I had originally written a piece on a different topic for this month’s blog/newsletter. But, with so many people writing and asking my thoughts on the current situation in Zimbabwe, I felt that it might be best for me to address the subject sooner rather than later. I am always cautious when writing on such a sensitive subject matter to put a disclaimer at the front end. Please remember that this is simply one man’s opinion and frankly it’s my observations from afar. I hope in time that some of my brethren in the country can shed more light on current developments, but at the moment all of them are in hiding with their families. I know that many of you are praying for the country and I can’t thank you enough for your supplications and petitions to God on behalf of the masses of innocent oppressed people who are now suffering.

The situation in Zimbabwe is not just sad, it’s tragic. Just to give you a general idea this is how bad things have deteriorated there recently…

• A small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars.

• The “official” life expectancy for a woman in Zimbabwe is just 34 years old. In reality it’s closer to 30. For males it’s not much better at only 37 years old.

• One out of every five people in the country is HIV positive. 60% of them are women.

• The current HIV crisis has resulted in tens of thousands of orphaned children and it still hasn’t peaked. Zimbabwe has a higher number of orphans, in proportion to its population, than any other country in the world.

• Due to the disastrous land reform policies of the current administration, most all of the productive farms in the country are now non-operational. The government cannot feed its own people and in order to recently secure re-election, kicked out all the NGO’s and relief agencies that could have helped alleviate the suffering.

Earlier this year a friend of mine asked if I was excited about the prospect of leadership change in Zimbabwe. I caught them off guard when I replied “leadership change will take longer than expected and there are no guarantees that anything will really change with new leadership unless God intervenes.” Let me elaborate…

Mugabe is just the tip of the iceberg

Robert Mugabe the current President, like most of his contemporary revolutionary comrades, came to power under the idealistic banner of “Socialism.”  As we look back now on the history of the 20^th century, we know that socialism as a political and economic ideology to govern a nation, simply doesn’t work. There is not a single success story. Mugabe, like so many others, started out with such noble but naive aspirations. He is an extremely intelligent man who earned six college degrees, most while imprisoned for his beliefs. He genuinely wanted to make a difference and improve the plight of his people. What he underestimated (as we all do) is the wickedness that lies within the human heart, including his own.

When one is suddenly handed the reins of a whole nation and given such power and authority, it’s intoxicating. Men change. Brilliant men become stupid. History testifies to the fact that when leaders gain power with bitterness, resentment and unresolved conflict in their souls they become destructive. Revenge becomes obsessive at the cost of everything else. Mugabe fell prey to this and in the early 1980’s waging genocide against his rivals the Ndebele people in southern Zimbabwe. Then he waged war against the few surviving white farmers that were feeding the nation. Taking their lands away under the auspices of returning the land to the blacks, he destroyed the “breadbasket” of Africa as those farmlands now lie fallow and his nation starves.  When one has power it unfetters the greed and lust hidden in one’s soul.  Like Mugabe, you lavish yourself with a massive new palace and bulldoze down thousands of peoples homes (that you put there) to clean up the neighborhood. Once you have power you become paranoid about losing it. In order to preserve your power, you gather around you family and friends that you trust and put them in key positions in your government. In order to maintain their loyalty you grant them special privileges and wealth which in turn corrupts them. Over the course of time instead of having a truly socialist government where everyone is equal and looked after, you have a few at the top that personally control the wealth and the masses are still enslaved to poverty. This corruption trickles down until you have a totally dysfunctional family under the guise of a government. Whether Imperialism or Socialism, the result is the same for the little guy who has no power, he remains poor.

As I tried to explain to my colleague, even if Robert Mugabe wants to step down, there is a whole entourage of people around him that don’t want to let that happen. Firstly, they don’t want to lose their positions of power and secondly many of them could be brought up on corruption charges and go to jail if a new government comes into power. It’s a very complicated and enmeshed situation. For a new government to come into power peacefully, it will take some time to transition with a lot of backroom meetings and promises to not prosecute the current government for corruption. While I certainly don’t want to minimize Mugabe’s sins as there are many, I suspect that he’s a disillusioned, scared, eighty-four year old man that is as much puppet as President. While on the one hand I’m angry at him as much for what he’s done as what he’s not done. On a much deeper level I pity the man as one day he will have to stand before God and give account for his stewardship of the country and I don’t think he expected it to end like this. His days are numbered one way or the other.

Will Morgan Tsvangirai lead Zimbabwe?

While Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced Chan-gur-i) seems to be the people’s choice to lead the country, whether the leadership of the current ZANU-PF government will let that happen is another story. At the moment the current military leadership is the biggest deterrent to that happening. Mugabe’s military chief Gen. Constantine Chiwenga has made it clear that he does not want Mugabe to step down and will not let it happen. Chiwenga has been trying to purchase arms to build up his military arsenal and fortunately Zimbabwe is landlocked and no African nation will allow the ships carrying the munitions to dock and unload their deadly cargo. With Western nations calling for economic sanctions and freezing the ZANU-PF leadership’s foreign investments, things are only going to get worse for awhile. The West seems intent on using the same strategy that brought regime change in South Africa years earlier. What makes this particular situation so unique on the African continent is that many other African leaders have joined their Western counterparts and are calling for Mugabe to step down. This is unprecedented and a huge blow to Mugabe. Sadly, it will be the people who will suffer the most as men in ivory towers play a giant game of RISK with their lives as board pieces.

For those of you that know little about Morgan Tsvangirai (56), he rose from being a mining plant operator to general foreman and at one point was an ardent member of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. Over the years he became heavily involved in the Zimbabwe Union movement and by 1989 became the Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the umbrella trade union organization in the country. While Mugabe is an intellectual and aloof, Tsvangirai is a blue collar guy that has the loyalty of the everyday working man. Frustrated with the one party system, and ZANU-PF corruption, Tsvangirai formed the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999. His popularity was quickly evident when in 2000 he led the movement to defeat Mugabe’s attempt to change the constitution. Since then, he’s been arrested on numerous occasions and stood trial on treason charges of which he was later acquitted. He’s been badly beaten and survived several assassination attempts. Earlier this year it seemed as though he had won the Presidential election only to have it taken away after the government delayed releasing the results for five weeks. When they finally did, they claimed that he had not received the needed 50% majority vote and a run-off was required. In the ensuing months before the next election the military kicked into gear and enlisted the help of many of the disbursed war veterans around the country to begin a campaign of terror on anyone associated with the MDC. I have pastor friends currently in hiding as their churches and orphanages have been burned and pillaged. One friend estimates he’s had at least 12 orphanage workers killed. The situation is dire to say the least.

If Morgan Tsvangirai survives this madness and does become President someday, he will inherit a nation that is in ruin and in need of a massive overhaul. It will be at that point that we will learn who he really is and what is truly in his heart. If he has not learned humility through all that he has suffered and resentment and revenge remain, the nation will continue to suffer under conflict. The last thing that the people of Zimbabwe need is another duplicitous politician; they need a true Leader that stands on principles. The power and influence he will be granted will reveal the true motivation of his soul. I hope and pray that he is a man that humbly fears God and that his soul is anchored in the principles of the Kingdom of God. If so, he will build an enduring legacy and lead the people of Zimbabwe to a new and bright future.

Is Zimbabwe a nation under judgment?

My answer to that is unequivocally, yes, but not in the way you may think. Most people view God’s judgment as aggressive action on His part to bring various forms of calamity on a person, city or nation. In my view there is another form of judgment that may be as devastating as the commonly held view and that is when God does nothing, and leaves us to our own self-destructive nature. It is my feeling that God’s judgments always have an ulterior motive which is to bring restoration. In other words they are meant to getting us back on the path once we’ve wandered off.  In my view (my book will elaborate more on this) the modern history of Zimbabwe and probably most of Africa is a sad commentary on mankind at its very worst. What’s an even harder pill for me to swallow is that the Church has been equally complicit in this debacle. Thankfully things have changed significantly in the last decade or so but we are still dealing with the consequences of our failing to stick with the mission. I was so pleased to read that the country’s church leadership recently met and issued a statement saying that based on the reality of conditions on the ground, their conclusion was that the will of the people of Zimbabwe was not given authentic expression in the elections last month. They called on God to have mercy on Zimbabwe and to give the nation "the spirit of forgiveness".

Knowing so many people in the country, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are tired of being tossed about and used by corrupt leaders whether black or white. They are ready for change, substantial change. Many are crying out to God for deliverance and pleading with Him to raise up a righteous leader who will in turn appoint righteous men to govern. Zimbabwe with all that it has suffered is ripe for revival. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I can’t think of anything more powerful than one day after the current administration is gone, that the new leadership of Zimbabwe calls a Solemn Assembly and the nation gather in one place to humble itself before God and ask not only for forgiveness but His grace to forge a new future built on the foundation stones of His Kingdom.

^“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

      II Chronicles 7:14