It was September 11, 2001 (now deeply etched in history as 9/11), the day Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the United States.
As the events unfolded on that day, former heavyweight boxing champion and black rights advocate Muhammad Ali said:
“Killing like that cannot be justified . . . I could never support hurting innocent men, women and children. Islam is a religion of peace. It does not promote terrorism or killing people. People say a Muslim caused this destruction, but they are not real Muslims. They are racist fanatics who call themselves Muslims . . .”
Here is a man brought up as a Christian (black Muslim to be precise) who converted to Islam (black Muslim, to be precise) in 1964 and discarded his slave name, Cassius Clay, to become Muhammad Ali in reaction against the racist Christian establishment in America.
But here is a man who lit the Olympic torch to open the Atlanta Games in 1996, the US had, indeed, come full circle to see an American hero in him from a perceived troublemaker.
Ali personified the transformation of the US into a more just society. My mind rewinded to Ali following President Robert Mugabe’s attack on the Roman Catholic Church last week when he opened the conference centre of the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). In his address, he said:
“Zimbabwe no longer has a place for churches and bishops still inclined to serve the interests of the country’s former colonisers,” fingering Catholics as being at the forefront of criticising his continued stay in power and accusing him of oppression, further attacking black clergy for doing the bidding of “their white clergy masters”.
I found this disingenuous because the issue goes far deeper, far wider, and far back, than that. Anyone who knows the track record of the Catholics can’t honestly make such accusations.
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Yes, there were valid reasons which led to the breakaway of blacks to form “independent” churches such as ZCC and they were mainly political, to escape white control.
The key factor to understanding the emergence of these churches is undoubtedly the racial paternalism exercised by foreign missions in the period before Africans took over leadership of the mainline denominations.
It would be disingenuous to pretend that this never happened. But, a word of advice to ZCC and other independent churches.
Asked: “When you became a black Muslim, the religion was perceived as anti-white. Has that changed?”, Ali replied:
“The real Muslim comes from Mecca. All people are God’s people. The devil can be any colour.” Asked further: “Do you know some black devils?” he replied: “A lot of them.” We don’t need racist fanatics, whether white or black, who call themselves Christians.
That said, Catholics in this country have shone like a beacon. During the liberation war, they were “the biggest thorn in the government’s side”, said an ex-member of the Rhodesian intelligence.
“Government didn’t like seeing and hearing the criticisms that were being levelled because they knew it was true . . .”
Then there was mention of a racial dimension. Bishop Donal Lamont was an Irish Catholic bishop and missionary best known for his fight against white minority rule in Rhodesia.
In 1976 he wrote an open letter to the regime: “As a Catholic bishop I cannot be silent while civil discontent, racial tension and violence are so much in evidence and daily on the increase . . .” His said the regime, “by its clearly racist and oppressive policies and by its stubborn refusal to change, is largely responsible for the injustices which have provoked the present disorder, and it must in that measure be considered guilty of whatever misery or bloodshed may follow”.
The same year he was sentenced to 10 years’ jail because he had allowed nuns in his diocese to provide medicines to Zanla guerillas and advised them, for their own safety and for the good reputation of the church, not to report the presence of guerillas to the authorities.
He pleaded guilty to ensure no one else would incriminate themselves by testifying on his behalf. He was immediately deported.
In 1975, German nun Sister Mary Aquina, among others, risked her life by hiding and driving Mugabe himself to cross into Mozambique to lead the war with the Rhodesians in pursuit.
Now, as then, Catholics occupy the moral high ground. While state media is overdosing on indigenisation and empowerment, a lot of injustices are going on around us and the ruling elite would rather have this pushed to the backburner.
But Catholics have refused to do this. There mustn’t be airbrushing of history. The church has maintained its principled stance of confronting injustice without fear or favour.
It must be doing well because the current regime is hardly distinguishable from Rhodesia, if not much more worse because the world has moved forward.
Catholics have been mostly consistent in condemnation of injustice from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.
So, there is really nothing new; what can be considered different is the new form of oppressor despite all these distortions going on around us with youths recruited, reportedly through monetary incentives, on public TV and radio to sing half-truths and outright lies about whites and others’ roles during the liberation struggle and after the attainment of independence.
“The media have been placed almost under the control of one political party, your own, and are manipulated constantly to suppress or to distort the truth,” wrote Lamont to Smith in 1976.
This disingenuous retelling of the story, especially coming from someone brought up as a Catholic and for whom the Catholics stood by his just cause in the darkest hour, makes out the new ruling elite to be victims whereas in reality they are the perpetrators. This is the side of the story the “Born-Free Crew” don’t know and don’t sing about.
To say the least, there has been failure to reveal the full story. Let’s be faithful to the truth, like Ali who has been consistent both pre-9/11 and post-9/11 by refusing to be a racist and religious bigot.
From 1976 to 1978, the relationship between the Catholic Church and the liberation forces was particularly close.
At independence in 1980, leaders of the movement made it clear that they appreciated the support the missionaries had given them during the war.
Mugabe himself told a television audience in Britain: “I want the Church, especially the Catholic Church, to help this country as we build a new society.”
That’s exactly what’s the Catholic Church has been, and is still, doing.
