Religion and Politics: Integration, Separation and Conflict

God-fearing President Mnangagwa attends church service.

Both religion and politics have one common goal: that is to acquire political power and use it to fulfill their aims. However, to achieve this object, their methods are different. Religion mobilizes religious sensibilities of people in order to get their support to capture power; while politics uses intrigue, diplomacy, and makes attempt to win public opinion either democratically, if the system allows it, or usurps power with the help of army, if the society is under-developed and backward.

I get worried more when an unelected self proclaimed President of a country begins to frequent religious gatherings to which he is not a congregate, and makes politically inclined speeches that obviously smack of imbalance. 

The initiates of the American constitution foreso this in 1791 and made the first amendment which drew a line between the pursuit of national concerns and those of religious concerns,, the fusion between church and politics has never produced anything good, church is inherently autocratic by design, politics is democratic, real or illusory it remains a topic of another day.

The dangers of fusing the two are apparent in that church is oiled by faith whereas politics is oiled by informed or uniformed deciders, now when you as a leader go to church and latently campaign to boost your dwindling party followers you are abusing the vulnerability of the church goers, they come to church with an open mind, open to spiritual fillers, in total trust of their church leadership, who apparently have sold them for twelve pieces of silver.More frequent than not you hear such impostors telling you how they are the chosen of God, how they are the anointed leadership from God, and how their coup d'etats were a blessing from God through the visionary guidance of the church, blasphemy. 

I remember Grace campaigning wearing regalia from apostolic faith church, she could hardly quote a single verse verbatim but she was given the podium to spit into the mic. She spewed bile as highly anticipated and praised her husband fondly there was little mention of God except the part when she claims to be among the chosen of God, apparently it's a verse in the bible.ED is on record to have said God should kill the opposition, Jesus!! 

Thank God he doesn't take instructions from Zanu.But for those who don't understand, this propaganda monkey business of frequenting the church is meant to potray a cleansed man, in ED, he wants us to believe he has changed and deserves a second chance, that who are we to judge him for the actions of the past, that we must accept him as he is. 

Of course it's an innocent church visit.....who are we to see it for what it is not?

Daniel Nyaude
(SA based Academic & Political Research Analyst)

The Dependency Culture

Over 90 % of African countries have people living in very high levels of poverty inherited from a colonial past that rewarded a few at the expense of the majority.

Even after most African countries attained their independence and power was transferred to a new black leadership, this did not change the structural functionality of the economy which simple exchanged hands from a wealthy white minority to a new wealthy black elite most who accumulated massive amounts of wealth through corrupt partnerships with government officials.

It is not a surprise that when it comes to political party funding, the funding sources of more established political parties are a very tightly guarded secret. This raises questions about the sincerity of some of these political parties as they clearly lack the basic principles that can promote transparency and accountability of public institutions. How many citizens actually know how their political parties are funded and how such funds are utilised across their political party structures? This is a real problem especially for countries that make claim to be championing democratic practice.

Most of the time ordinary citizens are distracted from questioning such sources by being entertained by bickering between politicians about either position and power and in very rare circumstances genuine issues that need to be addressed for the benefit of a greater good. FJCZ entry into the political arena has uncovered this unfortunate discovery where most ordinary citizens join a political party because they love the policies, principles and values but at the same time naturally have expectations based on comparing operational effectiveness with experiences of better resourced political platform, hoping to find the same conditions of participation as those of those older establishments.

People were used to seeing the outward performance of such parties like Zanu-PF affording to dish out campaign regalia and all in plenty fold without asking themselves how those party's actually manage to fulfil those handouts. And when they see FJCZ also coming onboard the political arena they automatically assume that the party will do what is obviously done and provide everything just like what Zanu-PF or MDC have always been doing.

It doesn't dawn on them that Zanu-PF has actually been diverting government funds to fund its own political party campaigns, whilst the MDC had the express backing of multi millionaires in the nature of whites who were keen to retain their hold on the monopoly of country's riches.

It does dawn on them the FJCZ must fund itself through the dedication of the millions who are left on the wayside by these elite Zanu-PF who only need their vote to have the fingers on the financial pulse of the nation's treasure. We do intend preaching to the people to refuse to be bought with few pieces of silver and use their "vote" to usher in a government by the people and for the people. 

But alas, how will they ever know. It will take influencing a change in attitudes and making ordinary citizens realise that together in their numbers they do have the power to challenge these very dominant players who use their financial advantage to influence the political outcomes in our society.

Elder Lameck Mahachi

FJCZ Interim Chief of Security & Induction Training

Elder L Mahachi is a founding member of Freedom Justice Coalition Zimbabwe Party since 2010. He comes from a security background and has been responsible for security vetting of new members of the party including taking them through the party's Induction Training so they have a basic understanding of the principles, values, mission and vision objectives.

Zimbabwe Leadership Succession Dilemma

The correlation between the family setup and consequent individual's mentality towards leadership will always affect how the general populace tend to deal with leadership issues of say for instance succession.

I find it quite hypocritical that there was a point when with one voice we all agreed that Robert Mugabe was no longer fit to be President (except for a few sycophants ), yet Tsvangirai is ailing and frankly the same people suddenly have become intolerant to reality.

The traditional family setup has always had the one father figure who does, makes and has the final say to almost all the decisions that affect his direct family that family setup is in civic society , patriarchal. There is nothing wrong with such a setup until that day when incapacitation becomes a reality. When the mother suddenly has to take charge and suddenly we aren't accustomed to any voice of command other than the archtype Father figure who has been and made us believe he will always be.

We are so convinced of his infallibility and invincibility that the moment of weakness is unimaginable.We have worshiped the man to a point short of building a shrine for him. But he is just a man, and we have fallen for the folly that leadership begins and ends with him, he did not create an environment that would exist beyond himself too, so we all lived under a cloud of delusion, yet never saw how things could change in a minute.

The succession issue is ongoing, the family unit should survive beyond the current leader, likewise, so should the family's ability to survive, leadership wrangles in our African setup emanate from building personality cults around individuals whereas we fail to acknowledge that the person must end but the organisation must continue.

The European setup is liberal, women are empowered and take note divorce is rampant it is not unusual to wake up to a new father overnight, for them transition is pretty much a walk in the park. Let me just say that part of our african leadership problems have come from taking up a European form of governance and pigeonholing it into the traditional african social setup.

The Bolsheviks did not see them selves ruling a people successfully while the family unit remained an impediment so they deviced a drive to break the family unit through propaganda and invoking thought that encouraged women to be independent( which is not bad).

Our leaders do not have vision enough to see leadership beyond them, their fight is self centered, even after 37 years Mugabe did not see himself resigning, even after 37 years Emmerson Mnangagwa calls himself "the new dispensation" and we cheer up, and expect change, typical of 3 blind mice leading each other.

Daniel Nyaude 

Author Profile

Daniel is a 'founding' member of Freedom Justice Coalition Zimbabwe Party. He currently serves as the Chairperson of the 'Grievance and Disciplinary Committee' and also part of the 'Research and Policy formulation' team. 

He is also member of FJCZ's Advisors Board that helps formulate strategy. He is currently working and living in Pretoria South Africa.