A regular Disqus user named
Commenting on two different pieces ran by The Chronicle this week concerning two SDA members caught up in sodomy and kidnapping scandals respectively, the user made it clear that the reports were an attack at the
On the case in which a Bulawayo man, Shepherd Moyo (25) was arrested for allegedly dragging a woman out of her house at night, assaulted and sodomizing her at a Seventh Day Adventist church with his accomplice Lloyd Matiza and raped her,
‘The Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) has been receiving bad press in certain sectors of the media of late. It’s as if this is a deliberate attempt by them to portray the Church in a bad light. The way I see it; is that the angle of this story was designed – whether deliberately or not – to link the crime and it’s perpetrators to the SDA Church. I say this because it is apparent that no attempt was made by the reporter to clarify whether the criminals concerned or the victim are members of the church in question.’
The user also echoed similar sentiments about the media not representing the church fairly and even went on to claim that church is under attack by opinion drivers locally and globally. In a recent case,
“African missionaries, Burns Musa Sibanda from Zimbabwe who was serving as chief finance officer and his colleague Passmore Hachalinga from Zambia were both working for the church in Angola. Judge Antonio Francisco sentenced the pair to three years and six months each month for allegedly kidnapping another pastor,” says the online source.
According to the statement, the guilty verdict was despite the prosecutor in the case submitting to the court that there was no basis for the case against the five accused as there was no evidence to support the allegations of either a kidnap or a plot to kidnap.
However, regardless of how ethical the piece was, it did not sink well with
He wrote: