Friday, July 30th 2010.
The sight of Robert Mugabe wearing full Mapostori gear and carrying the wooden staff of office must have puzzled quite a few people this week. Had the Dear Leader deserted Rome and converted to the Mapostori creed? It seemed unlikely but then anything is possible when there’s an election in the offing in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe was attending the annual gathering of Mapostori faithful held in the Eastern Districts. It was intriguing to note that the audience of shaven headed faithful were all smiling broadly at the sight of Mugabe and his security guards in their unusual garb. Was it intended as some kind of joke on Mugabe’s part?
These white-robed Mapostori were a very familiar sight in the rural areas of Mashonaland East where I lived and I had had quite a bit to do with them. Which of their rather peculiar beliefs had attracted Robert Mugabe, I wondered. They are polygamists with men having as many as five wives and numerous children by each of their wives. That’s where the biggest problem arises because the Mapostori faith will have nothing to do with western medicine and vaccinations are absolutely prohibited. So when there’s a measles outbreak, the children are taken away and hidden in remote rural villages, as far away as possible from the vaccination teams. Their other practice is that girl children are denied education. Mapostori women are therefore uneducated, suited only to be brides - and often very young brides - to the polygamous men. Travel out to Lake Chivero on a Sunday morning and you will see hordes of docile Mapostori women being preached at by shaven headed ‘prophets’.
What could the highly educated Robert Mugabe possibly find attractive in such backward thinking? His address to the gathering was clearly designed to appeal to his audience; he defended polygamy saying that nowhere in the bible was it condemned, though I can’t imagine the Roman Catholic church approves of that! Finally, Mugabe launched into his favourite ‘hate topic’ a vehement attack on gays and lesbians and that chimed in very well with Mapostori thinking. Then it all became clear; this was no damascene conversion, it was nothing more than a vote garnering exercise – and it worked! Three days later the largest of the Mapostori sects was told by the elders that they must now all buy Zanu PF cards or risk being thrown out of their ‘church’. One wonders how many ‘conversions’ we shall see in the weeks and months ahead as Zanu PF moves further into election mode. In a country where churches of one kind or another are more prolific than mosquitoes in the rainy season, Mugabe will have his work cut out getting round to all of them!
There was not much else to smile about in the news from Zimbabwe this week. By week’s end the already compromised judiciary had proved yet again that they are totally compliant to the wishes of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. No less a person than the Chief Justice, Godfrey Chidyausiku postponed judgement in the Roy Bennett case on the grounds that the documents in the case were so bulky that it would take him ‘a very long time’ to study them all! Judgement was therefore postponed indefinitely and Roy Bennett remains exactly where Mugabe wants him: out of government because, thanks to Chidyasiku’s ruling, the MDC nominated Deputy Minister of Agriculture is still facing criminal charges and Mugabe says he will not swear in a man with a criminal charge hanging over him. So now it all becomes clear; once again we see how personal animosity to Roy Bennett explains Mugabe’s attitude – and the Chief Justice’s indefinite postponement of judgement. Meanwhile on Bennett’s former and once prosperous farm it is reported that war vets are virtually in command of the farm school demanding that they be allowed to address the pupils and ‘educate’ them in the history of the struggle. Teachers too are at the mercy of the war vets with anyone deemed to be sympathetic to the MDC subject to harassment and intimidation.
And in another highly contentious case, Farai Maguwu, the Global Watch activist, having been released from prison has now been presented with a fresh charge of ‘being in possession of a stolen vehicle’. If that charge doesn’t stick, say the police, then they will charge him with not having the relevant documentation for such a vehicle. Such is the state of the rule of law in Zimbabwe that justice is sacrificed for petty revenge and spite.
While it’s just possible to excuse the behaviour of war vets and thugs as typical of brain-washed, ignorant people, the same excuse cannot be used for these judges who are highly qualified and educated men. Yet these same judges have brought the rule of law in the country into utter disrepute. A report titled A Place In The Sun, issued this week by an international team of lawyers who visited the country in 2009 describes the rule of law in Zimbabwe since the GPA was signed and concludes that the judges have been so corrupted by farms and favours that their impartiality has been totally compromised. As I read somewhere this week, “a clean slate is what the country needs.”
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson.
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