Zimbabwe will never go to the dogs

Zimbabwe will never go to the dogs. "Munyika muno makafira munhu mukuru. Mwari haangatenderi kuti anyadziswe" (God will not allow this country to go to the dogs because a very important person died in this country. He will not allow his name to be put to shame.)


This was the response of an elder of the Zion Christian Church when I asked him whether the prophecy from the church that Zimbabwe was going to regain its status as the region's breadbasket and its currency was going to regain its strength and compete against the South African rand, the Botswana pula and the United States dollar would be fulfilled.

That was six years ago, and he was talking about Samuel Mutendi, the founder of the ZCC, who died in 1976 and has been replaced by Nehemiah.

The prophecy came when Nehemiah decided to build a temple which accommodates up to 18 000 people at Mbungo Estates, the administrative headquarters of the church.

Construction of the church started in October 2005. Things were already tough then but nobody knew that they would get worse. But Nehemiah knew because he told his people that he was launching the construction of the church when things were tough to prove that nothing was impossible before God.

He even refused donations from outsiders because he insisted that the church must be built by church members so that when it was completed each would receive his or her own blessings.

As a journalist, I had to battle every day with what my church told me and what was on the ground. Things seemed to be going in completely different directions.  

Inflation at the time was 11 000 percent. I did not think it would get worse, but it did, reaching officially 231 million percent, but one American analyst put it at 6.5 sextillion percent at its height- which meant 65 plus 20 zeros after that or 6 500 000 000 000 000 000 000%

The only person who seemed to be enjoying himself at the time was United States ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell. He said it was now only a matter of months, if not weeks before President Robert Mugabe was kicked out.

“People have completely lost faith in the currency and that means they have completely lost faith in the government that issues it," he said.

Six years have gone by, Mugabe is still in power but the Zimbabwe dollar is no more. Inflation is currently 2.49 percent probably the lowest in the region.

Agricultural production is slowly picking up but there are some people fighting to rubbish this because it means something else. Instead of celebrating that the country is becoming the region’s breadbasket again, they would rather bury their heads in the sand because it also indirectly means that the land reform programme is beginning to bear fruits.

But the Zimbabwe dollar is still nowhere to be seen. Some quarters say it won’t be brought back for another five years. The first inclination would be to say the prophecy was wrong. After the trials and tribulations that I have gone through which are tabulated in my eBook, I have no doubt it will come back, probably sooner than most people else think.

See, I have been asking myself, are this year’s elections, the watershed elections? Why are they being held this year? These elections were supposed to be held in 2010- that is 18 months after the formation of the inclusive government, but they were not. 2011 came and went, and so did 2012.

Why 2013? This is a scared year because this year the Zion Christian Church is celebrating its centenary-to mark 100 years of true prophecy.

Is it just a coincidence that the elections are being held when the ZCC is celebrating 100 OF TRUE PROPHECY?

I am not supposed to mix church and politics, but remember I am a journalist. I am just asking questions.
As a Christian I cannot forget: “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?”- Number 23 vs. 19.

But more importantly that we are celebrating 100 YEARS OF TRUE PROPHECY.

When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles -The background

Prophecy is one of the cornerstones of our church but my journalism gut feeling, at times, made me question the prophecy. I was not supposed to. But, I could not help it. Mugabe had just won a six-year term that would see him in office up to 2008. Bush and Howard were facing elections the following year. Blair was going to the polls in 2005. 
 

Mugabe was facing a crucial party congress in 2004 at which everyone expected him to step down at least from the party but he had to remain Head of State until 2008.  He could not hand over power to his deputy, or someone else. The country’s constitution did not allow this. Anyone who took over from Mugabe, if not elected, could only act as president for 90 days after which he or she had to call an election.

The problem was that Mugabe had also become very unpopular. His worst enemy was the economy. It was in shambles. The country had no fuel, no cash, and no food. I remember leaving my car in a fuel queue for one month before withdrawing it to look for an alternative source. I had to rely on my cousins who worked for large retail grocery shops for basics like maize meal, sugar and bread which had become so difficult to get that most people had to bribe shop assistants to get them. Inflation was galloping.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change which had given Mugabe a scare in the 2000 parliamentary elections by winning 57 of the 120 elected seats, becoming the largest opposition party in the history of the country including the colonial period, was piling pressure on Mugabe to go. It had refused to accept the results of the 2002 presidential poll.

Five candidates contested the elections. Mugabe polled 1 681 212 votes which was 56 percent of the total vote of nearly three million. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai came a close second with 1 262 403 votes or 42 percent of the poll. The other candidates were miles away. Tarugarira Wilson Kumbula only won 31 368 votes. Shakespeare Maya had 11 906 and Paul Siwela, a paltry 11 871. Tsvangirai claimed Mugabe had stolen the election and did not accept the result.

A year later, an opinion poll by the Mass Public Opinion Institute, which received funding from the United States government through its international development agency, showed that 51.3 percent of those polled wanted Mugabe to go. The majority said Tsvangirai should be the next president. He received 35.8 percent of the vote. Simba Makoni, who had been fired by Mugabe as the country’s Finance Minister, was a distant second with 15.2 percent of the vote. Party chairman John Nkomo was in third place with only 5.6 percent just pipping Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa who had long been regarded as the heir apparent, or Son of God. He had 5.5 percent of the vote.

It was this background that made me question the prophecy. But it still nagged me because prophecy is not only the cornerstone of our church, it has never been wrong.  The Bible in 2 Peter 1 verses 18-21 told me: “We ourselves heard this voice coming from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain.  So we are even more confident of the message proclaimed by the prophets. You will do well to pay attention to it, because it is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the Day dawns and the light of the morning star shines in your hearts. Above all else, however, remember that no one can explain by himself or herself a prophecy in the Scriptures.  For no prophetic message ever came just from human will, but people were under the control of the Holy Spirit as they spoke the message that came from God.”

Mark 3 verses 28 and 29 got me thinking even more seriously. It said: “I assure you that people can be forgiven all their sins and all the evil things they may say.  But whoever says evil things against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, because he has committed an eternal sin.”

As a journalist I was guided by the need to seek the truth. Prophecy was foretelling. But the Scriptures told me it was more than that. It was revelation. Revealing something before it happened. What kept bothering me and drawing me back to the prophecy in the bible and the church was that the prophecy that Mugabe would outlast his enemies had not been about the political situation in the country. It was about an impending visit to Britain and the United States by our church leader Bishop Nehemiah Mutendi.

Bishop Mutendi had trained as a teacher but he left the profession to take over leadership of the church after the death of his father, Samuel. He was not even the oldest son but the anointed one. He had embarked on a mission to spread the gospel to the West because, he said, he wanted to show how God had manifested himself in Africa.

The prophet had told church elders, at an ordinary Sunday service in Harare, that during the Bishop's visit, there would be a big omen to show the world that the "Man of God"-as the bishop is also referred to- was in the area.  It was only in passing that the prophet had warned church elders to tell their members not to dabble in politics.

Some church members were now active in politics because of the general disenchantment and this was causing friction within the church between those who supported President Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front and those who supported the Movement for Democratic Change.

"Taurirai vanhu kuti vasiyane nezvenyika. Ngavasimbe pakunamata nokuti murume uyu haabvi pachigaro kusvika vavengi vake vainda. Ndizvo zvinonditaurira Jehovha," the prophet said in Shona, the vernacular language spoken by more than 80 percent of Zimbabwe's people. (Tell your people to leave politics alone and concentrate on worshiping the Lord. This man (Mugabe) is not going to leave office until all his enemies are gone. That is what the Lord has said).

This is the second chapter of my kindle book: When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles,which is available only through Amazon. The book is not about the church or about Mugabe but about my experiences in the Zion Christian Church. If,  in the process, this helps to spread the word about the ZCC then I would have done my part because the church and its leader Bishop Mutendi are not only preaching the Word of God in Zimbabwe and across the World but they are also promoting the development of Zimbabwe, which former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere said was the Jewel of Africa. As it is said in Isaiah 2 vs 2 "that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" so will Zimbabwe. For my fellow Zimbabweans who have no means of buying this book online, I will be serialising it on this blog, bit by bit. So follow this blog.

When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles

I heaved a sigh of relief when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first black President of the United States on January 20, 2009. I am a black Zimbabwean, but it was not the fact that Obama was black that excited me. It was the exit of his predecessor, George Bush. 

I had nothing against Bush, either. But I felt relieved when Bush stepped down because his departure was the fulfilment of a prophecy that had dogged me for six years pitting my journalism principles against my religious beliefs.

I had been a journalist for over 30 years then. I was, and still am, a member of the Zion Christian Church, a Zimbabwean-based Christian organisation that has spread its wings to neighbouring countries as well as to the United Kingdom and the United States.  

A prophet from our church had said way back in 2003 that despite the country's economic woes, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe would outlast his “enemies” who were calling on him to step down and had imposed sanctions on him and his top lieutenants. 

The prophet did not name the “enemies” but Mugabe’s main adversaries at the time were John Howard of Australia, Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and George Bush.

Mugabe had become one of the most hated men in the world. British academic and Guardian columnist George Monbiot said, according to the world’s press Mugabe was the most evil man on earth, besides Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Osama Bin Laden of Al Qaeda.

His crime was that he had taken land away from whites. Mugabe was a monster because he had usurped the natural order.

“The seizure of the white farms is both brutal and illegal,” Monbiot wrote in the Guardian. “But it is merely one small scene in the tragedy now playing all over the world. Every year, some tens of millions of peasant farmers are forced to leave their land, with devastating consequences for food security. For them there are no tear-stained descriptions of a last visit to the graves of their children. If they are mentioned at all, they are dismissed by most of the press as the necessary casualties of development.”

He continued: “Ten years ago, I investigated the expropriations being funded and organised in Africa by another member of the Commonwealth. Canada had paid for the ploughing and planting with wheat of the Basotu Plains in Tanzania. Wheat was eaten in that country only by the rich, but by planting that crop, rather than maize or beans or cassava, Canada could secure contracts for its chemical and machinery companies, which were world leaders in wheat technology. The scheme required the dispossession of the 40 000 members of the Barabaig tribe. Those who tried to return to their lands were beaten by the project’s workers, imprisoned and tortured with electric shocks. The women were gang-raped. For the first time in a century, the Barabaig were malnourished. When I raised these issues with one of the people running the project, she told me, ‘I won’t shed a tear for anybody if it means development.’

“The rich world’s press took much the same attitude: only the Guardian carried the story. Now yet another member of the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, is funding a much bigger scheme in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Some 20 million people will be dispossessed. Again this atrocity has been ignored by most of the media.”

According to Monbiot, the reason was that: “These are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world’s projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural order.”

As a black Zimbabwean who had grown up in Rhodesia, I agreed with Monbiot’s argument to some extent. Mugabe was being punished for trying to right a wrong. The figures told the story. The outcry in Zimbabwe was about the fate of 4 000 white farmers. No one had shed a tear for 40 000 black farmers in Tanzania. And there was dead silence over the future of 20 million Indians.  

At the same time, after 23 years in power, I felt that Mugabe had overstayed his welcome. The problem that bothered me, however, was who should get rid of him? To me, it was simple. It had to be the people of Zimbabwe. They had elected him to power. They should vote him out. 

The moment someone else stepped in, I felt quite offended.  Somehow, I just felt that anyone who tried to help was implying that Zimbabweans were so stupid that they did not realise that Mugabe was oppressing them. They were so daft that they could not even vote him out.  

But more importantly I always had these questions hanging at the back of my mind. Was Mugabe, as an individual entirely to blame or it was the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front as a party that had to blame?  Agreed Mugabe was the leader of the party and the government and therefore shouldered all the blame, but I just thought there was too much focus on one man and not the system.

The other question was why were all these foreigners trying to help us? Did they not have enough problems of their own at home? If so, what was in it for them? Surely there were no free lunches in this world. As they said in my language: “Inyasha dzei kupisika mwana wemvana madzihwa?” (Why should someone be so concerned about the child of a single mother as to wipe off his running nose?)

This is the introduction of my kindle book: When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles,which is available only through Amazon. The book is not about the church or about Mugabe but about my experiences in the Zion Christian Church. If,  in the process, this helps to spread the word about the ZCC then I would have done my part because the church and its leader Bishop Mutendi are not only preaching the Word of God in Zimbabwe and across the World but they are also promoting the development of Zimbabwe, which former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere said was the Jewel of Africa. As it is said in Isaiah 2 vs 2 "that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" so will Zimbabwe. For my fellow Zimbabweans who have no means of buying this book online, I will be serialising it on this blog, bit by bit. So follow this blog.