Robert Mugabe may be a destructive and ruthless megalomaniac, but he didn’t get to be dictator without political smarts.  His manipulations have divided the political opposition, and now the churches as well.  His temporal victory over the latter will be sealed by his latest propaganda coup: a national day of prayer set for Sunday, 25 June.

Mugabe, whose policies have destroyed the economy of what was once one of the most economically successful in Africa, has split his country's non-Catholic churches, pitting pastor against pastor, vicar against vicar, priest against priest.

John Makumbe, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, said, "The day of prayer is a coup for Mugabe. He has split the leadership of Zimbabwe's churches in two, just as he busted the MDC [the opposition Movement for Democratic Change] and split that in two. Mugabe will use anything, including priests, to try to clean himself of his own filth."

The Zimbabwe Council of Churches, affiliated to the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, has been lured into a new alliance with Mugabe, the guest of honour at the national day of prayer at the Harare showgrounds. The initiative for the prayer meeting began a month earlier when 82-year-old Mugabe asked a number of church leaders, mainly from evangelical and other protestant denominations, to meet with him. The result was a new Christian umbrella organisation, the Ecumenical Peace Initiative, supportive of Mugabe and the ruling party.

One of many black Anglican priests and pastors who fled Mugabe's oppressive rule to become refugees in Britain told IWPR [Institute for War and Peace Reporting], "It is like asking Satan to deliver the sermon on Easter Day."

The priest insisted the IWPR reporter not disclose his name because he has family members still in Zimbabwe who will be imprisoned if he publicly speaks against Mugabe.

To the embarrassment of Anglicanism, Mugabe's leading religious sycophant ally is Nolbert Kunonga, Anglican Bishop of Harare.  After Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spoke out against Bp Kunonga to no effect, ten Zimbabwean priests in exile in the UK appealed to Archbishop of York John Sentamu.

The priests told IWPR they prefer to deal with Dr Sentamu than Dr Williams because, they said, the former speaks out courageously on social and political matters whereas Dr Williams appears to waver when it comes to important principles.

"Dr Williams cuts no ice with any Anglican of significance in Zimbabwe," one exiled priest told IWPR. . . . Our hope is that Dr Sentamu – being an African from Uganda – will have clout in my country. I'm afraid hardly anyone there takes Dr Williams very seriously though he is a good man who has personally listened to and helped Zimbabweans in exile."

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo Pius Ncube is Mugabe's strongest Christian opponent.  He calls Mugabe, who was born into a Catholic family, "a lip-service Christian . . . a convenience Christian".  Jesus Christ himself, he says, would not survive in Zimbabwe because Mugabe hates the truth.

More power to Abp Ncube and those who stand with him against rank injustice.

There is much more in this disconcerting report on religion and politics in Zimbabwe today.  Read the whole thing.

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UPDATE (27 Jun.): Mugabe prays out of both sides of his mouth.