Hearing the Loud Voices of the Silent Church in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa. Sadly, throughout the long reign of the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe, through the militarised rise of President Emerson Mnangagwa in November 2017, until the present time, 2023, the ruling Zanu-PF party has politicised the country’s economy (Kanyenze et al. 2017, 6) and ruined the nation, to the extent that it is now a basket case instead (Magezi and Manzanga 2016, 1–2; Cook 2017, 1; Fenga 2018, 95–103; Moyo-Nyede 2021, 1–2). As reported by Bhoroma (2019) and Chingono (2021), the Zanu-PF administration is characterised by a dictatorship, political instability, policy inconsistencies, weighty taxation, command policies, and flawed rule of law. When citizens––who bear the brunt of poor governance–complain, Zanu-PF uses the military to close the democratic space, silence and cow them into submission for selfish reasons: conquest and retention of power. The Church is expected to stand up and speak out, as the voice of the voiceless, and the outspoken Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) can be commended for unwaveringly roaring, through admonitory pastoral letters and press briefings, and fearlessly contextualising their ecclesiology and hermeneutics. Contemporaneously, representative bodies of evangelical and Pentecostal denominations—the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), mainline Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) and Zimbabwe Christian Alliance organisation and their umbrella Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD)—seem sheepish, as they usually reactively write soft letters. Meanwhile, their members generally appear absent even when present by being passive in politics, reportedly due to fear. When the voice of the voiceless, paradoxically, chooses to be indifferent to tragic governance, introspection matters. Considering that Zanu-PF is predominantly militant and vicious (Chikwanha-Dzenga et al. 2001, 2), the relations between the Zimbabwean Church and the state have been characterised by combative engagements, which have not eased over time, but have, instead, retrogressively worsened the situation. Without ignoring the gullibility, corruptibility and partisanship of some church leaders who sanitise Zanu-PFism, this chapter notes the voice of the allegedly silent Church in a turbulent, vindictive and tragic context. The first section reviews and problematises Zanu-PFism. Subsequently, I define the silent Church. Thereafter, Church and political engagement in Zimbabwe is historicised. Then, I unpack the ineffectiveness and uselessness of confrontational approaches to the Zimbabwean predicament. In view of that, the following segment discerns the voice of the church through her diplomatic, spiritual, social, economic and political contributions to the democratisation and development of Zimbabwe. Although the approach has not eliminated Zanu-PFism, it withstands it progressively, by enlightening, empowering and transforming citizens and communities.