Anti-Mugabe pastor deserted

Source: Anti-Mugabe pastor deserted – DailyNews Live

Tarisai Machakaire      21 May 2017

HARARE – As much as he is outspoken and daring to the point of poking the
country’s feared authorities in the eye, activist cleric Patrick Mugadza
is a lonely man  who appears at his routine court hearings with no one to
lend him any support, no family, no friend,  or the evergreen civil
society.

While his public profile skyrocketed when he made a controversial prophesy
that put him in the soup, when he carries his light frame to the country’s
courts, Mugadza is mostly alone with no one to offer him a shoulder or a
hand.

Mugadza, who prophesised that the increasingly frail President Robert
Mugabe would die later this year, has been a guest at the country’s
prisons far from his family in Kariba and a 50-member church that
eventually crumbled in his absence for many times now.

“My family has been very supportive of my ministry and I can confirm that
they have not been coming to my court sessions and it is not because they
do not want but I have serious financial constraints and cannot afford to
have them in every sitting,” Mugadza said.

“…going to my extended family I can say the way this junta has been
working over the years has inflicted fear in not just them, but the rest
of the Zimbabwean population. Some of my relatives do not even want me to
visit their homes fearing that if our relations are known they might find
themselves in trouble.”

Mugadza said his relatives did not want to be identified with him owing to
the controversy he has created through his work in activism.

He has justified his friends’ absence saying it was because he did not
invite any of them to stand by him through the court sessions.

“I used to hurt over that but finally comforted myself in knowing that I
am not doing this for myself but the nation.  My wife always complains
that if it happens that I die, she and the children will be affected the
most – not the nation,” Mugadza added.

“People have said that family comes first but that is not the case with
me. I put God, his assignment, then my family at the end. I have come to
understand that family is something that came after God had designed
assignments for all of us.

“I am not in need of solidarity I go to court as part of my calling to
speak for the suffering children of Zimbabwe.”

Mugadza is convinced that God has a plan to bring change to Zimbabwe
through people like him and equates himself to the Biblical Moses who led
the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt.

“I feel that my ministry goes hand-in-hand with activism and for so long
we have lived under a misconception that it is a taboo but it was just a
trick by the regime to make sure that the most powerful entity – the
church – remains quiet pinned to the pulpit.

“…if Moses was here today I am convinced he would parade a placard
written; “Let my people go” right in Mugabe’s face. What I am doing is
what God wants me to be doing at a time like this.”

The cleric has been privileged to be afforded the services of Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights throughout his court appearances and for that he
is ever grateful.

“…wonderful people they are. They have stood with me throughout the
persecution I have endured at the hands of the government and I thank God
for them.”