There seems to be a religious or rather Christian revolution sweeping across Zimbabwe, but the trend is not only weird, it is strange, it is wacky, it is everything but normal.
I know I could be treading on a sensitive ground here, but there is a new breed of Pentecostal prophets that has literally taken over the country and for a moment, the country’s political problems are all but taking a backseat.
Take for example these two prophets, some tend to call them “profits”, Emmanuel Makandiwa and Uebert Angel.
These are not your ordinary prophets, who just take to the dais and preach, but they have literally tens of thousands of Zimbabweans in in trances every Sunday.
The “aptly” named Prophet Uebert Angel claims he can command the heavens to fill people’s pockets with mysterious money and swell their bank balances while at it too.
Angel pioneered this miracle in Botswana and now he has taken his trade to Zimbabwe, where his followers claim they are being blessed with “miracle money” every weekend.
If you think this is a joke, wait a minute. Thanks to miracle money, Angel scored himself a meeting with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, so he could explain these miracles, as this could affect earthly monetary laws.
Angel says the “miracle money” is meant to replace believers’ money that was either lost or went missing, and the believers are literally smiling all the way to the bank.
After the meeting, the reserve bank boss was convinced that no laws had been broken.
Not to be outdone the Minister of Finance jokingly said since the country was broke, the prophet should pray for miracle money to fill Zimbabwe’s bank balances. But Angel will have none of that, saying miracle money was not for thieves who stole from the country.
Now that’s what I call a strong retort, as a seer, maybe Angel knows something about the finance minister that we, men of flesh, know nothing about.
Then there’s Angel’s mate, the charismatic Emmanuel Makandiwa. This guy can fill a 60,000 seater stadium anytime he wishes; that is the power of his appeal.
Makandiwa on the other hand has more spectacular miracles, I dare say. At the beginning of the year, he said Zimbabwe shall have gold, diamonds, emeralds, in fact any mineral they wished for falling from the sky.
As he preached, people suddenly went into frenzy and reported that they had gold dust and diamonds mysteriously appearing in their hands. The problem is that those who seemed to be seeing the gold dust were only senior pastors and their wives.
Raising that question with members of his church can only draw anger: How dare you question the man of God.
Oh and dear women, if you have a weight problem, Makandiwa is your man. Never mind the weight loss pills, hours in the gym, or any other remedy your aunt prescribed, just visit his church one of these Sundays.
Recently Makandiwa, known to his flock as Papa, had a “miracle weight loss” session, where overweight people lost weight at the snapping of his fingers.
To show how confident he was with his miracles, videos of skirts falling off were posted online thanks just to prayer.
In one of the videos, one woman claims she weighed 110kg, but after a short prayer she had lost 10kg. But Papa was not done with her, whipped out a scale, the woman stood on it, and as he prayed the calibrator moved further down from 100kg to 80kg and she wept tears of joy.
Several other people testified that they had lost weight during those prayer sessions.
Now the sceptics, and there are many of them claim there can never be anything like that. They say if it is true that skirts fell off during the miracle weight loss sessions, how come no one reported that their under garments had also fallen off, as surely they should have been loose as well, but who am I to doubt the man of God.
Then there’s Prophet Passion Java, not very popular, but definitely not any less controversial. One of Java’s congregants claimed she was pregnant and the man responsible for the bugle would not take responsibility.
And what did Java do, he prayed for her and guess what; she had a miracle abortion. I am not so sure what the Good Book says about abortions and all, but in my Catholic upbringing, that’s a definite no no.
Now Zimbabweans are desperate for any good news, who can blame them for being gullible, considering what the country has been through.
Only a few years ago, some spirit medium claimed she could draw pure diesel from a rock and our government had to set up a taskforce to see how we could benefit from the fuel from the gods.
How this woman pulled wool over our ministers surely baffles me.
So while the rest of the world worries about austerity, may you please leave us to enjoy all sorts of miracles.