Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The visit by senior church leaders under the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations to State House to offer prayers for wisdom, divine guidance, and peace is, on the surface, an act of profound obedience to Christian duty.

If you value my social justice advocacy and writing, please consider a financial contribution to keep it going. Contact me on WhatsApp: +263 715 667 700 or Email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com

As believers, we are explicitly commanded by the scriptures to intercede for those in authority.

In 1 Timothy 2:1-2, the Apostle Paul instructs that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, and specifically for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

Similarly, Romans 13:1 reminds us that there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

From a purely theological standpoint, the steps taken by these ecumenical leaders to seek divine intervention for the presidency represent a commendable adherence to scriptural mandates.

However, there comes a defining moment when the Christian church, and indeed the broader society, must confront the brutal, unvarnished facts of our reality.

There is a time when we must finally admit that our leaders have absolutely no interest in governing under the guidance, justice, and wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The bitter truth is that the ruling elite is consumed by a self-serving agenda centered entirely on power retention, the total control and abuse of our vast national resources, and the systematic subjugation of the very citizens they have plunged into horrific poverty.

These leaders possess no genuine regard for the Word of God, let alone for Jehovah Himself.

Why, then, would they ever be interested in true wisdom or lasting peace?

If the spirit of peace and wisdom truly resided within the corridors of power, would we witness the industrial-scale looting of national resources while public hospitals go without basic medications, clean water, and lifesaving equipment?

This pervasive corruption leads to the needless, painful deaths of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans each year.

Would leaders who value divine wisdom govern with such profound callousness that millions of citizens struggle daily just to secure a single meal?

Furthermore, if these leaders genuinely feared God, they would not be actively pushing the Constitutional Amendment (No. 3) Bill to unconstitutionally extend their stay in power, completely overriding the free will of the people.

The reality is that these are leaders who have actively disqualified themselves from prayers for wisdom.

Scripture makes it clear that God rejects those who reject His counsel.

The Bible explicitly states how much the Almighty detests oppressive and corrupt governance.

In Proverbs 29:2, we are warned that when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.

Isaiah 10:1-2 pronounces a direct woe upon those who decree unrighteous decrees and write misfortune, robbing the needy of justice and taking what belongs to the poor, the widows, and the orphans.

Amos 5:12 further cements this divine outrage, declaring that God knows our manifold transgressions and mighty sins, specifically citing those who afflict the just, take bribes, and turn aside the poor at the gate.

Conversely, Jehovah loves leaders who obey His commands and actively champion the cause of the vulnerable.

Psalms 82:3-4 commands rulers to defend the poor and fatherless, to do justice to the afflicted and needy, and to deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.

Proverbs 14:31 reminds us that he who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker, but he who honors Him has mercy on the needy.

History proves that God does not indefinitely tolerate leaders who mock His decrees.

The scriptures are replete with examples of rulers openly rejected by God due to their disobedience and arrogance.

King Saul was completely rejected after he chose to obey his own desires and the pressures of his army rather than the explicit command of God, leading the prophet Samuel to declare in 1 Samuel 15:23 that because Saul had rejected the word of the Lord, God had also rejected him from being king.

King Ahab and his wife Jezebel faced total divine condemnation and destruction for their unchecked tyranny, corruption, and the murder of Naboth to steal his ancestral vineyard.

Even the mighty King Nebuchadnezzar was driven from human society to live like a wild beast for seven years until he finally acknowledged that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men.

Therefore, while we may appreciate the pastoral intentions of the church leaders who visited State House, we must accept the sobering reality that the time for praying for the wisdom of these specific leaders has long passed.

These individuals have demonstrated that they are beyond redemption and entirely closed to divine counsel.

What Zimbabwe desperately requires now are not polite prayers for a corrupt leadership to suddenly gain wisdom, but fervent prayers for Jesus Christ to directly intervene and deliver the nation from these kleptocratic, repressive, and cruel rulers.

Zimbabwe needs an entirely new set of leaders.

We need men and women who put Jehovah God first in absolute sincerity, not hypocrites who merely use the holy name of God and weaponize biblical verses to deceive a suffering populace.

We need a leadership that loves and obeys God in spirit and in truth, governing with justice, integrity, and genuine compassion.

The long-suffering people of Zimbabwe have endured enough layout of oppression, and it is time to pray for total renewal.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The attempt by ZANU-PF legislator Perseverance Zhou to defend Constitutional Amendment (No. 3) Bill is a masterclass in this political absurdity.

If you value my social justice advocacy and writing, please consider a financial contribution to keep it going. Contact me on WhatsApp: +263 715 667 700 or Email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com

Zhou claims that stripping citizens of their right to directly elect the president will magically promote peace and end electoral violence.

To bolster this claim, she points to neighboring countries that utilize parliamentary systems, framing the move as a progressive developmental step.

This argument lacks credibility and ignores global realities.

Moving the presidential vote to a legislature does not magically sanitize a highly polarized political environment.

In consolidated democracies and stable nations like Spain and Italy, the parliamentary selection of a prime minister is frequently a source of bitter political warfare, backroom horse-trading, and deep societal division.

In Spain, the parliamentary investiture of the prime minister has triggered mass public protests and accusations of political bartering that split the nation down the middle.

This unfolded clearly when Pedro Sánchez traded a controversial amnesty law to Catalan separatists. He did this solely to buy their legislative votes to secure office.

In Thailand, the parliamentary selection process has repeatedly caused immense toxicity, resulting in massive street protests and the regular collapse of governments.

The system itself is not an antidote to division.

The recurring tragedy of Zimbabwe’s disputed and divisive elections has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the president is elected directly by the people.

The source of public disgruntlement and polarization is the systematically compromised conduct of the institutions mandated to oversee the process.

If we examine past elections that have caused the most profound national trauma, the focus of condemnation has never been the democratic act of citizens casting their ballots.

Instead, the blame lies squarely with the questionable conduct of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), the partisan interference of the security sector, the intolerance of the ruling ZANU-PF party, and the glaring bias of the state media.

This institutional rot was clearly indicted by the SADC Election Observer Mission during the 2023 harmonized elections.

The regional body explicitly called out these state institutions for flouting Zimbabwe’s own domestic laws, as well as SADC’s principles and guidelines governing democratic elections.

Blame was never laid upon citizens exercising their right to vote for a president.

The crisis in Zimbabwe is born from state institutions taking political sides instead of maintaining the professionalism and impartiality required of them by the Constitution.

Attempting to resolve this crisis by shifting the presidential vote to parliament is merely sweeping the rot under the rug.

Changing the venue of the election does not fix the partisan bias embedded within the electoral commission, the security apparatus, the judiciary, or the state broadcaster.

If these entities remain captured, the toxic, divisive, and disputed nature of Zimbabwean politics will simply manifest with full force during parliamentary elections.

Citizens will still face intimidation, the figures will still be questioned, and the legislative polls themselves will become the new flashpoint for national conflict.

Furthermore, the claim that parliament is a safer, more stable arena for selecting a head of state is completely demolished by recent history.

Arguably one of the greatest political scandals to bedevil Zimbabwe and ferment massive divisions occurred entirely within the walls of parliament itself.

This happened when both the speaker of the House of Assembly, the president of the Senate, and the judiciary recognized a self-appointed opposition official, Sengezo Tshabangu, and permitted him to recall over 42 elected opposition legislators.

This egregious manipulation handed the ruling party a two-thirds majority that it completely failed to garner from the electorate during the 2023 harmonized elections.

It is the very same artificially manufactured two-thirds majority that ZANU-PF is now weaponizing to amend the supreme law of the land.

What can be a bigger scandal than a legislature that actively subverts the expressed will of the voters?

This monumental travesty was not a result of Zimbabweans voting for their president; it was the direct result of parliamentary vulnerability to political manipulation.

Given what Zimbabwe has already experienced with the Tshabangu recalls, leaving the election of the president to parliament risks causing far more toxicity and instability than a direct popular vote.

Parliament can be easily distorted and rigged through the questionable recalling of legislators considered opposed to a preferred presidential candidate.

Under such a system, it is entirely predictable that soon after parliamentary elections, a ruling faction could systematically purge elected lawmakers viewed as unlikely to vote for their chosen presidential contender.

This would inevitably result in a deeply fraudulent parliamentary vote, producing a leader completely divorced from the public will, and plunging the nation into an even deeper state of polarization.

Zhou’s attempt to inject religious symbolism into this constitutional regression by describing the number seven as a biblical blessing for a proposed seven-year presidential term is a disingenuous distraction from the erosion of democratic rights.

Zimbabweans do not need theological justifications for the dilution of their franchise.

The fix for Zimbabwe’s political crisis is not to shield the executive from the judgment of the voting public, but to enforce the constitutional obligations of professionalism, neutrality, and independence on state bodies.

True peace and stability cannot be engineered by locking citizens out of the presidential selection process.

It can only be achieved when state institutions stop acting as political contestants and begin serving the nation with the impartiality the law demands.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08