EDITOR – Greetings.
My name is Maidei and I am an avid reader of your newspaper and have decided to write you a letter on why I stopped going to church a few years ago.
When I was young, I used to go to one of these orthodox churches and as I grew up, I switched to one pentecostal church in Harare. However, there are certain things I ended up realising that made me stop going to church.
In fact, they made me question Christianity as a whole, which is why I love your newspaper too.
As black people, who did we worship before the coming of the whiteman with his Bible and Christianity?
Surely we knew about Musikavanhu and we had our own ways of communicating with the almighty, but the whiteman came with his doctrine.
Kurova makuva and kubika doro among other things have suddenly become ‘evil’.
Some of these pentecostals don’t even believe in nyaradzo after the death of a loved one.
Going back to history:
I came across an article in your paper chronicling how Sekuru Kaguvi was baptised before being hanged.
That Sekuru Kaguvi was given the name ‘Dismas’ before being hanged is pathetic.
That we have many people back then who were given foreign names after being baptised by the whiteman got me livid. Tungamirai was named ‘Lucifer’, ‘Goremusandu’ was given the name ‘John’ and Murongiwa changed to ‘Luke’.
What was the whiteman up to?
Was this not a way of erasing a people’s identity?
What also worries me is, to date, we still have a situation whereby children in pre-school are made to sing ridiculous songs.
One that really bothers me goes like: ‘Deep deep down the valley, down the valley, up the mountain Jerusalem is my home.’
What is wrong with us?
A child from Dotito, Gumbonzvanda, Malipati, Kezi or Binga is being bombarded with the message that Jerusalem is his/her home!
Isn’t that absurd!
It’s high time we open our eyes as black people.
The white Jesus whom we were, and are, made to believe in is totally fake!
Let us not continue to be hoodwinked!
I would be grateful if you accommodate below an abridged version of the speech by King Leopold II of Belgium to the first colonial missionaries to Africa in 1883.
I know you have published the speech before but as they say nowadays: ‘Dzokororo rinesimba.’
It is my understanding that the speech, which unearths the real intention of the Christian missionary journey in Africa, was exposed to the world by one Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko from Congo who, in 1935, while working in the Congo, bought a second-hand Bible from a Belgian priest who forgot the speech in the Bible.
“Reverends, Fathers and Dear Compatriots: The task that is given to fulfill is very delicate and requires much tact.
You will go certainly to evangelise, but your evangelisation must inspire above all Belgium interests.
Your principal objective in our mission in the Congo is never to teach the niggers to know God, this they know already.
They speak and submit to a Mungu, one Nzambi, one Nzakomba, and what else I don’t know.
They know that to kill, to sleep with someone else’s wife, to lie and to insult is bad.
Have courage to admit it; you are not going to teach them what they know already.
Your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world.
For these things, you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty in their underground.
To avoid that, they get interested in it, and make you murderous competition and dream one day to overthrow you.
Your knowledge of the gospel will allow you to find texts ordering, and encouraging your followers to love poverty, like “Happier are the poor because they will inherit the heaven” and, “It’s very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
You have to detach from them and make them disrespect everything which gives courage to affront us.
I make reference to their Mystic System and their war fetish – warfare protection – which they pretend not to want to abandon, and you must do everything in your power to make it disappear.
Your action will be directed essentially to the younger ones, for they won’t revolt when the recommendation of the priest is contradictory to their parent’s teachings.
The children have to learn to obey what the missionary recommends, who is the father of their soul.
You must singularly insist on their total submission and obedience, avoid developing the spirit in the schools, teach students to read and not to reason.
There, dear patriots, are some of the principles that you must apply.
You will find many other books, which will be given to you at the end of this conference.
Evangelize the niggers so that they stay forever in submission to the white colonialists, so they never revolt against the restraints they are undergoing.
Recite every day – “Happy are those who are weeping because the kingdom of God is for them.”
Convert always the blacks by using the whip.
Keep their women in nine months of submission to work freely for us.
Force them to pay you in sign of recognition-goats, chicken or eggs-every time you visit their villages. And make sure that niggers never become rich.
Sing every day that it’s impossible for the rich to enter heaven.
Make them pay tax each week at Sunday mass.
Use the money supposed for the poor, to build flourishing business centres.
Teach the niggers to forget their heroes and to adore only ours.”