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About security sector reforms……Why the West and its MDC stooges want Zimbabwe’s Defence and Security Forces reformed

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This week Cain Mathema in his book Why the West and its MDC stooges want Zimbabwe’s Defence and Security Forces reformed that The Patriot is serialising says, missionaries manipulated the black peoples’ psyche right up to their graves and left behind large numbers of ‘converts’.

WHAT the missionaries taught the people about poverty and life after death as well as its rewards in death should be understood in the context of Jesus Christ having died poor, but also having gone to heaven after death.
The message of the missionaries to the colonial slaves was to emulate Jesus Christ while his killers remained behind enjoying life on earth. But the other point about Jesus Christ is that the missionaries brought him to the colonial slaves as a blue-eyed, white, handsome man – all the churches had a picture of a white Jesus Christ.
This had, and still does have, the effect of making blacks worship a white god, therefore of worshipping any white person who is a representative of the Jesus in the pictures.
Therefore, whatever any white person says or does must be believed by blacks as correct, seeing the representatives of a white Jesus Christ say so or do so. Surely there is no better psychological manipulation than that!
And the missionaries manipulated the black peoples’ psyche right up to their graves and left behind large numbers of converts.
These priests did not mince their words on whether they sided with their state, or with the colonial slaves. They did not mince their words as well as to whether the independence of the blacks should be smashed or not.
Let us take a few examples of what they said, about or against black people in the country.
a) Fr Gonzalo da Silveira
Fr Silveira was a nobleman who was a zealot priest belonging to the Society of Jesus in Portugal.
“The society trained and looked at its members as soldiers of Christ, fighters of heresy and the protestant Reformation.
“It was anti-Semitic.” (Mudenge, 2011)
It is interesting to note that the whites who were or are anti-Semitic (that is, anti-Jews and anti-Arabs) actually worship Jesus Christ who is supposed to have been a Jew, a Semite!
Fr Silveira saw his mission as being directed at the conversion of the Munhumutapa. Once a Christian king, the Mutapa was likely to favour the Portuguese traders in his country and either expel or reduce the numbers and influence of the Moslems trading in his state.
Therefore, if successful, his mission was expected to bring great advantage to the Portuguese crown and to the Church of Rome.
b) Rev Charles D. Helm
Rev Charles D. Helm of the London Missionary Society (LMS), one of Rhodes’ agents, lied to King Lobengula about the Rudd Concession, which Rhodes used against his competitors, for him to be granted the Charter to colonise Zimbabwe.
Helm lied to the king about the contents of the concession. He deceived the king who had trusted him a lot. When the BSAC and the settlers failed to find as much gold as they had anticipated in Mashonaland, Jameson and his friends decided to destroy the Ndebele kingdom hoping to find more gold within the centre of the kingdom.
Helm supported the idea completely.
“For Helm, Christianity was never going to take hold and thrive as long as the ‘savage’ kingdom of Lobengula existed.
“It had to be destroyed.” (Matshazi, 2008)
c) Fr Andrew Hartman and Canon Balfour
“When the Pioneer Column – the spearhead of the white settlers – set out for Mashonaland in 1890, the Jesuit missionary, Fr Andrew Hartman, accompanied it as chaplain.” (Zvobgo, 1996)
“Canon Balfour of the Anglican Diocese of Bloemfontein also accompanied the Pioneer Column as Chaplain.
“Cecil John Rhodes on behalf of the BSAC gave the Anglicans 600 (pounds sterling) towards the expense of Anglican missions in Mashonaland.”
d) Fr Peter Prestage
Fr Peter Prestage, the founder of the Empandeni Roman Catholic Mission, wanted the Ndebele people to be totally defeated by the British, the BSAC and white settlers.
On October 10 1896 he wrote from Empandeni saying that not until the Ndebeles had been subdued in decisive battles would the war be over. Earlier on in 1893 he had advocated the war against the Ndebele kingdom. He wrote then: “I trust the Matabele kingdom will be smashed up.
“The Matabele system of government was a system of iniquity and devilry.” (Zvobgo, 1996)
A month or so after that he wrote: “We must put down the Matabeles and then go on with our work as if nothing had happened.” (Zvobgo, 1996)
Like Nehanda later, both King Mzilikazi and Lobengula refused to be Christians, that is why the missionaries like Fr Prestage wanted the Ndebele Kingdom overthrown, even by violent means, in order to give the missionaries a free hand in their efforts to convert people to Christianity. The missionaries had failed to convert people to Christianity ever since they started their ‘Christianising’ mission in the kingdom.
e) Rev Isaac Shimmin
Rev Isaac Shimmin of the Wesleyan Methodist Church wrote in September 1893: “I have spoken with hundreds of men and have heard from everyone the same opinion expressed that the Matabele question must be settled at once and by force.
“On this point the clergymen and the farmer, the English and the colonial are at one, and however much we dread the horrors of warfare, in a case of this sort the better choice of two evils.” (Zvobgo, 1996)
“The priests at Chishawasha and parts of Mashonaland armed themselves to the teeth and fought against the people in the 1896-97 war of independence, with many of them, like Fr Biehler, being appointed priests for the soldiers by the Rhodesian state. (Zvobgo, 1996)
Let us remember that the Christianity in Europe, since it was adopted by Emperor Constantine of Rome as the state religion, has been one of the leading institutions, instruments in public life serving the interests of the ruling exploiter classes (slave owners, feudal lords and the bourgeoisie) very well, while at the same time it has made itself very rich through all sorts of ways, including looting of peasant lands in Europe and looting the land of the people in Zimbabwe.
The Roman Catholic Church even used to have brothels where nuns were the prostitutes working for the church right up to the 11th and 12th Centuries AD.
What the church preached to blacks in Zimbabwe is what it had been preaching to and ramming down the throats of working people in Europe and North America, down the throats of slaves in Europe, the peasantry in Europe, the working class in Europe, America and the black slaves in America for centuries.
And the church did its job very well as part of the state machinery of the exploiter classes.
It was well positioned as the official religion, every state occasion and activity (including the execution of Zimbabwe’s freedom commanders and freedom fighters like Nehanda and Chief Gutu) had to be prayed for and blessed by the church.

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