Zimbabwe in Crisis
By: Anli Serfontein
Tags: Africa, Church, Catholic, Zimbabwe, World

In the past, they had voiced criticism when they deemed it warranted from the era of white minority rule that ended in 1980 and then during the 30-year rule of President Robert Mugabe until 2017, which in his later years was criticized as particularly harsh.

The bishops condemned a “government crackdown on dissent” in Zimbabwe, saying the government “automatically labels anyone thinking differently as an enemy.”

They said that constitutional bodies like the judiciary and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) “seem to be losing their independence and effectiveness.”

Zimbabwean The Sunday Mail on August 16, 2020

The ink had barely dried on the Pastoral Letter before Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa on August 15, launched an unprecedented attack through issueing a long statement and taking to State-controlled television

She called the Catholic leaders an “evil-minded flock of misled narrow-minded bishops.”

Her harshest words were for bishops’ conference president, Robert Ndlovu, the Archbishop of Harare, accusing him of tribalism.

“With nefarious cynicism to history, Archbishop Robert Christopher Ndlovu is inching to lead the Zimbabwe Catholic congregation into the darkest dungeons of Rwanda-type genocide,” she said.

‘Evil message’

Mutsvangwa, in her attack, said, “Its (letter) evil message reeks with all the vices that have perennially hobbled the progress of Africa. It trumpets petty tribal feuds and narrow regionalist agendas. That he (Archbishop Ndlovu) hopes to sow seeds of internecine strife as a prelude to civil war and national disintegration.”

The letter from the bishops linked the current State-sponsored violence against Zimbabweans, that earlier this month gave rise to the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter campaign on social media, to the Gukurahundi massacres in the mid-1980s.

That bloody interlude in Zimbabwe erupted shortly after its independence from white minority rule and British dominion. The infamous Zimbabwe Fifth Brigade said to have been trained in North Korea, killed between 20,000 and 80,000 people in the Matabeleland and Midlands regions.

The Catholic archbishop is an Ndebele, most of whom live in Matabeleland in southwestern Zimbabwe.

“Suppression of the people’s anger can only serve to deepen the crisis and take the nation into a deeper crisis. This comes on the backdrop of unresolved past hurts like Gukurahundi, which continues to spawn even more angry new generations,” the letter said.

Rev. Kenneth Mtata, the general secretary of the Christian umbrella body, the Zimbabwean Council of Churches (ZCC), which includes Protestant Christians, the Catholic bishops, Orthodox and Evangelicals as well as Pentecostals, responded quickly in a tweet.

“We knew the situation would escalate but not at this rate. The tone responding to the ZCBC letter is worrying. We hope president Ed Mnangagwa @edmnangagwa will tone things down. At this rate, we will be crushing sooner than later. @zccinzim ,” said Mtata, a Lutheran.

Tweet by the general secretary of the Zimbabwean Council of Churches

’Tribalistic hate speech’

The main official opposition MDC-Alliance tweeted “We strongly condemn the unwarranted attacks by Minister Monica Mutsvangwa on the Catholic Church, particularly the tribalist hate speech against Archbishop Ndlovu. These have no place in a constitutional democracy. #ZimbabweanLivesMatter”

While others took to social media. Chalton Hwende from the opposition MDC-T Party tweeted, “As a Catholic, I am shocked by the reaction of the government of @edmnangagwa represented by the tribalist Minister Monica Mutsvangwa. The way they have singled out the archbishop should be condemned unreservedly. Surely Zanu-PF is now heading to the political dustbins of history.”

Zanu-PF is a coalition party made up of two liberation moments that led the most robust challenge both militarily and politically against the white minority government of Ian Smith who led a government from 1966 to 1979 that declared independence illegally from Britain.

Kholwani Nyathi tweeted, “In her unrestrained attack against the Archbishop Ndlovu, what does Monica Mutsvangwa mean by ‘the righteous minority Ndebele?’ Is it a coincidence that Ndlovu, a Ndebele, is singled out for the most vicious attack over a pastoral letter signed by scores of Catholic bishops?”

South African envoys send to diffuse crisis

Various international bodies like the United Nations, the European Union, and the African Union (AU) and governments have highlighted human rights abuses in Zimbabwe after the 31 July demonstrations.

On 10 August, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, the current president of the AU, sent special envoys seeking to solve the ongoing crisis, which South Africa has tried to deal with several times unsuccessfully in recent decades. The envoys were sent home without meeting with the opposition, the churches, or civic bodies.

No broad consultations

The bishops wrote, “Their failure to make broad consultations with the Church and civic society at this most tempestuous time was most regrettable. Was this not an opportunity missed?”

They further pointed to wide-spread corruption in the country that has several times caused inflation to rise monumentally to some of the highest levels known historically in the world.

“The corruption in the country has reached alarming levels. Government and civic society are agreed that corruption is choking the economy and compromising our justice system.”

The bishops in their letter also offered their solutions to heal the country.

These include implementing outstanding reforms towards constitutionalism and the rule of law, adopting a new social contract with an inclusive national economic vision, mending global relations, and an inclusive national humanitarian and emergency response.

On Sunday, 16 August, the Law Society of Zimbabwe warned of a “deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe” and demands that the government acts to “eradicate these abuses as a tangible assurance to the nation that the state does not approve of this conduct.”

United States Sanctions

The United States has sanctions against some of Zimbabwe’s leaders. According to the United States, these apply only to officials responsible for the repression and not to the Zimbabwean people. They target only “officials from the ZANU-PF ruling party, top military figures and some government-owned firms…not the entire country.”

Last year the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Brian A. Nichols said the economic crisis in Zimbabwe is as a result of corruption, and not sanctions.