Abstract
The Zimbabwean crisis has been on-going since the year 2000. The various ecumenical bodies of the church in Zimbabwe have been voicing their concerns to the state through meetings and pastoral letters. While the church has been touted as a critical player in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, concerns about the church have been raised. One of these has been the issue of a divided organization that has failed to speak with one voice. With the coming into power of the so called ‘Second Republic’, hopes were raised that the state would be willing to have the crisis resolved. However, the crisis has just worsened, and the church has again been forced to break its silence. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the pastoral letter that was issued by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference on 14 August 2020, titled ‘The March is not Ended’, which sought to respond to the crisis in Zimbabwe. The paper seeks to establish what religious groups can achieve in the event that they set aside their differences for the common good in conflict situations. Data for the paper were gathered through the issued pastoral letter, as well as the responses to it on online media.
Highlights
This article analyses a pastoral letter that was released by the Zimbabwe CatholicBishops’ Conference (ZCBC) on 14 August 2020
Taking into cognizance the fact that Zimbabwe is a state in crisis, the pastoral letter can be viewed as a response that was meant to intervene in the conflict that was unfolding
In order to put the pastoral letter into perspective, it is imperative for the study to examine the intersections among religion, conflict and peacebuilding
Summary
This article analyses a pastoral letter that was released by the Zimbabwe Catholic. Bishops’ Conference (ZCBC) on 14 August 2020. Scholarship has started to take seriously the potential of religion to contribute positively to peacebuilding (Silvestri and Fba 2015; Tarusarira 2020a; Manyonganise 2016, 2020) Scholars supporting this idea base their argument on the evidence that religious leaders have played pivotal roles in influencing the cessation of conflict, and in uniting communities, thereby bringing healing and reconciliation. As shall be discussed later, this is when the Zimbabwean crisis began While historical groups such as the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe had sought to engage the government in non-confrontational ways such as holding meetings with government officials as well as issuing pastoral letters, the new groups that emerged such as the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance and Churches in Manicaland, among others, were confrontational, as they sought to respond to the unfolding crisis. In order to place this pastoral letter in its proper context, an understanding of the nature of the Zimbabwean crisis is significant
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