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Beware of churches' initiative
Comment, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
November 05, 2006

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=21&id=5171

THE churches in their latest initiative recently launched in Harare have delivered themselves to Zanu PF on a plate. As a result they run the danger of becoming ensnared in the ruling party’s sinister web of deceit and diversion.

The government and the ruling party will play along because the initiative will buy them much-needed breathing space but the end result will mean nothing except an extension to Zanu PF’s sclerotic rule.

For the government, getting the churches to come together to speak with one voice and vision is a major coup. Since Zimbabwe is made up of various churches, the government will claim that it has the support of all citizens of this country and that any dissenting voices are of people being paid to destabilise the country.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The churches have misread and mistimed the situation and have misdirected themselves. The churches’ initiative — The Zimbabwe We Want — must be seen in the context of recent overtures by government to church leaders who were wined and dined at State House. It is billed as an attempt to create dialogue with the State when there is no reciprocity on the part of government. There can be no dialogue when President Robert Mugabe declares certain aspects non-negotiable.

The essence of dialogue is that people approach it with an open mind and arrive at a common position.

There was also a fundamental flaw in the way the whole matter was handled. Mugabe and the political parties should have been the last port of call. They would then have been presented with the outcome of consultations with the people.

Despite Mugabe’s posturing, the government appears to support the initiative by the churches but has no intention of following it to its logical conclusion. They will milk it of its value and drag their feet, in the process creating false expectations. By the time the churches realise that they were misled, Zanu PF and the government will be selling the country another illusion.

The government desperately needs a pretext to explain its heel-dragging on political reform. The church dialogue provides a perfect excuse to do nothing while telling international observers and the region that it is engaged in talks. It also needs a mirage on which it can focus national attention between now and next month’s Zanu PF national conference in Goromonzi, and after that the discussion around whether or not there will be Presidential elections in 2008. The churches’ intervention was fortuitous for the government and the ruling party.

But there is a history to all this. There have been previous attempts by government to exploit willing or naïve members of the clergy in order to prolong its term. Andrew Wutawunashe, Obadiah Musindo, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, Father Fidelis Mukonori and others have all betrayed their calling to serve the interests of the regime. Who can forget Peter Nemapare’s performance at State House earlier this year?

The churches need to be informed by the role the church played during the struggle for independence and learn to avoid such pitfalls. While the churches believe that such pieces of legislation as AIPPA and POSA need to be repealed or amended, the government has a different interpretation and we saw this when promises to this effect were made to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

The government is good at promising reforms but it is also a master of deceit.

The national vision document is another clever hoax by the government and Zanu PF to divert attention from the administration’s real and mounting failures. Sadly, the churches have become unwitting partners.

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