GOVERNMENT will soon register and regulate churches in light of recent human rights abuses orchestrated by church leaders, senior government officials said yesterday.
SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
Home Affairs secretary Melusi Matshiya and Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede told the Parliamentary Thematic Committee on Gender and Development chaired by MDC-T Matabeleland South Senator Watchy Sibanda that proposed regulations would help instill sanity in places of worship.
Matshiya said previously there was no law to regulate or register churches and they were left to freely carry out their activities. He also said that the Private Voluntary Organisations Act and the Constitution did not require churches to be registered.
Mudede added that registering churches was not perculiar to Zimbabwe as other countries such as Burundi had strict laws that governed church operations.
“The answer is that we have come to a position of registering churches – not only in Zimbabwe but the whole of Africa because it has become a means of money -making, and people are forming churches at places where there are no means or public toilets, and young men are suddenly forming churches – some of them which might be devil worshipping,” Mudede said.
“The Home Affairs ministry only has the powers to pronounce a ban or outlaw a church and that is the problem that bedevilled Budiriro where the word ‘ban’ was pronounced to the Vapostori sect.”
