The Sunday News
Khumbulani Vodloza Sibanda
SINCE Friday last week social and mainstream media have been abuzz with debate and opinions over the pastoral letter issued by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ZCBC) last Friday “on the current situation in Zimbabwe.”
Many people and groups mainly in the opposition camp came out in support of the document largely because it was targeted at Government and, by extension, President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Most of the views on the issue were very subjective and it is evident that people supported the document and its content not because they understood it but because it supported their anti-Government position.
The number of inconsequential organisations that crept out of the woodwork to support the clerics especially after the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Monica Mutsvangwa response to the letter on Saturday was astonishing.
The content of the statements of solidarity exposed the fact that the quantity of support was largely based on emotion than reason. They exposed their blind hate for President Mnangagwa and Government which is not supported by any good reason. One can only guess that the main reason is that the President leads a party of winners.
The bible counsels Christians to pray for their national leadership and Government and never encourages confrontation. The letter was partial and biased right from the beginning. It was headlined “The March has not ended” which was a word play on the opposition’s failed 31 July 2020 protest which was calculated to remove President Mnangagwa from power in the name of demonstrating against corruption.
The clerics vainly attempted to explain this by claiming that the march to liberate the country, which ran from the 1960s to 1980, should continue but the drift was very clear. Before one analyses some of the issues raised by the ZCBC, one needs to look at the bishop’s understanding of their role in society biblically.
Instead of praying for Zimbabwe and its leadership, the bishops displayed their hunger for recognition as equal players in the socio-political fabric of Zimbabwe. They self-righteously complained that the failure by the South African envoys, who visited Zimbabwe recently, “to make broad consultations with the church and civil society . . .was most regrettable.” Instead of praying for the country and its leaders, the bishops were worried about their failure to secure a place at the high table where discussion on various matters affecting the country are discussed.
Instead of being intercessors for the nation and its leadership, they wanted to have a say in how this great country is run.
The letter exposed the clerics’ increasingly fleshly orientation when their calling bids them to be spiritual people. It showed that they have become more of opposition activists than men of the cloth. How else can one explain priests’ support for an opposition political campaign such as #ZimbabweanLivesMatter? How can one explain their statement that “the voices of various Governments, the European Union, the African Union and the UN on the desperate situation in Zimbabwe have not only confirmed the seriousness of human rights breaches by Government agents but the need to rally behind #ZimbabweanLivesMatter.”
The bishops tried to sound neutral but their adoption of the opposition lingo in the rhetoric question: “Is this the Zimbabwe we want?” sold them out. The Catholic Bishops claimed the high moral ground to lecture Government by quoting the biblical prophet Micah who they said “championed the poor and the oppressed.” Put differently, they sought the world to regard them as the latter day Micah, but the prophet’s moral uprightness is beyond reproach. Micah did not sweep issues of the raping and impregnation of nuns and female parishioners by the clergy as do these self-righteous senior priests.
By their own admission Micah “cared for God’s people with profound compassion.” The bishops cannot claim to be today’s Micahs when they are converting schools such as St Ignatius College into private institutions to make more money at the expense of the children of the poor. One wonders which poor the bishops were talking about. They even had the cheek to consistently refer to themselves in the document as “your shepherds” when the moral bankruptcy stinks all the way to the Vatican.
The Catholic Bishops called for “our politics to build a united nation and not to divide us” when, in fact their letter divided the nation right from the level of a grassroots parish in Chikuruwo or Kambuzuma. The church brings together people of various political backgrounds. The moment a cleric attacks a party in Government, he also attacks his own parishioner who supports the party. When a bishop embraces an opposition campaign against a ruling party, the President and Government, he alienates a parishioner who does not agree with the campaign.
Most important of all, he trashes the parishioner’s Constitutionally-assured right to associate with a political party of their choice.
The tone of the ZCBC letter gave the impression that Government did not recognise the church as an integral part of the Zimbabwean society but nothing is further from the truth. On 19 December last year, President Mnangagwa met members of the Inter-Denominational Council of Churches at State House to discuss various issues affecting the country. It is, therefore, grossly unfair for the Catholic to claim non-consultation.
There is a tendency among some denominations to absent themselves from such gatherings for fear of being labelled Zanu- PF churches by the opposition only for them to issue complaints like the ZCBC pastoral letter’s contents.
Gatherings such as the one convened by the President in December enable churches to communicate their views and concerns to Government. They open communication channels for continued communication so that church can continue to interact with Government for the good of citizens. It is only when church spurns such forums that the nations witnesses the abominations like the so called pastoral letter, which in fact, read like an opposition political commissar’s address. The letter has generated unnecessary drama by the rogue “shepherds.”
The bishops questioned the recent US$3.5billion compensation deal signed between Government and white former commercial farmers arguing that it did not address the welfare of former commercial farm workers. When the West imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2001 resulting in thousands of factory closures and mass retrenchments, they were conspicuous by their silence over the welfare of the retrenchees. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
The clerics sensationally indicated that, “it is not clear to us as your bishops that the national leadership we have has the knowledge, social skills, emotional stability and social orientation to handle the issues that we face as a nation.” This sounded more like an opposition campaign message than a “pastoral” statement from senior priests who are expected to know Paul’s message to the Romans (Romans 13.1-3) on the need to respect those in authority. The scripture reads as follows;
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of God, and those that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Do you want not to be afraid of those in power? Do what is good, and you shall receive praise from the same.”
The senior priests are advised that if they are not happy with the sitting Government, instead of pushing opposition protest campaigns, they have another chance to vote for a leader of their choice in 2023.
