Mugabe in desperate attempt to woo Apostolic sect

By Never Kadungure

These are desperate times for Zanu PF’s 86 year-old dictator Robert Mugabe who last week dressed up in white apostolic sect robes and joined the Johane Masowe Passover ceremony. With elections slated for next year in 2011 Mugabe and his lieutenants are only too aware their popularity is at an all time low and have no chance of winning a free and fair election.

In April this year Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai took part in a Masowe service with members of the Apostolic Sect but this was part of a campaign to encourage them to immunize their children. Members of the church are discouraged by their leadership from using modern medicines or going to clinics and are instead told to rely on the healing power of prayer should they get sick.

But Tsvangirai’s trip to the Masowe service is said to have thrown Mugabe into a mad panic with party loyalists suspecting the MDC leader was wooing millions of Masowe followers in the country. It is that context analysts are viewing Mugabe’s trip to the Johane Masowe Passover ceremony as a propaganda attempt to win over supporters and boost his failing popularity.

Nehanda Radio understands the Zanu PF commissariat decided in April that they would intensify church penetration and infiltration with the aim of influencing church leaders to spread their propaganda to church followers. A leaked party document outlined plans for Zanu PF to use churches ‘as future vehicles’ of its propaganda message.

Minister Webster Shamu, war veteran’s leader Jabulani Sibanda, party spokesman Ephraim Masawi, and Dickson Mafiyosi, clad in white garments did in fact attend a Johane Masowe church service in Madziwa where they urged church members to support President Robert Mugabe. It did not take long for the gullible church leaders to fall for the trick with Johane Masowe leader Mudzidzi Jowasi calling for the lifting of targeted sanctions imposed on ZANU-PF officials by the West.

During the opening of parliament last week Tuesday several members of the Apostolic Sect lined up outside Parliament waving the Zanu PF fist slogan in support of Mugabe. The Vapostori, as they are alternatively called have become a prominent feature at state functions singing for Mugabe and his party.

Several senior officials like police commissioner Augustine Chihuri are members of the church. Despite this they engage in heinous human rights abuses and murder. Little wonder then the Johane Masowe sect allowed Mugabe, a man who has killed thousands, to worship with them.

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