The National Vision Document of Suspicious Verses

The National Vision Document of Suspicious Verses

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THE debate around the recently released National Vision Document (NVD) has so far suggested an emerging pathetic cover up for an evidently gigantic ecumenical gaffe.

Since its release, there have been comments to the effect that ‘The Zimbabwe We Want’ document is "good" and that those who see otherwise are barking up the wrong tree. Only last week, a leading business weekly newspaper's editor took a swipe at the critics and labeled them "bigots".

There has been little, if any at all, effort by commentators and journalists to dig deeper for clues as to how all this began and to where it is leading us.

According to Bishop Trevor Manhanga, who so far appears to be the spokesman for the Church Leaders, it was President Robert Mugabe who suggested that they "go out to the people" and be his ears on what they want.

Be that as it may, questions immediately arise.

Am I alone in finding it shocking that the same church leaders who were in the Constitutional Commission in 1999 will allow themselves to go and gather the same information they gathered and handed over to Mugabe seven years ago?

Is the Bishop seriously telling us that they rose up and took their bibles and went to see Mugabe without the people’s mandate, and they were told by Mugabe to then go to the people? Is he telling us that when they met Mugabe they didn’t know what the people wanted and therefore could not say it to Mugabe then and they had to go and ask?

Is it a people’s Church which seeks audience with a tyrant without their mandate and needs to be reminded by a tyrant that there are people to be consulted? Are they visionaries who don’t know what the people want or they are tools ready to be used?

It goes without saying that the 1999 findings were more genuine because we know that the government gave money to the Commission and sent it to the people. We still remember the dramatic meetings throughout the country and in South Africa. The reports are still there.

This is in contrast with the Church Leaders whose meetings are not easy to remember and whose donors are unknown. What then is "good" about a document which is essentially a summary of what we all have read and heard over the years?

Bishop Manhanga dares to say "give the process a chance". What process? What Chance?

This whole senseless thing about going to the people was a measure to cover up for a dismal performance at the State House on May 25 where we saw for ourselves elderly Bishops behaving like children.

If there was a concrete plan on the part of the Bishops on how to move forward on all this, they would have told Mugabe that there was no need to go and ask the people. As Church leaders who minister to a whole population affected by Mugabe’s policies, and who know what the people want, they would have said it there and then. Instead, they offered their "support" for him and told the whole nation that he was a "listening" leader.

To suggest that it is beyond their mandate for the Church leaders to offer political clues to an afflicted people is to miss the point and to pull the opposite direction against Jesus Christ.

It is the Church’s duty to point at the people who are at the centre of humanity’s agonies. The people who were beaten and had their buttocks roasted on stoves in 2000 belong to the Church. So are those killed by Gukurahundi and displaced by Murambatsvina, the two projects carried by the army whose commander is Mugabe.

It is, therefore, not over the top for the Church to "apportion blame". To avoid apportioning blame is cowardice.

Jesus Christ of whom they are supposed to be his servants, called Herod the "fox", cracked the whip when the situation demanded, and above all, he refused to be associated with corrupt tyrants and the authors of the common people’s misery. Always he mingled with the victims of power.

He knew what the people wanted and did not need to meet Herod. He sought modest solutions and went straight to mobilise the people without anybody’s funding and finally rode on a donkey to Jerusalem.

Just because the Church leaders did not have any plan they not only unwisely accepted to "go to the people" and be Mugabe’s ears, but they offered their "support" and told us that he "listens".

Now that the document -- whose contents were pretty obvious anyway -- is out, the same person whom were told listens has refused to accept what we want and told us it's "not negotiable".

We see here an offensive inability to perform their duties in exact line with the teachings of a creed they claim to stand for.

In a nutshell the whole premise of the Church’s approach was wrong because it left many loopholes for Mugabe to manipulate it as Archbishop Ncube has always warned. It is generally a disservice to be praised by Mugabe and the Church should have known that.

For instance, President Mugabe resents donor-funded organisations that dare talk about the constitutional matters but why is it that he is at ease with the Church leaders whom we know lead organisations funded by Western donors?

It is difficult to imagine that there is a Western donor who will fund the launching of a suspicious document, which is a brainchild of people who "support" Mugabe. They fund, mostly, developmental projects and so it is hard to imagine that they bought this one.

So where will the money to print and launch the document in all the provinces come from? Shall we purchase into the suggestion that a person like Prof Marvelous Mhloyi spent all her time assisting in the writing of the document all for free? Who will pay her?

It is the silence around these questions, which suggest that the Church Leaders have been bought. This probably explains why they are operating with this sense of guilt and this whole air of wanting to protect an image.

Like a barking dog in Saul Bellow’s The Dean’s December, we simply "ask for the universe to open a little more" but a cabal of Bishops is shrinking it further with their suspicious verses in the name of righteousness.

Mthulisi Mathuthu is a Zimbabwean journalist and New Zimbabwe.com columnist. Views expressed here are his own. He can be contacted at: thuthuma@yahoo.com
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