[Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo] Pius Ncube Fails Dismally (Zimbabwean Communist enemy propaganda)

When Pope John Paul II speaks, the world listens. Why? He is the leader of one of the biggest and most influential Christian denominations in the world - the Catholic Church.

In the same vein, Billy Graham is considered the United States' national cleric, and when he speaks, America listens.

Recently, George Bush (Snr) asked him for scriptures to use during the burial of the late President Ronald Reagan. And since Graham was in hospital, he told him to read from Psalm 37. Knowing how Americans turn everything into pop culture, it is not surprising that Psalm 37 is in vogue right now.

When Archbishop Pius Ncube speaks the world listens. Why? He is the Archbishop of the Catholic laity in Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo.

During the week beginning March 8, 2004, I listened to two reports on and about Zimbabwe on the Voice of America's Studio 7. The reports contained the usual stuff: Mugabe-Zanu PF-Zimbashing.

One report caught my attention - and that was about the Rt Reverend Archbishop Pius Ncube, and his visit to South Africa as a "political activist' and religious leader. The report extensively zeroed in on the Right Reverend's views about the Government of President Robert Mugabe. And the reporter was none other than "Bernard Mandizvidza", who thinks that by masking himself under a false name he has fooled all Zimbabweans.

The vitriolic attack on the person of President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF Government by Archbishop Ncube was quite perturbing. It was so venomous that any sane person listening would have wondered that the words attributed to Archbishop Ncube, especially in the Shona bulletin, were coming from a man of the cloth.

Upon reflection, I realised why there are diametrically opposing viewpoints about clerics engaging in politics. As a Catholic, I would want to know from Archbishop Ncube whether he expresses his views independent of both the Christian and Catholic doctrine. He is an Archbishop with a huge following in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but followers who, despite their gender, race, colour, creed and political affiliation, look up to him for leadership and guidance in Christian spiritual matters.

It was very disturbing to hear Archbishop Ncube say that he will never forgive President Mugabe because of the human rights violations perpetrated against the people of Matabeleland in the early 80s.

I then wondered whether the Bible, which contains the Word of God for Christians, is also his point of reference when he talks about forgiveness.

Below are a few biblical references regarding forgiveness, including the aspect of forgiving those who have wronged us.

According to one reference, "forgiveness is an important part of our walk with the Lord; it is not an option; it is a command. In His Word, God tells us repeatedly that if we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven by our Father.

If we do not forgive others, "unforgiveness" continues to grow in our spirits and turns to resentment, bitterness and hatred, eventually overtaking us completely

Thus, it is worrying that a person who stands in front of huge congregations, day in, day out, should express such a strong viewpoint: unforgiveness.

The Archbishop went on to express how he had refused to be bought off by the Zanu-PF Government, when they offered him a farm in Matabeleland North, a farm that belongs to a well-known personality who, sadly, has always been referred to as a Zanu-PF apologist (whatever that means), Dr Ibbo Mandaza.

However, I wonder how much the Archbishop has been pocketing (since he started his anti-Zimbabwe crusade) in the form of speaking fees and per diems, and all this in foreign currency, I am sure, since he seems to be so well known outside of Zimbabwe.

By virtue of his anti-Zimbabwe or call it anti-Mugabe stance, Archbishop Ncube has made the position of Catholics in Zimbabwe very difficult. The same brush now paints us all. The Archbishop's prejudicial sentiments breed intolerance and hatred, and it is also a clear manifestation of the refusal to submit (and not subjugate oneself) to authority as the Lord teaches all Christians, meaning that he is failing dismally to lead by example.

Jesus had a clear-cut understanding of submission (not subjugation nor subservience) to authority. Which authority is the Archbishop telling us to submit to? Men of the cloth should remember that even during Jesus' time, He knew that there was a place for Caesar and a place for God, and Caesar's rule never made Him depart from His core business. He submitted Himself to Caesar's authority by paying taxes and by telling the Jews to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar. To demonstrate His respect for that authority, He actually paid taxes.

The Word of God, which Archbishop Ncube represents, is absolute truth, and not obsolete, and we cannot select parts of it to satisfy our little gratifications.

Submission to authority is further taught by St. Paul, one of Christ's greatest Apostles, in his letter to the Romans:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.

Therefore, it is necessary to submit to authorities, not only because of possible punishment, but also because of conscience.

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honour, then honour. (Romans 13:1-7 [NIV])

Religion appeals to people's spiritual inner being, notwithstanding one's ideological/political leanings. Why then do we have clerics, who should be preaching love (Agape, 1 Corinthians 13; 1-13), preaching the exact opposite?

Another observation is how some men of the cloth shamelessly and openly take sides through the use of the mass media. There is, for example, a cleric who only writes to certain privately owned media. By virtue of their positions, they forget that they are representatives of the people, irrespective of political and religious persuasion. This particular cleric writes in papers that openly support such dastardly acts like homosexuality. Am I missing something here?

The papers they write for are also difficult to access, especially by the majority of the people, so who are they writing for?

To Archbishop Ncube and the likes of him, I'll reiterate that you have put Catholicism in bad light, making it appear as though all Catholics are on a collision course with Government. As teachers/leaders, it is important that your opinion pieces appear in all media or, better still, use the Catholic magazine.

And, please go back to the Church's core business, i.e. preaching the Word of God, for there are still millions of lost sheep who are waiting for the Word of Salvation entrusted to you by the Lord; not the divisive messages with dubious doctrines full of hatred, intolerance and hypocrisy.

The Church in Africa should also do some soul-searching, especially after the Rwandan genocide when a number of Catholic nuns and bishops were accused of fomenting the atrocities The International Court of Justice has already tried and sentenced some.

The double standards that our clerics display are also sickening. Archbishop Ncube, for instance, only remembers the atrocities committed by the Mugabe Government, but decides to turn a blind eye to the genocide that has been perpetrated by colonialists not only in Zimbabwe, but also across Africa since they "discovered" the continent it. Right now, HIV/Aids is threatening to decimate us all, including men of the cloth, but we haven't heard you talking about the origins of such a deadly virus, which seems only to love the warm climate and bundus of Africa more than any other part of the world. It knows not the immorality that goes on in the majority of the Western countries. Come on! Get real!

The Middle East is burning, but to people like Archbishop Ncube, they (Iraqis, Palestinians, etc) probably deserve it because they rejected Christ. Soon and very soon, Sodom and Gomorrah will be in our backyards when gays and lesbians demand same sex marriages. Our neighbour in the south, who loves to mimic everything that is Western, is already under threat for the South African gays and lesbians are taking their government to court over that issue. Who says their sponsors cannot bring it to Zimbabwe? We forget so quickly that it seemed like a joke that in 1997, the Gays and Lesbians' Association of Zimbabwe (GALZ) booked a stand at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair --- and they got it, while Moslems were denied the right to display because of somebody's warped religious prejudices.

When President Mugabe reacted (a reaction that should have come from clerics across the nation), all hell broke loose. What was the end result? GALZ are still here, and they have booked themselves a permanent place in the TelOne Telephone Directory, and boldly too. That's human rights and freedom of expression for you and me, and our men of the cloth says it's OK because if they speak out they will be trampling on these people's human rights!

Men of the cloth, many of us "hunger and thirst for righteousness", but we cannot be filled, for those who are supposed to be our shepherds seem lost. How we wish that they could look up to personalities such as David, a man after God's own heart, who fulfilled God's promises during his generation.

It is interesting to hear that you have outreach programmes Down Under in Australia. After all, isn't this the heartland of the Rhodesian lobby? Of course, you need the donor dollars also, not to ensure that God's Word has reached every part of Zimbabwe, but for your personal glories. But how well are you known in Zimbabwe? I never forget that at the height of the Constitutional Commission's work in 2000, one Sunday morning mass had to be rushed because there were representatives from the CCJP who had come to explain to the believers at Uganda Martyrs, Mufakose Parish, about the work of the CCJP. This was close to more than 30 years after the organisation had been formed. I wondered whether all along the Catholic believers in Mufakose did not have needs that required the services of CCJP. But then, I also remembered that Mike Auret (Snr) was then the director of the organisation and that he was part of the regime change think-tanks. He wanted to use the Church to campaign for the "No Vote" for the draft constitution, and at the same time, work on a regime change, through the call for a new constitution, under the banner of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), which was then led by Morgan Tsvangirai. This he cannot deny. For most of the NCA groundwork was done by Mike Auret (Jnr), and in 1997, presentations were made to select individuals. The South African model was his most favourite.

Here's a United Press International dispatch:

A critic of the Robert Mugabe government in Zimbabwe warns next year's elections in the troubled African nation will neither be free nor fair.

Speaking in London, Archbishop Pius Ncube said he had evidence of massive electoral fraud and called for an independent electoral commission to oversee the 2005 elections, the BBC reported.

In the last presidential vote in 2002, which Mugabe won with 54 percent, some 800,000 dead people were on the electoral roll, Ncube said.

Mugabe this week promised to reform electoral laws.

But Ncube said the people were "desperate" and said Zimbabwe is facing a severe food crisis.

"We think there is a starvation plan... Mugabe will use [food] politically, he's done that in the past and he'll do it again,' he said.

Local election observers and some of their international counterparts, including the European Union and the Commonwealth, had declared the March 2002 presidential election neither free nor fair.

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Not sure which forum I should have placed this on, but I chose this one because the Archbishop is a religious official.

It looks like we have one brave and prominent Zimbabwean standing for the truth despite the yoke of Communism, and I commend the great Archbishop. Pope John Paul II is said to have played a key role in the downfall of the Soviet Union and its Communist philosophy and atheist theology.

That Communism leads to famine is not new; history tells us that famine is the normal result of the implementation of Marxism, especially in applying that economic tyranny to the agricultural sector.

Such was the true Ukrainian miracle: the transformation of a European breadbasket into a famished wasteland. No drought nor flood nor hurricane nor plague of locust could wreak such havoc upon a people and so decimate a land of milk and honey. Only government could do this, and through Communism and its political, social, and economic tyranny, it did for year after year, decade upon decade, until the repressive government and its bankrupt philosophy could survive no more.

And yet Communism survives still, in North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. It persists in Burma, Laos, Iran, and Libya. And Communism is coming to Zimbabwe and, now, Venezuela.

Famine is the predictable result. Does God want his people to starve to death? Unequivocably no. We believe in a culture of life. Government-imposed famines (wherein the "more equal" eat adequately and the "most equal" eat lavishly) invariably are contrary to the ideas that we hold dear as Christians, and proper love of our neighbor requires the good Archbishop to do everything that he can to ensure that his flock--and all Zimbabweans--can eat.

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Onward to the religious issues.

Jesus was indeed God, but while on Earth, He was fully human, the Son of Man and the Son of God. Being God, He could have established for Himself a vast temporal empire, but that was not the plan of the Father. As a man, Jesus was an ordinary plebe; He was not an Emperor, He ruled nothing, although He did have His Apostles, and He did not find himself in command of the greatest fighting force that the world has ever seen.

In His capacity as a man--and He was fully human and fully God at the same time, not some sort of demigod--He was a mere carpenter from Nazereth. Until He died for our sins and rose again, His Apostles were very few in number and frankly rather uncommitted. There were other Disciples, but one can only surmise that these were mostly even less convinced of His Divinity during his ministry. The miracle of the Pentecost is in no small part that the same Apostles who had denied and doubted Him rapidly became the brave leaders of a rapidly growing Church.

Even though Jesus the man was not politically powerful, He did not have to be politically powerful to save lives. The Gospels do not describe famines, nor do Caesar's troops, however repressive, seize farms, nor does Jesus live in a war zone. If you read the Gospel, you see that the biggest scourges against the life of humanity in his day were various infirmities and illnesses from leprosy to blindness. Although undeniably poor, even these infirm apparently were not starving in Jesus's day.

So what if Jesus paid taxes to Caesar. Life itself was very possible under the regime of the Caesar of the Roman Empire. Mugabe, by contrast, is starving his people to death. Indeed, it would be irresponsible of the Archbishop of Bulawayo not to oppose Mugabe. Obviously, the Archbishop has recognized the imporbability of converting the Communist dictator, and has progressed along other means.

To forgive Mugabe would require contrition on the part of Mugabe and his determination to impove or even to maintain the lives of the Zimbabwean people. Although Jesus did offer forgiveness, He commanded those whom He forgave to "go and sin no more." Because Mugabe lacks even the pretense of an intention to refrain from sinning hereafter (and murder by starvation is a sin), forgiveness is not an option. Even Jesus, in the commissioning of His Apostles, explicitly gave them the option of denying forgiveness of sins. Why? Because some people will not strive to sin no more. Until Mugabe changes his ways, he will be among them.

The Archbishop merely seeks food for his people. I'm not an expert on the Christian position on submission to government, but I can guarantee you that even Christianity gives the believer to defy the government to preserve life or to practice religion. Indeed, for three centuries after the Resurrection, worshipping Christ as God was forbidden and punishible by death in the Roman Empire, but the religion flourished nevertheless.

Finally, this propagandist (author) dastardly mentions the inaction of the Church to prevent the Rwandan genocide (about which I admittedly am no expert) in his bashing of the action of an Archbishop against the ongoing genocide by famine in his own country. Perhaps genocide by famine is somehow less violent and less media-attractive than genocide by machete, but it is indeed the same sort of cruel mass murder.

Then the propagandist launches into a diatribe about the other ills that have plagued the African Continent over the past century. But let's get real here: HIV can take a decade to run its course, but famine can kill hundreds of thousands in a single season. Can one rationally oppose the Archbishop for not diluting his message about an urgent problem that threatens the lives of millions this very year? Of course not. Again, the propagandist is irrational; however much he demands that we "get real," he needs to get real himself--if only he could get real and keep his head attatched to his body in today's Zimbabwe.

May God bless the Archbishop and may God save the people of Zimbabwe from the yoke of Communism.

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