Nothing could have conjured the images of a riven country more eloquently than the Zimbabwe national day of prayer. An event meant to unite a country was marked by a slanging match that would not have looked out of place before a heavyweight boxing match.
At the event staged at the Glamis Arena in Harare, the country’s President, Robert Mugabe, was initially conciliatory, urging the church to point out his government’s ”shortcomings, sins of commission or omission”.
But later he turned to lay into the outspoken Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube: ”When the church leaders start being political, we regard them as political creatures — and we are vicious in that area,” he said.
This tone was not out of place in a week in which Bishop Levy Kadenge of the Methodist Church, who is the convener of the anti-government Christian Alliance that boycotted the event, had not been to his house since Thursday last week. Reports say that a Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) officer told him ”we want to wipe you out”.
His secretary general, Jonah Gokova, recently said that the bishop was not in hiding and was ”at his office”. However, Kadenge had been ”advised not to speak to the press”.
Gokova said the Christian Alliance was formed in response to concern from church members after last year’s urban clean-up operation that left up to 700 000 people destitute.
Ncube told Irin News that church leaders who have aligned themselves with the government had compromised themselves. Last month he claimed that some leaders had been bribed to support the government. ”The church should be a safe haven for the tortured. This government continues to abuse people’s rights and church leaders should be warned that their solidarity with those who have caused so much suffering leaves the victims feeling betrayed,” he said.
Head of the organisation behind the national day of prayer, Christian Denominations and Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, Bishop Trevor Manhanga, however, insisted that working with the government was the best way in finding a solution to Zimbabwe’s problems. ”We refuse to join our detractors and short-sighted citizens who do not see anything good about the country,” he told Irin News.
Analysts argue that in a country where people have lost faith in opposition politics and the ability of Mugabe’s government to find a solution to the country’s problems, many people have turned to Christianity.
They point out that the church has, consequently, become the new arena for the control of the minds and hearts of the people. Analysts say that the church is no longer reading from the same gospel at a time when people, despairing of the divided opposition, are looking to it for leadership.