Women’s World Day of Prayer pays tribute to Zimbabwean and South African women

By Tererai Karimakwenda
03 February 2006

The Women's World Day of Prayer was celebrated Friday, a day set aside to pray for an end to abuses against women and to acknowledge their strength and beauty. This year special focus was placed on the struggles of women in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Reverend Martine Stemerick led a Prayer service Friday afternoon in the UK town of Derby. As the invited speaker, along with the Mayor and many other guests, she showed them a musical pilgrimage of images taken through South Africa, highlighting the issues that the women raised.

Asked for a special prayer this year Bishop Paul Verryn of the Methodist Church in South Africa said, “The first thing I would pray for is a politically sustainable solution for the Zimbabwean crisis. The second thing I would pray for is that while peace is not in place, that people seeking asylum and refuge find a more humane welcome in the countries to which they flee, and that in South Africa, we have the opportunity for them to be granted full refugee status, almost in response to the way we were hosted and cared for during the difficult years by the Zimbabwean government of that time. And thirdly, it would be so good if we could pray for the health of refugees on every level. Some people come here who are really very sick. They are young people and there isn’t enough to sustain them and bring them to a place of health. Unfortunately, we have had two people die in hospital in the last week, one young man who was 19 years old and another young man who has a two-month-old baby back in Zimbabwe. The tragedy is enormous so health is a big issue for us. And then finally, prayers that begin to recognize that this is a ‘God moment’ for us in South Africa. That Zimbabweans and people from the DRC and other exiles who seek help are a gift, especially to the Christian community. It’s an opportunity for us to open our hands and knuckle down and be what we say we are. And in actual fact to be transformation agents and to recognize that the people who come across our borders are given to us for a very short while. And that they may be the people who ultimately are the agents of change when they return to their countries. And for us to use the opportunity of them being over here to inculcate standards of care and humanity that anticipate a changed Africa. Those are my prayers for the church in Lent.”