Another plague of biblical proportions is on the horizon

Historic events and upheavals point to biblical truth

Monster or hero?

By Susan Gibbs, daughter-in-law of a former Governor of Rhodesia.

Very few, black or white, genuinely mourn the death of Robert Mugabe. They may praise him as ‘an icon of Africa’s liberation’, but few will genuinely mourn his passing. Nor should they, for even by the abysmal standards of post-colonial Africa, ‘Comrade Bob’ was particularly bad.

In his first address after becoming President of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) following the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, he surprised even his supporters by declaring in clipped English: “I urge you, whether you are black or white, to join me in a new pledge…to forget our grim past, forgive others, and forget.” Yet it was Mugabe himself who never forgot or forgave. Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”

Not fully aware of the depth of this hate, nor of the spiritual battle being waged, many have searched for other answers to his murderous malevolence. The fact remains that Mugabe was no founding father of Zimbabwe: he was the appalling destroyer of the ‘Jewel of Africa’.

Mugabe’s True Colours

Mugabe in 1982In the midst of the ‘Chimurenga’ (Zimbabwe’s war of liberation from white rule begun in the 1970s by bush fighters), at a summit of post-colonial African leaders in Gabon (West Africa), crucial decisions were imminent on Zimbabwe’s future leadership. The choice was between supporting Mugabe or his arch-rival, Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe was armed and supported by China, while Nkomo was armed and supported by Russia. Mugabe won the day – but he wanted one-party rule and in 1984 Nkomo fled temporarily to England.

Soon after taking power in 1980 Mugabe showed his true colours, as a tyrant intolerant of opposition, consolidating his power in what became known as the ‘Gukurahundi massacre’ in Matabeleland. A conservative estimate concluded that 20,000 black civilians (including women and children) were slaughtered in what has been classified internationally as genocide.

As the nation plunged into decades of famine, an HIV epidemic and hyperinflation in which the central bank printed useless notes (in one night 12 zeros were wiped off the currency), the arch-proponent of pan-Africanism and Marxism sought to apportion blame for the chaos and turned on Zimbabwe’s 4,000 white farmers.

Nothing better sums up Mugabe’s madness: the farmers were among Africa’s most efficient producers of food, the backbone of the economy and essential to the country’s survival, yet he turned on them with murderous viciousness. In the six months before we left at the end of 1983, 10% of the white farmers in our district had been murdered (including, during one Easter holiday, two little girls - school friends of our son - on a neighbouring farm).

Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”

Brazen Corruption

Few leaders in modern history have been more brazenly corrupt than Mugabe. As the nation sunk into impoverishment, he taunted his citizens by throwing lavish parties at which French champagne and caviar were served.

During those long years many of us kept praying and asking the Lord how he could keep getting away with it for so long. But in Zimbabwe the elderly are respected and as the only African leader who had fought in a ‘war of liberation’, Mugabe was venerated in surrounding countries. Eventually his people were so weakened that they were unable to rise up against him and ZANU, his political party.

Realising at one point that his country needed to work to feed itself, Mugabe briefly pacified white farmers by offering Denis Norman the job of Minister of Agriculture (Norman, previously a minister in Ian Smith’s government, now lives in the UK and runs a small Christian charity dedicated to helping those who suffered during the war years). But after Mandela was released in 1990 and the glory bestowed on Mugabe as the golden boy of Africa shifted southwards, Mugabe ceased trying to woo the world.

Mbare township before (left) and after (right) Operation MurambatsvinaHe sent army personnel to DRC to plunder their diamonds and rape their women, and used army brutality to pillage Zimbabwe’s own diamonds, leading to the suffering and deaths of civilians in Marange. One of his worst actions, in the middle of a very severe winter in 2005, was Operation ‘Clear out Rubbish’ (Murambatsvina) in which he bulldozed slums in Harare. This resulted in the loss of some 700,000 homes and livelihoods, with an estimated 2.4 million indirectly affected. This still haunts many in Zimbabwe today.

Learning to Forgive

Despite his fierce anti-colonialism, declared Marxism and determination to end British rule, Mugabe clung to many customs that echoed colonial rule and maintained a deep personal admiration for the Queen.¹

My father-in-law represented the Queen in his capacity of Governor of Rhodesia between 1959 and 1969 and Mugabe wrote a glowing introduction to his biography “honouring him as a man of principle and commitment”.

He later followed this up by sending the 5^th Brigade, his North Korea-trained praetorian guard, to kill our family.

We left the country, but the couple who bought our farm were murdered a few months later. We feel profoundly blessed to have escaped without having had a family tragedy. A great many of us have had to learn the true meaning of forgiveness. I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years. 

I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years.

How to Eulogise

Throughout his long reign, much of Mugabe’s corruption and depravity was unknown to the wider world, as he stifled freedom of expression. Newspapers faced censorship and a ruthless and unrelenting onslaught was mounted on journalists, media houses and individuals who dared express themselves. On one particular occasion I remember the Bulawayo Chronicle was published with an entirely blank front page.

The tragic wreck of a country Zimbabwe became remained two years after Mugabe was deposed in an army coup. Mnangagwa, who has taken over, was involved with Mugabe’s atrocities and is generally regarded as worse.

Reflecting on Mugabe’s death, Fr. William Guri (CSsR, PhD) said the following:

For me to eulogize Robert Gabriel Mugabe would be an act of great betrayal to the many people who died and whose lives have been damaged for life by his long rule.

To eulogize Mugabe for me is to capitulate and give up the struggle for human rights and social justice. It will be to celebrate the triumph of the evil over the good, the false over the true, the darkness over the light, the irrational over the rational, the inhuman over the human.

After thinking long and hard about Robert Gabriel Mugabe, I have concluded that it is alright to feel no sadness and grief. It is alright not to mourn. It is also alright not to feel guilty for not feeling sad and for not mourning. Much as he disregarded Christian values and much as he debased humanity, I shall not allow him to diminish my Christian faith nor my humanity, which in Africa we call Ubuntu.

“Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
Or birds taken in a snare,
So men are trapped by evil times
That fall unexpectedly upon them”

(Ecclesiastes 9:12)

Susan Gibbs is the daughter-in-law of the late Sir Humphrey Gibbs, former Governor of Southern Rhodesia. She is the author of Call Of The Litany Bird: Surviving The Zimbabwe Bush War (2011, Loose Chippings).

Notes

1 A devout Catholic, educated by Jesuits, Mugabe was also a deeply religious man. His mother lived with him during his early years in Government House and each morning they took communion together. As the years went by and we began to see the face of evil in his actions, many felt that the Vatican should have taken action against him. Instead (grotesquely, it was felt) he was even permitted to attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005.

Persecution calls for joy in hope, patience in affliction and faithfulness in prayer.

Imagine feeling a shot of panic every time you hear a motorbike go past your home. Or waving your spouse off to the shops, or your children off to school, knowing there is a distinct possibility they may be abducted or slaughtered. Or wondering every time you go to a church service whether you and your loved ones will come out alive.

This is the grim reality for Christians in many parts of northern and central Africa, where Islamist militant gangs like Boko Haram and al Shabaab are spreading terror, inspired and supported by better-known groups like Al Qaeda.

This month alone, the Barnabas Fund has reported that Islamist gunmen have been on a killing spree in northern Burkina Faso, storming church services, rounding up congregants and shooting them dead. In predominantly Muslim Niger, a pastor has been shot and a church looted, following a spate of attacks on churches. In mainly Christian Cameroon, two Christian villages have been ransacked.

In Nigeria, one of the deadliest countries in Africa for Christians, 17 church-goers were abducted by Boko Haram last weekend whilst at their choir practice. ISIS-inspired Boko Haram are intent on establishing a caliphate from north-eastern Nigeria to northern Cameroon.

Writing this on a beautifully sunny spring day in England, it’s difficult to imagine what these believers and their families are going through. The long night of Islamist persecution in Africa (particularly in the Sahel region) grows ever darker, with no sign of dawn.

Great is the Darkness

The vast regions of western Africa provide sadly plentiful examples of the persecution of the faithful but, as Open Doors unveils every year with its ‘World Watch List’, Christians are being discriminated against and abused, imprisoned and murdered all around the globe.

The Easter Day attacks in Sri Lanka made shocking headlines, but the fuller list is exhausting: Christians are being targeted by hard-line Islamists in Indonesia and Pakistan, communist state pressure in North Korea, China and Vietnam, radical Hindu attacks in India and Nepal, radical Buddhists in Laos and Myanmar, and Islamic persecution in virtually every country in central Asia, the Middle East (save for Israel) and north Africa.

Christians are being discriminated against and abused, imprisoned and murdered all around the globe.

Such a bleak map spurred the Bishop of Truro to claim in his recent report to the Foreign Secretary that persecution of Christians in some areas is at ‘near genocide’ levels, though political correctness has generally stopped it being reported in the mainstream Western press.

Open Doors' 2019 World Watch List map, showing in colour the 50 worst countries for persecution of Christians.Here in Britain, we may justifiably be concerned about the erosion of free speech, or the gradual encroachment of secularism or Islam, or the threats posed by a Corbyn government. But even with the recent spate of Islamist terror attacks on people and churches in Europe, Christians in the West do not yet face anything like the danger being faced on a daily basis by our brothers and sisters elsewhere around the world.

Refining Fire

In Matthew 24, speaking to his disciples, Jesus said that in addition to deception, wars, famines and earthquakes, one sign of his imminent return would be that “you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me” (Matt 24:9). But just because these things ‘must happen’, it does not mean that Christians in the comparatively safe West should turn a blind eye, or fail to speak up on these issues, or withhold their prayers. It may not be long before we are next.

Mark well Jesus’ subsequent words: “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (emphasis added).

High levels of persecution lead to a flourishing underground Church; the Gospel has always, paradoxically, produced most life in the fires of hardship. These fires are refining: strengthening faithful believers and removing their impurities through testing.

But they are also refining in another sense, purging the dross from the Body of Christ. As persecution increases, we see the less committed falling away, their attachment to Christ not strong enough to withstand threats to their personal safety or dignity. Still others become ensnared by the smooth words and enticing promises of false prophets, who provide a tempting diversion from harsh reality.

I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of this refining in the Western Church today, where false teachings have already ensnared many and where an increasingly stark division is apparent between Christians who cleave to Scripture and to their Lord (whatever the cost), and those who have accepted a syncretistic or worldly gospel which cannot save.

Just because these things ‘must happen’, it does not mean that Christians in the comparatively safe West should turn a blind eye.

Momentous Drama

It may be that one day soon, believers in the old heartlands of Christianity will face the same long night as our brothers and sisters are currently enduring elsewhere around the world. We must pray that if and when it comes, we will be found faithful.

The wonderful news is that a worldwide surge in persecution will be accompanied by the worldwide spread of the true Gospel and the adding of many more believers to the true Church, who is being prepared as a Bride for her Husband (Matt 24:14).

As this momentous drama unfolds, we are enjoined by the Lord Jesus to guard our hearts and not let our love grow cold – which I take to mean both our love for him, and our love for each other. May this dreadful news from west Africa this month fan the flame of love in our hearts, especially for our persecuted family, in the knowledge that one day soon, our Lord will return and justice will be done (Rev 6:9-11).

Here are several ministries through which you can stand with the persecuted Church. If you know of others, please post them below.

• Barnabas Fund https://barnabasfund.org/en
  
• Open Doors https://www.opendoorsuk.org/
  
• Release International https://releaseinternational.org/
  
• Samaritan’s Purse https://www.samaritans-purse.org.uk/article/help-persecuted-christians/
  
• Sat-7 (satellite network reaching the Middle East and North Africa with the Gospel) https://www.sat7uk.org/
• Morningstar News (news service focusing exclusively on the persecuted Church) https://morningstarnews.org