Mnangagwa calls on the church to ensure peace ahead of the 2023 elections

The afore-quoted excerpt made Livingstone a perfect forerunner of Cecil John Rhodes, the Empire Builder. Significantly, Rhodes worked with the same Duke of Argyll whom David Livingstone mentions in the letter to his professor.

Fast forward to 2000 and beyond, when we carried out our Land Reform Programme. The name Lord Argyll looms large amongst fiercest critics to Land Reform Programme. Even as we took decisions on Land Reforms, we had to content with the stark fact of the Church in Zimbabwe as a landowner, indeed as a beneficiary of settler colonial land policies.

We thus cannot run away from the enmeshed histories of Church and State in our country.  When I look at the pioneering generation of nationalists, again the Church looms large. The late Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo was a lay preacher of a missionary denomination.  So, too, was Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, Bishop Muzorewa, Reverend Canaan Banana, not to mention late President Robert Gabriel Mugabe who was a devout Catholic raised by the Jesuits. Again, Church and Nationalist histories enmesh.

We see the same intertwined histories of Church and our Liberation Movements. We worked with priests and pastors, indeed with numerous church leaders, including those from Independent African Churches which had broken away from established denominations as a precursor to generalised African assertiveness. During the dying moments of our Liberation Struggle, the Church sent its delegation to meet with us in exile.

Today’s State is a creature of the Liberation Struggle. We thus have a legacy we should acknowledge, and a veritable resource we should build on, going forward in close partnership.

The Second Republic fully recognises the Church and its role in society. Indeed, our Constitution entrenches freedom or religion and worship. We hold that freedom sacred, both for reasons of history and our constitution.

Our whole history thus dictates partnership between the Church and the State. It decries needless conflict, which we must avoid at all cost and remove through constant dialogue. To that end, my door remains open to the Church.

Broadly speaking, the State minds the physical needs of the citizen, while the Church ministers to his the spiritual side of the citizen. However, as history amply shows, matters are not as clear cut as this physical/spiritual binary suggests.

There is a way in which activities of the State can and do actually assist the Church in enhancing its spiritual mission. Equally and as demonstrated in our long history, the Church has been a key provider of many basic services, key among them health and education. That role, dating back in history, and often bravely done in defiance of racial laws of the day, must be remembered and cherished.

As Africans living under settler colonialism, we owed our physical and spiritual advancement to the Church. Even into Independence and under the Second Republic, that vital role continues. We fully appreciate it.

Church-run schools must be respected and should be part of our institutional matrix. They assist Government achieve its goal of universal education. Equally, Church-run clinics and hospitals must be fully cherished. They assist Government in expanding health delivery nationally, including in remote areas which were neglected in colonial days.

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