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Showing posts sorted by date for query PENTACOSTALISM. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2023

Nelson Chamisa: The comeback preacher who wants to be Zimbabwe president

Shingai Nyoka - BBC News, Harare
Sun, August 13, 2023 

Nelson Chamisa

With all the drama of the Pentecostal preacher that he is, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa can work a crowd.


He will now put that charisma to the test in the general election on 23 August when he will once again face President Emmerson Mnangagwa after losing to him in a disputed poll in 2018.

Mr Chamisa will run for the presidency under the banner of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), the party he formed last year after he was thrown out of what used to be the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

It came after a vicious power-struggle broke out in the party following the death of its founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Mr Chamisa was accused by his MDC rivals of staging a coup to wrest control of the party, and as the battle became increasingly vicious he was evicted from the party's headquarters, and lost a court battle where his claim to the leadership of the party was challenged.

It marked a low point for Mr Chamisa, but he made a comeback with the formation of the CCC. The string of victories it notched up in parliamentary by-elections was heralded by his supporters as a yellow revolution - a reference to the party colours.

On the campaign trail he has sounded optimistic about his prospects, despite saying that the political field is tilted against the CCC, with little access to state media, and an electoral commission he says is staffed by ruling party supporters.

However, President Mnangagwa has said the elections will be free and fair.
'A formidable opposition'

The 45-year-old's campaign has focused on his relative youth, with supporters chanting the Shona language slogan "ngaapinde hake mukomana" meaning "let the boy in".

But it remains to be seen if he can defeat 80-year-old Mr Mnangagwa, known as the "crocodile", who has been in politics longer than Mr Chamisa has been alive.

Still hugely popular among urban and youth voters, Mr Chamisa is credited with transitioning into his own brand of opposition politics in the last two years and creating an identity divorced from the man he regards as his mentor, Mr Tsvangirai.

"Creating a formidable opposition in a short period of time has been his greatest victory," says political scientist Alexander Rusero,

Like the late Mr Tsvangirai, being the face of the opposition has made him a target. Mr Chamisa says 63 meetings have either been banned by police or disrupted - potentially a preview of the upcoming elections.

Mr Chamisa suffered a fractured skull when beaten up in a crackdown on the opposition in 2007

Moreover, members of his party have been arrested and convicted in what Mr Chamisa describes as fabricated charges aimed at weakening the CCC.

He says he has faced threats to his life, which have made him extremely cautious and mistrustful - including escaping an alleged assassination attempt in 2022 when his convoy came under attack during by-election campaigns. He also suffered a cracked skull during a clampdown on the opposition in 2007.

He has previously told the BBC that he rarely eats at public events, for fear of getting poisoned.

'Strategic ambiguity'

An ordained church pastor who graduated from Living Waters Theological Seminary in 2016 and a practising lawyer, Mr Chamisa's social media timeline is filled with political commentary and biblical references in almost equal measure.

His almost Baptist-like charisma has served him well on the campaign stage, but some say it has come at the expense of substantive policy and a coherent political game-plan.

The CCC follows what Mr Chamisa calls "strategic ambiguity". It has not held an elective congress, and has not unveiled its party structures or constitution. It prefers to call itself a broad-based citizens' movement, rather than a political party.

"Our [by-election] wins shows that it is organised and is not a one-man band," according to CCC spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere.

But some of his former supporters, among them social media influencers, are increasingly frustrated.

Mr Rusero believes that Mr Chamisa appears to be intimidated by the ruling party, opting to confront them on "social media, with bible verses and misplaced optimism", instead of in real life.

He thinks the opposition candidate has missed opportunities to wage a robust campaign in the face of allegations of rampant government corruption and public discontent at the spiralling cost of living. President Mnangagwa has previously promised a zero tolerance approach to graft.

In 2018, in his characteristic way, Mr Chamisa told the BBC that he was a young man trying to bring about alternative politics on the African continent and that he wanted to replace strong men with strong institutions.

It was a reference to the personality cult that had developed around former President Robert Mugabe, a common phenomenon in Zimbabwean politics.

He too has not been a stranger to controversy. During the last presidential campaign, he boasted he had met Rwandan President Paul Kagame and been central in crafting a digital strategy that had been key to Rwanda's economic success.

However, Mr Kagame rebuffed this, tweeting that he had no clue who Mr Chamisa was and had never even had a discussion with him.

He has also been labelled as sexist after telling voters he would marry off his then-18-year-old sister to President Mnangagwa if his rival only won 5% of the vote in the 2018 election.

He later said it was just "political banter that I used to illustrate that even if I promised to give him my most prized possession, he would still not be able to defeat us in a free and fair election".

In the 23 August poll, Mr Chamisa is hoping to emulate the victory of long-time Zambian underdog Hakainde Hichilem, who lost every presidential election since 2006, until he finally won in 2021.

But it is unclear whether Mr Chamisa has enough resources and support to win, especially when the playing field is tilted in favour of Mr Mnangagwa, whose Zanu-PF party has maintained a tight grip on power since independence in 1980.

However, he remains the hope for millions of Zimbabweans who believe that it is time for younger people to lead the nation.


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Wednesday, May 18, 2022

US supreme court abortion reversal would be global ‘catastrophe’ for women

If Roe v Wade is overturned, it will encourage anti-choice groups – particularly in the developing world, activists warn

GLOBAL PENTACOSTALISM
A pro-choice activist in Alberta, Canada, protests in solidarity with women in the US after the supreme court’s opinion was leaked. 
Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock


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Wed 18 May 2022 07.00 BST

The probable demise of abortion as a federal right in the US will be a “catastrophe” for women in low and middle-income countries, with an emboldened anti-choice movement likely to raise renewed pressure on hard-won gains, doctors and activists have warned.

The leak this month of the US supreme court’s draft majority opinion, which argued that the 1973 ruling effectively legalising abortion had been “egregiously wrong from the start”, stunned and enraged many in America.

But those shock waves did not stop at the borders of the US, as pro-choice figures around the world – many in countries with restrictive abortion laws and high levels of social stigma around reproductive rights – warned that Justice Samuel Alito’s words would “send a really clear message” of inspiration to anti-choice groups.

“I’m sure the pro-life or anti-choice movement in [Uganda] must be hoping and praying that the Roe v Wade legislation be overturned. I’m sure if that succeeds, it will be the biggest achievement the anti-choice movement [has] registered. I’m sure they will use it significantly to counter the work and the gains we thought we had registered,” said Kenneth Buyinza, a Kampala-based doctor.

Abortion in Uganda is legal in certain circumstances but highly restricted and dogged by stigma and misinformation. A ministry of health report in 2010 attributed about 8% of the country’s maternal deaths to unsafe abortion.

It is far from the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to see a strong link between stubbornly high levels of maternal mortality and unsafe abortions carried out by unlicensed practitioners, often in unsanitary conditions and without the proper equipment.

In such countries, the potential for the US move to encourage anti-choice politicians, judges and activists and further hold back abortion rights could not be more worrying.

“If Roe v Wade is reversed it would be a victory for anti-choice groups who finance the opposition in Africa and a catastrophe for us. It could influence policymakers and mean that in Africa we will keep seeing women dying. Whatever we have gained could be lost,” said Abebe Shibru, Ethiopia country director for MSI Reproductive Choices.

Another region where Alito’s words have caused alarm is Central America, where three countries have total bans on abortion: El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. In another, Guatemala, lawmakers recently increased prison sentences for women found to have had an abortion, legal only if the mother’s life is at risk.
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Eugenia López Uribe, regional director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, warned the US move would inspire anti-choice policymakers in countries such as Guatemala.

“They can see that if they change the laws and they go against women’s rights, they can do it without any consequence,” she said. “The sign they are giving now is that women’s rights can be on the table for negotiations. So this is very worrisome.”
An unplanned pregnancy information poster in Kampala, Uganda. Campaigners fear a chilling effect on African governments’ funding for family planning services. Photograph: Bsip Sa/Alamy

Sarah Shaw, head of advocacy at MSI, said the potential for legislative backsliding was clear. “A lot of the countries in which we work that have less restrictive abortion laws are probably a little bit ahead of where the country is socially. So they are very, very fragile. So it’s not going to take much to undermine them, overturn them,” she said.

In recent years US funding has been essential to the anti-choice movement globally, and Shaw said she feared the overturning of Roe would prompt a surge in the flow of money. In countries where corruption is rife and political systems are vulnerable to “dark money” lobbying, the impact could be sizeable.

The other major concern was that in countries heavily dependent on US aid for public health programmes the move could have a “chilling effect” on African governments’ commitment to abortion provision and other reproductive rights, making them “think twice about what they spend money on”, said Shaw.


Killed by abortion laws: five women whose stories we must never forget

“If there’s a chilling on prioritisation and funding for services that are already massively deprioritised and massively underfunded it’s going to be catastrophic,” she added.

Buyinza, who also works at the Uganda family planning consortium, said he worried the move could affect “fundraising and resource allocations to maternal and child health interventions”. He added that in Uganda – perhaps as in the US – anti-choice forces would be unlikely to stop at abortion, broadening their attacks on other areas such as LGBT+ rights.

“[By] taking this kind of action, [the US] is actually holding the flag very high now for countries that are still struggling with human rights issues, like, for instance, Uganda, but many other countries. There is no doubt that having this legislation overturned is going to have a significant bearing, [and] most likely it is going to be negative,” he said.

In his draft opinion laying out why Roe should fall, Alito concluded that the right to abortion was “not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions”. Such reasoning was deeply problematic, warned Buyinza.

“Someone might be looking at abortion rights in isolation, but … there are so many things that are not … rooted in Ugandan and African ‘traditions and history’. And that goes beyond just abortion rights,” he added.