Churches engaged in soul searching over role in Zimbabwe's crisis

Some leaders fear the church will become irrelevant if it doesn't do more to speak out against the government

BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE - On a recent weekday evening, a dozen young members of the Bulawayo Baptist church met in their congregation's spacious hall for a jam session and prayer group. Seated on wooden benches amid scattered bibles, the young musicians animatedly discuss the topic of the day: praise and worship and the difference between them.

This is a church that would prefer to stay focused on its parishoners' spiritual - not political - education. But here in Zimbabwe, events on earth are not so easily ignored. President Robert Mugabe has tightened his grip on the country since winning reelection nearly a year ago. Zimbabwe is experiencing severe food shortages, skyrocketing unemployment, and heavy-handed repression of anyone who dares oppose the government.

Now spiritual leaders here are doing some soul searching about what their role in the crisis should be.

"God has heard the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe," says the Rev. Ray Motsi, the fiery pastor of this 3,000-strong congregation. "He has heard the cries of the people, not just in Israel, but also in Zimbabwe.... I don't believe the church should be involved in politics, but if politics means bread and butter issues, then I'll talk about it."

The role of African churches during crises has been an uneven one. The continent is full of haunting memories of times the church has failed to speak out for the poor and powerless - and even contributed to the turmoil. Some religious leaders here hope Zimbabwe won't be added to that list. While a few parishes have railed against Mr. Mugabe and his ruling party - even in the face of threats and violence - others have remained silent or even sided with the government.

"By and large, the church in Zimbabwe is fearful, docile, and selfish," says the small, stocky Mr. Motsi, whose manner bounces between intensity and lighthearted teasing. "The majority don't want to get involved because they are afraid they will be victimized by the government."

One of those who has been victimized is Archbishop Pius Ncube, head of the Bulawayo Catholic diocese. He is a tireless campaigner against the violence of Mugabe's regime. For his efforts, he has been vilified in the government press. These days he often sleeps in safe houses, but worries more about the safety of his elderly mother, against whom he says multiple threats have been made.

"It all depends on one man - Robert Mugabe," he says with conviction. "He is the source of all our suffering."

Fr. Ncube, Motsi, and several other ministers here have united to form Christians for Peace and Justice, a group of about 10 religious leaders and 100 members formed in response to the current crisis. But too few, they say, have joined the cause.

Indeed, not all churches here agree that the government is responsible for Zimbabwe's current plight, or that it is the responsibility of men of God to speak out against it. The majority have remained silent.

Still others have sided with the ruling party. The Anglican Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, uses his sermons to praise Mugabe and last year attempted to ban 19 parishioners from church property for their opposition to his pro-government stances.

While government foes here in Zimbabwe take inspiration from those like Nobel-laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was instrumental in ending South Africa's state-sponsored racism, and Martin Luther King Jr. - Motsi's personal hero - they also take warning from the places where churches here have failed.

Many African churches openly supported the slave trade, or opposed the fight for independence from European colonizers or for racial justice. In South Africa, for example, the Catholic church was criticized for its initial failure to challenge apartheid. In Nigeria, Christian and Muslim leaders have been accused of inciting religious violence that has left thousands dead in the past few years.

Still others have been closely tied to corrupt African regimes or have actively engaged in violence themselves. Last week, a Rwandan minister was sentenced to 10 years in prison by an international court for his involvement in that country's 1994 genocide.

"The [Zimbabwe] church runs the risk of becoming irrelevant if we don't speak out," says the Rev. Barnabus Nqindi, a handsome young Anglican priest who is saddened by the silence in his own church. "People will say, 'Where were you when I was hungry? When I was raped?' "

Fearing that churches are fomenting dissent, the government has tried to declare some meetings and church services illegal, and has prevented churches from feeding the hungry, saying that the food will be used to build support for the opposition party.

Motsi was arrested for distributing food, while Father Nqindi's colleague, Father Noel Scott, spent four days in jail before last year's election for leading a public prayer for Zimbabwe. Two weeks ago, a priest was strangled to the point of unconsciousness by police for taking pictures of a women's march against violence.

Back in his office before a trip to South Africa to garner support, Ncube - the man who may one day be remembered as Zimbabwe's version of Bishop Tutu - laments Zimbabwe's lack of religious leadership. In India, he says, there was Gandhi; in South Africa, they had Tutu.

Here in Zimbabwe, he says, there are more than 300 different churches, divided among and within themselves. While Ncube condemns Mugabe in Bulawayo, in Harare, priests serve him weekly communion.

"Mugabe has managed to divide us," he says. "Churches are no longer speaking with one voice."

*** Still others have sided with the ruling party. The Anglican Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, uses his sermons to praise Mugabe and last year attempted to ban 19 parishioners from church property for their opposition to his pro-government stances.

BUMP!

We should also help shine the spot light on South Africa and the genocide that is going on there against the Boer farmers. Zimbabwe's white farmers are almost finished off by Magebe's Communist thugs, but we need to do what we can to get Christians in US and others involved in exposing what is going on in South Africa, before it's too late. Here is an article on the killing of the South African Boers by Anthony LoBaido:

This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
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Sunday, July 28, 2002

DISPATCH FROM SOUTH AFRICA
'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer'
Death chant at ANC funeral leads to more murder of whites

Posted: July 28, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Anthony C. LoBaido

WELKOM, South Africa – The chanting of "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" at the funeral of the ANC member who coined the phrase is adding more fuel to the political fire here, as the attacks on white farmers continue unabated.

The ethnic cleansing of Southern Africa's commercial farm communities has taken the lives of 1,334 farmers, farm workers and their kin since 1994, the year the ANC took power. The farmers were killed most often in violent, organized attacks, always by young African males. Add to the death toll 12 farmers killed in Zimbabwe and four in Namibia. In 85 percent of the killings, not one item was stolen from the farms and farmhouses.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has called the farm murders of whites "the final stage of the revolution."

Said Dutch journalist Adriana Stuijt, a former anti-apartheid activist based in Holland, "If South Africa's vicious farm murders had occurred in Zimbabwe, these would have been world news. But these 'only' occurred in South Africa, and so the rest of the world remains oddly silent. Post-apartheid South Africa is apparently immune from the usual investigative journalism being conducted in the rest of the Western world."

"Why has the South African farmer become the world's most endangered species?" Stuijt asked. "Why are South Africa's few remaining commercial farmers now most at risk of being murdered in the whole world? They are being murdered at 264 per 100,000 population group. It is the highest in the world! A Nedbank probe recently described these farm attacks as 'deliberately targeting specific homesteads to kill the Afrikaner victims.'"

Stuijt noted that with more than half of South Africa's commercial farmers now already having vacated the sector permanently since 1994, "more than 1 million hectares less maize is also being harvested this year. The entire region with its 120 million people is also plunging headlong into widespread famine. … And all these facts are not unrelated."

Protected speech?

In the week after the death of ANC member of Parliament Peter Mokaba, 43 – the man who coined the ANC slogan "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" – there were at least six known farm attacks in South Africa. The Dent farming couple in KwaZulu-Natal was killed at point-blank range in front of their teen-age son, who then was kidnapped to drive the getaway vehicle. At least five other farms were violently attacked; one attacker was killed, one injured.

Also, a shot was fired at an elderly Afrikaner farmer, and a Tswana farm foreman was tied up, threatened with a crossbow and his firearm stolen.

Cassie Aucamp of the Afrikaner Unity Movement told WorldNetDaily that the Afrikaners never politicized funerals. He asked the ANC to "imagine the uproar if Afrikaners were to start chanting, 'Kill the Xhosas, kill the blacks'" at the next funeral of a murdered farmer.

In response to Aucamp's complaint to the office of the president, Mbeki issued a statement a full five days after the Mokaba funeral, which he had attended, finally condemning the slogan's use as "unacceptable" hate speech.

The South African Human Rights Commission, however, recently ruled that the ANC slogan was not hate speech, but merely an expression of "the constitutional rights to free speech."

South African Policewoman Karen Allen told WorldNetDaily she is concerned about the plight of the farmers.

"The situation is out of control. Where are these farmers going to run to?" she asked.

A South African farming activist with the Transvaal Agricultural Union told WND, "It might indeed be a good idea for the U.S. Congress to hold hearings on the farm killings and extend visas to the Boers to go live in the United States."