Dear Editor
?I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out!?
These are the words of Jesus as recorded in Luke 19:40. We have always been urged and urged one another to break the silence on AIDS, and this was a good call. There is yet another silence that, as the government of Botswana, and by extension, as the people would rather not break. There is a new diplomacy embraced, especially by SADC states called ?Silent diplomacy.? We are meant to believe it means Heads of states are engaging their Zimbabwean counterpart in the privacy of their exalted offices. The reality seems to point to a deafening silence! Diplomacy is about engagement, but this engagement is not about nursing feelings and relationships, especially when people are dehumanized, maimed and murdered!
Thousands of Zimbabweans, like Batswana, are Christians and, as such, they yean for ?thy Kingdom come.? Whenever they say the Lord?s Prayer, they express their yeaning for the reign of God, which is antithetical to that of President Mugabe.
To call for God?s Kingdom as Batswana, especially those who call themselves by the name of Christ, while we embrace ?Silent diplomacy? is to be hypocrites.
We need to be reminded that Jesus was born in an oppressive society where political leaders of his time had no regard for justice. Peace for them meant absolute obedience and compliance by the oppressed. The kingdom and the Peace of Rome were only ideal to the Roman Empire (kingdom). Jesus advocated for a different empire, one where peace is not merely the absence of strife, but where shalom of God, the wellness of God?s people took precedence over imperial political interests. To be Christian is to dare to dream and act on a dream for an alternative community where God?s people in Zimbabwe enjoy the shalom of God. No doubt, Zimbabwe is a blessed land; it is a wealthy land, which could be a major economic powerhouse in the SADC region. Why the Silent diplomacy? Sometimes I am tempted to believe South Africa embraced this quite ?diplomacy? as the woes of Zimbabwe are in some way a blessing to them. Zimbabwe?s resurrection will surely change the economic playing field. Botswana and other countries in the region will have a choice compared to the present, where it is either South Africa or starvation. The greatest wealth of Zimbabwe is its people. Zimbabweans have a surprising work ethic. While I normally avoid generalizations, I dare say they are hard workers who would turn Zimbabwe into an economic miracle. Our quite diplomacy serves only to break them, thus turning them into something they are not.
I wish to applaud the likes of Hon. Botsalo Ntuane for breaking the silence. I believe we need to confess and repent as we have let our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe down. We pray ?lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil? yet we lead through quite diplomacy our own siblings from Zimbabwe into the same. We share the blame for turning some of them into thieves, robbers, and murderers. Yes, we made them that, unless one can convince me they are inherently evil, and that they have always been like that. Desperate situations make people behave desperately! Do we ever stop to think what will become of us should we find ourselves in a situation like theirs? The government?s tactics of arming the police and soldiers in the so-called engaging in anti-crime exercises serves only to make an attempt at dealing with the symptom. Worse still, it continues our specialty of blaming those in difficult situations.
We are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves. This is the second greatest commandment after which the rest is commentary. I am sorry to say but we have a funny way of loving the neighbour. If how we treat the Zimbabwean issue shows how we love them, then I do not know what loving the Christian way is. We are reminded we cannot love the God we cannot see with our eyes, when we hate the neighbor we live with (1 John 4:20). Have we been lying in our profession to love God? Do we know God at all? Those who do not love do not know God, as God is love (1 John 4: 7-8). For this I would like to repeat we need to confess and repent not just in word but also in deeds.
When we say the Lord?s Prayer we start with ?Our Father.? Can we pause and let every one answer for themselves this question: are Zimbabweans included in this ?our?? The fact that Jesus calls God ?our Father? points to the very fact that we are siblings; we are brothers and sisters. The question then is who would keep silent when their sibling is maimed, dehumanized and killed? To keep silent in such situations is to negate what Christ taught and thus to act in an anti-Christ way! I, therefore, call upon all Christians and Church leaders in particular, and all people created in God?s image to jointly condemn the evil of oppression that like kgogomodumo is swallowing our siblings from across the border. I call upon all to engage our political leaders to do something about this atrocious situation and to name it for what it really is: demonic! It is demonic because it is anti-life! We need to wake up to the fact that what has happened to the leader of the MDC is nothing compared to what ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe go through every day! This must stop, if it takes isolating, Mugabe so be it! The blood of those dying when we could have done something to prevent their dying is crying like Cain?s from the earth, I can hear the cry, can?t you? Even the most expensive perfumes could not clean the blood from the hands of Lady Macbeth; silence will not clean their blood from our hands!
Zimbabwe does not belong in the tombs and the wilderness; we need to work with all concerned and loving to rid her of the legions in order for her to make a return to where she belongs! Speak out we must for ?I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out!? The prophet Jeremiah was once confronted with a similar situation where Jerusalem had turned into an oppressive regime. God vowed to destroy the city of corruption and oppression (Jer. 6). What irked God even more were the priests and prophets about whom he said, ?They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ?Peace peace? they say when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall with the fallen? (Jer.6:14-15). Have we lost the ability to blush so much that we can turn and look the other way in the face of oppression? I urge you, let us join hands and be instruments of God in God?s costly discipleship!
Rev. Dumi O. Mmualefe is Chairman of the UCCSA Synod of Botswana and a lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Botswana.
