Parker T. Williamson
Editor emeritus and senior correspondent of The Layman
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is headed for a fall. It won’t be pretty. Indications are that this man whose cruelty knows no bounds will take others down with him – politicians who dared oppose him and journalists who tell the truth about his ruthless rule.
Unwilling to concede his recent electoral defeat, Mugabe unleashed thugs who trashed the offices of his opponents, jailed a
New York Times reporter and surrounded the courthouse with armed militia so that a lawsuit requiring revelation of official election results couldn’t be filed.
No doubt this dictator’s landing will be soft, considering the millions of dollars worth of property confiscated from white Rhodesian farmers and funneled to his family, friends and mercenaries. Having devastated the Zimbabwean economy – one third of the population has fled the country since he took over in 1980 and 80 percent of those who were left behind are unemployed while inflation rages at 100,000 percent – he’ll retire in the luxury to which he has been accustomed. Chances are his retirement cache long ago exchanged now worthless rands for euros, dollars and Swiss francs. He will not share the plight that he has wrought upon his people.
Funds from the faithful
Mugabe came to power brandishing machetes, bullets and Presbyterian Church (USA) dollars. A self-avowed Marxist, he wooed the World Council of Churches and its Presbyterian partner into believing that he was an agent of liberation. For mainline denominational leaders, that made him a savior of sorts and a worthy recipient of $85,000 from church offering plates. Liberation theology was, after all, the
cause du jour.
On his way to power, Mugabe massacred thousands, including a planeload of Christian missionaries who happened to fly over his air space. Some women and children survived the crash, only to be hacked to pieces by Mugabe’s mercenaries.
Presbyterians who demanded accountability for that crime were blown away by Eugene Carson Blake, the denomination’s stated clerk, who refused to guarantee that “funds destined for liberation movements might not be used to buy weapons.”
Blake’s successor at the World Council of Churches, Philip Potter, also opposed attaching strings to the money. He insisted that the World Council “would not send inspectors to see whether the money had been spent in the way that it was given” because “there could be no real sense of solidarity with people if you did not trust them.”
Blake was ultimately succeeded as stated clerk by Clifton Kirkpatrick, who appears never to have met a leftist dictator he didn’t like. So, nothing has changed. Kirkpatrick expanded the most favored entourage to include Cuba’s Fidel Castro, with whom he has welcomed photo ops, and North Korea’s Kim Il Jong.
During his guerrilla days, Mugabe forged an alliance with Joshua Nkomo’s Ndebele tribe. After winning control of the country, he turned his infamous Fifth Brigade upon the Ndebele people, committing wholesale genocide. Having slaughtered his potential competition, he proceeded to establish his one-party state.
One thing you can say for Mugabe is that he remembers to thank his friends. At a World Council of Churches meeting in his country, where Kirkpatrick occupied center stage both as a representative of the Presbyterian delegation and as a member of the World Council of Church’s Central Committee, Mugabe attributed much of his rise to power to his ecumenical supporters. Kirkpatrick seemed pleased to have been so properly thanked.
Having seen the carnage that Mugabe has wrought upon his people, has any Presbyterian bureaucrat expressed second thoughts over having empowered him? At denominational headquarters, the silence is deafening. What’s done has been done and, in due time, few Presbyterians in the pews will remember the role their denomination played in Mugabe’s rise to power. Besides, the current Louisville crew has turned its attention northward. Liberating Palestine is on its minds.
Does anyone wonder if there’s a new Mugabe in the making?
The Rev. Parker T. Williamson is editor emeritus of The Layman.