Since President Mugabe resigned as the head of state for the Republic of Zimbabwe in November 2017, the church has been at the centre of momentous political negotiations and thrusting forth tirelessly to make sure there is an accord and balance in the country.
In that trek to date, the Church has moulded the government in some field and supported it whenever it feels that it is doing good for the people.
Albeit, it has also opposed some government policies which they would have deemed no good to the welfare of the people and democracy. Given that backdrop, relations between the church and the state have, at some times, been strained.
The church wants to see itself as above politics. Politicians don’t believe that anyone is. So there has been a repeating pattern in which the church or churches try to make cross-party points and the government of the day bites back hard, dismissing them as woolly-minded nostalgics.
But because the Church sees it as its duty to serve everyone in the parish which means, a good of the population in the country. It comes into contact with more poverty and desperation than almost any other middle-class professionals, and owing to that, it believes that it has a mission to inform and educate the government, even if this belief has not been really shared by any government in the last 38 years.
All of which means that the clergymen can never rise above party politics.
Nevertheless, that has not ceased the church to speak. It continues to do so, openly, either to the regime’s attention or not.
And the recent hot-button issue that has brought the two historical frenemies at a face-off is the conduct of the recently closed commission of inquiry into the August 1 2018, post-election violence that saw seven sacred lives being lost.
State media have reported that the former South African president Kgalema Motlanthe-led Commission has wound up its work and submitted an executive summary of the report to the President and was yet to submit the main report which contains its observations and recommendations after the collation and analysis of the evidence presented to it over the past two months.
Whilst all eyes and ears in the country await on the commission’s discoveries, Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba (not related to this writer) is on record, saying that at law, President Mnangagwa in his capacity as the Head of State and Government is the sole recipient of the report by the Commission of Inquiry and that there was nothing that obliged him to share the report with anyone or not to do so if he so wished.
One prominent Senior pastor, national conversationist and Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) president, Dr Shingi Munyeza, is, however, speaking out, urging the powers that be that if the President is so keen on bringing back credibility and instil confidence in the country, he should make the report public.
Posting on the microblogging site Twitter on Monday, Mr Munyeza, who was among the SADC Eminent Persons Observation Mission (SEPOM) during the July 31 plebiscite, calls in for, among other things, the availing of the commissioners’ report to the public, a national dialogue between MDC & ZANU-PF and expedition of all cases of corruption.
He wrote:
“BRINGING BACK CREDIBILITY & CONFIDENCE
1.Make the #August1Inquiry public asap!
2.Expedite all cases on corruption
3.Allow the selling of fuel in USD and open up fuel importation
4.The USD is not 1:1 with bond
5.MDCA & ZANUPF must dialogue”
BRINGING BACK CREDIBILITY & CONFIDENCE
1.Make the #August1Inquiry public asap!
2.Expedite all cases on corruption
3.Allow the selling of fuel in USD and open up fuel importation
4.The USD is not 1:1 with bond
5.MDCA & ZANUPF must dialogue #NationBuilding#Zimbabwe
— Shingi Munyeza (@ShingiMunyeza) December 4, 2018
Time only will tell if the seating government has a political will to pursue the cleric’s plea.
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