, a change from the point of view of those who are considered to be at the bottom of society.
If we refuse to take the side of the weakest segment of our people, we can expect to have at least two emotions or reactions. The first is outrage and revulsion for whatever forces conspire to keep people in a state of deprivation, oppression and marginalisation. This is the negative pole. Social analysis is good at provoking this kind of emotion. The second is a burning desire to work for change. This is the positive pole. Social justice is about laying out a plan and setting out on a path of transforming the structures of our society.
Social justice is not justice if the resources meant for all citizens are hijacked by a privileged few. As human beings, we all have essentially the same basic needs: food, health, shelter, work, and so on and so forth. To live a decent human existence, these are things we just cannot live without. The reality of life is that there are so many people who have been made to live without these basic necessities.
As long as there are people who are not able to enjoy these minimum conditions of human existence due to inhuman socio-economic and political structures, we cannot say we have a socially just situation.
It is said that one of the greatest injustices in the contemporary world consists precisely in this: that the ones who possess much are relatively few and those who possess almost nothing are many. It is the injustice of the poor distribution of goods and services originally intended for all.
Social justice is about guaranteeing the basic conditions of life for the most number of people, rather than a privileged few.
In the biblical account of the creation of the world, God had a dream of the kind of world He wanted to create. That dream broke down, due to sin. But it was not beyond repair and redemption. When God took the people of Israel out of oppression in Egypt, He had in mind to create a new society that would be the envy of and an example for all the societies that existed then. As we know from the evidence of the Old Testament, the dream was never fully realised. But as we also know from the New Testament, God has never abandoned that dream. In Jesus Christ, God made another attempt to revive and realise that dream.
We are told that the world that God saw prior to the incarnation was a divided world: a world with 'some white and others black, some in peace and others at war, some weeping and others laughing, some healthy and others sick, some being born and others dying'. The vision we have here is that of a dislocated, divided and traumatised world. This world is a far cry from the one we first saw in Genesis or after the Exodus. God would never look at this world with the same eye with which He looked at the world of Adam and Eve or saw the Promised Land from Mount Nebo (Deuteronomy 34). When God looked at that world, He saw and said 'It is good'. But when God looks at our world, He says, 'Something has gone wrong', 'Something has got to change', 'I need someone to change this', 'We need a new plan, and a new architect' - that is how the incarnation came to be.
This act itself is, first of all, an act of solidarity: Jesus freely chooses to identify with and take on the life of the poor, in order to bring about the salvation of the human race. It is, secondly, an act of protest. The status quo could no longer be allowed to continue; something had to change quickly and radically. But the most significant aspect - and this is the third point - is that God's act, ultimately leads to transformation.
Social justice does not come about because of a miracle; it takes work. It is a labour of love, even on the part of God. Social justice does not come about as an imposition from the outside; it happens from inside.
If you ever wanted to see a sketch of God's dream for the world, read Ezekiel 34; there you will catch a glimpse not only of what has gone wrong with our society, but also just what it will take to put it right again.
God has a dream for our world and our society. It is a dream of a world where there shall be no woman, man or child living in ignorance, disease, poverty and oppression.
But when we look around us, everything we see reminds us that God's dream is an unfinished project. The kind of society we see and in which we live bears all the signs of a broken promise, and an unfulfilled dream. But this human and social agenda is by no means an abandoned project.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY
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Zanu-PF: Fending off, fighting on
Friday, 18 May 2012 23:05
Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis
As the story of TB Joshua rages on, rages towards its denouement, I have been reminded of the church politics in England of the late middle ages. And of course church politics necessarily meant the Catholic Church with its many Orders, its vast real estate, its ever swelling coffers, all set against gargantuan appetites of its supposedly holy, otherworldly inmates, starting with the Pope.
Far reaching reforms suggested for the Church in the 12th and 13th century had come to spectacular grief, as dictates of happy secular life got the better of monks and friars, got the better of church dogma, philosophy and vows to a life of devotional privation. Gone and gone for good was the devotional self-abnegation of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries which had given these religious figures and orders a higher spiritual plinth, well ahead of ordinary men and women of their time. Wealth had slowly but inexorably driven out single-mindedness and the devotion of yore, bringing with it “the world’s slow stain”, to quote A R Myers.
The things of Martha versus Mary
The abbot and the rest of the church officialdom found themselves spending more time in managing accounts of the church, in growing the wealth of the church through extortionate tithes and other exaggerated charges for the redemption of the soul, than in fulfilling St Francis’ dicta: follow naked the naked Christ. Myers puts it beautifully: “It seemed to them (church officials) a solemn, even sacred, obligation to maintain the privileges of their house unimpaired; but such a view meant that the things of Martha tended to drive out those of Mary, and that to its tenants and subjects the monastery appeared not as a holy community but as a property-owning corporation, tenacious of its legal rights . . . The lure of wealth had ensnared the friars . . . ”
Fixed and focused on the here-and-now, naturally the hereafter suffered, with the monastic values of isolation, ascetic frugality and regard for work, prayer and the poor, giving way to parasitic venality. So changed, so degraded, so material, so secular was the church that none in its ranks could dare repeat the Carthusian “nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata”, which meant “it needs no reform that has never been deformed”. It was this sybaritic givenness to pleasures of the world which triggered massive disenchantment with the Catholic Church, and with faith in general, giving rise to the great ferment we now call the Reformation.
Holy See and the Mafia
Yet in spite of these excesses which are as old as the medieval era, the Holy See is yet to give us a clean Catholic Church. Only last month, in April, the Vatican was rocked by yet another sordid scandal involving the burial in 1990 of a mafia mobster, one Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis of the infamous Magliana organised crime gang, next to a whole row of bishops and cardinals. How such a sinner, how this dead bloody mafioso could buy his way onto the sacred grounds of the Holy See, and then find his way into one of the ornate sarcophaguses (marble tombs) of bishops and cardinals in the crypt of Basilica of Sant' Apollinare, all to quietly lie there unasked, unmasked, until 1997, lie there undisturbed and peacefully until April 2012, lie there a pretentious neighbour to so holy men, no one, no one in this great church is prepared to say! And how only keys to such a holy tomb could only be in the hands of the gangster's wife, now late, again no one was and is prepared to say to this day.
Explosive Vatileaks
But Vatileaks dramatise even more bizarre dimensions to the story: the dead crook made too huge a monetary offer to the Church for it to refuse him a holy sepulcher. Much worse, there is very strong indication that De Pedis was not lying in the tomb alone. A mysterious caller to an Italian investigative television programme intimated the mafioso was in the company of the 15-year-old girl, Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who mysteriously went missing in June 1983, never to be seen again, whether in person or by remains.
The belief is that she was kidnapped and killed by De Pedis' Magliana gang, possibly by De Padis himself, on the orders of a powerful cardinal of American origins, all to shut the mouth of her father who knew too much on the arcane banking affairs of the Vatican. Apparently the little girl’s father who worked for the Vatican had stumbled on documents linking the Vatican Bank with the Magliana gang through one Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker”. In a spiraling mystery, Calvi himself was found hanging in London in June 1982 in yet another unexplained case of murder. He stood accused of stealing millions laundered on behalf of the mafia.
Dead in company
Only Monday this week was the mafia boss’ tomb opened after the Vatican finally granted authority to Italian forensic police. That authority had been very long in coming. On prising open the tomb, De Pedis was found there, intact in his dark blue suit and black tie of the burial day. But also tucked under his body in this three-layered sarcophagus were dozens of boxes containing unidentified human bones. Italy is still to establish whose remains these could be, but with the missing Emanuela in mind.
[Paul Crouch.]
Paul Crouch.
The story of TBN
Still my mind wonders to TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest so-called God channel. As I write, it is embroiled in a vicious family feud, the latest in a series of scandals to gnaw it, including one of a gay tryst involving a male employee and TBN’s owner, Paul Crouch. TBN is a multi million-dollar world Christian media empire with so many diligent followers in many countries, including Zimbabwe. Now Crouch’s granddaughter, Brittany Koper, has filed court papers in Costa Mesa, California, that include allegations of US$50 million in financial shenanigans. Her suit was followed by another one from a Koper in-law which details opulent spending at TBN, including on purchasing such items as private jets mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida, and a US$100 000 mobile home for Crouch’s wife, Jan’s dogs. TBN is exempt from paying any taxes. Now the police and Internal Revenue Service are interested.
So little God, so much gold
TBN was founded in 1973 on the philosophy that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will reward them with material wealth. TBN raked in US$92 million in donations in 2010 and cleared US$175 million in tax-free revenue. In the same year, TBN declared US$800 million in net assets. Reports speak of a maze of other organisations run by the Crouch through which financial transparency gets soundly and gainfully defeated. And the fight that has spilled into the courts is over competing lavish lifestyles. Gentle reader, it is not for me to draw any lessons for you from the foregoing anecdotes. That is your business. Or to suggest any parallels with any persons living or dead, here or in West Africa. Again, that is for you. Or even to impute un-holiness in the body of Christ.
Tithes and bank accounts
What I am very clear about is that our immigration laws place most West African nations in category C. That means they have to apply for visas well before their day of travel. That has not happened in respect of our guest of honour. That might never happen if May 25 is the day. Much more, many in the MDC-T did not think the invitation was clever, let alone uniting. They think it is much worse now, with all this mud bespattered everywhere. But the story of Jesus between two robbers on the crucifix, the story of De Pedis between tombs of bishops and cardinals, is quite intriguing, suggesting compelling parallels from Zimbabwe's brisk politics nowadays. Enjoy the National Day of Prayer when it falls due, always bearing in mind the basilica accommodates cardinals and De Pedis, indeed that in a bank account, even tithes and the widow’s mite, all come in one colour or money, indeed build towards a +dollar!
Thank you Excellency Deborah!
I heartily thank Deborah Bronnert, Britain’s official lady here in Zimbabwe. I spared her a few weeks back when she made some not-so-charitable comments on our policy on indigenisation, and what she perceived to be its negative impact on the country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. I would have politely reminded her that our “mother country” Britain gave us a long lecture whose delivery began in 1890 and ended in 1980, a lecture that Newcastle coal is never given away to the Japanese, let alone to Russians. Coal tenaciously remains a British preserve, a dark British family “silver” for all time, for all generations, for all governments — Labour, Conservatives or Lib Dem. We took the lesson to heart, carried it in our bosoms for all time. We hope to be good students, so good that even the teacher shall not be spared the full wrath of well grasped lessons.
Not party to the GPA
But thank you Deborah, Your Excellency, for your candid remarks on the GPA and the obligations it unfairly places on your country in respect of the costs of our land reforms. I want to quote you: “Well, we are not parties to the GPA, this was a Zimbabwean agreement and we have never accepted liability to fund the land reform although we did actually provide some funds for land reform, soon after independence. I think it was £44 million which we paid.” You went further, Madame Ambassador: “But we do have a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken and we feel it was unfair to the individuals affected. It had a terrible impact both on those running and managing the farms, those working on the farms and the wider Zimbabwean economy.” Then you concluded: “At some point I think we are likely to . . . support a future settlement but I think we are a long way from it and it will require quite a big political shift and a political settlement here for that to be taken forward.”
[Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.]
Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.
No alchemists please
We understood your English, forever being grateful that you put it so plainly that none lost your meaning in all its compelling fullness. As with other lessons from your great, great civilisation, we take this one to heart, too! Your country is not a party to the GPA. This is truly and correctly put and we hope this settles the matter definitively. That you spare us the need to remind you in the not-so-distant electoral future that GPA is, in your own clear English words, “a Zimbabwean agreement”. Needless to say it did not, does not, should not, concern foreigners from any clime — Britain, Europe included. Zimbabweans should and must be left alone to deal with their GPA, in the best way they know how. It cannot be a document that outsiders conveniently and alchemically turn into a whip with which to lash at us. Equally, it cannot be a conditionality invoked in our name, invoked against us. Indeed the few quiet months which have gone by, with no meddling from all outsiders of whatever hue, who have been so solicitous in the name of our welfare, have seen remarkable progress in our effort at finding one another as Zimbabweans, GPA Zimbabweans.
When all are fed up
And as should be clear to Madame Deborah, Mugabe is fed up, Tsvangirai is fed up, Ncube is fed up — all are fed up with one another and with the Inclusive Government that all are ready to move to the GPA’s last phase, its last assignment, which is elections. We need to be left alone, something which most people, including this our good British lady, seem incapable of. I sometimes wonder why my little country prompts such deep but unsolicited engagement and involvement. Let me illustrate. After correctly renouncing the GPA, Ambassador Bronnert then goes on to voice “a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken”. Well, she does not have to for I am sure that as the British ambassador here, and as a British citizen away from home, her plate is already full, already spilling with unresolved British issues crying out for attention. She does not have to carry extra burdens from, and of, Zimbabwe. In any case we are not likely to be thankful, to be grateful. How we do things here is part of the exercise of our sovereignty. She does not have to like it, she does not have to shed an impulse, whether of empathy or of revulsion. Which is what begins to rile me about this woman.
Big political shifts?
Her last bit on the requirement of “quite a big political shift and political settlement here” before British support for land reforms which she says do not concern Britain, is quite provocative, to say the very least. I will hate any political shift meant to please this solicitous girl or her country. My country and I are not bound to please her and her Britain, the same way her country need not please or even help Zimbabwe. To require political shifts and settlements, whatever these are, is to meddle in our own affairs. It is to invite Zimbabwean opprobrium and revilement. And that she tries to hide her racist concern for white former farmers here — towards whom she simulates impersonal detachment by referring to them as “those running and managing the farms”, deludes no one. We know fully well that her heart goes out to evicted setter farmers the majority of whom are of British extraction, with blacks she calls “those working on the farms” only being dropped in to mask this racialised advocacy.
That gives colour and political identity to the “big political shift”, to the big “political settlement” she hungers after, but which she might never live to see or celebrate. This ambassador has chosen to take us back to Labour’s politics of confrontation in order to wreck the engagement currently underway with the EU. She must be taken on; we must not shirk confrontation if her country, simply on crass grounds of ex-colonial legitimacy, thinks it owns this country, and controls people and its destiny.
Locating Deborah’s politics
[Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.]
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir. Its president, one Charles Taffs rues what he terms the destruction of property rights and land tenure during our land reforms. “The attrition of these rights has impacted, not only on citizens, but also foreign investors. Compensation for expropriated investments is a pre-requisite to the restoration of the country’s image as a good place to do business.” You are left in no doubt that he is Bronnert’s “those running and managing farms”, and whose stability only returns through “a big political shift”.
Equally, you cannot miss the implied throwback to a pre-land reform discourse, in its a-historical conceptual form, and seeking to gloss over massive colonial land alienation, massive destruction of original property rights without a single dime for compensation. And since Deborah has repudiated British obligation to meeting costs of resolving this colonial land question, it is clear from whom compensation is being asked. And a political settlement that guarantees such compensation can only exist outside the framework of Zanu-PF-), indeed can only exist inside the framework of MDC-T with its neo-liberal political outlook.
Land, mines and indigenisation
In fact Taffs gets quite explicit in his disappointment that the MDC-T has failed to fight in the CFU corner, for the greater part of the past decade. Bemoaning the party’s naked weakness, Charles Taffs says: “What is the MDC’s policy on indigenisation, mining and land? It concerns us that all that they want to do and will hinge their election campaign on is to remove President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power. That is what they have been trying to do in the past decade. At least Zanu-PF programmes are clear-cut and well known. It is about time the election became a contestation of ideas.” You cannot miss the clarity and coincidence of thought between Bronnert and Taffs, a coincidence which more than attests to the reactivation of a political common front involving the British government, settler farmers and the MDC formations. Equally, you cannot miss the fact that white interests strip the next election down to land, mines and the rolling back of the policy of indigenisation as it relates to both classes of assets.
The real role of white farmers
If there is anyone in Zanu-PF who thinks land is now a done deal, that land is now irreversibly transferred, I urge them to think again. The electoral question and agenda has hardly changed, has hardly moved an inch. Though numerically trimmed and economically weakened, white farmers remain belligerently hopeful for a return to their pre-land reform heyday. True, they may not have the money now but their hopes remain as implacable as ever. They may have fought a lonely war but today they think miners and industrialists are so upset and shaken by the policy of indigenisation that the front against Zanu-PF could be decisively broadened. Their frustration with the MDC formations does not amount to a capitulation, a surrender; rather it underlines a desire to challenge and hopefully galvanise the formations’ inert leadership. Or even to rattle it in a way that brings forward new blood in leadership. MDC weakness cannot be merely read from the attitude of farmers. Long broke, white farmers no longer count for much as financial benefactors. But they help rouse British opinion and with it, the British Government. This is why the Deborah-Taffs axis must be taken seriously.
ZCTU bogey
Equally, the divisions in the ZCTU might mean very little to the MDC vote. The ZCTU will throw its weight behind MDC anyway, the real issue being that its membership has been declining precipitously over the years. The real issue is for Zanu-PF to interpret its indigenisation programme in a way that engages this dormant worker-voter who is no longer part of the ZCTU anyway by virtue of the fact that he is either unemployed or self-employed. That is where the numbers are; that is where the effort should be, apart from the youth.
Down to zero
More critically, the link between the efforts of Britain and white farmers to “push the clock back”, and certain ministerial behaviours in the Inclusive Government must be established. While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land. That attack has depth, has been developing incrementally. It has now gathered enough confidence as to be openly bold and defiant.
[While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.]
While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.
The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government, initially furtively, now blatantly. And this capacity has been whittled down progressively to a stage where, as with wheat farming, it has shrunk to zero! What is even more worrisome is that both affected farmers and authors of the land reform programme, that is, Zanu-PF, appear to have been wearied, to have been worn down to zero protest. And the MDC faction’s anti-land reform strategy has been overwhelming: nil funding for farmers, overwhelmingly erratic power supply to levels where as a farmer you think you are being sensible by not planting anything at all. And because you are being sensible, you are content with silent self-congratulations for your induced no-show on the land.
Subduing a sense of ownership
Three outcomes are immediately apparent. Land is fast becoming a dead asset whose emotional attachment and intensity to Zimbabweans is being precipitously lowered to become a rallying point for elections or against their possible loss. That is worrisome, deeply worrisome. Much worse, because the land lies fallow in your hands, with someone relentlessly pointing that out to you daily through politically contrived editorials, you begin to feel guilty about your owning and occupying it, indeed begin to regret that you were ever given it in the first place. And guilt is not the impulse for resistance, for assertion of one’s heritage. The sense of deservedness associated with ownership gives way to a new sense of failure and futility founded on low or nil productivity. Farmers are being set up for failure in order to induce a sense of self-contempt for ownership. And of course a people without a strong sense of ownership are ready to be subdued into a new, menial role of a worker. Need we wonder then that Biti is pushing for a jobs programme?
The domino effect
Much worse, with agricultural production heavily compromised, the whole economy has drifted towards a reliance on food imports. And with that decline goes all processes of agro-value addition, principally milling. This week we saw millers wailing through a huge advertisement. The mills have ground to a halt against flour imports, against zero wheat farming. It is a sign of things to come. Had it not been for tobacco, those involved in the manufacture of agro-implements would have been wailing too. With little activity on the land, no one comes for services. They will cry eventually, unless this trend is checked.
Weakening the defence of land
With the farmer impotent and inert, he ceases to be a homogenous constituency for political outcomes, including voting. He also begins to seek livelihoods elsewhere, away from the land. And as he does so, he harbors bitterness which is not always easy to causally link with the guilty fraction in the Inclusive Government. Already we have witnessed a situation where Made and Biti are being blamed in equal measure.
Yet Made only moves upon disbursements of funds by Biti. When culpability gets this blurred, you could be witnessing a seismic shift in attitudes. With power outages endured everyday, we begin to get used to Mangoma’s non-delivery on energy, a non-delivery that we never got to at the height of sanctions. We forget this has a direct bearing on the meaning of land reforms, especially at a personal level. And where the meaning has been lowered, few are motivated to resist politics of land reform reversal. In such circumstances, Ambassador Bronnert’s “big political shift” becomes feasible.
Blaming it all on land reforms
The MDC is not concerned about agricultural failures. These will be posted on Zanu-PF anyway. And as reports of likely imports from Zambia gather visibility, we have seen the return of that discourse that blames imports on land reforms, that see imports as an indictment on land reforms. That discourse does not recognise that from about 2008, the productivity trend has been upward, except in times of drought. Such that we can no longer trace low productivity to land reforms, but to aborted agrarian reforms, thanks to the anti-land elements in the Inclusive Government. The agrarian reforms which were making steady progress before the Inclusive Government, have now been denied their inputs components, principally finance, well before hitting their threshold.
[TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.]
TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.
The budget tool
All of which means what? Well, that we must take notice of the clear definition of white interests and the relentless pursuit of their realization, riding on the platform of forthcoming elections. As Taffs says, it is not the removal of President Mugabe as a political proposition which matters in the forthcoming elections; it is the land, the mines, and reversing indigenisation. And in this crucial election, MDC formations are being instrumentalised by these white interests.
The budget becomes a principal tool. Biti’s double thrust of refusing to plant for a national harvest, while wanting to harvest what God planted in Marange for more and more debilitating imports, is quite telling. And you notice together with Mangoma, he will not import power to drive our engines, to drive our farmers, to drive our economy. Only to import wines, mixed flour, stale chickens and some such needless goods we can grow here with better financial support. Zanu -PF has been allowing this to happen.
Fend, fight!
Is all lost? Of course not. The MDC formations are not ready for elections. Tsvangirai is all over the world, including in Austria looking for funding for his sellout politics. His party is deeply fractured, with the white lobby losing patience with his leadership, while also pushing the likes of Biti in what amounts to a negative campaign. Bennett’s recent outbursts should be seen that way. Much worse, as Eddie Cross’ most recent piece shows, the MDC-T know they will not win the forthcoming elections. I quote him: “Almost certainly it will be another GNU — but this time led by Tsvangirai as State President and the leader of a defeated Zanu-PF as first Vice President.”
This is an admission of a failure to win the forthcoming elections, seeking measly consolation in imaginary convoluted posts. An MDC outright win does not yield another GNU. That was the essence of his article tellingly titled “making progress”, and not “winning”. He is right, the MDC formations will not win. Zanu-PF will, which is why it needs to understand the politics and subterfuges of this dire moment. The land issue is back on the agenda; the issue of mining and mineral rights must be firmly on the agenda through the programme of empowerment which will constitute its central message in the forthcoming election. Both issues should be carried by Zanu-PF. This means as it fends off attacks on the previously conquered and occupied ground of land, it should at the same time, fight on in respect of the new and more exciting ground of mines and minerals.
Icho!
* nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, CHRISTIANITY, ZANU-PF
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Zanu-PF: Fending off, fighting on
Friday, 18 May 2012 23:05
Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis
As the story of TB Joshua rages on, rages towards its denouement, I have been reminded of the church politics in England of the late middle ages. And of course church politics necessarily meant the Catholic Church with its many Orders, its vast real estate, its ever swelling coffers, all set against gargantuan appetites of its supposedly holy, otherworldly inmates, starting with the Pope.
Far reaching reforms suggested for the Church in the 12th and 13th century had come to spectacular grief, as dictates of happy secular life got the better of monks and friars, got the better of church dogma, philosophy and vows to a life of devotional privation. Gone and gone for good was the devotional self-abnegation of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries which had given these religious figures and orders a higher spiritual plinth, well ahead of ordinary men and women of their time. Wealth had slowly but inexorably driven out single-mindedness and the devotion of yore, bringing with it “the world’s slow stain”, to quote A R Myers.
The things of Martha versus Mary
The abbot and the rest of the church officialdom found themselves spending more time in managing accounts of the church, in growing the wealth of the church through extortionate tithes and other exaggerated charges for the redemption of the soul, than in fulfilling St Francis’ dicta: follow naked the naked Christ. Myers puts it beautifully: “It seemed to them (church officials) a solemn, even sacred, obligation to maintain the privileges of their house unimpaired; but such a view meant that the things of Martha tended to drive out those of Mary, and that to its tenants and subjects the monastery appeared not as a holy community but as a property-owning corporation, tenacious of its legal rights . . . The lure of wealth had ensnared the friars . . . ”
Fixed and focused on the here-and-now, naturally the hereafter suffered, with the monastic values of isolation, ascetic frugality and regard for work, prayer and the poor, giving way to parasitic venality. So changed, so degraded, so material, so secular was the church that none in its ranks could dare repeat the Carthusian “nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata”, which meant “it needs no reform that has never been deformed”. It was this sybaritic givenness to pleasures of the world which triggered massive disenchantment with the Catholic Church, and with faith in general, giving rise to the great ferment we now call the Reformation.
Holy See and the Mafia
Yet in spite of these excesses which are as old as the medieval era, the Holy See is yet to give us a clean Catholic Church. Only last month, in April, the Vatican was rocked by yet another sordid scandal involving the burial in 1990 of a mafia mobster, one Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis of the infamous Magliana organised crime gang, next to a whole row of bishops and cardinals. How such a sinner, how this dead bloody mafioso could buy his way onto the sacred grounds of the Holy See, and then find his way into one of the ornate sarcophaguses (marble tombs) of bishops and cardinals in the crypt of Basilica of Sant' Apollinare, all to quietly lie there unasked, unmasked, until 1997, lie there undisturbed and peacefully until April 2012, lie there a pretentious neighbour to so holy men, no one, no one in this great church is prepared to say! And how only keys to such a holy tomb could only be in the hands of the gangster's wife, now late, again no one was and is prepared to say to this day.
Explosive Vatileaks
But Vatileaks dramatise even more bizarre dimensions to the story: the dead crook made too huge a monetary offer to the Church for it to refuse him a holy sepulcher. Much worse, there is very strong indication that De Pedis was not lying in the tomb alone. A mysterious caller to an Italian investigative television programme intimated the mafioso was in the company of the 15-year-old girl, Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who mysteriously went missing in June 1983, never to be seen again, whether in person or by remains.
The belief is that she was kidnapped and killed by De Pedis' Magliana gang, possibly by De Padis himself, on the orders of a powerful cardinal of American origins, all to shut the mouth of her father who knew too much on the arcane banking affairs of the Vatican. Apparently the little girl’s father who worked for the Vatican had stumbled on documents linking the Vatican Bank with the Magliana gang through one Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker”. In a spiraling mystery, Calvi himself was found hanging in London in June 1982 in yet another unexplained case of murder. He stood accused of stealing millions laundered on behalf of the mafia.
Dead in company
Only Monday this week was the mafia boss’ tomb opened after the Vatican finally granted authority to Italian forensic police. That authority had been very long in coming. On prising open the tomb, De Pedis was found there, intact in his dark blue suit and black tie of the burial day. But also tucked under his body in this three-layered sarcophagus were dozens of boxes containing unidentified human bones. Italy is still to establish whose remains these could be, but with the missing Emanuela in mind.
[Paul Crouch.]
Paul Crouch.
The story of TBN
Still my mind wonders to TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest so-called God channel. As I write, it is embroiled in a vicious family feud, the latest in a series of scandals to gnaw it, including one of a gay tryst involving a male employee and TBN’s owner, Paul Crouch. TBN is a multi million-dollar world Christian media empire with so many diligent followers in many countries, including Zimbabwe. Now Crouch’s granddaughter, Brittany Koper, has filed court papers in Costa Mesa, California, that include allegations of US$50 million in financial shenanigans. Her suit was followed by another one from a Koper in-law which details opulent spending at TBN, including on purchasing such items as private jets mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida, and a US$100 000 mobile home for Crouch’s wife, Jan’s dogs. TBN is exempt from paying any taxes. Now the police and Internal Revenue Service are interested.
So little God, so much gold
TBN was founded in 1973 on the philosophy that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will reward them with material wealth. TBN raked in US$92 million in donations in 2010 and cleared US$175 million in tax-free revenue. In the same year, TBN declared US$800 million in net assets. Reports speak of a maze of other organisations run by the Crouch through which financial transparency gets soundly and gainfully defeated. And the fight that has spilled into the courts is over competing lavish lifestyles. Gentle reader, it is not for me to draw any lessons for you from the foregoing anecdotes. That is your business. Or to suggest any parallels with any persons living or dead, here or in West Africa. Again, that is for you. Or even to impute un-holiness in the body of Christ.
Tithes and bank accounts
What I am very clear about is that our immigration laws place most West African nations in category C. That means they have to apply for visas well before their day of travel. That has not happened in respect of our guest of honour. That might never happen if May 25 is the day. Much more, many in the MDC-T did not think the invitation was clever, let alone uniting. They think it is much worse now, with all this mud bespattered everywhere. But the story of Jesus between two robbers on the crucifix, the story of De Pedis between tombs of bishops and cardinals, is quite intriguing, suggesting compelling parallels from Zimbabwe's brisk politics nowadays. Enjoy the National Day of Prayer when it falls due, always bearing in mind the basilica accommodates cardinals and De Pedis, indeed that in a bank account, even tithes and the widow’s mite, all come in one colour or money, indeed build towards a +dollar!
Thank you Excellency Deborah!
I heartily thank Deborah Bronnert, Britain’s official lady here in Zimbabwe. I spared her a few weeks back when she made some not-so-charitable comments on our policy on indigenisation, and what she perceived to be its negative impact on the country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. I would have politely reminded her that our “mother country” Britain gave us a long lecture whose delivery began in 1890 and ended in 1980, a lecture that Newcastle coal is never given away to the Japanese, let alone to Russians. Coal tenaciously remains a British preserve, a dark British family “silver” for all time, for all generations, for all governments — Labour, Conservatives or Lib Dem. We took the lesson to heart, carried it in our bosoms for all time. We hope to be good students, so good that even the teacher shall not be spared the full wrath of well grasped lessons.
Not party to the GPA
But thank you Deborah, Your Excellency, for your candid remarks on the GPA and the obligations it unfairly places on your country in respect of the costs of our land reforms. I want to quote you: “Well, we are not parties to the GPA, this was a Zimbabwean agreement and we have never accepted liability to fund the land reform although we did actually provide some funds for land reform, soon after independence. I think it was £44 million which we paid.” You went further, Madame Ambassador: “But we do have a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken and we feel it was unfair to the individuals affected. It had a terrible impact both on those running and managing the farms, those working on the farms and the wider Zimbabwean economy.” Then you concluded: “At some point I think we are likely to . . . support a future settlement but I think we are a long way from it and it will require quite a big political shift and a political settlement here for that to be taken forward.”
[Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.]
Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.
No alchemists please
We understood your English, forever being grateful that you put it so plainly that none lost your meaning in all its compelling fullness. As with other lessons from your great, great civilisation, we take this one to heart, too! Your country is not a party to the GPA. This is truly and correctly put and we hope this settles the matter definitively. That you spare us the need to remind you in the not-so-distant electoral future that GPA is, in your own clear English words, “a Zimbabwean agreement”. Needless to say it did not, does not, should not, concern foreigners from any clime — Britain, Europe included. Zimbabweans should and must be left alone to deal with their GPA, in the best way they know how. It cannot be a document that outsiders conveniently and alchemically turn into a whip with which to lash at us. Equally, it cannot be a conditionality invoked in our name, invoked against us. Indeed the few quiet months which have gone by, with no meddling from all outsiders of whatever hue, who have been so solicitous in the name of our welfare, have seen remarkable progress in our effort at finding one another as Zimbabweans, GPA Zimbabweans.
When all are fed up
And as should be clear to Madame Deborah, Mugabe is fed up, Tsvangirai is fed up, Ncube is fed up — all are fed up with one another and with the Inclusive Government that all are ready to move to the GPA’s last phase, its last assignment, which is elections. We need to be left alone, something which most people, including this our good British lady, seem incapable of. I sometimes wonder why my little country prompts such deep but unsolicited engagement and involvement. Let me illustrate. After correctly renouncing the GPA, Ambassador Bronnert then goes on to voice “a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken”. Well, she does not have to for I am sure that as the British ambassador here, and as a British citizen away from home, her plate is already full, already spilling with unresolved British issues crying out for attention. She does not have to carry extra burdens from, and of, Zimbabwe. In any case we are not likely to be thankful, to be grateful. How we do things here is part of the exercise of our sovereignty. She does not have to like it, she does not have to shed an impulse, whether of empathy or of revulsion. Which is what begins to rile me about this woman.
Big political shifts?
Her last bit on the requirement of “quite a big political shift and political settlement here” before British support for land reforms which she says do not concern Britain, is quite provocative, to say the very least. I will hate any political shift meant to please this solicitous girl or her country. My country and I are not bound to please her and her Britain, the same way her country need not please or even help Zimbabwe. To require political shifts and settlements, whatever these are, is to meddle in our own affairs. It is to invite Zimbabwean opprobrium and revilement. And that she tries to hide her racist concern for white former farmers here — towards whom she simulates impersonal detachment by referring to them as “those running and managing the farms”, deludes no one. We know fully well that her heart goes out to evicted setter farmers the majority of whom are of British extraction, with blacks she calls “those working on the farms” only being dropped in to mask this racialised advocacy.
That gives colour and political identity to the “big political shift”, to the big “political settlement” she hungers after, but which she might never live to see or celebrate. This ambassador has chosen to take us back to Labour’s politics of confrontation in order to wreck the engagement currently underway with the EU. She must be taken on; we must not shirk confrontation if her country, simply on crass grounds of ex-colonial legitimacy, thinks it owns this country, and controls people and its destiny.
Locating Deborah’s politics
[Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.]
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir. Its president, one Charles Taffs rues what he terms the destruction of property rights and land tenure during our land reforms. “The attrition of these rights has impacted, not only on citizens, but also foreign investors. Compensation for expropriated investments is a pre-requisite to the restoration of the country’s image as a good place to do business.” You are left in no doubt that he is Bronnert’s “those running and managing farms”, and whose stability only returns through “a big political shift”.
Equally, you cannot miss the implied throwback to a pre-land reform discourse, in its a-historical conceptual form, and seeking to gloss over massive colonial land alienation, massive destruction of original property rights without a single dime for compensation. And since Deborah has repudiated British obligation to meeting costs of resolving this colonial land question, it is clear from whom compensation is being asked. And a political settlement that guarantees such compensation can only exist outside the framework of Zanu-PF-), indeed can only exist inside the framework of MDC-T with its neo-liberal political outlook.
Land, mines and indigenisation
In fact Taffs gets quite explicit in his disappointment that the MDC-T has failed to fight in the CFU corner, for the greater part of the past decade. Bemoaning the party’s naked weakness, Charles Taffs says: “What is the MDC’s policy on indigenisation, mining and land? It concerns us that all that they want to do and will hinge their election campaign on is to remove President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power. That is what they have been trying to do in the past decade. At least Zanu-PF programmes are clear-cut and well known. It is about time the election became a contestation of ideas.” You cannot miss the clarity and coincidence of thought between Bronnert and Taffs, a coincidence which more than attests to the reactivation of a political common front involving the British government, settler farmers and the MDC formations. Equally, you cannot miss the fact that white interests strip the next election down to land, mines and the rolling back of the policy of indigenisation as it relates to both classes of assets.
The real role of white farmers
If there is anyone in Zanu-PF who thinks land is now a done deal, that land is now irreversibly transferred, I urge them to think again. The electoral question and agenda has hardly changed, has hardly moved an inch. Though numerically trimmed and economically weakened, white farmers remain belligerently hopeful for a return to their pre-land reform heyday. True, they may not have the money now but their hopes remain as implacable as ever. They may have fought a lonely war but today they think miners and industrialists are so upset and shaken by the policy of indigenisation that the front against Zanu-PF could be decisively broadened. Their frustration with the MDC formations does not amount to a capitulation, a surrender; rather it underlines a desire to challenge and hopefully galvanise the formations’ inert leadership. Or even to rattle it in a way that brings forward new blood in leadership. MDC weakness cannot be merely read from the attitude of farmers. Long broke, white farmers no longer count for much as financial benefactors. But they help rouse British opinion and with it, the British Government. This is why the Deborah-Taffs axis must be taken seriously.
ZCTU bogey
Equally, the divisions in the ZCTU might mean very little to the MDC vote. The ZCTU will throw its weight behind MDC anyway, the real issue being that its membership has been declining precipitously over the years. The real issue is for Zanu-PF to interpret its indigenisation programme in a way that engages this dormant worker-voter who is no longer part of the ZCTU anyway by virtue of the fact that he is either unemployed or self-employed. That is where the numbers are; that is where the effort should be, apart from the youth.
Down to zero
More critically, the link between the efforts of Britain and white farmers to “push the clock back”, and certain ministerial behaviours in the Inclusive Government must be established. While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land. That attack has depth, has been developing incrementally. It has now gathered enough confidence as to be openly bold and defiant.
[While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.]
While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.
The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government, initially furtively, now blatantly. And this capacity has been whittled down progressively to a stage where, as with wheat farming, it has shrunk to zero! What is even more worrisome is that both affected farmers and authors of the land reform programme, that is, Zanu-PF, appear to have been wearied, to have been worn down to zero protest. And the MDC faction’s anti-land reform strategy has been overwhelming: nil funding for farmers, overwhelmingly erratic power supply to levels where as a farmer you think you are being sensible by not planting anything at all. And because you are being sensible, you are content with silent self-congratulations for your induced no-show on the land.
Subduing a sense of ownership
Three outcomes are immediately apparent. Land is fast becoming a dead asset whose emotional attachment and intensity to Zimbabweans is being precipitously lowered to become a rallying point for elections or against their possible loss. That is worrisome, deeply worrisome. Much worse, because the land lies fallow in your hands, with someone relentlessly pointing that out to you daily through politically contrived editorials, you begin to feel guilty about your owning and occupying it, indeed begin to regret that you were ever given it in the first place. And guilt is not the impulse for resistance, for assertion of one’s heritage. The sense of deservedness associated with ownership gives way to a new sense of failure and futility founded on low or nil productivity. Farmers are being set up for failure in order to induce a sense of self-contempt for ownership. And of course a people without a strong sense of ownership are ready to be subdued into a new, menial role of a worker. Need we wonder then that Biti is pushing for a jobs programme?
The domino effect
Much worse, with agricultural production heavily compromised, the whole economy has drifted towards a reliance on food imports. And with that decline goes all processes of agro-value addition, principally milling. This week we saw millers wailing through a huge advertisement. The mills have ground to a halt against flour imports, against zero wheat farming. It is a sign of things to come. Had it not been for tobacco, those involved in the manufacture of agro-implements would have been wailing too. With little activity on the land, no one comes for services. They will cry eventually, unless this trend is checked.
Weakening the defence of land
With the farmer impotent and inert, he ceases to be a homogenous constituency for political outcomes, including voting. He also begins to seek livelihoods elsewhere, away from the land. And as he does so, he harbors bitterness which is not always easy to causally link with the guilty fraction in the Inclusive Government. Already we have witnessed a situation where Made and Biti are being blamed in equal measure.
Yet Made only moves upon disbursements of funds by Biti. When culpability gets this blurred, you could be witnessing a seismic shift in attitudes. With power outages endured everyday, we begin to get used to Mangoma’s non-delivery on energy, a non-delivery that we never got to at the height of sanctions. We forget this has a direct bearing on the meaning of land reforms, especially at a personal level. And where the meaning has been lowered, few are motivated to resist politics of land reform reversal. In such circumstances, Ambassador Bronnert’s “big political shift” becomes feasible.
Blaming it all on land reforms
The MDC is not concerned about agricultural failures. These will be posted on Zanu-PF anyway. And as reports of likely imports from Zambia gather visibility, we have seen the return of that discourse that blames imports on land reforms, that see imports as an indictment on land reforms. That discourse does not recognise that from about 2008, the productivity trend has been upward, except in times of drought. Such that we can no longer trace low productivity to land reforms, but to aborted agrarian reforms, thanks to the anti-land elements in the Inclusive Government. The agrarian reforms which were making steady progress before the Inclusive Government, have now been denied their inputs components, principally finance, well before hitting their threshold.
[TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.]
TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.
The budget tool
All of which means what? Well, that we must take notice of the clear definition of white interests and the relentless pursuit of their realization, riding on the platform of forthcoming elections. As Taffs says, it is not the removal of President Mugabe as a political proposition which matters in the forthcoming elections; it is the land, the mines, and reversing indigenisation. And in this crucial election, MDC formations are being instrumentalised by these white interests.
The budget becomes a principal tool. Biti’s double thrust of refusing to plant for a national harvest, while wanting to harvest what God planted in Marange for more and more debilitating imports, is quite telling. And you notice together with Mangoma, he will not import power to drive our engines, to drive our farmers, to drive our economy. Only to import wines, mixed flour, stale chickens and some such needless goods we can grow here with better financial support. Zanu -PF has been allowing this to happen.
Fend, fight!
Is all lost? Of course not. The MDC formations are not ready for elections. Tsvangirai is all over the world, including in Austria looking for funding for his sellout politics. His party is deeply fractured, with the white lobby losing patience with his leadership, while also pushing the likes of Biti in what amounts to a negative campaign. Bennett’s recent outbursts should be seen that way. Much worse, as Eddie Cross’ most recent piece shows, the MDC-T know they will not win the forthcoming elections. I quote him: “Almost certainly it will be another GNU — but this time led by Tsvangirai as State President and the leader of a defeated Zanu-PF as first Vice President.”
This is an admission of a failure to win the forthcoming elections, seeking measly consolation in imaginary convoluted posts. An MDC outright win does not yield another GNU. That was the essence of his article tellingly titled “making progress”, and not “winning”. He is right, the MDC formations will not win. Zanu-PF will, which is why it needs to understand the politics and subterfuges of this dire moment. The land issue is back on the agenda; the issue of mining and mineral rights must be firmly on the agenda through the programme of empowerment which will constitute its central message in the forthcoming election. Both issues should be carried by Zanu-PF. This means as it fends off attacks on the previously conquered and occupied ground of land, it should at the same time, fight on in respect of the new and more exciting ground of mines and minerals.
Icho!
* nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, ZANU-PF
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COMMENT - I'm not gay (if I was, I'd say so), however this article is important in understanding the Republican party's tactics during elections. It may also shed a light on what is going on in Uganda with regards to 'The Family' and introducing all kinds of anti-gay, very draconian, but if you examine it closely, un-Constitutional criminal bills. (Read Article 21 of the Ugandan Constitution, which goes very far in protecting civil liberties.)
Secret documents reveal anti-gay marriage group planned to divide gay and black voters
by Christopher Brocklebank for PinkNews.co.uk
27 March 2012, 4:36pm
Maine, where the documents were revealed in court this weekConfidential documents made public in a court in the state of Maine yesterday revealed the leading opponents of same-sex marriage planned to defeat campaigns by “fanning the hostility” between black and gay voters and by casting President Obama as a radical enemy of marriage.
The documents, circulated by the LGBT rights group Human Rights Campaign, were marked “confidential” and contained details of the internal strategy of the National Organisation for Marriage (NOM).
An internal report on the 2008 and 2009 campaigns, in a section titled “Not a Civil Rights Project” stated: “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies”.
It continued: “Find, equip, energise and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots”.
The document also targets Hispanic voters, who Republicans have long placed hope in as allies against gay rights:
“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity – a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation”.
The Human Rights Campaign’s Media Director, Kevin Nix, who has fought NOM for many years now, said: “Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is.”
The documents also outlined NOM’s plans for the 2012 presidential election race, including a strategy that “requires defeating the pro-gay Obama agenda” and a $1 million plan in conjunction with the conservative American Principles Project to “expose Obama as a social radical.”
This section, titled Sideswiping Obama, suggested raising “side issues” – including pornography – to attack the Democrats.
The group also sought to identify “victims” of same-sex marriage, such as children raised in gay households — using a budget of $120,000 to locate “children of gay parents willing to speak on camera.”
The documents came to light in a dispute over campaign financing under Maine law, and also include detailed 2009 budget plans for the group. So far, NOM’s spokeswoman has not responded to emails seeking comments.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, HOMOSEXUALITY
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Tsvangirai’s letter of shame to Prophet TB Joshua
Saturday, 21 April 2012 23:05
Munyaradzi Huni
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has, through his close confidante Mr Ian Makone, officially invited controversial Nigerian prophet TB Joshua to come to Zimbabwe next month, as the desperate MDC-T leader tries to use the prophet to assist him to become the country’s next leader, it has been revealed.
It is understood that Mr Makone wrote a letter to TB Joshua on March 25 2012 inviting him to come and attend the National Day of Prayer slated for May 25 which would be a culmination of the ongoing “prayer” rallies that the PM has been holding around the country.
About two weeks ago, the prophet allegedly told his church during a Sunday service that was broadcast on his Emmanuel TV station that he was “headed for a troubled African country.”
However, impeccable immigration authorities told The Sunday Mail yesterday that it was highly unlikely that TB Joshua would be allowed into the country as he is known to use his alleged prophecy to meddle in politics.
Speaking to The Sunday Mail on condition of anonymity for fear of victimisation, a top MDC-T official with a strong religious background said Mr Tsvangirai’s obsession with
prophets in a bid to enhance his chances of becoming the country’s next leader had reached alarming levels.
“On the 10th of March this year, this was the PM’s birthday and on the 12th of March we held a small birthday party for him. This idea of inviting TB Joshua was mooted during this party and some of us were shocked to discover that on March 25, Makone had written a letter to TB Joshua inviting him to Zimbabwe for the National
“This took some of us by surprise because we never thought the PM could go that far but then Makone runs the PM and all we could do was just to watch. Quite a number of us in the party have our own religious beliefs and I am aware that this TB Joshua invite hasn’t gone down well with many in the party,” said the MDC-T official.
It is understood that in the letter, Mrs Makone went all the way praising the prophet giving the impression that the PM now really believes that only TB Joshua can usher him into power and not the electorate.
Reports say Mr Tsvangirai was introduced to the world of prophecy by Mrs Theresa Makone together with Locardia Karimatsenga Tembo, the woman that the PM allegedly “married and later dumped.”
“Theresa and Locardia are the ones who first visited TB Joshua and when they came back they came with bottles of what they were calling holy waters to bless the PM’s marriage to Locardia.
“The PM then went to meet TB Joshua in September 2010 and reports that we have not been able to verify say the PM was told that he would never rule the country. Even some of the PM’s kids went to meet TB Joshua.
“In the MDC corridors, people are whispering that the PM is now living in captivity of these prophecies. Why does the PM want to bring TB Joshua here if he was told that he will never rule this country? Could he be courting TB Joshua for a re-prophecy? As far as I know prophecy does not work like that.
“We also wonder why he is resorting to a foreigner like TB Joshua if he needs divine intervention because close home there is Apostle Java, Reverend Chisvo, Reverend Muriritirwa and Reverend Chundu who could have assisted him.
“Some of these reverends, who have been praying for the PM all this time are not happy that their efforts are not being recognised,” said the official.
The official said after writing the invitation letter to TB Joshua, the PM intensified his prayer rallies in preparation for the coming of the prophet during the National Day of Prayer.
Interestingly, most of the prayer rallies are being held in areas that have been hit hard by this year’s drought giving credence to claims that when he comes, TB Joshua will preach more about drought and aid to affected communities.
Reports say the prophet will also speak at length about violence and in recent weeks, the MDC-T has drummed up claims of violence around the country.
It is understood that there is a ploy to infiltrate Zanu-PF strongholds, especially in the rural areas using the prayer rallies.
While Mr Tsvangirai “seems obsessed” with TB Joshua, in Nigeria the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria has refused to allow him to join their fold.
One of the top pastors in Nigeria, Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God Enoch Adeboye even went to the extent of saying he would never worship in TB Joshua’s church.
In November 2011, pastors from TB Joshua’s church were caught on camera claiming to have healed people living with HIV and Aids and recommending that they stop taking life-saving anti-retroviral medication.
However, this backfired and the victims were later told to continue taking the drugs.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, IAN MAKONE, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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Propaganda, prophecy and prosperity
Wednesday, 18 April 2012 21:06
The mass media is to the general populace what the clergy is to the Church. Evangelism and the teaching of the word of God in the Church is what news bulletins are to the general public.
Both the mass media and the clergy serve a system for communicating messages and symbols to their respective audiences, having a compelling function to amuse, entertain, inform, and to inculcate values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour designed to orient people into specific institutional structures.
To sustain the inequalities brought about by class differences and interests, the role of the mass media has sadly been to promote a notorious systematic propaganda regime designed to protect the interests of the propertied classes. The Bible says in Matthew 24:11, “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many,” adding in verse 24, “For there shall arise false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
(The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible)
With these words, Jesus Christ was foretelling a predicament of deception in the Church, warning believers of mass deception at the hands of unscrupulous religious charlatans titling themselves as prophets, less for the anointing they purport to carry and more for legitimising their deceptive ways. One normally starts a church as Reverend so and so, then Pastor, and then Prophet or Apostle — all the time attributing these changes to God’s instruction.
Prophecy, just like propaganda, can be used as a means to control the masses under a tempestuous cloud of loathsome deception. In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, often there is a monopoly control of the media, coupled by official censorship that ensures that the media serves the ends of a dominant elite.
In a Church controlled by a false prophet, there is monopoly control of spiritual and administrative matters by “The Man of God,” ostensibly carrying out instructions from God himself, having a special calling and anointing — a calling quite unique and always superior to that of everyone else that may ever choose to be part of that church. Disagreeing, disobedience and rebellion mean exactly the same thing in a church of this nature.
Just to set the record straight, this writer totally believes in the validity of the word of prophecy, the existence of true prophets, the power of the Holy Spirit, and salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. Prophecy is always designed to direct people towards God’s plan, whether this may be through encouragement, warning, reprimanding, punishment, or giving direction. It is never about proving a point about the legitimacy of the prophet in question.
God raised so many men of little means and significance as his prophets from the Old Testament dispensation, and it was never God’s worry to necessarily find popular and respected people to be his prophets, and neither did God empower any of the prophets with powers to prove themselves. Even Prophet Elijah’s contest with Baal’s 450 false prophets was not a show of legitimacy for Elijah himself but an exposure of the deception of Baal. It was a redemption exercise and not a mere show of power.
In 2001 this writer answered to an altar call by Prophet Andrew Wutawunashe at the Chitungwiza Aquatic Complex; not so much of a complex these days. Prophet Wutawunashe had prophesied that God was showing him a “few men who are going to climb the mountain of politics,” including some who would “become political writers.”
The altar call was not for the Prophet to make politicians and political writers out of members of his congregation, but a confirmation of ambitions and callings already existent within the Church, also an assurance of God’s blessing to such initiatives.
Among the few of us who went forward to “receive God’s blessing” were the likes of George Chingarande, Patrick Huni, and Casper Shumba, all published political writers of various convictions and ideas.
It is this writer’s conviction that the purpose of this prophecy was to keep our inherent ambitions and callings within God’s plan, not necessarily to create future politicians for the Prophet or for his church — it was a plan to breed God-fearing politicians and political writers from within the Church. The 1st Corinthians Chapter 14:4 says the purpose of prophesying is to “edify” the Church, “speaking unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” (Verse 3).
Today, we read about a populist Nigerian prophet whose idea of edifying and comforting the Church is to make predictions of soccer results, pretty much just like any other gambler in the soccer-gambling syndicates, only that he says God favours him “to watch these matches before they are played.” Just like rogue gamblers fix matches to suit their predictions, false prophets also fix events to suit their prophecies.
Prophet TB Joshua did it with the first match at the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010, and repeated it when Zambia was about to play Cote d’Ivoire in the Africa Cup of Nations final this year.
When Prophet TB Joshua is not edifying the Church through predictions of soccer results, he is predicting the deaths of prominent people to edify and comfort the same church. It all started with the revisionist claims that he had prophesied the death of Michael Jackson by confiding in a “family friend” of the Jacksons, a friend he claims he had tasked to bring Michael to Nigeria “to avoid this death.” He has paraded the claimed friend before his congregation a few times.
On February 5, Prophet TB Joshua issued a despondency-bound prophecy about the death of an African head of state, indicating the death would be within 60 days.
Immediately after this prophecy the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), the church he founded and leads, issued a statement vehemently denying that the prophet had ever put a date on the prophesied death, only to release a bragging video to the contrary after the death of Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika fell within the prophesied time frame.
The prophecy about the death of an African head of state had been repeated by TB Joshua on March 18, and finally on April 1, where video footages show him twice saying the death was to be on a Thursday, although he says he was not sure which Thursday.
Confirmed reports say President wa Mutharika had a heart attack on Thursday the 5th of April, but it is not certain when he actually died, with some reports suggesting he died on Friday the 6th.
After the death of President wa Mutharika, TB Joshua’s public relations handlers were quite euphoric in proving the preciseness of the prophecy, posting numerous videos on YouTube and also carrying out complementing programmes on Emmanuel TV, SCOAN’s TV Channel. To prove that the prophecy was no fluke, TB Joshua braggingly brought to church a letter he claimed was written to him by President wa Mutharika, purportedly acknowledging that he knew the prophecy was about him. Joshua did not reveal the contents of the letter but allowed photographers to take pictures of the letter’s letterhead and signature.
It turns out that the letter in question was a mere acknowledgment of receipt of a book given to the President by TB Joshua, according to the late Mutharika’s Aide on Religious Affairs, one Billy Gama, and also according to the typist who says she was tasked to type the letter, both of them claiming to have copies of the said letter.
The prophecy about the death of an African head of state initially sounded like most of TB Joshua’s characteristic one size fits all prophecies, with the usual outlet strategy of saying, “I am praying to see if I can stop this,” something Joshua would be assured of boasting about if no head of state had died in the whole of 2012.
But also this seems to have been a classic case of the now common “prophesying from a data base” strategy, so much used by young and popular trickster prophets who mischievously memorise mobile numbers of people from written down prayer requests, only to recite them days later before prayerful and unsuspecting congregations, making impressive claims of having known people’s problems and ailments directly from God.
People blissfully forget that they provided this vital information themselves. Some junior pastors from satellite churches tell the Prophet information obtained during counselling sessions with their church members, only for the prophet to break into a sudden tongue-speaking trance during an ordinary preaching session, calling out the name of a person he says God is telling him about, and proceeding to proudly reveal that person’s problem.
The confirmation of this prophecy by the prophesied person always sends the congregation into raucous shouts of “Hallelujah!” Bibles and jackets hysterically thrown into the air in jubilation, drums and keyboards screaming to high heavens. Back to Prophet TB Joshua, the facts of his prophecy are that the successor of the late Mutharika, Joyce Banda, has been a member of Joshua’s SCOAN since 2009, and she is a widely broadcasted supporter of Prophet TB Joshua.
Joyce Banda had a public fallout with Mutharika and she is on video publicly asking SCOAN members for prayers “on this persecution.” The last visit was in November 2011, after Banda had been reported to be under police investigation for treason, something that emanated from her public endorsement of public demonstrations against President Mutharika. It was also reported that documents linking Banda to a plot to topple Mutharika with the help of “some Nigerians” were in the hands of the Police Chief in Malawi. This man was the first person to be sacked by Banda hours after the confirmation of Mutharika’s death.
The possibility that TB Joshua’s prophecy could have been based on important intelligence possibly provided by Banda and/or her aides cannot be dismissed easily without investigation, just like the likelihood that Mutharika’s death could have been medically induced by people hired to ensure Banda’s ascendancy to power is tempting enough to warrant a call for an investigation. In this case the prophecy could have played a huge role in diverting public attention from the possible criminality behind this death, what with everyone crediting Joshua for expert prophesying.
Investigating these matters would make Prophet TB Joshua a murder suspect at the worst, or an accomplice at the least — undoubtedly making him a heroic target of persecution by those supposedly used by the Devil himself to bring down the man of God; that is in the eyes of his followers.
The major attraction to the churches of emerging prophets is the gospel of prosperity, usually preached on the strength of over-promising and the power of testimonies, sometimes heavily exaggerated by those claiming to have been miraculously prospered “after the Man of God prayed for me,” or after “our father told me” this and that.
Just like the propaganda model in the US uses terrorism as a national religion to control its citizens, prosperity is used as a hook to attract the attention of poverty-stricken people in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa, overfilling them with a vacuous but addictive hope and faith that a prosperity miracle awaits them if they pray, fast and give away the little they have “to the House of God.”
The fear of evil terrorists like the ones who carried out the 9/11 attack is good enough to ensure that Westerners trust almost every word about security that comes from their politicians. Equally the fear of poverty and the desire to attain sudden and miraculous wealth make the prophet’s followers fanatical about the person and character of the prophet, and viciously defensive against any objections that may be raised in regards to the conduct of the revered man of God.
The other day one of the popular prophets in Zimbabwe was exalting back-door dealings by church members for the benefit of himself as “favour from God,” arguing that the person providing the back-door services would have been “strategically placed there by God.” This writer invited the wrath of fellow believers after pointing out that what the man of God had just said was gross heresy.
It is like writing against the brutalities of Israel today. So many times this writer has been warned not to “touch the apple of God’s eye,” whatever that means.
Propaganda, poverty, prosperity and prophecy are the four Ps we must watch out for as we seek to lead lives truly led and blessed of God.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, REASON WAFAWAROVA
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The myth of crazy-eyed African witch-hunters
Tuesday 6 March 2012
Tim Black
The horrific murder of Kristy Bamu by unstable individuals has been used to paint all African Pentecostals in Britain as potential nutters. It is a murder that stands out for being so singularly horrific.
In December 2010, 15-year-old Kristy Bamu, alongside his two brothers and two sisters, left his native Paris to spend Christmas in London with his big sister, 29-year-old Magalie Bamu, and her 28-year-old boyfriend, Eric Bikubi. During Kristy’s first night in Bikubi’s east London flat, he awoke and, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings, wet himself. Unfortunately Bikubi, a man obsessed with Kindoki, the Congolese for ‘witchcraft’, did not view this as an accident. It was a sign that Kristy was possessed by evil spirits.
Over the following four days, Bikubi, aided and abetted by Magalie, tortured Kristy to death. His mouth was smashed in with a hammer, his ears ripped apart with pliers, and his head repeatedly beaten with bottles. Then, with Kristy, starved of food and water and in immense pain, reportedly begging to die, they drowned him in the bath. Last week, the pair were found guilty of murder, and at the Old Bailey yesterday, they were given life sentences.
As heart-rending as Kristy’s death is, and as horrific as Bikubi and Magalie’s actions were, it is a unique case. Bikubi, by all accounts, was a damaged individual. Exceptionally so. Indeed, literally so. MRI scans carried out while he was imprisoned at Pentonville revealed significant brain damage, most probably caused by a childhood fall. And he himself admitted to suffering from ‘abnormal visions’, such as seeing swarms of rats. All of which merely confirmed in his mind that he was, according to Bikubi himself, ‘the chosen one’. In fact, while growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo (he moved to east London when he was seven), his behaviour was so disturbing that, as he ambiguously put it, he was kept in ‘isolation’. Magalie, meanwhile, appears to have been little more than a willing accomplice to Bikubi’s twisted will.
Yet what happened to Kristy just over two years ago is not being treated as an exceptional crime committed by a deluded, dangerous individual and his weak but willing girlfriend. It is being treated, much as so-called honour killings are, as a culturally determined crime committed by culturally conditioned individuals. In this case, it is being presented as a manifestation of the darkside of Pentecostal Christianity, an iceberg tip of the witchcraft-obsessed barbarity that lurks just out of sight, but resolutely in our midst. From the police to charities, this jump from a particular murder, with specific morally culpable protagonists, to a general societal trend, with many unthinking agents, has been eagerly made. Little wonder that even the sentencing judge seemed determined to place Kristy’s killing within the context of a broader obsession with witchcraft. So, when Magalie stated, ‘I don’t have any views [on witchcraft] because I don’t believe in it’, Judge Paget refused to believe her, despite there being no reason at that stage for her to lie. ‘[Kristy’s murder] is only explicable if you shared Eric Bikubi’s belief in witchcraft’, he insisted, before feeling the need to remind the public that ‘an explanation’ ‘does not excuse [Kristy’s murder]’.
The police, however, went further than the witchcraft-hunting judge. After the verdict was announced, detective superintendent Terry Sharpe claimed that what happened to Kristy was indeed a large-scale sociocultural problem. ‘Children are being abused and murdered in increasing numbers in Britain because their African relatives think they are “spirit children”’, he claimed. And the reason for this belief? The rise and rise, apparently, of Pentecostal Christianity. This denomination, we are told, not only encourages speaking in tongues, and a belief in the immediate presence of God, but a belief in demonic possession and exorcisms, too – which, to be fair, is hardly anathema to other well-known strains of Christianity. Untroubled by such considerations, the witchcraft-finding generals are now convinced it is the rise of this belief system, particularly among African immigrants, that has led to an assumed increase in child-abusing, infanticidal believers.
UK Charity Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, a group keen to promote the idea that a belief in witchcraft is prevalent, was clearly wary of suggesting that all Pentecostal Christians were child-murderers in the making. ‘This is not a problem with all pastors or all churches’, said an AFUACA spokesperson in the wake of Kristy’s murder. ‘But the branding of children as witches is not abating’, she cautioned, ‘it is a growing problem. There are so many children suffering in silence.’ Joining in the insinuating chorus, Thomas Bikebi, executive director of Congolese Family Centre, reinforced the impression that damning children as possessed is a widespread cultural problem. ‘There are people within the community who will say that this pair did the right thing, they killed a witch’, he said. Little wonder that one broadsheet reported witchcraft-induced abuse as a ‘hidden crime’, or as the Daily Mail put it, ‘Officials suspect grotesque acts continue to thrive behind closed doors, fuelled by a toxic combination of extreme evangelical Christianity and traditional beliefs’.
‘Hidden crime’, ‘behind closed doors’… these are telling phrases. They reveal the curious logic at work in the witchdoctoring frenzy. For it is not based on evidence of wrongdoing, or knowledge of the prevalence of witchcraft practices in certain British communities. It is based, rather, on an absence of evidence, a lack of knowledge. This void, this space of official ignorance, existing ‘behind closed doors’, has been transformed into an opportunity for official speculation, a precondition for fantasising about just how prevalent the kind of abuse meted out to Kristy Bamu really is. Not knowing has been turned into proof positive that there is something unpleasant to know.
It seems incredible, given the past few days of state-stoked hysteria and charity cheerleading, but the groundless speculation as to the prevalence of witchdoctoring remains just that: groundless speculation. Just pause for a moment to consider the facts. In the most recent English Church census of 2005, it was estimated that there were nearly one million practising Pentecostal Christians in the UK. Since 2005, the number of Pentecostal Churches has risen by around 15 per cent to nearly 4,000. So, given that there is now likely to be well over a million Pentecostal Christians practising this religion, complete with its promulgation of demonic possession and exorcism, you might expect there to be a fair few cases of the type of abuse visited upon Kristy.
But that is the thing. Since 2001, there have officially been 83 incidents involving (non-specified) so-called ritual or faith-based abuse of children. Furthermore, there have been just 17 actual prosecutions. It may be a humanly significant figure, but statistically it is of no import. Of course, the reason for such low actual figures could be that it really is a crime ‘hidden behind closed doors’. Or just perhaps, it might be because most Pentecostal Christians are not actually disturbed homicidal maniacs.
Like the brutal killing of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié by her guardians in 2000, the murder of Kristy Bamu shocks because it is the exception, not the norm. It defies our imagination rather than prompts it. Yet, like so-called ‘honour killings’ and British Pakistanis, because this brutal act has been committed by immigrants it is not simply grasped for what it is: a brutal, repugnant act. It is grasped, rather, as a cultural crime, an act sustained by the beliefs and practices of a particular ethnic grouping. Not only does this type of thinking efface the singular responsibility, indeed the criminal responsibility of the perpetrator, it also damns a whole swath of British society. Because, believe it or not, not every Pentecostal Christian routinely abuses ‘possessed’ children.
Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY
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Do not tamper with Christian nation declaration - Miyanda
By Abigail Sitenge
Sat 31 Dec. 2011, 13:54 CAT
NOBODY, including the technical committee to draft a new constitution, should tamper with the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation, says Heritage Party president Brigadier General Godfrey Miyanda.
Speaking to journalists after the 20th anniversary of the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation, Brig Gen Miyanda (left) urged Christians never to be ashamed about the declaration.
He said Christians should never be ashamed to confess Jesus Christ as Lord over Zambia because that was the purpose of the Christian nation declaration.
"As far as I am concerned, nobody should tamper with it, this is a wrong forum. I will talk about the constitution making on another forum but today (Thursday) I am saying no one must tamper with it, not even what they've called the technical committee which personally I don't agree with," he said.
And in his New Year's message, Brig Gen Miyanda urged the new government to look into the interests of the people.
"I hope the government will look after the interest of the people and to us the politicians, I have seen a lot of deceit, a lot lies in the politics of our nation. I hope that the New Year will be different. Nobody must promise things they can't do, if you can't do it, don't promise it, that's my message," he said.
Brig Gen Miyanda also warned young people against drinking alcohol during the festive period.
Speaking during the commemoration, Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia executive director Reverend Pukuta Mwanza said corruption was one of the worst forms of crime that had badly ruined the moral fibre of the country.
He said corruption had become so deeply rooted in the hearts of selfish and greedy persons, among them leaders in public office.
Rev Mwanza said the Church supported the government's commitment and that of law enforcement agencies in fighting corruption because it would protect the country's resources.
"The constitution-making process is an important undertaking in our country because it is a basis for accountability and good governance. May I correct the notion that seems to fill the general public that our primary interest in the constitution-making process is only the declaration clause. To the contrary, we are interested in the entire constitution; we want a good constitution just like every Zambian," said Rev Mwanza.
On Thursday, several church leaders, political party leaders and government representatives gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Lusaka.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, GODFREY MIYANDA
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Cleansing by applying Christian principles
By The Post
Fri 14 Oct. 2011, 13:58 CAT
WHEN Michael Sata says the country needs religious cleansing, he says something significant and fundamental which deserves some attention and deep reflection. Zambia has been declared a Christian nation. What does this mean in the context of what Michael is saying? We are not here trying o debate the merits and demerits of the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation.
We are starting from the premise that Zambia is a Christian nation. The debate on whether or not this should have been done is not something we want to go into because it has been done.
When Michael says Zambia needs a religious cleansing, we must ask ourselves what this means. It does not make any sense to call a country Christian when injustice, oppression and exploitation of the poor are what rule the day.
A Christian nation should be governed according to Christian principles. Who would not want to live in a country that is governed by Christian principles? We say this because Jesus Christ lived an exemplary life and left many lessons which, if applied, would make life wonderful.
This is why we should welcome the call for religious cleansing. We all want a country where justice, peace, love and joy can be assured for all our people. It is nonsensical to claim to be a Christian nation and yet condone the exploitation of the poor by those in authority.
No one should be allowed to personalise resources meant to improve the welfare of our people. This is something that Rupiah Banda and his pack of ravenous henchmen did with impunity.
To them, running government was one endless party where state resources could be commandeered to meet their personal interests at will. Rupiah and his family became the chief procurement officers for all government contracts. To them, running government was about making money.
The impact of their behaviour on the lives of ordinary people meant nothing. If Rupiah and his family had love for our people and cared for their joy, if they were interested in upholding Christian principles, they would not have allowed themselves to abuse our people in the way that they did.
The slogan that Rupiah seemed to enjoy very much was ‘boma ni boma'. The translation of that slogan is that government is government. What that meant is that since government is government, it can do whatever it likes. It meant that government is above the law.
This was a slogan celebrating impunity. From his behaviour, Rupiah believed that he was above the law. Having elected Rupiah as president, we ended up with many presidents - his sons were also presidents. They could do whatever they wanted. Government policy and decision making was being controlled by Rupiah and sons.
They all got drunk with power and forgot who the real bosses were. Rupiah struck terror in the hearts and minds of those that surrounded him to the extent that some of his closest friends and supporters could not take it. They exploded and left. The Bembas have a nice saying that best describes Rupiah's inability to live and work with others.
It is a simple saying but its meaning is profound. When men are counselled for marriage, they are told this: ‘ukuteka imbwa mano. Uwatekele imbwa kuchipyu yaya.' The transliteration of this saying is simply this: even keeping a dog requires kindness. If you are cruel to your dog, it will run away.
Now if you have to be kind to a dog, what about human beings, those who are created in the image of God? Isn't it only normal and fitting that we should be kind to each other, and above that compassionate? Compassion requires that we feel for the suffering of our people.
This is the quality that best defines what Christianity is. This is what defines the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are taught that he came to earth to die for the sins of others.
He gave his best for the benefit of others. Even when he was dying on the cross, he had the heart to promise paradise to a thief who was cricified together with him.
This is the kind of religious renewal that this country needs. It is a cleansing of hearts so that each of us can look to the interests of those around us and make sure that we don't do things that destroy or disadvantage others.
It is this kind of religious renewal that will help our leaders to look at service as more important than the benefits that they get from being our leaders. As Michael calls for this religious cleansing, we hope, and let us add we pray, that he will demand selflessness from his colleagues in government.
Our people want to see a government that is truly compassionate and capable of identifying with their cries, their joys, their highs and their lows. We have had a government that was prepared to compromise our people's interests regardless of what the cost was.
In many ways, our government which claimed to be running a Christian country did not behave in a Christian way. We wonder whether Rupiah ever thought that he had an obligation that went beyond himself.
He had an obligation to our people to do the right thing and beyond that, he had an obligation to God. In a Christian nation, people do not do things for their own sake. They are supposed to do them because God commands them. And when there is this recognition, fighting corruption becomes easier, delivering services to our people will definitely improve.
We are taught in the Bible that the servants of God spoke for justice. Those who claimed to work for God, the prophets and others spoke for the poor and the voiceless. The clergy in the Bible were ambassadors for the downtrodden. Those who did otherwise were dismissed as imposters.
This is something that we hope to see in our country, a clergy that fearlessly holds those in power to account. We are not necessarily asking for public criticism of those in power. No. When this is necessary, by all means let it be done. But more importantly, when our clergy engage with our leaders privately, they need to be able to communicate as clearly as possible what the cries of our people are and how they can address them.
Rupiah abused the clergy by shamefully using them as his vuvuzelas. Some of our clergy joined the ranks of Edwin Lifwekelo, Gregory Chifire and even Humphrey Siulapwa. It was shameful to watch our clergy behave like paid megaphones hired to disseminate Rupiah's propaganda. There was nothing Christian about the way some of these clergymen behaved.
This call for religious cleansing deserves all our support. We say this because if our country learns to uphold the major tenets and themes of a Christian faith, we will be much better for it.
We believe that our societies will become more organised and better ordered if Christian principles are embraced. The rule of law can only be strengthened by the upholding of Christian principles. As Michael rightly said the other day, the Ten Commandments form the basis of the root of the law that we apply today.
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, ETHICS
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