15 August 2012
Okay, I feel like a sluggard when it comes to writing! First, I skipped writing for almost two years for "excuses, excuses, excuses . . . ." Then I wrote two posts and have more excuses for the last eight months. I could list the excuses, but that is boring—let's get back to writing.
I do have plans to get on with this on a daily basis. I just won't be able to keep up with the pace of 1000 words/day as I was doing a few years ago. My plans include finishing this history of my time in Zimbabwe over the next several months and publishing the story as an ebook during 2013. [Note: It only took me 13 more years to finish in 2026!]
Then, I will continue this blog as a forum for more current conversation. Nevertheless, back to our story.
I should probably point out again that this is my own story. As such, I am both hero and villain, depending on how I feel as I reflect on these events. No doubt, many of my recollections are colored and even distorted. I am certainly more objective now than I was a few decades ago, but memories are funny things. We remember what we remember. And, what we remember is often wrong.
I do have a detailed journal that I kept from 1983-86 as well as photos, letters and newsletters that I wrote from 1976-87 when we left Zimbabwe for the last time. Of course, those represent my perspective that, although first hand, is completely subjective. And, let's face it, I was one "confused puppy" wandering and wondering. I am trying to be as honest and objective as possible, but I have read enough history to know that no history is truly objective.
So, if you share some of this history with me and your memory is different, that is okay. This is what I remember, what I thought, think and continue to wonder about.
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Now back to Wedza:
As I climbed into the cargo-bed of the Ministry of Information pickup truck, I was only a few minutes away from understanding former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s quip, “All politics is local.” The truck bumped its way up the road to Matsine town—a half block of buildings that included a small grocery and a few other shops. I was escorted to a semi-circle of one-room buildings behind the shops. The unpainted cinderblock buildings resembled one of those five-room motels that you still find abandoned off the rural highways of the American South.
I was “invited” into one of the rooms that had a few small work tables and chairs. As I entered, I passed by a gathering crowd of about 30 people who were getting ready for some sort of local ZANU-PF political meeting out front. Several of the women in the crowd gave me a smile and a wave. They knew me from the tent meetings of the previous week.
After being seated, I was introduced to a husky 30-something man who identified himself as an official with the Ministry of Information. It was unusual to meet African men who were not chronically thin. Even if this fellow hadn’t introduced himself as an official, his round jowls and plump belly were enough to identify him as an African politician. Only politicians were well-fed and had the leisure to be overweight!
He explained to me that the people outside and his reason for being here was to have a political rally for Prime Minister Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. The reason I had been “invited” was to make sure that what I was saying in my meetings was not contradictory to the spirit of these political meetings.
Africans in Zimbabwe were participating in government for the first time since the arrival of white settlers financed by Cecil Rhodes in the late 19th century. And, as is the case for those who have “found politics” for the first time, politics is sacred! As a scholar in the field of comparative religions, I have noticed few differences between between those who have found politics and those who have found God, religion, spirituality, the Truth, the Path—you get the point. Politics is hard to separate from religion because, for many, politics is religion!
In the mind of this official, what I was doing was the same as what he was doing. We were both in the people-persuasion business. And here I was, a foreign, white, former member of the hated Rhodesian Army drawing crowds of 200-1000 people. I was a potential competitor, and an outsider!
Mr. Wasserman, I have invited you here to discuss these meetings you are having. What are you telling our people?
I replied that I was “sharing the gospel (good news) of Jesus and the kingdom of God.” I also reminded him that we had permission from the Wedza Police Commissioner and the local ZANU-PF party and were using ZANU-PF Youth Brigade members as ushers.
Hmm . . . We have heard of this “gospel” before. Are you preaching the same “gospel” as Muzorewa? If you are you will end up where he is!
This wasn’t good! Abel Muzorewa was a Methodist Bishop and had served for almost a year as the interim Prime Minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia 1979-80). He was currently in Chikirubi Maximum Security Prison for being a religious/political figure in opposition to Mugabe. [We had returned to Zimbabwe in 1983 just after Muzorewa was imprisoned for suggesting an agricultural alliance with Israel. He was accused of being a South African and Israeli agent.] All of Mugabe’s competitors and many of his former allies had already been exiled, imprisoned or killed. Only Muzorewa’s international profile kept him alive through subsequent imprisonment and exile. He died of cancer (age 84) in Harare in April of 2010 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Muzorewa].
To answer the official’s question, I launched into a 15-minute discourse explaining the “gospel” as I understood and taught it. My theme was one that avoided Zimbabwe politics, focusing on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, especially on God’s mercy and forgiveness. I explicitly separated Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God as being “heavenly” rather than earthly, quoting Jesus saying that his kingdom was “not of this world” and the reason why his disciples “do not fight” [John 18:36].
I further asserted that since I was a guest in Zimbabwe, that it wasn’t my place to enter the political discourse. I was already in enough hot water, so I didn’t say this at the time, but I had learned my lesson about meddling in the political affairs of others during my first visit in 1977-78. My first trip as a “Christian soldier” had not been helpful to anyone and had left Pegi and me both dazed and confused as to who we were and what our lives were all about.
The official actually took detailed notes as I talked. I remember thinking that he would be reading my gospel explanation to others and hoping that this would lead to others responding to God’s love. Today I realize how silly that was.
Ronald Reagan’s reelection and our recent trip to the USA had exposed us to an increasing politicization of church life. Our focus was on the way Jesus had lived, the compassion of his ministry to the poor and oppressed and the foundation of Zimbabwean churches that would reflect the 1st century disciples of Jesus. I had never been impressed with “establishment” Christianity. In my Jesus Freak days I had called this “Churchianity” and had never been able to reconcile modern church life with the New Testament period church.
[Years later I would write my doctoral dissertation on the early Jewish-dominant church, hoping for a modern Jewish-led Christianity’s reemergence would serve as a vehicle for my own faith, published as Messianic Jewish Congregations: Who Sold this Business to Gentiles? Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000. An eBook version will be available in late 2012 from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com].
It seemed in my interest to point out that we had been so distressed by the political focus of churches when we were home in the States, that we had decided not to vote in that election cycle. After all, we were living as guests in Zimbabwe and wished to remain politically uninvolved and neutral. As we have related this story over the years, many have taken us to task for not voting in that election cycle. Frankly, we didn’t “have a dog” in the Reagan v. Mondale fight and would support and respect whomever the American people elected. We were temporarily sacrificing our “right” to participate in earthly politics to focus on the establishment of the reign of God in human hearts in a foreign land. You may not agree with the decision we made at the time, but you didn’t have to live with the consequences either!
I am convinced to this day that my apolitical assertion was what got me out of this dangerous situation, not my exposition of the gospel! Once the official heard me say that we hadn’t voted, he closed his notebook and invited me to come on outside to observe the local political meeting that was already starting.
I was escorted out and given a comfortable seat near the front of the crowd that had now grown to about 200. I was free to leave, but since I had come in the government truck, there would be no one to take me back down the road until after the meeting.
The meeting was characterized by speeches from local party notables, singing and chanted slogans praising Mugabe, the ZANU-PF Communist Party and government. The chants were led by about twelve women, many of whom had waved to me earlier. The leader would shout and the women, wearing dresses that were posters for Mugabe and ZANU-PF, would lead the crowd in choruses of response:
Up - up - up with Mugabe! Down - down - down with Muzorewa!
Up - up - up with Zimbabwe! Down - down - down with America!
All the while, the people were smiling happily at me, not in a menacing way, but seemingly saying: “Look at us! Isn’t this great? We are doing politics.” It reminded me of how young people are so excited and proud when they accomplish something new. I fully expected to be personally attacked, but it was as if they were doing this for my benefit. They had been to my gospel meetings and were excited about being Christians. And, as new Christians, they were showing off a bit for me out of respect.
I was thinking about politics internationally. They were enjoying their new political freedom. I don’t think they made the connection between their local Marxist practices and the geopolitical conflict between the West and the Communist Bloc. Now, politicians and government officials clearly had another agenda, one that may have been sinister. But as this local political celebration continued, it seemed amazingly similar to our tent meetings celebrating God. And, it was the same crowd!
About 45 minutes into the meeting, which wouldn’t lose steam for at least another couple of hours, Pegi and Norman arrived after their morning travels to farm churches around Wedza. When they had returned to the tent, instead of finding me, they found that teenager who had been left in charge of our equipment. He told Pegi that ZANU had taken me off. Appropriately, she and Norman were frightened. They were imagining me being beat up. After all, that was not an unreasonable expectation.
As they approached the crowd, others pointed out where I was seated. As they joined me, I explained that we were free to leave and all was okay. But we all three were left shaken.
The feeling was similar to that of having a near-miss on the highway. At the moment, you feel above it all and are strangely objective as you swerve to get out of the path of impending danger. It is about two minutes and two miles down the road that you are suddenly shaken by the reality of your own near demise. By the time we had driven the mile or so back to the tent, we were thoroughly shaken. Yes, we could go ahead and have our planned afternoon meeting, but I just felt like getting the hell out of there!
We cancelled the planned meeting, brought down the tent and piled it into the back of the truck. Within the hour were on our way back to the Hess Farm. And within a couple of days we were on our way to the other side of Zimbabwe, Lake Kariba.
