For its first fifteen
years after independence in 1980, Zimbabwe was Africa’s
rising star, renowned for mining, agriculture, education, and
its infrastructure. Unfortunately, its wealth lay mostly in
the hands of a white Rhodesian minority. When the governing
party began forcible takeovers, the economy swiftly unraveled.
Today Zimbabwe faces enormous problems: high unemployment,
runaway inflation, poverty, disease, HIV/AIDS, food and fuel
shortages, lack of free speech, and massive dislocation. “Yet
still the Great Commission moves on,” write regional liaisons
Sue and Ted Wright. “Evangelists plant new fellowships
that eventually mature. Preachers proclaim the good news of
Jesus—not only in pulpits, but at rallies and youth retreats,
in prisons, and through the media. Presbyterian churches are
noted for addressing social ills. Despite cultural resistance,
there has been a significant move toward openness in confronting
the AIDS pandemic and in ministering to those who have the disease.”
Angola
Angola is one of Africa’s major oil producers, but it
is also one of the world’s poorest countries and has some
of the continent’s lowest life-expectancy rates. Ever
since the Portuguese arrived in 1482, Angola has been exploited
by its rulers at the expense of the people. From 1961 to 2002
the country was in a state of war, first in the struggle for
independence and then in a vicious war within itself. Some 1.2
million Angolans died in the civil war, 90 percent of them noncombatants.
The country faces the difficult task of rebuilding its infrastructure,
retrieving weapons from its heavily armed civilian population,
and resettling tens of thousands of refugees who fled the fighting.
The PC(USA)’s partner church, the Presbyterian Church
of Angola, has seven congregations in the Luanda area, with
about 20,000 members in the southern part of the country. |
