leadership

Starting Afresh

Daniel — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:11:08 +0200

Zambia is in a state of tension. The tension comes from the looming job losses in the wake of a sharp decline in world copper prices and the increased cost of food, especially meal-mealie, our staple food. But the tension is far deeper than this. It is the crisis of hopelessness among us as a people. Distrust in the electoral process, poverty, corruption, unemployment and unnecessary deaths from HIV and AIDS make us feel defeated, hopeless and helpless. Even our expectations of what the government can do to improve our lives have been depleted. But is there truly no way out for our country? What are citizens called to do in times like this?

On a recent trip to Lusaka, I was able to attend a Church conference for Men. Speaker after speaker inspired us to fight hardships, poverty and sexual immorality to succeed. During one of the sessions my eyes wandered to the writing on the church wall: The Year of Starting Afresh (Isaiah 42:9). “See the former things have taken place and new things I declare to you…” As difficult as these questions are, this verse came to me as an answer that God is doing a new thing in Zambia, and He is inviting the citizens and me to participate.

First, part of God’s invitation to participate in this new thing requires us to demonstrate God’s righteousness and to be light to those who do not know Christ in our communities. The chance to turn our families, communities, nation and own lives away from HIV and AIDS and indeed, the power to set this country on the road to godly prosperity-begins with the people who understand that God is doing something new. An American comedian, Bill Cosby says, “When you have people who tell you, ‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’ that’s when you know that it’s the devil you’re hearing, no one else.” Therefore, if this crisis is leading you to apathy, ignorance and total hopelessness, know that you’re dining with the devil.

Second, part of God’s invitation to participate in this new thing requires us to demonstrate our acts of love for God by the way we love our neighbour. If God’s Word has liberated you from physical and spiritual poverty, God wants you to reach out to others living under oppression that they too may find victory that comes from surrendering their life to Christ. God has anointed you to renew people’s hope and to work for a nation that manifests God’s peace, righteousness, prosperity and justice. These are lacking in our nation right now.

Will you join God in doing a new thing in this year of starting afresh?

Making Disciples

Daniel — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:31:56 +0200

“What is the one thing churches are called to do?” asked Jim Liske of Ridgepoint Community church in the USA at a recent seminar in Chifubu for church leaders. The 148 church leaders answered in unison, “To make disciples.” But making disciples is a complicated business especially in Zambia. To invite people to be followers of Christ in our church today is often to put oneself at a risk of not having a church grow numerically. There is something more than appealing about the Zambian church-especially the evangelical charismatic, something more than a simple desire “to make fishers of men”-which draws us to the church again and again.

Whether that something is curiosity or guilt, a desire to be delivered from cultural oppression or demonic power, a promise to be wealthy and healthy or a search to find dignity, or some strange combination of them all, is something those who want to make disciples must find out and address with wisdom. God’s desire for us is that we know Him better and this should be a prayer for every church leader for their members.

We submit that it is this failure to know God’s desire for us that has made this rich nation (Zambia) poor. Jesus and the apostles lived to make disciples. Think for a moment over what happened when Zacchaeus became a follower of Jesus. Here is what he said, “Look Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Or reflect for a moment on life of Tabitha (Dorcas). The Bible says she was a disciple who was always doing good and helping the poor. The church in the first century knew that it was called to make disciples.

One thing the church is called to do is to make disciples. Our disciples should be at National Constitution Conference (NCC). Our disciples should be coming to pastors and bishops and asking them what is the mind of God in what they are doing. Our disciples should be providing leadership in the ministry of works and supply ensuring that we no longer have potholed roads. Our disciples should be running the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) and ministry of agriculture ensuring that even in lean years we have food. Our disciples should be running the anti-corruption crusades and showing by example what it means to live a holy life. Our disciples should be providing leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS, cholera and malaria.

Can you imagine what Zambia would be if the church was in the business of making disciples? Can you imagine what Zambia would be like if we had people like Nehemiah, Daniel, Joseph and Esther in strategic institutions of our nation? The church should do one thing. Make disciples. Is this what your church is doing in bringing transformation to Zacchaeus, Dorcas and the Philippian jailer to live holy lives and to do good?

South Africa: Polygamy and progressive leadership do not square

Gender Links — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:34:07 +0200

Johannesburg 26 January: It’s time to stop beating about the bush where polygamy and suitability for leadership of a progressive democracy are concerned. I refer of course to the likelihood of African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma and his four (or is it two or six?) wives becoming the first family of South Africa after the April 2009 elections.

Before the ink has even dried on this page I can hear the cries that I am white; I am a feminist and I have a western bias. I plead guilty to all three. But I also pride myself on believing in equality; knowing that two of the least comfortable bedfellows in our Constitution are polygamy and equal rights; and that criteria for leadership go well beyond legal or even Constitutional technicalities.

Picture, for example, in any other modern democracy you can think of, a leader who has a case of corruption hanging over his head; whose personal conduct in a rape case concerning an HIV positive woman half his age raised the brows of even a highly conservative judge, now preparing to enter office with a slew of wives and children that no one has an accurate count of, save that many of these additions took place simultaneously.

He might have slipped through the noose of the courts on the rape count; might still do so on the corruption count and may even be on the safe side of a Constitution that fudges the issue of polygamy. But would he pass the test of leadership, bearing in mind that a leader should not only espouse but embody the highest ideals of any given country?

The doubts cast on Zuma’s credentials by the corruption case have been widely canvassed. Sadly, those relating to Zuma’s attitudes and conduct towards women have not. Our national media has reduced the debate on Zuma’s polygamous lifestyle to what this will cost tax payers; whether presidential security will be able to cope and which one of the first ladies will be the official escort; not whether acquiring more and more wives as if they were possessions raises concerns as to how Zuma views our Constitutional provisions on gender equality.

It’s worth scrolling back to what the Constitution says on the thorny issue of gender equality versus customary law which any women’s rights activist will tell you were the most painful of all the compromises made at the Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) that finally ushered in a new era in 1994. The Constitution does not ban polygamy. But, in affirming gender equality as a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy, the Constitution states that should there be a contradiction between customary law and the Bill of Rights, the latter takes precedence.

By requiring that customary marriages be registered, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act seeks to ensure that all women in polygamous marriages have equal rights to property. At least part of the calculation there was that financial considerations would lead to polygamous marriages dying a natural death. By and large this practice is indeed dying out: with notable exceptions like our soon-to-be President.

Would polygamy stand the test of a Constitutional Court challenge? It seems difficult to see how provisions for equal rights between women and men could possibly be squared with a system that allows men to have as many wives as they want yet women to have only one husband! Furthermore, if every man had six wives, a very large number would have none, since women comprise half the population. How equal or fair can such a system be for men, let alone for women!

Zuma’s stock response to polygamy is that many of his male political counterparts (in South Africa and elsewhere) have concubines and mistresses and that at least he is open about his multiple relationships. Whether open or secret, the term itself should cause us to cringe in an era in which UNAIDS cites “multiple concurrent partnerships” as the main driver of HIV and AIDS. What kind of example is Zuma setting to the youth when the widely publicised unprotected sex that he had with an HIV positive woman is followed within months by two (or is it three?) babies, all by different mothers?

What kind of respect does Zuma have for the women that every few months he acquires? Ah, I can hear some readers say, but they marry him willingly! In response, I would ask you to name one situation in which there is a power imbalance in society in which the underdog is not said to “willingly” do what the master wants. We would do well to scrutinise the sub-text, like the fact that one of Zuma’s wives (Nkosazana) divorced him before pursuing a successful career as foreign minister while another (Kate) committed suicide after writing a damning letter about Zuma’s lifestyle. Clearly, it’s not all a case of happily ever after.

Is this relevant to the leadership debate? Should we be like the French, who believe that the private lives of politicians are out of bounds (except when a woman minister has a baby out of wedlock!) or like the Americans, who believe so passionately that the personal is political that they almost impeached a president for telling half truths about his philandering?

To me it’s not about copying one model or the other but about putting our leaders through a battery of tests that include reflecting in their lives the fundamental values of our Constitution. As I see it, even without all the other blots in Zuma’s copy book, his big-chief attitude towards women, not to mention failure to recognise that a woman wearing a kanga might in fact not be asking to have sex, disqualify him from leading this great nation. It’s high time we find the voice to say that if any leader does not show equal respect for women and men – in deed as in word – he or she is simply not fit to rule.

Article by Colleen Lowe Morna - executive director of Gender Links. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service that offers fresh views on every day news.