Gift Tandare memorial service in Harare Tuesday

By Violet Gonda
26 March 2007

Church, opposition and civic leaders are lined up to give a hero’s send-off at the memorial service of slain opposition activist Gift Tandare on Tuesday. Tandare is the MDC and NCA activist who was shot in cold blood by Harare police three weeks ago when the security forces used violence to block opponents from gathering in Highfields.

An information alert from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said the service will be held at Northside Community Hall in Borrowdale at 10am.

The leaders of both MDC factions Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, and the chairperson of the National Constitutional Assembly Dr Lovemore Madhuku are expected to speak at the service.

The Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, was supposed to deliver the main sermon but will not be present due to a difference of opinion with the Catholic Archbishop of Harare, Robert Ndlovu. It was feared the outspoken cleric’s presence combined with that of the opposition leaders, would turn the church service into a political gathering. Tandare was a Catholic in Bishop Ndlovu’s diocese.
Ncube confirmed that Bishop Ndlovu wanted it to remain apolitical.

Ncube said: “He (Ndlovu) did not want the opposition to come into it because it could spoil the relations between the Catholic Church and the government.” Ironically it was politics that killed Tandare, who leaves behind a wife and three young children.

The Save Zimbabwe Campaign, which organised the fateful Highfields prayer rally that resulted in Tandare’s death, have urged the people to attend the service to celebrate the life of the activist.

Observers say the line up of speakers at the memorial service poses a threat to Mugabe because they are respected individuals that could incite the public to take to the streets. They say this is the reason the increasingly paranoid regime seized Tandare’s body from a funeral home in Harare two weeks ago and took it to his rural Mt. Darwin home for burial, without his wife’s consent.

Archbishop Ncube told us that the situation is so bad in Zimbabwe that life is beginning to be senseless for the ordinary people. It is because of this worsening crisis that even the church is finally becoming outspoken and militant. The cleric said: “Church leaders can no longer ignore the ugly situation that is there…the situation is such that no one can be blind to it anymore. No one can excuse the situation any more and Mugabe, himself, is aware that the people are pretty angry now.

Just last Wednesday the Archbishop told a press conference that he was ready to face bullets and prepared to lead peaceful resistance to force Robert Mugabe to step down. He said in order to restore the rule of law fellow Zimbabweans had to fill the streets in their thousands in protest.

Ncube told us: “We’ve been soft peddling for so long and people are suffering, and we’ve been trying to keep safe and sometimes running away from facing trouble. And I was telling them that its time we get off from our comfortable seats and stand with the people and suffer with the people otherwise we are not really giving witness to Jesus Christ.”