Thread by @APAZimbabwe

#ICYMI: APA Statement on Government of #Zimbabwe response to pastoral letter
Highlights Thread 📰

https://twitter.com/APAZimbabwe/status/1295066953812447234

APA is taken aback, but not surprised, at the reaction of the Government of Zimbabwe to the pastoral letter issued by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference on the current situation in Zimbabwe.

3/For the sake of clarity, and with reference to this particular context, APA would like to point out the following undeniable facts regarding the history of the Catholic Church in the Rhodesia era and independent Zimbabwe.

4/ The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) consistently and publicly protested against the racist practices of the Rhodesian regime.
@GuildCatholic

5/It was Father John Gough, a Catholic priest, who assisted Robert Mugabe and Edgar Tekere to escape Rhodesia in to Mozambique to join the armed struggle in 1975.
#Zimbabwe

6/During the war, the Catholic Church published books such as The Man in the Middle (1975) and The Civil War in Rhodesia (1976) to expose the excesses of the settler regime #Zimbabwe

7/The armed struggle benefitted from the moral high ground of a just cause as well as the support of a powe8rful ally in the church. #Zimbabwe

8/The Catholic Church went as far as providing refuge, in dangerous times, for liberation fighters at its institutions, such as Silveira House.

9/After the post-independence ZanuPF-led government turned from liberator to inflicting terror on fellow liberator, ZAPU and fellow citizens in Matebeleland North, South and the Midlands, it was the CCJP that raised the alarm in keeping with its ethos.
#Zimbabwe #NdebeleTwitter

10/They did not do this surreptitiously. Rather on 5 November 1982, they went and presented evidence of gross human rights abuses to the then Prime Minister and his security ministers including the current president. #Zimbabwe

11/How has the government of Zimbabwe reacted to exposure of human rights abuses and concerns for the state of the country?

1983: Mugabe called the Bishops “sanctimonious prelates and foreign agents”

12/
2004: Our government called Bishop #DesmondTutu an “angry, evil and embittered little Bishop” 

2004: Minister @ProfJNMoyo : “They are trying to prevent our economic independence by using the recklessly tribal #PiusNcube ”

13/
2005: “Archbishop Pius Ncube has gone too far

2006: Arrests and interrogations of Bishop Levee Kadenge, Reverend Ancelom Magaya and Reverend Brian Mugwidi of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance

#Zimbabwe

14/
2007: Government declared that Bishops would no longer be treated with “kids’ gloves since they had decided to take the dangerous path of siding with the opposition”
#Zimbabwe

15/And here we are today, another shameful letter from a government Minister condemning and labelling Church Ministers for speaking truth to power.

16/One of APA’s pillars is national cohesion and we join the nation in condemning the singling out of a Bishop because he is Ndebele and the naked attempts to turn a national crisis of conscience in to a tribalism issue. #Zimbabwe

17/As is custom, the pastoral letter was signed by all the Bishops and yet the government, in keeping with its divisive falsehoods, deliberately chose to focus on one individual bishop for obvious reasons.

18/One of government’s responsibilities is to hear the cry of the oppressed but true to form, our government is not only oppressor, but the first to cry “witch!” when the just raise their voices in protest. But we remind our government that we are not living in medieval times.

19/To quote a previous pastoral letter, “political arrogance, lies and deceit will not save our people from the national crisis which is characterised by brutality, misery, suffering and death.”

20/APA calls on this government to stop the non-stop finger pointing and lashing out at imaginary “enemies, detractors, renegades, supremacists and naysayers” but rather, to govern in full accordance with the constitution, with sound economic management and meritocracy.

21/APA further calls on Zimbabwean citizens to see what this regime for what it really is: a selfish predatory elite living in crass conspicuous consumption off the backs of the suffering of the masses.

The end.
#Zimbabwe
#ZimbabweanLivesMatter