To the church in and outside of Zimbabwe

I've been watching closely the situation in Zimbabwe for nearly two years now.

My curiosity was heightened in September 2006 when I was in Burundi and began to realize that Africans didn't see the country's leader, Robert Mugabe, in the same way he was generally portrayed in the West.

I began meeting last year with some officials from the country here in Paris in order to gain some perspective, to hear the side of the story that I wouldn't get from the West.

I also have made a point of talking with people from different backgrounds and social levels in Zimbabwe, though my access to the very poor is of course extremely difficult here in Paris.

But I have talked to those who speak for them, including some advocates whom I watched call my other Zimbabwean friends to task for what they saw as injustice coming from the Mugabe government.

I've learned why there our nuances and shades of gray to the situation that we have a hard time understanding in the West. And I've come to see how history and the positions of the West have helped shape today's crisis in the country.

So I can't help but feel sadness when I see the situation get further and further out of hand. I've been hoping and praying for the best of people to prevail. But once again it has been confirmed for me that "the best" usually doesn't just happen.

BRINGING OUT THE BEST

People don't typically act unselfishly and lovingly toward their neighbors. They don't put the interests of others before their own. These attitudes, this justice, happens typically when some people make sacrifices  -- often at great price -- in order to bring about change.

So I read with great interest an open letter from South African activist and liberation theologist Allan Boesak to the church in Zimbabwe. The letter is long, but worth a read if you have the time.

It calls on the church there to stand up for the poor and the oppressed and against repression and injustice at the hands of the Mugabe government. He points out Mugabe and his government have allowed the Cause of standing up against the injustice of a white racist power structure to blind them to the point that they no longer stand for the people. A point well made in an interview with author Heidi Holland.

The letter spoke strongly to me about the need for the church in the US and in the UK, for example, to be equally as courageous as Boesak is encouraging the Zimbabwean church to be.

Boesak describes well what I think has happened in Zimbabwe. Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF, focus on the injustice and unfairness of the power of the Anglo-Saxons that they still see as their oppressors.

And that injustice at the hands of the UK and the US serves as justification for whatever measures Mugabe takes in order to resist it.

In my talks with some of the government officials I know here, I hear a refrain: They resent being controlled by outside forces and believe Zimbabwe should be able to handle its own problems.

There is, of course, some truth and logic in their feelings. No people wants to feel as if it is subservient to another, as if it were a boy who must obey the Man’s wishes. That I understand.

But the problem, as Boesak points out, is when this focus on the outside oppressor turns us into the inside oppressor.

Sharon Lamb, in the Problem with Blame, says “If victims do not repent today, they will become the oppressors of tomorrow.”

THE MESSAGE

This to me needs to be the message of the church not only in Zimbabwe but everywhere. It's a call to repentance AND to forgiveness.

Even as we seek justice and call oppressors to task we must do so with repentant hearts that recognize our own propensity to put ourselves above others.

This did not happen for Mugabe and Zanu-PF, and we see the results. The liberator becomes the oppressor. We become so focused on ridding ourselves of the tyrant that we will use any tyrannical means necessary to do so.

POT TO THE KETTLE ...

But I believe the West has little room to criticize if it does not do so with a strongly repentant heart of its own, recognizing in effect that it has, in part, created the monster that it now wishes to subdue.

Without repentant hearts and voices from the West, cries for Mugabé’s removal seem to play into the belief that the West simply wants to regain control of Zimbabwe for its own means.

Indeed, I don’t think any of us can firmly say that Western interests are not more about protecting businesses and those who still hold most of the wealth in Zimbabwe (according to some sources, most is still is in the hands of whites) than about fighting for the poor and powerless.

So, I applaud Boesak’s letter, but I believe that Britain now needs its own Boesak to write to the churches there. Same for the U.S., and for the white churches of Zimbabwe. Boesak rightly challenges the church in Zimbabwe to be ready to stand in the face of injustice. I couldn’t help but feel that the same call applies to those of us in the West.

I'm convinced that many decent people, like my friends here in Paris, who support Mugabe's basic principles, would be much more ready to acknowledge and repent from the negative aspects of his regime if they saw repentance coming from those they perceive as their enemies.

Who, if not the church, can lead the way in bringing out this "best" of us?.

I was particularly struck by his mention of the Dutch Reformed Mission church's  “Confession of Belhar,” originally formulated 25 years ago during anti-apartheid activity.

It has become the bedrock of our theological existence and reflection, a witness from us to the people of God in the world. Today, that confession speaks as clearly to us as then, and has become a source of life and inspiration to millions across the earth – everywhere where God’s people are subjected to injustice, suffering and brokenness. In Article Four the confession says;

We believe that God has revealed God self as the One who wishes to bring about justice and true peace on earth; that in a world full of enmity and injustice God is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged and that God calls the church to follow in this; that God brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry; that God frees the prisoners and restores sight to the blind; that God supports the downtrodden, protects the strangers, helps orphans and widows and blocks the path of the ungodly; that for God pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering; that God wishes to teach the people of God to do what is good and to seek the right;

That the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And then the confession says: that the church, belonging to God, should stand where God stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the Church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.

Those words are a call for the church everywhere, not just in Zimbabwe. Problem is, we have a much easier time seeing injustice at the hands of Mugabe than we do when it comes from our own people.