‘I am a man of God - I am not done!’ – Bishop Kadenge of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance on how it will take more than arrest and intimidation to finish off someone who has God on their side. In a disaster situation like the one facing Zimbabwe, two people who know, talk about the difference being a Christian makes when life gets hard.
Living the paradox
After years of misrule, today Zimbabwe is a land caught between appearance and reality. While the government struggles to maintain the outward impression of a country that’s still holding it together, life - for most people - is falling apart.
In once-affluent suburbs of Bulawayo the poignancy of such a collapse is all the more acute as it takes place against a backdrop of middle-class houses – here it’s educated professionals who are now unable to buy fuel or bread, or even to find clean water. And it’s a sharp indication of what life is like for poor communities in the townships and the rural areas, for people who never had much, but now have even less.
Out here grandmothers like Margaret are left to care for her four grandchildren after her sons died of suspected AIDS-related illnesses and the children’s mothers left to find work in South Africa. Margaret’s six-year-old granddaughter Thandolwenkosi sits at her side, showing signs of chronic malnutrition. ‘She was supposed to go to school today but she is too hungry to go,’ Margaret explains. ‘I feel that death is looming for us if we don't get food.’
As Christians, watching the downward slide of a country that, until recently, was prosperous enough to provide food to its neighbours, we can’t help but wonder what our faith would look like in the face of such trials. How does it feel to be in such a place?
When we interviewed Promise Manceda of the Zimbabwean Christian Alliance and Methodist Bishop Kadenge they were more than keen to tell us exactly how it feels. And their testimony throws off the apparent hopelessness of their situation to reveal what CS Lewis called in his children’s stories the ‘deeper magic’. It’s a deeper truth that cuts through the temptation to despair – and declares with spirited persistence that God is there, that God is able, that hopelessness is an illusion.
From our nice, cosy, democratic armchairs, we can often recoil at the thought of making such easy statements as ‘God will be with you, you are in God’s hands, all will be well,’ when we’re not the ones facing the storm. But it’s quite something when those words come from the very people who know what it is to fear, to suffer, to be tested.
Watch the three short video interviews with Promise and Bishop Kadenge below – their message is astonishingly consistent and reveals a paradox they have found to be true: that it’s exactly when things seem hopeless, that God is most powerfully present.