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Divisions rock Zimbabwe church leaders
ZimOnline
August 16, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=12673

BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe's divided church leaders say they are working on two parallel processes both aimed at finding a solution to the country's long running economic and political crisis.

One group comprising mostly older generation leaders of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishop's Conference that met President Robert Mugabe two months ago to discuss Zimbabwe's crisis say they are cobbling up a National Vision document detailing the views of all stakeholders on how to end the country's problems.

The group which subsequently met leaders of the two factions of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, appears to envisage a central role for Mugabe in resolving Zimbabwe's crisis and say they will take their document - charting the way forward for the country - to the veteran President.

But other more radical elderly and younger generation church leaders grouped under the Christian Alliance have dissociated themselves from their colleagues' National Vision document and say they are in fact working on a separate Democracy and Social Charter they say will also chart the way out of Zimbabwe's crisis.

The Christian Alliance - some of whose leaders were briefly detained by the police last week after convening a strategic planning meeting of civic groups and opposition political parties in Harare - appears to see Mugabe more as part of the problem and not the solution to Zimbabwe's crisis and has not said it will submit its document to the President.

The documents by the two religious camps are expected to be publicised by the end of this month.

Christian Alliance spokesman Pastor Lucky Moyo attempted to play down divisions in the church community over Zimbabwe's crisis, telling ZimOnline on Tuesday that although the clergymen will produce two separate documents purporting to provide solutions to the same problem, they were still not rivals.

He said: "The Christian Alliance is not against the National Vision document because we do not know what it contains. It is unfair that we are now perceived as rivals, we respect their document but we know nothing about it and it is a separate document from the Social and Democracy Charter we are coming up with."

Bishop Trevor Manhanga, who met Mugabe with the other church leaders, would not be drawn to discuss the apparent rift among the clergy, only saying he and his colleagues would issue a "comprehensive statement" once they have finished compiling the National Vision document.

Zimbabwe's church leaders have taken long to speak out strongly against alleged human rights abuses by Mugabe or his controversial policies.

While individual church leaders such as Bulawayo Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube have spoken out against the government, on the whole, the church's voice has been at best muffled.

Analysts say bickering among the clergy over how to deal with Mugabe's government would - just like the MDC's split last year - only benefit the veteran leader who will certainly rejoice that such a key moral authority is unable to speak with one voice.

Zimbabwe is grappling its worst ever economic and social crisis, dramatised by the world's highest inflation of 993.6 percent, shortages of fuel, electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity.

The MDC and Western governments blame the crisis on repression and wrong policies by Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's 1980 independence from Britain, Mugabe denies mismanaging the country and says its problems are because of economic sabotage by Western governments opposed to his seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks. - ZimOnline

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