A tangled revolution
Parker, Roger
December 16, youth in Moutsie held an open-air meeting predict that from March onwards, there will be no business in under a thatched roof. The police drove into the meeting....
...December 16, youth in Moutsie held an open-air meeting predict that from March onwards, there will be no business in under a thatched roof...
...The practice is acceptable because it is so close to The church, about 8 percent of the total population, gives Catholic attitudes toward prayers for the poor souls in purgathe impression of a black organization run by white...
...by ancestral spirits forms an important part of Catholicism's The priests with me at dinner, quite elderly, came decades inculturation here in Zimbabwe...
...By come to their aid...
...But lawyers give them no hope...
...Zimbabwe...
...ZAPU has a powerful tribal base...
...Anything associated crisis, Makitla recognizes me on the street and tells me of the with KwaNdebele was attacked...
...ened, and well he might be...
...he hoped, might care about the impending deaths in Moutsie...
...The white popupatrons complained about the noisy singing, and the charis- lation in Zimbabwe numbers only about two hundred matics were told they could no longer meet at the center...
...Zimbabwe Africans, with their tradition of possession by The professed plan of Mugabe's ZANU is to simply elimiancestral spirits, take naturally to pentecostalism's Spirit- nate Nkomo's ZAPU...
...No one seems to know whether any of them practices prison is his restraining influence on ZAPU militants...
...Frightfully expensive, too expensive for uncommon, and that many, especially men, must formally the blacks," the priest tells me...
...But both statements are meaning from the demonstration of proficiency with a severely courageous...
...their unofficial capital is Bulawayo...
...In country's communism is less economic than political...
...Pentecostal sects proliferate - over one liament has proposed seriously, with the sometimes amusing thousand in Zimbabwe...
...Outside the charismatic movement, Catholics practice the Another ZANU member of parliament suggested last Auregular Sunday Mass and ordinary piety...
...To my knowledge, Ndabaningi Sithole (out of the country - the government will no one and no church protested...
...limited vocabulary of movement and gesture...
...We will close down to fight...
...They claim to understand the Africans, and maybe they assimilating the ancestral spirit doctrines and practices into really do...
...Then Will Joshua Nkomo and his ZAPU eventually go the way of it was simply dropped from the curriculum...
...It was briefly exhilarating but in lesssociety, and government force when persuasion fails...
...That same year, both parties talism with a strong African cast...
...The Africans invite like an urbane guardian angel...
...Zimbabwe is a youthful Traditional religion in Zimbabwe holds that ancestral spirits return to inhabit the bodies and souls of their living descendants...
...We are appealing to the international suddenly silent...
...But the disappear...
...Supporting the govern- the First and Second World Wars...
...In their pastoral statement of January 1, 1984 movement clean as a whistle in limbo space...
...And they work hard roadblock manned by government police...
...rapher whose inventiveness has been apparent from uses modern methods of torture, including electric shock...
...Africa and the railway becomes inoperable, Zimbabwe will be Consequently, Mugabe has for some time carried on a reign almost completely cut off from its overseas trade...
...The result was the government...
...But in than-expert hands became tedious...
...They do not know the world ended in 1981, - unfairly - all present at table agree, except, perhaps, the 28 February 1986: 107 black servant who remains silent and motionless...
...regard to the professed Marxism of the ruling party, ZANU, The dedicated integrity of such work was not and is not in and the drive toward a one-party state...
...As in all the police camps in the south, the C.I.O...
...The Catholic charismatics that I spoke to center, unlike other bars, remains open on Sundays...
...but ancestral spirits...
...Commonweal: 108 country with over half its population under fifteen years of African party, ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union), age...
...Most of the Matabele support ZAPU...
...year...
...relinquishing Lebowa's claim to Moutsie...
...Impassive, he pretends he cannot hear the The people seated at table with me this evening are all white, conversation, which turns to the Catholic church in Zimlongtime residents here in Harare (formerly Salisbury), the babwe...
...The Matabele back heavily on the South African economy...
...There is the black archbishop of Harare relies heavily on his astute and no similarity between the Catholic attitude toward the souls in loyal English Jesuit secretary, who guides and protects him purgatory and ancestral spirit possession...
...The Bulawayo newspaper The Chronicle the process of finding it continues to be a tantalizingly enjoyfor August 28, 1985 quotes the Minister of State Security, able event in the vanguard modern dance world...
...He sees no difficulty in simply ago...
...What is going to boy was shot in the leg...
...his first solo appearances at the beginning of the They operate directly under Prime Minister Mugabe, and eighties...
...An elderly white priest laughingly refers to the Catholic The only strong opposition to ancestral spirit possession Center at the Harare Cathedral as "the cheapest brothel in among Catholics that I could find belongs to the Catholic town...
...The other African party, ZAPU (Zimbabwe intimidation as its purpose, and I do feel intimidated...
...with guns," Makitla had told me on my visit to Moutsie...
...We are appealing to the international community," he Earlier, Moutsie leaders thought they would sue in court to said, as I scribbled down his words...
...not renew his passport), Bishop Muzorewa (who fled the In fact, the government professes to be Marxist...
...Cars with KwaNdebele violence in Moutsie the day before...
...This practice forms the central core of traditional religions in Zimbabwe...
...of terror in Matabeleland...
...There are many black gust that Zimbabwe declare war on ZAPU and "wipe out this vocations to sisters' congregations...
...were banned and their leaderships interned...
...As a result, spirit possession holds a high place in traditional religion and culture, with the usual resulting trance states, spirit-induced ecstasies, and emphasis on magic of all kinds...
...The politicians, in parliament and in the newspapers, regularly cry prime minister, Robert Mugabe, and most of his cabinet are out for Nkomo's imprisonment...
...THE CATHOLIC CHURCH in Zimbabwe stays outside politics The police have already raided Nkomo's house and, at with very few exceptions, and religion in general seems to present, are investigating the documents they seized...
...Comrade Emmerson Munangagwa: "In this region Morris, like his contemporaries in the under-thirties group, [Matabeleland], security forces, acting in concert with each matured into a world of experimentation in which mechanical other, particularly on intelligence pertaining to these dissi- repetition, drone music, and unisex handling of roles were the dents, will be more efficient in their efforts to eradicate these norm...
...cause serious problems, he shrugs...
...The Moutsie...
...the maiming and death of hundreds and hundreds of innocent The erosion of all institutions during the sixties and sevenpeople...
...But the police neither ask ZANU knows that, within a year or so, these will have negligi- for our documents nor examine the car...
...The Catholics of Harare, white spirits (souls of the deceased) to possess them...
...MORRIS DANCING The main days for torturing seem to be Monday, Tuesday, MODERNIST & TRADITIONALIST and Wednesday...
...The white woman appointed by the archbishop to run In the charismatic renewal, the differences between white the center made the group enter by the rear door...
...The outside world must streets...
...people...
...These charismatic groups pray exuberantly, sing loudly, led by Joshua Nkomo, is a real problem...
...It wants to strip after years of battling against Moutsie's incorporation into black people of citizenship...
...Zimbabwe's Marxism, however, ap- Of the eight and a half million people in Zimbabwe, about pears unsophisticated and superficial...
...thousand, or a little over 2 percent of the total population, and Unable to find a place to meet, the charismatics have temporar- white people continue to leave at a rate of about six thousand a ily disbanded...
...This recent statement became increasingly hermetic as it fed upon itself, deriving is weaker than the 1983 pastoral letter...
...There was a definite aridity Zimbabwe, government authorities do not seem to be listening built into the rigorous honesty of continuously elaborated form to the voice of religion...
...Abandoned by their In the following weeks, KwaNdebele vigilantes, beginning allies and offered scant hope by the law, they see no defense the feared reign of terror, abducted four hundred Moutsie but to fight desperately and call upon the world's people to residents, beat them up, and then returned them to Moutsie...
...desperation to the struggle...
...Nothing in and black, regard the archbishop as weak, afraid, and not Catholic practice or doctrine corresponds to this...
...When I point out that the traditional African they never change...
...again say that they "are deeply saddened by the suffering of Such studied concentration was elegant in its simplicity, many people and the senseless loss of life caused by disunity, subtle in inventiveness, and leisurely in development...
...I The dying has begun...
...we Zimbabwe strongly holds the traditional African ideas on tell them at meetings that they must treat us differently...
...The Shona party is Government speakers pay lip service to Marx's name, but they ZANU...
...Mugabe effect, ridiculous as it sounds, Zimbabwe has declared war on appears to follow the political model of Rumania...
...At least, local residents tell me, that is when you can hear the screaming - especially at night...
...Mugabe the faith...
...tion of form with minimal emotional display became an honest In a later pastoral statement of January 1, 1985, the bishops way to work...
...They tell me that the C.I.O...
...It seems most unlikely...
...Seething with anger, the community demanded the know...
...The message was they state their clear opposition to certain Marxist principles: the choreographers' facility in presenting flowing designs of atheism, class warfare as a means of positive transformation of increasing complexity...
...Like the characters in C. S. Lewis's novel, The Great Divorce, they maintain their dignity I N ZIMBABWE, the world has ended...
...seminary...
...We are not going to agree...
...knows that with Nkomo removed, the armed bands of ZAPU Parliamentary sessions always begin with prayers, which dissidents that roam southern Zimbabwe would be even more appear to be a mere formality...
...taught in all government primary and secondary schools...
...ancestral little hard of hearing, and missed the explosion in 1981, when spirit possession is deep in the mentality of all the tribes in the world ended...
...He adds, his voice rising, "That is why ideas and practices are contrary to Catholic teaching and surely there are no vocations...
...vehicles are up to specifications...
...however, they appear almost totally out of contact Catholicism...
...people live in the south...
...Standards and customs The black and colored prayer groups, composed largely of differ, and social contact is infrequent...
...and fifties when younger choreographers began to find fewer and have degenerated into brutality and atrocity," bringing about fewer values worth such unquestioned devotion...
...Yet they 14 ARK MORRIS is a bright, keenly intelligent choreogcan still hear the screams hundreds of yards away...
...Rumania, and Bulgaria...
...The dramatic Having a cup of tea with a lay official of the Catholic Justice potential of encounters between male and female dancers was and Peace Commission, I ask why the commission has made diffused by assigning highly similar movements to all and by no ' statement concerning the brutalities and atrocities of gov- carefully restricting costuming so that it emphasized ernment police and soldiers in Matabeleland...
...Accordingly, a cool mathematical manipulaexcesses" ("Reconciliation Is Still Possible," Easter, 1983...
...And they "appeal to the govern- technique, its discipline and purity, had an integrity not to be ment to use its authority to put an immediate stop to these found elsewhere...
...Of these, two are that they do this to check documents and "to be sure the made up mostly of whites, and have a diminishing influence...
...Mostly cial - buying and selling from one another, or master-servant middle-aged whites, they pray decorously...
...ROGER PARKER is a priest, author, and lecturer who travels widely in Europe, Asia, and Africa...
...I would estimate the whites at about 6 percent of the total White society and black society seem to run on parallel and Catholic population...
...I ask him...
...Police teargassed the youth...
...February 6, forty people had been killed in protests over the "We are fighting with our bare hands and they are fighting incorporation...
...Commonly, African Zimbabweans invite the souls of their deceased ancestors to enter their bodies...
...Soldiers detained ninety-six people...
...The official documents seven million belong to Shona-speaking tribes...
...The Matabele and the newspapers give every citizen the title of "comrade...
...POLITICS & RELIGION IN ZIMBABWE A tangled revolution ROGER PARKER and they act just as they did before...
...The younger modern ings, and rapings...
...Two white bishops, Bishop Karlen of Bulawayo Startled by such views from a priest, I ask a European and Bishop Prieto of Hwange, are considered socially con- missionary what is taught about ancestral spirits in the national scious and courageous...
...ZANU be an ineffectual formalism with no practical import...
...The other 10 percent go to the quite inadequate port of minority party, but with a hostile and warlike tribe whose Beira in Mozambique by a rail line protected from Mozambi- members speak their own language, have their own customs, can guerrillas and bandits by a large contingent of Zimbabwe's and possess the fierce spirit of their cousins, the, South African army, with only partial success...
...The na- country after his defeat in the last election), and their followtion's best friends and supporters are North Korea, China, ers...
...It also hatred, and ruthless hunger for power...
...The argument runs like this: The church must be with the surrounding realities...
...renounce such beliefs and practices and be freed from them The largest Catholic charismatic prayer group, almost en- through prayer before they are capable of using the common tirely African, met at the center every Sunday afternoon until charismatic gifts of the Spirit such as praying in tongues...
...That generation's passionment in its efforts to preserve order in Matabeleland, the ate commitment to humanistic values lingered on through the bishops condemn "methods which have been adopted...
...Snooker tour- charismatic renewal, a fledgling and struggling movement naments and the like - lots of drinking...
...raphers was precise, emotionally restrained, and highly conWhat stand has the Catholic church in Zimbabwe taken with centrated on form rather than content...
...People active in ZAPU regularly "Socialism" in Zimbabwe means "communism...
...It is ZANU (led by Ndabaningi Sithole, and later succeeded by not hysteria, however, but uninhibited Catholic pentecos- Mugabe) and ZAPU (Nkomo...
...The bar and black Zimbabweans can be seen clearly...
...The roadblock has ble importance...
...party, ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union), have de- Coming into Bulawayo from the airport, we meet a cided to make the nation a one-party state...
...He looks fright- similarities rather than differences of bodily form...
...It was as if the youth, grim stop the incorporation...
...I ask what activities take place there...
...And curses and spells are the stuff of everyday life...
...He and his ZAPU...
...The black man stand1981...
...letters...
...As the South African Nkomo...
...If his own choreographic voice is as yet unfocused, answer only to him...
...They burned down one home and two shops owned In Johannesburg some weeks later to attend a meeting on the by people they believed to be informers...
...The told me that spirit possession among Catholics is not at all patrons are white...
...The consensus is: probably not...
...The They picked up youths as young as eleven and twelve from the government is prepared to kill us...
...To a great extent the work of the leading-edge choreogworrisome individuals...
...In an Easter, 1983 question...
...Two days later, a nineteen-year-old from Moutsie, recogThe next day two cameramen working for the British nizing me from the UDF meeting and knowing I am a foreign agency, World Television News, were arrested and charged journalist, stops me on the campus of the University of with inciting unspecified violence in Moutsie...
...Four of Zimbabwe's six dioceses have black bishops, but yet This analysis, of course, simply does not hold up...
...ZAPU must be banned and its leadership locked up...
...Perhaps it is because they are a inculturated in the local matrix of custom and beliefs...
...I feel 28 February 1986: 109 outright fear later, when I walk past the "Stops and Ross Camp" just behind the Catholic bishop's house and the Dance Dominican sisters' convent...
...The result has not been a new heaven or a new earth, ing immaculately at the end of the table in his servant's jacket but a Marxist purgatory...
...But "This apartheid regime is oppressing people...
...They point to starvation in some areas due dancers without any network of agreed-upon values to which to government troops having deliberately cut off supplies of to hitch their artistic futures decided that the inherent worth of food and any access to food...
...Its apocalypse was the and the elegant manner that comes from good breeding, unarevolution against Ian Smith's Rhodesian government in ware that they now reside in purgatory...
...pass around us, he tells me relentlessly proceeds despite their protests, there is a particular of the recent violence...
...The bishops state that "the facts point to a reign of ties left political, educational, religious, and artistic husks terror caused by wanton killings, woundings, beatings, burn- where vital organisms had once been...
...This is the principal police base in i Matabeleland...
...He is confronted not only with a rail...
...Zimbabwe depends The Shona-speakers back M 4gabe...
...number over a million, a strong minority...
...praise God with no inhibitions and with echoes of traditional (In 1963, after agitation in the black reserves of Rhodesia, culture...
...The future of the Catholic charismatic ingenuousness which characterizes Zimbabwe political staterenewal looks promising in Zimbabwe, although its African ments, that the two parties merge: ZAPU could drop the last exuberance should increasingly disconcert the staid mis- two letters of its name, and ZANU could drop the first two sionaries, mostly British and German...
...No one An African priest in Bulawayo assures me that possession laments the lack of African vocations...
...youth ran...
...Even though Mugabe calls for a one-party state and economy crumbles and the rand weakens, Zimbabwe's econ- publicly invites Nkomo and ZAPU to join ZANU, he knows omy will suffer...
...withdrawal of troops...
...gives them no clues...
...ZAPU and arrest its top leaders...
...Witchcraft is rampant...
...The resulting party would then be called ZANU...
...Earlier, they had the support of the homeland Lebowa...
...happen is that we have to die...
...One of ZANU's representatives in parfilled manifestations...
...No statement is planned...
...About 90 percent of 811 overseas imports to that only forceful repression will weaken and eventually deand exports from Zimbabwe pass to the sea by South African stroy the opposition party...
...Ethel Walt, of the Black Sash, reports that community to help, to write letters of protest calling for a Phatudi's been offered the orange estates of Zebediela and a referendum in Moutsie, and to take it up with the United rail link from Zebediela to the Lebowa capital in exchange for Nations...
...We are prepared to die...
...An elderly white woman, with me at a black prayer the African National Congress Party split into two factions, meeting, muttered to me disdainfully, "Pure hysteria...
...young people, are expanding rapidly...
...Witswatersrand during a Christian youth conference...
...tory...
...There was a variety of reasons for such self-imposed statement, the Catholic bishops directly addressed the problem limitations, the most notable one being a distrust of the heroic of the brutal suppression of ZAPU and the persecution by the convictions that shaped modern dance in the period between government of the Matabele people...
...The economy, in reality, is capitalist...
...The resultant works tended to be presented on clear stages The bishops have also confronted the Marxist orientation of unencumbered by naturalistic props or decors...
...What keeps Nkomo out of Catholic...
...Nevertheless, there are some predomiindependent tracks...
...Commonweal: 110...
...If the government pursues the KwaNdebele and warnings of bloodshed should the incorpora- incorporation, they are killing the people because we are tion proceed, Lebowa's chief minister, Cedric Phatudi, is prepared to die resisting...
...The Matabele rarely, if ever, mention any of his ideas...
...does its torturing and killing here...
...The bar at the with few members...
...relationships where black serves white...
...As black Moutsie has been fighting the incorporation plans ever since youths wearing T-shirts proclaiming, "No Peace Under Apartthey were first proposed in 1979, but now, as the incorporation heid" and "The Future Is Ours...
...license plates were stoned...
...The C.I.O...
...The and urgent, were addressing a world he had never seen outside white power structure wrote the laws, they point out, so the South Africa, an unknown territory inhabited by people who, laws are on Pretoria's side...
...Central Intelligence Organization, modeled on the K.G.B...
...recently...
...Matabeleland looks like an occupied country...
...My driver explains at the process of eliminating the other parties...
...Until not long ago, religion was of a problem than they are now...
...with diminished content...
...He tells me that the professors stand divided on the My black priest friend tells me, speaking of my white priest issue, and that, reportedly, at least one African bishop in dinner companions the evening before, "They are racists...
...If war breaks out in South Zulus...
...important...
...The missionary orders have stopped sending new men nation's capital...
...The only exchanges appear to be commer- nantly white charismatic prayer groups in Harare...
...tortures people, sometimes to death, in an eight-cell block in the center of the extensive camp...
...One "What will happen now...
Vol. 113 • February 1986 • No. 4
