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Zimbabwe: Police Beat Up, Evict Anglicans In Church

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allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Police Beat Up And Evict Anglican Parishioners Page 1 of 1
State sponsored violence against members of the Anglican Church reached new levels over the weekend as police in different parts of Harare gatecrashed church services and beat up parishioners loyal to new bishop Sebastian Bakare.

At the St Francis parish in Waterfalls riot police interrupted the service during holy communion and told parishioners to leave. Witnesses said the parishioners assumed it was the usual police over-zealousness and some of them remained seated. The police then began beating up people, including women, in the church.

Bishop Bakare, who replaced former bishop-deposed Nolbert Kunonga, goes on to note that Kunonga has accused Bakare of being an MDC supporter, has accepted financial support from Britain (ie., the Devil), and so on.

I’ve quoted the entire article as AllAfrica.com tends to scroll stories off into the archives (or remove them) pretty quickly.  The Zim stories seem to be escalating – more news is getting out, at least, so it’s hard to tell if the atrocities are getting worse, or it’s just that they’re getting reported.

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Zimbabwe: Images Of Protest

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zimpeace.jpg

BBC NEWS | Africa | Civil society’s triumph on Zimbabwe
Image: South African church groups protest the Chinese arms ship An Yue Jiang at Durban harbor last week.

chinalost.jpg

UN Move on Robert Mugabe as police round up MDC
Image: activists arrested from in front of the Chinese embassy in South Africa. One of these activists is a young man who still had his cell phone with him. The pastoral sponsor of the youth organization is the Rev. Mufaro Stig Hove, who runs a plethora of Zim blog sites. The activists may already have been deported by now. The sign says “China — Mugabe Lost The Election.”

Sokwanele Street Pamphlet

Image: Street pamphlet/newspaper ad produced by Zimbabwe Democracy Now, whose site is filled with activist tools, images, and political cartoons.

Image: This is from South Africa’s premier cartoonist, Zapiro.

Image: “We Have Done It”
Here’s another one, sent to Sokwanele/This is Zimababwe blog: it’s their blog post, reformatted for readers that don’t have Internet access that someone printed up and was handing out in Harare.
Since uploaded to Flickr. Their Flickr stream is constantly being updated with news photos and images sent to them via cell phone and email.

tsvang_salute_2.jpg

Image: The probable-rightful President of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangarai. Note raised open right hand; this is the salute of the Movement for Democratic Change. The symbol for Mugabe’s party ZANU-PF is a closed fist. Recently, reports have surfaced that thugs are cutting off the right hands of suspected MDC activists.

And then there’s this, An entire set of protest signs is here.
Image: a pre-election blimp (!) sent up by South African activists.

They do this in spite of a long history of police repression. Here are images from an October, 2007 rally for a new constitution:

Before:

After:

40 hospitalised as police attack NCA demo in Harare

By Tererai Karimakwenda
16 October, 2007

Riot police attacked a group of NCA members who had gathered for a demonstration on 2nd street in Harare on Tuesday, and injured 40 of them. The NCA (National Constitutional Assembly) reported that approximately 400 members had come to protest against Constitutional Amendment 18 Bill, which passed in parliament earlier this month. The group intended to march peacefully to the parliament building, but they were rounded up at Herald House where the police took turns beating participants.

The NCA had announced there would be a peaceful demonstration in the capital this week, but did not reveal the exact date of the protests fearing the police would react in just such a brutal manner. A statement by the NCA said that the injured, including a man who sustained a deep cut on the forehead, were taken to a private hospital for treatment.

NCA spokesperson Madock Chivasa told newsreel the marching activists had just turned onto 2nd Street when they were blocked by police and ordered to sit down on the sidewalk. Some immediately fled for safety and others sat down. Police then assaulted them severely, causing chaos and many of them got up and escaped. Chivasa said it appears the police just wanted to assault and intimidate the activists because no arrests were made.

A statement released by the group said in part: “We urge all pro-democratic forces in Zimbabwe to include all stakeholders in fundamental issues such as constitutional making.”

Fears of the end-game are rife. The parlieamentary recount is finished, showing MDC is still the winner, but the presidential returns are still MIA.
The UN Security Council will talk some more on Tuesday. Meanwhile, ordinary people will keep coming up with information and clever ways to protest, get the word out, and shame the world into taking action.
Nothing will change, however, unless the supporters of Mugabe’s regime stop getting their payoffs in cash, food, and confiscated farms. The low-level thugs are drunk on power, booze, and blood – they’ll keep going as long as they get their “fix.” The mid- and high-level guys, who fear democracy (and a working judicial system) won’t leave until they have nobody to beat people up on their behalf.
The Mugabe regime is morally, politically, and financially bankrupt. Once everybody realizes there’s no more cash to be had from the cow, it’s all over.

You Are My Witnesses: Thugs Attack Mothers Union Meeting

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Ruth Gledhill – Times Online – WBLG: Zimbabwe: The devil came late today.

Ruth Bakare, wife of the interim bishop of Harare, was the main speaker at a Mother’s Union meeting at an Anglican church in Zimbabwe. Over 3200 women had arrived for the day’s activities and Mrs. Bakare was partway through her talk, which included commentary on a text from Isaiah, “You are my witnesses.” The Mother’s Union is one of those Anglican bodies that evokes images of ladies drinking tea and enjoying a nice day out with educational speakers and fun activities. Not a rout with bully boys (and one bully girl) intent on breaking the meeting up. Part of the context is political, and part of it is that the thugs were apparently there on behalf of the deposed former bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, who’s a major ally of Robert Mugabe’s.

Half way through my address I saw a truck with riot police drive into the yard towards the crowd in a rather aggressive way. I asked Vimbai whether I should continue and she advised me to ignore them. So I did.

And just as I said in my address: “What have we not seen” (or witnessed in today’s Zimbabwe), the second truckload of police arrived, and a policeman came to the front of the tent where I was and requested us to leave immediately. The women started saying a last prayer, and many were shedding tears. Then they began to disperse one by one, with some older ladies on walking sticks trotting behind.

The Bishop and I took our time leaving and followed other women who were driving out of the gate. Most of the women had gathered just outside the church grounds by the gate and were now singing hymns on top of their voices. When our car went out of the gate, it was like a “triumphant exit from Jerusalem”, the way the women responded – was it joy or anger?

Certainly they sounded happy and confident and some were saying, “The devil came late today. After all we had nearly finished our day.” When they saw me moved to tears at their singing and cheering us, they called to me “Musatye” (don’t be afraid”), and indeed I was not, carried by so much joy and love and hope.

I knew that what we are going through is only for a while. “We shall overcome!”

Chinese soldiers and arms in Zimbabwe?

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Sokwanele reports a new and disturbing development in the “little” Zimbabwe story: it seems a group of about 10 Chinese soldiers and/or officers, armed with revolvers, checked into the Holiday Inn in Mutare, and are going about with Zimbabwean police for some reason. Meanwhile, a Chinese ship called the An Yue Jiang just cleared customs in Durban with a few containers said to contain arms consigned to the Zimbabwean army. The timing is pretty disturbing; if it’s a long-planned training exercise, with some new toys for Mugabe’s bully boys, it couldn’t come at a more dangerous time. Also, there are reports elsewhere on various Zim blogs and South African news sites that troops armed with water cannon and so forth are driving around in the suburbs and streets of Harare. The general strike the other day didn’t really come off as most people didn’t hear about it until they were already out and about for the day.

From several posts and comments at This is Zimbabwe » Blog Archive » Chinese soldiers seen in Mutare

A quick search this morning pulled this article up, published on zimbabwejournalists.com, which corroberates the truth of what he saw:

“Residents are going about their normal business despite a call by the opposition to stay at home. Businesses were operating as usual but there was a heavy police presence in the city centre and in all the high density suburbs,” he said.
…

The police are armed with AK rifles, teargas canisters and baton sticks. Water cannons were being driven throughout the suburbs. There were no incidents of violence as of mid-morning. However, says Baxter, there was a surprise presence of Chinese soldiers armed with revolvers in the city.

The Chinese, together with about 70 Zimbabwean senior army officers are staying at the Holiday Inn, in the city’s central business district.

There are about 10 Chinese soldiers. “We were shocked to see Chinese soldiers in their full military regalia and armed with pistols checking at the hotel,” said one worker.

“When they signed checking-in forms they did not indicate the nature of the business that they are doing and even their addresses.”

Still on the topic of China meddling in our affairs, we also received this information from another source who said that a ship had docked in Durban, South Africa on the 15 April: “container ship An Yue JIANG, Voyage 143, Vessel Agent COSREN”. Our emailer told us that he had been advised that the ship had a small number of containers – three, he was told – “which contained weaponry (small arms/RPG7 projectiles/mortars) destined for the Zimbabwe army”.

Apparently this news has already been reported on Radio 702 in South Africa, who said there were six containers of weaponry. I haven’t been able to find a link to that but in the process of looking did find this. I haven’t set up the required account to view details though. I think this is a picture of the ship, location unknown.

The An Yue Jiang

The bloggers at Sokwanele go on to caution calm and notes that there are Zimbabweans of Chinese descent who may suffer by association, if this story leads to a Chinese intervention of some sort. It’s my hope that the Chinese troops may be there for some sort protection of Chinese interests, but it feels a little too clandestine and under the radar for that. Especially with all that’s been going on with the Olympic torch relay and Darfur. The Chinese, as someone said recently, don’t respond well to criticism. But this is a very worrisome development.

Bad Bishop: Not Fooling Anybody From The Bully(ing) Pulpit

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IOL: Mugabe is ‘a prophet of God’ – rebel bishop

Last year, Kunonga withdrew from the Anglican province of Central Africa to set up his own province in Zimbabwe, ostensibly in a row about homosexuality.

But his critics claim he was really just preserving his own position. The mother church fired him last month. He has been steadily abandoned by all the parishes in Zimbabwe and now serves a community of only a few dozen worshippers who fill a few pews in the cathedral on Sunday mornings.

“We will not use the cathedral for services again until we have reconsecrated or sanctified it from the act of sacrilege done by Kunonga in that place,” said Bishop Bakare, who was brought out of retirement from eastern Zimbabwe to take over the cathedral parish temporarily.

Africa and its Anglicans is the “big stick” in the Communion, used by conservatives to try to verger we misguided majority-liberal, minority-conservative American Episcopalians into line. We’re constantly being reminded that there are far more Nigerians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, Ugandans and other Africans in the pews in the Southern Hemisphere than there are English, Europeans, Canadians, and Americans in the Northern half of the globe (the Kiwis and the Ozzies mostly align with the North, with some standout exceptions).

Is this truly the example we are supposed to follow? Fall in with intolerance simply because there’s far more bottoms in the pews in countries were corruption and violence against gays are understood to have the Church’s blessing, or at least its acquiescent silence?

Kunonga, now deposed Bad Bishop of Harare, is failing to rally his base from the evidence in this story; his flock have caught on to his ways and have voted with their feet. They don’t bother about his assertions about homosexuality corrupting the Western church, and are making it clear that they would prefer to follow another leader. He still has a bully pulpit, the cathedral church, but with only a few dozen parishioner-thugs, he’s really just a pulpit bully preaching to an empty building behind padlocked gates.

The Zimbabwean Anglicans will need to do some serious purifications after he and his dirty laundry are finally kicked to the curb.

Hypocrisy and Opportunism: The Bad Bishop Again

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The Zimbabwe Independent – The Leading Business Weekly Newspaper

I THINK recent developments at the Anglican Cathedral and Greendale parish clearly show the difference between Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and Bishop Sebastian Bakare: one is a thug and the other a true spiritual leader.The public needs to know that the hype about homosexuality is real hypocrisy and opportunism on the part of Kunonga. Before he clutched onto this he had suggested as an agenda item to the provincial secretary that the Province of Central Africa should be dissolved as a sign of respect to Archbishop Bernard Malango who was retiring at the end of September 2007.

All other provincial bishops laughed at his reasoning. It was after this that he came up with homosexuality as the basis of breaking away.

I’ve been collecting links to stories about Bishop Kunonga for about a year now… but this opinion piece from the Zimbabwe Independent deserved a bit more notice. I saw it at Episcope along with another article from the same source about Kunonga’s rather scandalously cozy relationship with Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.

Right, I blog about gay clergy and gay marriage and gay laity issues a lot as they relate to the Episcopal Church. Why? I’m not gay, though I’m proud to say that in college I was named an honorary dyke (those words exactly) by a large circle of friends I had in Eugene who were lesbians. Since then, I’ve found that on my spiritual journey, which led me to the Episcopal Church, there were gay people at key waypoints.

So I keep an eye on the issues, and this led me to start keeping an eye on the “Bad Bishop of Harare.”

In some ways, Kunonga strikes me as a less adroit version of Bishop Akinola of Nigeria… one who hasn’t been briefed with the game plan and the strategery, although he gets the gist: attack the gays, label critics as Satanists, kick out clergy and congregations who don’t toe the line, and grab the goodies.

And in some ways, Kunonga and Akinola and some of the other “province poaching” bishops in Africa remind me of some of our own dissatisfied and unhappy conservative bishops, and most especially of Bishop Schofield, self-declared Bishop of San Joaquin of the Southern Cone (and ex-bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin), who seemed to be confused about whether he could wear both pointy hats recently.

It’s refreshing to see some news from an African source laying out the facts as they are seen there; the literalists who condemn homosexuality on Biblical grounds claim that great numbers of disapproving African Anglicans demand that the US church snap out of it and get back into exclusionary lockstep with the rest of the Communion.

Well, there’ve been several stories lately that have pointed out that in Zimbabwe (and also Nigeria) great numbers of Africans (not just Anglicans) simply want to go to church without armed thugs preventing them from entering, or people in purple shirts taking the keys to the parish car, or disrupting their Sunday worship. They’re worried about rampant hyper-inflation, not “Adam and Steve.” That whole argument is revealed as hypocritical and opportunistic by this telling little detail; the other bishops laughed at him when he suggested a self-aggrandizing reorg, so he attacked “the gays” instead.

Bishop Kunonga is an example of “how not to Bishop.” And too many of the conservative clergy and bishops seem to be using the same strategery to improve their status in the Anglican world – by getting more pointy hats and provinces of their own. I wish they’d realize how bald-faced obvious a ploy it is. It’s embarassing.

AFP: Zimbabwe Anglican church to sever ties with gays: official

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Remember: Harare is the seat of the “Bad Bishop of Harare” that I’ve blogged about before. As stories in African web publications can disappear behind archive screens, or be withdrawn if someone important enough repudiates them, I’ve quoted the whole thing. Meanwhile, the Central African  synod  ousted a  progressive bishop who called for moderation on the gay clergy issue at their meeting in Malawi.

The scandalous “not fit to live” remarks by Bishop Orama of Uyo, Nigeria have been removed from the UPI website, but the “Akinola Repent” blog thoughtfully saved the article as a PDF.

AFP: Zimbabwe Anglican church to sever ties with gays: official

HARARE (AFP) — The Anglican church in Zimbabwe Saturday said it will not “stand with homosexuals” at a synod of four southern African Anglican churches in Malawi which is set to revive the issue of gay clerics.Refering to a diocesan act, a cleric at Harare diocese told AFP that three of the four dioceses in Zimbabwe had “unanimously agreed” to sever ties with dioceses in the Central African province which were in favour of homosexuals.

The Anglican province of Central Africa comprises Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The cleric, speaking on condition of anonymity, said according to the diocesan act, which came into effect on August 4, the Zimbabwe church will “dissociate and sever relationship with any individual, group of people, organisation, institution, diocese, province or people who indulge in or sympathise or compromises with homosexuality”.

He said Zimbabwe, along with Zambia and some dioceses of Malawi, will lead the anti-gay lobby at the synod which opens Saturday in Malawi’s southern resort district of Mangochi.

There are fears that the Central Africa province would break into three national provinces of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.

Botswana does not qualify to be a province because it has only one dioecese instead of the required four.

The chasm in the African Anglican church has partly been sparked by the church’s refusal to consecrate a liberal British vicar as bishop-elect of the diocese of Lake Malawi following allegations that he was gay.

Malawian Archbishop Bernard Malango, head of the Anglican Church in Central Africa stopped to confirm Nicholas Henderson amid allegations that the Briton supports gay rights or could be gay himself.

Malango was among the African Anglican primates who vehemently opposed the appointment of an American gay cleric, Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire and the Canadian communion’s decision to bless same-sex marriages.

Henderson is said to be an active member of a group calling itself Modern Churchpeople Union (MCU) which advocates interests of gay people among other revolutionary ideas.

[tags]Anglican, gay clergy, Zimbabwe, Harare[/tags]