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Harare Stations of the Cross held outside the city walls
by Pat Ashworth
 Quiet moment: the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, attends a church service in Bulawayo on Easter Sunday.
The country’s general election begins tomorrow | AT THE last minute, police in Harare withdrew permission given to the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches to hold public Good Friday services and processions in the centre of the city. The riot police brought in to ensure that the edict was obeyed were singing, and seemed “geared up for beating up the Anglicans”, one eyewitness said on Monday. A six-hour vigil in Africa Unity Square was to have begun with Stations of the Cross in St Mary’s Anglican Cathedral. Permission had been granted by the police and by the City of Harare. The interim Bishop of Harare, Dr Sebastian Bakare, had appealed for the prayers of the Anglican Communion (News, 20 March) for the event, but had continuously warned against confrontation. More than 2000 people assembled, instead, at St Michael’s, Mbare, and the Stations of the Cross procession took place through the township. “It was Good Friday ‘outside the city walls’,” said one church member who took part. A four-hour service followed, during which clergy and lay people discussed aspects of the Passion story and gave their testimonies. |
| The Cathedral is still under occupation by Dr Bakare’s deposed predecessor, Nolbert Kunonga, and youth militia. Dr Bakare has urged all Christians in Zimbabwe to use the influence of their votes in the elections, and to be guided by their conscience. “Voting is our civil right and, indeed, obligation, as Christians. This is the only time the powerless and helpless can exercise their power,” he said in a pastoral letter on Maundy Thurs-day. As the elections loom, Zimbabweans from the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, a coalition of pro-democracy groups set up by the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance in 2005, have been marking the first anniversary of the arrest and torture of peaceful protesters in Zimbabwe on Sunday 11 March last year (News, 16 March 2007). On that day, a heavy police presence and roadblocks were put in place before a prayer meeting. In the police brutality that followed, one man was killed and 100 arrested, including the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai. A woman in her late 60s, Sekai Holland, was savagely beaten. Two days after addressing the meeting held to mark the anniversary, she was arrested and detained for more than five hours, in a police move declared by the MDC as intended to “instil fear in the people” before Saturday’s election. |
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