ZAPU calls on Mugabe to stop parceling land to Chinese
By Walter Sebele

Published: November 5, 2012

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(Gwanda)As it kick started its referendum “Vote Yes” campaign in Gwanda at the weekend, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) party has called on government to stop parceling land to Chinese people, as it asked as well for Calf Loans for cattle rearing areas such as Gwanda..

Addressing at rally meant gunner up backing for the forthcoming referendum at Imbizo Community Centre in Gwanda, ZAPU Vice President Emelia Mukaratirwa, appealed for support from the Imbizo Community saying the new draft constitution was a better devil than the current Lancaster House charter.

“In my view it is but wise to “vote yes” in the coming referendum as we all know that the devil we know is better than the one that we do not know and will help us map a way forward. “A “No vote” is likely to derail our efforts of addressing the bread and butter issues that are affecting us as a people of Zimbabwe,” said Mukaratirwa.

ZAPU and all MDC formations have joined hands with other civic organizations like Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) who have endorsed the draft constitution as they are all demanding a referendum and new constitution.
She said as the country spent valuable time arguing about what should be included in the new constitution, certain sectors where really benefiting from that controversy as they used the time to carry out their illegal deals.

“As we are busy deliberating on the draft constitution, a lot of our raw minerals are busy being illegally channeled outside the country without what I refer to as value addition. So many a times are these bogus Chinese agents looting our resources and we as people of Zimbabwe are left with nothing to show for ourselves,” she added.

However speaking in separate interviews Gwanda residents have called upon the government to consider extending its hand to the dry community of Gwanda.

Emilia Mukaratirwa
They said since the government was quick to chip in and assist the Mashonaland community in times of need, it was but just for cattle rearing areas to be considered as well in these loan schemes.

“It is not fair that we always hear of the grain loan scheme to the people of Mashonaland yet there has been nothing done to improve our welfare as a people of Gwanda. What the government should be doing was to offer us what we call “Calf loan Schemes” since cattle rearing is the closest we get to agriculture,” said Nixon Mlilo, a villager at Imbizo.

Lungile Mathe who is also a villager in Gwanda cried of being treated as second class citizens in Zimbabwe as they have never been approached on any issue concerning their welfare or at least have measures in place to ensure that the drought situation is dealt with.

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A NYANGA man who was ‘locked’ in 2008 after bedding a friend’s wife and spent the last five years enduring excruciating pain from mysterious ailments, is now a free man.

Romanisi Mukura who betrayed his close buddy’s trust and slept with his wife several times was set free at a cleansing ceremony held last Thursday in Muwi Village in Headman Landmine Madongoda’s area of Nyanga.

He paid four beasts with a total value of $1 600 to Marunguto Tafirenyika as compensation for the illicit affair.

The aggrieved Tafirenyika whose marriage to Christine Kadete, is now on the rocks had initially demanded eight beasts, but Headman Madongoda intervened and slashed the compensation to be inline with provisions of the Traditional Leaders Act.

Although Tafirenyika had long ‘fenced’ his wife’s forbidden fruit from trespassers, Mukura was not initially caught in the snare because he was using condoms.

Luck ran out when he stopped using condoms and opted for unprotected sex.

In an interview with The Weekender at his shop in Nyanga on Tuesday, Tafirenyika said he set free Mukura after he was given the money he had demanded.

He said he had no hard feelings, but indicated that there were grey areas he was sorting out with his in-laws over the case.

When asked how exactly he had “locked” Mukura, Tafirenyika spoke in riddles.

“That is my secret and, after all, if I tell how I do it, the juju will lose power. However, when I unlocked him, I begged with my ancestors to set him free for I had been paid what I demanded. In the event that he was going to default there was no way I was going to remove that curse because sleeping with someone’s wife is as bad as murder. His days were numbered,” he said.

As a result of the curse, Mukura had swollen thighs, stomach and private parts. He also developed a fontanel (nhova) which caused him severe headaches and non-stop sweating.

Tafirenyika was also not at liberty to disclose how he unlocked Mukura, but Headman Madongoda whose aides were present when the cleansing ceremony occurred disclosed everything.

“Mukura and his family were called to Tafirenyika’s homestead where the rituals were conducted. When they arrived at the house, Tafirenyika asked for a $1 which he said was for a ritual called mutete. When he was handed over the money he appeared as if he talking to his ancestors telling them to set free Mukura from the curse since he had been paid everything that he had demanded.

“He drank some traditional beer and spit the contents on Mukura’s face. After that he gave Mukura some concoctions, which were in the form of tree roots. When he was handed over the first muti, Mukura was told to bath with the concoction under a tree after which he was ordered to speak on top of his voice telling the tree that the curse he has must be left here. He was also given two concoctions which he was also going to bath with using the same method,” he said.

It was not yet clear whether Mukura had improved since he failed to visit the headman’s house on Tuesday as per instruction, but the traditional leader said his health had greatly improved.

“He was supposed to be here to give his testimony, but I don’t know what happened. However, I telephoned him on several occasions and he told me that he had greatly improved since the day of the cleansing ceremony. He wants this chapter to be over because he has endured a lot of pain,” said Headman Madongoda.

He said this was his first time to deal with such a case at his courts, saying it was an eye-opener.

“We have learnt a lot of lessons from this encounter. First, it is dangerous to sleep with someone’s wife or husband. Married people should be trustworthy. Secondly, ‘locking’ people is not good because of many reasons. This can cause death and whenever someone dies avenging spirits will come out. In the vent that Tafirenyika was going to die before unlocking Mukura what was going to happen to Mukura? This creates more problems than solutions,” he said.

Headman Madongoda said Mukura had travelled the length and breath of this country to get treatment from renowned traditional healers, but none of them were able to remove the ‘lock’.

It needed the owner himself to end what he had started.

Bulawayo24

The Urgency of Obedience

Although Satan is “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4), he does not have carte blanche to afflict God’s people. The more precisely we as believers obey God, the more difficult it is for the Devil to succeed in ruining our lives. Sections of Scripture like Psalm 91 make it plain that the effectiveness of God’s protection of us is in large part proportional to our “dwelling in the secret place of the Most High” and “abiding in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Satan tries to trick us into sinning (disobeying God) and by doing so leaving the umbrella of God’s “protective custody.” For example, when Satan was tempting Jesus in the wilderness, he twisted God’s Word. By misapplying Psalm 91:12, he tried to get Jesus to do something dangerous and foolhardy that would have cost him his life. He wanted Jesus to mistakenly believe that God’s protection of him was absolute, when it was actually relative to his faith in and obedience to God’s Word. Nowhere does God guarantee blanket protection to Temple-jumpers.

If Jesus needed to remain in the will of God to assure himself of protection, surely we do too. Sin in the life of a Christian is a primary cause of his vulnerability to spiritual defeat. If Satan can get a believer to act contrary to the will of God, it appears that this gives him an opportunity to step in and afflict him.

Satan carefully chooses his moments to strike, in accord with his goal to confuse people as to the difference between good and evil. He does not take advantage of all sin to correspondingly afflict each person who sins, because then he would eventually discourage sin, and his success depends upon encouraging it. He does take special pleasure in hurting God’s people in order to make it seem that commitment to God does not result in blessings.

God does not kill people who love Him, or cause them to suffer. It is the Devil who causes death and suffering. God is righteous and just. If a parent, judge, schoolteacher, etc. were to act as God is portrayed by many as acting — punishing one person while letting another go free for the same sin — imagine the din of angry voices shouting “Unfair! Unfair!” And it would be unfair.

It is interesting that most Christians who write about suffering admit that it is unfair, or at least that it seems unfair. But their erroneous belief that God is the cause of the suffering necessitates a distorted rationale. Not wanting to point an accusing finger at God, a finger they would unhesitatingly and rightly point at people, i.e., Stalin, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Snidely Whiplash and other perpetrators of heinous crimes, they are forced to say that “unfair” is really “fair” after all.

Philip Yancey’s comment is representative of the confusion that exists concerning God’s fairness:
If, for the sake of a “test” of love, a husband subjected his wife to the trauma that Job had to endure, we would call him pathological and lock him away. If a mother hid herself from her children…we would judge her an unfit mother. How, then, can we understand such behavior…by God Himself? I offer no neat formula…[1]

The Word of God makes it plain that applying such a double standard to Him is unwarranted, since He is the epitome of a loving Father.

By doing things like afflicting some people who sin, and disregarding others, the Devil has confused multitudes. In Old Testament times, this confusion contributed to what came to be the popular belief that God, if He did not choose to punish someone for his sin, would instead punish the person’s descendants. Job refers to this belief in his great speech in Chapter 21: “It is said, ‘God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons’” (Job 21:19a). Recognizing that punishing children for a parent’s sin while letting the parent go free is not justice, Job continued, “Let him [God] repay the man himself so that he will know it!” (Job 21:19b).

Jeremiah 31:29 and Ezekiel 18:2 also reflect this common belief in biblical times that God punished children for their parents’ sins, as does the verse that we quoted earlier in Chapter One: “Rabbi [Jesus], who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). This verse shows that even Jesus’ disciples were confused and were considering the possibility that God did punish children for some ancestor’s sin.

Unless one understands the figure of speech Metonymy, it would appear that the Bible does indicate that God punishes children for their parents’ sin. Exodus 20:5 reads, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers [ancestors] to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” But this is a great example of the figure Prophetic Metonymy. God is not actively punishing, instead He is prophetically warning of the consequences of Israel’s disobedience. God does not punish the children of sinners! He even forbids that children be executed for sins they did not commit, as the following verse shows:

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.

It is true that children often do suffer for the sins of their parents, in that such sins often allow Satan the window of opportunity to afflict them. By their sinful behavior, parents can open the lives of their children to the direct influence of evil spirits that cause confusion, sickness and even death. Sometimes the “consequences” children receive are very obviously related to the physical sin of their parents. Fetal-alcohol-syndrome and babies addicted to crack-cocaine are both examples of this. It can be documented that abusive tendencies, alcoholism and other sinful behavior tend to stay in a family for generations. But are these problems acts of God? No! If a mother is a drunk, she is sinning of her own free will. Her fetal-alcohol-syndrome baby is not God’s doing. God is always trying to help and bless people in any way He can.

Again we want to emphasize that suffering or affliction is never, by itself, an accurate gauge of sin in one’s life. The Bible shows that sometimes the righteous suffer while the sinful go free. That is not to imply in any way that there is no value to living a holy life. First, there is a Day of Judgment coming when the Lord Jesus Christ will judge every person according to his or her earthly behavior. Second, and most germane to our thesis, God does work to actively protect those who are trying to serve Him. Throughout the Bible, God is called the believers’ “savior,” “deliverer,” “shield,” “rock,” “fortress,” “stronghold,” “refuge,” “shepherd,” “rearguard,” etc. Although God cannot always totally protect His people from all evil, He is always actively working to “deliver us out of all our troubles” (Ps. 34:17). No doubt every believer can give examples of God’s helping hand on his or her life.

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