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Letter
to Methodist Recorder
Graham
Shaw
July 10, 2004
The minute of
the Methodist Conference of 2003 relating to Zimbabwe reads "Conference
has heard of the difficult situation in Zimbabwe". That frankly
pathetic response to a major international crisis causing intense
suffering to millions of Zimbabweans provoked at least four Districts
around the Connexion to take a closer look at the developing tragedy
in Zimbabwe, and in the result to move strongly to persuade Conference
this time around to adopt a stance both more realistic and more
prophetic. Alas their efforts proved futile against a determined
Conference staff who even contrived to prevent Conference from listening
(for just three and a half minutes !) to the sound track of a recording
of one who truly speaks for the voiceless in Zimbabwe - Archbishop
Pius Ncube. The resolution acknowledging a commitment to speak out
prophetically against the oppression being visited upon the suffering
people of Zimbabwe was "not put" and in the end Conference
settled for a meaningless resolution to set up a talk shop called
the Zimbabwe Reference Group.
I am not here
concerned with issues of how much power Conference has delegated
to Methodist Church House staff or just how democratic Conference
really is – though I trust others have an eye on these things. But
my concern is with the intense suffering of the people of Zimbabwe
under a fascist dictatorship which is in effect waging an undeclared
war on its own people. My concern is that the Methodist Church should
listen to the cries of a suffering people, and let their response
be shaped by what those suffering people are saying rather than
paying heed to others who have shown themselves to be compliant
with a godless regime and who even benefit materially through their
complicity.
Two things strike
me about the reports I have received of the carefully choreographed
proceedings, the all-too limited debate which took place, and the
hopelessly inept resolution to which Conference was led. First there
was little sense of the ferocious evil that Zimbabweans are now
facing on a daily basis. And, closely related, there was no real
sense of urgency about the matter.
Was Conference
aware when it refused to do anything more than set up a talk shop:
- that opposition
forces in Zimbabwe are being terrorized, and that politically-motivated
torture, rape and murder are now touching the lives of thousands
?
- that Mugabe
has just rammed through Parliament a Bill which introduces preventative
and punitive detention provisions reminiscent of the worst of
the South African apartheid era ?
- that at the
same time as Conference was deliberating Amnesty International
(South Africa) published an open letter to the South African President,
Thabo Mbeki, expressing the urgent need "to intensify efforts
to publicly signal to the Zimbabwean government that the violation
of human rights is unacceptable" ?
- that a few
days later an African Union report surfaced at the AU summit in
Addis Ababa, in which the Mugabe regime was lambasted for flagrant
human rights’ abuses
- that the
United Nations estimates that 9 out of 10 Zimbabweans are living
below the poverty datum line, and that international aid agencies
reckon on at least three million people (more than a quarter of
the population) needing food aid before the year is out ?
Little wonder
then the comment made last month by James Morris, the UN’s special
envoy for humanitarian needs, that "what is happening in Southern
Africa represents the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world
today. The crisis dwarfs even that in the conflict-ridden Sudanese
region of Darfur".
I cannot believe
that if Conference had been aware of these realities it would have
been satisfied with the response put forward. But as the South African
government has hitherto attempted to shield Mugabe from international
censure through the now-threadbare policy of "quiet diplomacy",
so the leaders of our Methodist Church have taken it upon themselves
to exercise their own form of quiet diplomacy in order to protect
from criticism those in the Church in Zimbabwe who are compliant
with a tyrannical regime. And this form of ecclesiastical diplomacy
has tended to shape their whole policy towards the sister Church,
preventing them from exercising an objective judgment or offering
that form of constructive criticism which "speaking the truth
in love" would surely require of them. Why should such a healthy
interaction not be possible in a real engagement of equals between
two partner churches ? For make no mistake, this is not a matter
of emphasis, leadership style or even party allegiance as some have
suggested. It is a matter of the truth against a lie, goodness against
evil, light against darkness – in stark terms, the life or death
of a nation. It is a question of finding the courage to confront
an evil so monstrous that, if inchecked, it will create a human
catastrophe of major proportions and make a spiritual wilderness
of what Julius Nyrere once called "the jewel of Africa".
As one who cannot
escape the terrible suffering in Zimbabwe and who knows how urgent
is the need for regional and international solidarity and support
in addressing its root causes, I can only record my own profound
dismay at Conference’s conspicuous silence. In such a situation
is not a silent Church a contradiction in terms ? Those courageous
Zimbabweans who are daily risking life and liberty for the sake
of the kingdom values of truth and justice, did not ask you to remain
silent, and frankly they deserved better of you.
Just a few months
ago Desmond Tutu said of the situation in this country, that the
silence of those who will not speak out makes them complicit in
the evil. That judgment applies as much to a silent Church in Britain
as to a silent Church in Zimbabwe.
Graham Shaw
Bulawayo
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