BEWARE OF MODERN RELIGION: IT’S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

MADONNA’s real name is Louise Ciccone, which is very Italian, if you asked me.

She was born in 1958 in Michigan, but not in Detroit, about which a number of songs have been written, but which is also the motor industry capital of the US, apart from being the home of Motown music which dominated the country for many years in the recent past.

For a long time to come, Madonna’s name will be associated with Malawi, the poor African country in which her adopted son, David, was born.

The debate is still raging on her reasons for flying all the way to this country, whose poverty is probably due to the cruel, uncaring reign of its first independent president, one Hastings Kamuzu Banda, to adopt a child.

Or was it for publicity or was it out of a genuine altruistic instinct?
Or, even more intriguing, was it for both? Madonna has contrived a lot of publicity for herself. Almost all her shows have contained ingredients which sparked either outrage or derision from certain people.

She is probably Catholic, but if the Vatican has ever considered her for a position as a goodwill or a honorary ambassador for the Holy See, I have not read or heard of it.
So, she is probably not a very religious person. Malawi has a substantial Muslim population, its Yao ethnic people having been in touch with the Arabs in its early years.

But there was not a peep from the Muslims when David was adopted, probably because he was not named Ahmed or Abdul.
I most actively suspect that, in these days, when religion has polarized people and nations, it was most fortunate that this seemingly philanthropic act by a controversial billionaire American singer/actress had no pronounced religious element.

I hate to imagine what would have happened if she had performed this act of goodwill in a country such as Sudan and had chosen Darfur, and picked a child named David or John, who could only be Christian.

John, by the way, was the first name of a man who died after the conclusion of a deal to end a decades of civil war in Sudan, involving Christian Africans and Muslim Arabs in this vast country.

John Garang, in some ways like Josiah Magama Tongogara, one of the heroes of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, did not live to see the results to which he had dedicated half his life – the unification of Sudan.

Neither Christianity nor Islam are indigenous to Africa – as far as any authoritative history of the continent has recorded.
Yet you have the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has been waging a civil war for decades in a large swathe of territory in Uganda. There have been unspeakable atrocities and President Yowerri Museveni, has only recently engaged the LRA leaders in any dialogue remotely approximating reconciliation.
For a while before this, it seemed to many of us that Museveni, for his own selfish reasons, was quite willing to let the blood-letting continue, as long as it didn’t threaten his political survival.

In Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent, sporadic religious clashes between Christians and Muslims have cost many lives since independence in 1960.
It’s a wonder that there have not been more clashes between the two major Muslim sects. The differences between the Nigerian Shi’ites and the Sunnis are said to be as pronounced as those between similar groups in Iraq.

Yet again, this is an African country sustaining loss of life in a religious conflict which does not have any indigenous origins.
Religion, many analysts have been recently observing, has been causing so much bloodshed around the world, some of them have suggested – and not entirely with tongue in cheek irony – this warning on both the Koran and the Holy Bible: Religion May Be Damaging To Your Life.

Most of this has been generated by the invasion by the so-called Coalition forces in Iraq, beginning with the hunt and subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein, found hiding in a hole.

That event itself, shook many people. His defiance, particularly of the United States, had suggested that Saddam Hussein would surrender and dare them to hang him.
That he didn’t set many people wondering how much courage resided in Saddam’s heart to withstand the US-British challenge head-on.

They also theorized, rather myopically, that many thousands of Iraqi lives would have been saved if Saddam had surrendered fairly early on in the confrontation: that he didn’t suggests, very disturbingly, that the man turned out to be an ordinary, garden-variety, snivelling coward.

Yet, in spite of his death by hanging, not many analysts see the Iraqi imbroglio coming to a peaceful end. Religion, now almost a curse rather than a blessing of humanity, may continue to decimate Iraqi lives even after the person around him the Sunnis rallied, Saddam Hussein, is no more on the scene.

The lesson for countries such as Zimbabwe, where such religious schisms have never been the cause of any violence, is to ensure religion is accorded judicious exposure.
For instance, the preponderance of Christianity on the State propaganda networks must leave a very nasty taste in the mouths of people of non-Christian religious persuasion.

Admittedly, in screening regularly Christianity and Tradition every Sunday, ZBC-TV is on the right track. Yet on the same day, the profusion of Christian religious programmes is far more likely to offend religious sensitivities than assuage them.
Clearly, in these days when the consequences of seeming to prefer one religion over others can promote a sort of religious chauvinism, the secular route is probably wiser.

Zimbabwe is not officially or constitutionally designated as a Christian country. It would be perfectly logical for the State networks not to discriminate in any way on the grounds of religion.

In other words, how much credibility would the government lose if it withdrew altogether any religious programmes on radio and television?
There is an appreciation among many politically-sensitive citizens that Zanu PF, its back against the wall on all fronts, would not hesitate to use Christianity to bolster its waning popularity.

Already, we have seen a Christian group cobbling together the so-called Vision of the kind of Zimbabwe they would find acceptable: evidently, this would be a Christian-driven Zimbabwe.

It could be argued that this is not necessarily accurate, that although the proponents are Christians, all they are advocating is a nation in which religion does not play a dominant role.

Why, other people argue, is a constitutional conference not preferable to a religion-based, and – let’s face it – a controversial vision?
Zanu PF would clearly prefer a scenario it can manipulate and the Christian
Vision is one eminently susceptible to manipulation.

All you need is to refer to the 1999 constitutional referendum: the seed was planted by the National Constitutional Assembly. But there was a sinister case of modified genetic engineering here, so that the fruit that resulted was not one recognizable as a product of the NCA – it was decidedly Zanu PF.

Most Zimbabweans must know that their government and the party which dominates it thoroughly has no blueprint hidden somewhere which calls for them to eventually loosen their grip on power and allow other so-called “stakeholders” to dip their fingers into the pie of power.

The strength of the opposition has clearly been weakened by the split in the MDC, but the people themselves still hold the trump card.
There can’t conceivably be a majority of them who feel that Zanu PF’s path is in the overall interests of the majority. There is now so much corruption in high places, who is naïve enough to believe that these same people can engineer a transformation that would end that corruption and usher Zimbabwe into a new world of good governance and genuine zero tolerance of corruption?

A start could be made with a spirited, determined campaign to remove all pretence of Christian or religious diversity on the public broadcasting system.
Perhaps it would be patently nasty and unfair to describe this regime as reeking with ungodliness. Yet it would be equally naïve to credit it with even an iota of Christian  sentiment.