CONQUERING Zimbabwe and the rest of the African continent was a task that missionaries found herculean.
They had a genocidal attitude towards black people and their system of governance.
Father Oskar Wermter, the Roman Catholic Jesuit Priest in Zimbabwe has a similar attitude and might as well be labelled Zimbabwe’s modern-day missionary.
Missionaries came with the perverted belief that everything Western was superior to what Africa had.
The German Fr Wermter represents the outdated and failed thinking that he is an influential figure who can bring down the Government of Zimbabwe through his provocative anti-Zimbabwe writings and opinions.
That is where the man of cloth gets it wrong and this is where missionaries lost it in the country.
When missionaries came to Africa, they were spies who supplied information to the colonialists which they utilised to plan how to effectively impose their colonial rule and crash African resistance.
Most missionaries like David Livingstone and Fabri of the German Missionary Society in Namibia were driven by greed and an objective of imposing Western education and Christianity in order to pave way for colonialism.
Now Fr Wermter believes antagonising the Government will create the leeway for the demise of the empowerment programmes being pursued in the country.
“This country came off to a false start,” he wrote on July 30 2014.
“At first the new plane seemed to soar into the sky beautifully, but then it crashed.
“Why?
“I think our crew had no idea where it wanted to fly.
“There was no chart.
“How were they selected? According to their war credentials. No one asked them if they had a pilot’s licence. Now the old crew is tired and worn-out. They have had their day. Let them rest.”
It is this anti-liberation struggle mentality that normally comes from Western corridors of power that puts Fr Wermter’s objectivity into question when it comes to the Zimbabwe issue.
Our liberators are seen in the eyes of the West as ‘backward and a clueless coalition of spent old men and women’.
This was the objective of missionaries; to do anything necessary to convert Africans who were viewed as uncivilised and barbaric.
But just like Fr Wermter, they often failed to distinguish between Christian principles and those of the colonialists.
They misused biblical passages to further the causes of their colonial friends.
Robert Moffat, a famous missionary wrote about King Mzilikazi and the Ndebele in 1857 saying:
“His Government is one of tyranny and intrigue, lies and blood.
“I feel melancholy.
“I often feel willing to suffer anything or die any kind of death if it would only result in the moral renovation of the Matabele, their deliverance from their present awfully degraded condition.”
The message preached by missionaries encouraged Africans to rebel against everything that formed the foundation of African family and society.
Fr Wermter today teaches Zimbabweans to rebel against everything that forms the foundation of this country.
“Some naïve believers may be pleased that their leaders are ‘religious’. But what does such God-talk really mean?” he wrote last year.
“If God loves the party, does the party also love God? We know ‘God is love’.
“Parties and movements driven by hatred have no place in God’s creation which is held together by love and respect. But there is hate-speech against enemies, envy, jealousy everywhere. There is tribal rivalry and ‘xenophobia’.”
It is amazing that Britannica describes Robert Moffat as: “Scottish missionary to Africa and Bible translator, who was known for his efforts to improve local living standards in Africa.
“He was also the father-in-law of the missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813–73).”
Improving local living standards to them means he aided Europeans in taking land that belonged to Africans and then forcing them to work for a living so that they would pay taxes for things that never benefitted them.
This land-grabbing project was initiated by Father Gonzalo da Silveira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary who arrived at the court of the Munhumutapa as early as 1543.
Father Silveira was from a Portuguese noble family.
He felt God was calling him and joined the Society of Jesus in 1543.
The church posted him to Goa in 1556 where he quickly became known as a successful preacher and converter of the non-Christians.
In 1560 he went to Mozambique, armed with a strong zeal to reach the kingdom of Munhumutapa and convert the Shona people.
Africa’s problem with the land-grabbing process traces right to Fr Wermter who in June 2014 penned an article claiming the country could only achieve what he said was ‘mature democracy’ if ZANU PF lost elections and handed over power ‘peacefully’.
The problem with that alteration of democracy is that ZANU PF continues to win the elections.
“Our dirty secret is that the ruling party voted for the new Constitution for political reasons, without respect for the moral principles contained in it,” wrote Fr Wermter.
“In fact the Party has its own basic law which it observes religiously: cling to power by any means!
“Which is why working for ‘regime change’, even thinking or talking about it, is a criminal offence in their eyes.
“Regime change, of course, is a basic democratic procedure.
“To make it go smoothly, without violence or bloodshed, we have elections.”
“A friend recently asked, ‘When do you think we have a mature democracy?’ And he supplied the answer himself, ‘When a governing party which originated the war of liberation is defeated in elections, accepts the defeat and hands over power graciously to the winner, willingly moving to the opposition benches’.”
Where other yesteryear missionaries failed, surely Fr Wermter cannot succeed.
He is an incarnation of yesteryear missionaries, but he will not find joy in his anti-Zimbabwe endeavour.
Perhaps he must stick to his robs and burying the dead!