CNS STORY: Church officials: Zimbabwe reconciliation workshops draw big crowds

ZIMBABWE-RECONCILE Nov-4-2009 (630 words) xxxi

Church officials: Zimbabwe reconciliation workshops draw big crowds

By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Church-run reconciliation workshops in Zimbabwe that include lessons in political participation are drawing large crowds, say church officials in the southern African country.

"It is very exciting; the fear in people is slowly going away and they want to participate in forming a new order," Father Edward Ndete, parliamentary liaison officer for the Zimbabwe bishops' conference, told Catholic News Service in an Oct. 30 telephone interview from the capital, Harare.

Most Zimbabweans want a rift in the country's coalition government to be fixed, Father Ndete said, noting that President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party is "very afraid" of losing power.

While the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans "have changed enormously for the better" since the government was formed by longtime rivals Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in February, "it is in Zanu-PF's interest for the unity government to fail because it doesn't like to share power," he said.

Tsvangirai, the prime minister, withdrew from Cabinet meetings in mid-October to protest a crackdown on his supporters and a deadlock over key appointments.

"People are fearful of losing the donor funding that has been trickling in since the unity government was set up" in the poverty-stricken country, said Joseph Buchena Nkatazo, Bulawayo coordinator of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, in an Oct. 30 telephone interview.

Part of the reason for the huge turnout at church meetings around the country is to show support for the church after the bishops' Oct. 1 pastoral letter on national healing and reconciliation, Father Ndete said.

In the letter, the bishops said the truth about the country's violence needs to be told for the "cycle of violence, humiliation, oppression and exploitation" in Zimbabwe to stop. They said "victims need to tell their stories in a free and supportive environment" and perpetrators "need to take responsibility for their sins."

Several priests were "called for questioning" by police and asked to explain what the letter was about, Father Ndete said, noting that "wherever we go we are told by authorities, 'You people (Catholics) are a problem.'"

More than 2,000 people attended an Oct. 24 meeting in Chegutu, Zimbabwe, hosted by the local justice and peace commission, Father Ndete said.

"Vibrant discussions about human rights, how to put one's ideas forward about the constitution" and other matters "went on until I said Mass to conclude the meeting at 4 a.m." the next day, he said.

Father Ndete is coordinating the church's participation in the constitution-making process. Zimbabwe is to draft a constitution that will go before voters for approval in a referendum in 2010, clearing the way for new government elections.

At another justice and peace commission-run meeting in late October, in the town of Nyabira, the 600 participants had "mixed feelings" about the church's work in Zimbabwe, Father Ndete said, noting that "so many people were tortured and they felt they were not protected by the church."

Brutal state-sponsored violence targeting the opposition after disputed March 2008 elections left more than 80 people dead and 200,000 displaced, human rights groups said.

Nkatazo said the workshops, which combine themes of healing and reconciliation with how to report abductions, as well as how to participate in the formation of the constitution, are also "very popular" in the Bulawayo Archdiocese.

"One topic opens the door for the next, and people show a lot of interest in taking part," he said.

Nkatazo said Zimbabwe "has not seen the movement on drawing up the constitution that we hoped for," noting that "airwaves and newspapers" are still state-controlled and the state media encourage "hate language toward any opposition to Zanu-PF."

This "does not augur well for national healing," he said.

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