08514
July 17, 2008

Church must speak out on Zimbabwe, reiterates South Africa’s Boesak

by Trevor Grundy
Ecumenical News International

LONDON — The resilience of Zimbabweans in the face of “unspeakable horror”  has been praised at a service in London attended by exiles from the southern African country living in Britain, while in South Africa, anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak has urged churches to speak out about the situation in Zimbabwe.

Addressing a meeting of church leaders in Johannesburg, Boesak said the Church must not remain silent about Zimbabwe because it was not united on the stance to take, a call he made also in May after a visit to the beleaguered country.

“Those divisions are inevitable,” Boesak was reported on July 16 as saying by the South African Press Association. “There is a line that is drawn, not by us, but by our obedience to the Gospel. Our main job is not to keep the Church together. Our main job is to do the will of God.”

He said similar debates took place in South Africa in the apartheid era when churches were divided on how to respond to apartheid.

The Johannesburg meeting was hosted by the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa and the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, in cooperation with the Council for World Mission and the South African Council of Churches.

CWM’s moderator, the Rev. Roderick Hewitt, a leader of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, said that President Robert Mugabe had become “addicted to power.”  Speaking at the opening of the July 14-17 meeting, Hewitt recalled that Jamaica reggae star Bob Marley had sung at Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations in 1980.

“Bob Marley must be turning now in his grave when he sees what is going on in this beloved African nation that has been for so long a symbol of hope to so many Africans at home and in the Diaspora,” said Hewitt. “Who would have believed that in 28 years this beloved nation would be held to ransom by a regime that murders, starves and brutalizes the very citizens for whom a war of liberation was waged?”

In London, more than 350 people, many of them Zimbabweans living in Britain, gathered at Southwark cathedral on July 13 for a service conducted in Zimbabwe’s two main vernacular languages, Shona and Sindebele. In his sermon, the dean of Southwark,  the Rev. Colin Slee, said British Christians admire the resilience of all Zimbabweans in the face of “unspeakable horror.”

He condemned “the injustice, violence and oppression of the last few weeks.” Slee added, “We want to share our strength with you so that you may be stronger and more hopeful that you were when you arrived among us.”

A choir of African women sang traditional hymns and songs, asking God to intervene and save Zimbabwe.

The service was conducted Bishop Ishmael Mukuwanda of Central Zimbabwe, Bishop Wilson Sitshebo of Matabeleland and Bishop Godfrey Tawonezvi of Masvingo, in southeastern Zimbabwe.

Several African priests and Zimbabwean lay people told ENI that it was no longer any use just talking about Zimbabwe. “All we can do now is pray,” said a priest who asked not to be named.