Reason Wafawarova
It is the tempting belief for every journalist worth the enviable pride in this most thankless profession that there is no issue beyond the range of his or her pen. The media fraternity comprises characters that have no issue bestowing upon themselves the self-anointed status of being the indisputable guardians of society’s conscience, and armed with the pen we often proceed from the idea that all facets of human endeavour are fair game for the newspaper.

Our news, commentaries, editorials and postscripts have no known boundaries as we cover all matters we consider to be of public interest, fair opinion and true. We spare no politician, no clergyman, no social figure; and we examine every angle, we analyse every element and we dissect every factor in any matter we consider to be good for public consumption.

It really matters little that many times we are confronted with unflattering views from both readers and subjects of our reports, and we are always prepared for the worst from power corridors and from those who stand to lose face or reputation as a direct effect of what we write.

The call for journalism is one to inform and save the world, and whatever flak may come along the way can simply wait.
Like in every other set of rules there are always exceptions, and one can read Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky’s best-selling book “Manufactured Consent” to see how the media can bend the hard core rules of journalism in acquiescence to power diktats, even reducing its role to one of utter deception.

This writer has so far written three pieces on religion, precisely on how the Christian faith has been hijacked by the “prophetic ministry” enthusiasts and prosperity gospel evangelists.

After some warnings from fellow Christians and friends I at one time decided to rest the pen for the sake of avoiding to “divide the house” to which this writer proudly belongs – the Christian family. But a time comes when one is faced with a choice between protecting the house and risking dividing it in the face of intruding ruinous heresies that need to be stopped.

This writer has already publicly refused to continue singing songs of glory on matters of our country’s derailed political revolution, and has been using his pen to expose the reality around us – the heartbreaking betrayal of our people by our elected politicians who have turned into monstrous vampires sucking the blood of the nation.

The bludgeon will not be spared until the monstrous behaviour is smashed. Likewise we cannot help spread self-serving fantasies packaged as “God at work” without fundamentally betraying our own people, and more importantly, destroying the dignity of Christianity itself. We cannot allow our media to play peddlers for make-believe stories about non-existent supernatural happenings reportedly taking place in some of our churches – however, exciting some of these claims may be.  In fact, the only supernatural thing about most miracle stories of today is the gullibility of those who believe the exciting fabrications. The moment I read about a prophet that had reportedly “crash-landed” flying witches in Budiriro my first reaction was “not another hoax again,” and after telling friends that this read like an attention-seeking gimmick stage-managed by the “prophet” to hoodwink would be followers; the reaction from friends and readers was that I was “naïve” and did not know that “these things happen.”

A friend based here in Sydney was so convinced that the story had happened to the extent that he was prepared to kill in defence of this “truth,” and disagreeing with him was unquestionably futile. Of course the story was a huge fraud.

The piece “Prophets, Prophecy and Prosperity,” my first on religion, was tackling how some preachers might be fooling destitute people through prosperity gospel, and how some of the vainglorious prophecies of today may be nothing more than shallow-minded tricks targeted at those who are genuine about the Christian faith as to be unquestioning.  The piece was first published by this paper, and was republished by many other media outlets thereafter.  Most interesting were the responses from Zambian readers after one of the country’s leading papers re-printed the piece. While many of the readers agreed with what the article said, there were many others who were evidently infuriated, taking it upon themselves to warn this writer about the wrath he was inviting upon himself – some declaring that this writer was possessed by legions of God-hating stinking demons that needed to be exorcised. When this writer questioned the authenticity of the miracle cash hype popularised by one of Zimbabwe’s mushrooming church founders, there was again mixed reactions from the readers, with many suggesting this writer was an enemy of God’s work.

In that piece this writer wrote: “Zimbabwean Prophet Eubert Angel’s teaching about ‘miracle cash’ might be immensely impressive, but it is logically nonsensical, spiritually unsound, Biblically heretical, ethically questionable, economically fraudulent, and theologically weird, and as such it deserves no respect at all, even among the sinful lot.”

That appeared to some as unwarranted attacks on the man of God, and some people very close to this writer vowed to terminate relations because the sin against the golden biblical rule “touch not my anointed” had been committed.

I do not think our blood-sucking politicians are the greatest threat to our nationhood, diabolical as they stand. These we can revolt against, and we can either transform them or eliminate them from the political scene – by the vote.   If religion cannot destroy our country then nothing will. No doubt this is one enemy-attracting statement one can ever make. But we cannot keep our silence when our media helps in peddling rumour as fact, when mere theatrics are elevated to matters of genuine miracles, and when our sick people are told they have been healed when nothing has happened to them, with some being told to throw away their medicines, only to die of the same disease in their innocent and unsuspecting faith.

Commitment to my faith does not mean I must tolerate and accept anything that comes in the name of Jesus Christ, just like it does not mean that I run down others to prop up my own beliefs. No doubt one will do well steering clear of writing on religion. The area is just too emotive and too rigid for any meaningful rationalisation. Clearly a miracle by virtue of being a miracle cannot be rationalised. Being irrational is what makes up a miracle. But rumours are not miracles and they can be rationalised and dismissed for what they are – unfounded mythical stories peddled under the influence of fanatical emotions.

We have heard that one of our prophets brags regularly about having raised at least 24 people from the dead, and his prophetess wife is his prime eye witness; he boasts of being a regular visitor to heaven, of having made breathtaking prophetic predictions on anything of public interest – soccer, natural disasters, deaths of prominent people, election results and so on and so forth.  In most cases the videos of these “accurate prophecies” are released immediately after the event has taken place, and we must trust the media teams of these prophets as too holy and righteous to commit the sin of doctoring images, or contriving legitimacy and credit. No doubt in many people’s minds the male organ enlargement miracle reported by The Sunday Mail recently did actually happen. Well, it did not.

The header of the news report read “Makandiwa’s manhood miracle,” and clearly this was a misleading title, not least in that it ambiguously suggested that something miraculous had happened to Prophet Makandiwa’s manhood. The paper credits Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa with performing the somewhat bizarre miracle in its header, but the story that follows shows nothing more than a prayer being made for a man who claimed he had a tiny organ that made him scared of the prospect of a marriage.  The words attributed to Prophet Makandiwa suggest that the man simply prayed for a five-month growth period for the organ.

The paper reports that the prophet prayed thus, “First month grow, second month grow, third month grow, fourth month grow, fifth month . . . mmmm, stop.” The story ends abruptly with that prayer, and for reasons best known to the reporter, the prayer was elevated to a breathtaking organ-enlargement miracle, and some fanatical miracle admirers are now vehemently defending the baseless rumour as a genuine miracle, and the trend is not at all surprising.

The paper states that Prophet Makndiwa “has made the lame walk, changed the status of people living with HIV through prayer as well as helped hundreds of couples conceive.” Although the paper states that these are claims from the prophet’s church, it does not follow basic journalist principles of reporting.

Surely a hugely popular paper like Zimbabwe’s Sunday Mail should be able to track down at least one ex-lame person miraculously healed by the prophet for an interview, with concurring relatives in support. Equally the paper should be able to name at least one person whose HIV status was miraculously reversed, or track down at least one of the 24 people reportedly raised from the dead by Prophet Makandiwa’s best friend. The prophet himself has produced videos in which he claims to be performing miracles – weight losses, miraculously growing missing teeth, growing hair on balding heads, and he once sensationally claimed he had prayed for a miraculous three-day pregnancy that subsequently produced a healthy baby.  No picture of the baby was ever shown, either by the church’s media outlets or by any of the papers that reported on the story.  We must protect ourselves from the ruinous effect of religious fanaticism. It can be so dangerous as to be suicidal. In the Bible there is the infamous story about the overzealous sons of Sceva in Acts 19.

In their fanatical zeal the seven gentlemen almost got killed by furious demons after they tried to emulate demon-chasing miracles without the necessary know how, vainly imitating Paul.  In 1990 an overzealous Nigerian prophet was mauled to death by lions at Ibadan Zoo after he took his congregation to the lions’ den so they could see him re-enact the biblical Daniel miracle. Recently another pastor, Franck Kabele drowned in Gabon after trying to publicly re-enact Jesus’s walking-on-water miracle. Perhaps some of these biblical stories must carry a warning label “Don’t try this at home.”

In early 2004 the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) banned all “miracle broadcasts” on its airwaves after it described the broadcasts as “fake, spurious and phony.” After the ban most of the church leaders went on to establish their own television networks so they could continue with the discredited practice. Social networks like You Tube have come in handy in peddling some of the video rumours.  We must not repeat the same Nigerian scams here in Zimbabwe, pretending in the process that this is our season and that God has favoured our country.  Some of the things we call miracles today are mere visual and audial rumours made to lure unwitting members of the public into the congregations of the fake claim-makers – some titling themselves “prophets”. Obviously, they succeed as the contributions the new members bring in are used to swell the purse of the church. But the media cannot be complicit to this kind of unethical behaviour.

According to the NBC, what Nigerians had witnessed for years on their screens were mere theatrical productions conjured up by those who have more faith in deception and filthy lucre than the Big Three of the Holy Trinity.  We hope we have not caught on the infectious fever. It is important for a Christian writer like myself to take on the charlatans within my own faith and damn the consequences, just as Jesus Christ did when he ejected the miscreants whose activities polluted the house of worship.

This piece is not against any church or against any man of God. It is a mere reaction to what appears to be a widespread and underlying malaise that afflicts the Christian faith in Zimbabwe today, and the way Christianity is practised by many of its adherents both within and outside the country. This idea of miracles transmitted right into your living rooms via mass media is not new.  It is borrowed from the United States where its pioneers made billions in untaxed dollars, and it would appear like some fast thinking but dubious Zimbabweans could have made the witty decision to bring TV miracles right into our homes – that way importing America’s multi-billion miracle industry to our own doorstep. It does not take miracles to attain God’s inheritance. It takes a simple step of faith in His son Jesus Christ and we have no compelling reason to conjure up non-existent miracles as if these were a requirement for a pass mark on judgment day.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.

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