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NewsDay

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Cleric trades pulpit for politics

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BULAWAYO cleric, Reverend Frank Mhlanga says he decided to throw his hat into the political ring after realising that the country’s current leadership had failed to live up to public expectation.

BULAWAYO cleric, Reverend Frank Mhlanga says he decided to throw his hat into the political ring after realising that the country’s current leadership had failed to live up to public expectation.

BY NIZBERT MOYO

Mhlanga, the People’s Rainbow Coalition parliamentary candidate for Bulawayo Central, is the founder of the Spread the Gospel Christian Ministry.

“One can pray for a person, but if the Lord has rejected that person, nothing can change. We have prayed in Zimbabwe for 38 years, but nothing has happened,” he told Southern Eye on Tuesday. “This new dispensation cannot deliver unless they are made to work under us,” Mhlanga added, citing the cash crisis, crumbling health system and rising unemployment levels as graphic examples of Zanu PF failures.

He said God inspired him to close his successful business in South Africa and come to serve his people as a politician.

“I am still a pastor, an evangelist by calling, not only in spiritual matters. This earth is run by politics. We cannot run away from it. Politics needs people who are righteous. People are asking why they are being led by people who are corrupt. I have come to be their answer,” he said.

The cleric said he was aware that politics was a dirty game, but he wanted to set an example that ministers of the gospel can enter into the political arena and still remain clean.

Mhlanga added that he will only spend one term in office as he had realised that the more one stayed in power, the higher the chances of being tainted by corruption.