Prophets warned

Zimbabwe Council of Churches secretary-general Dr Solomon Zwana has slammed clergymen who are taking advantage of the challenges the country is facing to dupe people of their hard- earned money and those that have devised unethical ways to advertise their so-called healing powers.

Dr Zwana said this when he appeared before the Thematic Committee on Gender and Development to present what they were doing to curb domestic violence and incidences of rape in the Church.

His criticism comes in the wake of efforts by the ZCC, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe to come up with a draft document for onward transmission to Government to create a regulatory framework for churches.

"Why is it people are becoming so gullible? And it's certainly not because they are dull. They are not dull but you know sometimes people brainwash you when you are desperate and this would be our appeal that we really need to look at the social issues bedevilling our people and try to see how best they can be addressed so that they don't continue to fall victim because everybody is looking for a bag of money to fall from above and if someone promises it you just fall for it," he said.

The ZCC secretary-general also criticised prophets who were abusing disabled people in their advertisements of healing powers.

"We are doing it to ourselves where we are trying to use the same approaches of using disability as way of making money and also making names for ourselves.

"We have also been trying as much as possible to remind people of the theology that it is God who heals and not individuals. So if there has to be a miracle of any kind it is God's work and not an individual's work so that God is not pushed to the periphery and people occupy the centre.

"That is the kind of theology that we have been pushing that when it comes to miracles it is God's work and also that it is unethical for any religious practitioner to take advantage of a disabled person or even use their images and try to advertise their work"

EFZ secretary Reverend Lindani Dube echoed similar sentiments saying they were working on the draft regulations but said anyone who breaks the law should be dealt with accordingly.

He said as the Church they were concerned with unruly elements who claimed to be clergy and were abusing the Church to commit crimes, extort and exploit people.

"The umbrella bodies are in a process and in that process we are exploring ways in which a sustainable model to ensure that these things are dealt with is put in place.

"We are working on that mechanism and it would be interesting to be invited (to Parliament) to outline the model that we are brainstorming. In fact, what we have done is we have met as Zimbabwe's Heads of Christian Denominations executive and we assigned different umbrella bodies the EFZ, ZCC, ZCBC to deliberate on issues to do with regulation as it were," Rev Dube said.

A number of prophets have emerged in the country in the past five years with many of them claiming to perform miracles that include raising the dead and healing such ailments as HIV.

A number of them also promise instant riches to their followers.

Others like RGM End Time Message founder Reverend Robert Gumbura have been jailed for raping their congregants.