Sat, 20 May 2017 10:32:33 +0000
Dear Editor,
You cannot avoid the Pentecostal churches in Zambia. They are omnipresent and growing and their prayer sessions are both rapturous and solemn.
Largely originating across borders in DR Congo, Malawi and Zimbabwe, including South Africa and Nigeria, and encouraged by the liberalisation of Zambia’s laws in the 1990s allowing freedom of association and worship, congregations of the gullible, unemployed desperadoes, childless married couples, need to feed and the need to marry individuals jam into any available space in the country.
If you listen carefully to the words spoken from the pulpit in these churches, you could be forgiven for thinking that its local and foreign pastors have an undeniably political agendas.
As expected recently, scores of Lusaka residents flocked to Kenneth Kaunda International Airport (KKIA) to witness the arrival of South Africa-based Malawian Prophet Shepherd Bushiri who had publicly dared the Zambian government that he would forcefully enter Zambia with or without the Government’s approval. His unwarranted vitriol and scorn that was particularly aimed at the Minister of Religious Affairs Godfridah Sumaili backfired.
Prophet Shepherd Bushiri backtracked from his planned Zambian trip after realising that his invectives been taken seriously by those in authority in the country (“Prophet Bushiri grows cold feet”, Daily Nation, May 18, 2017).
Could the Malawian prophet’s dazzling chutzpah be interpreted as sedition? Not quite. The fact is, Zambia’s politicians are, at worst, just a little uncomfortable at the astonishing notoriety of this kind of evangelic imports. But at best they are actually rather grateful that the likes of Bishops Joshua Banda and Joe Imakando are home-based. This is because the main goal of the Pentecostal churches is, officially at least, benediction and salvation of poor souls rather than political agitation.
The authentic churches believe God appoints government leaders through the electorate and Christians are duty bound to pray for them. If Zambia is suffering from a shortage of good leadership in government then it is God’s design. All of this puts the Religious Affairs Minister in an interesting position.
How comfortably does the rise of vociferous Pentecostal foreign prophets sit with the PF government? What about those foreign prophets who donate foodstuffs at a fee to the need to feed congregations? Only time will tell.
Needless to say, of late, even the local Pentecostal churches have come under more scrutiny. For the past two decades, Zambians have taken solace and refuge in self-styled prophets who specialise in dispensing of miracles at a fee in Nigeria. Perhaps, fearing the adverse publicity this was generating, the Zambian government has advised its citizens to seek any miracles on home soil and from authentic prophets for free. Ministries of Religious Affairs and Home Affairs in collaboration with the three church mother bodies are yet to produce a list of churches authorised to function in Zambia which may exclude a number of the country’s questionable upcoming Pentecostal churches.
Perhaps predictably, though, the Ministries have since gone quiet on the earlier pronouncements – and local or foreign, fake or genuine Pentecostal churches continue to grow. A considered case of the lesser of two evils perhaps?
Mubanga Luchembe,
LUSAKA
