The Sunday Mail
GOVERNMENT should facilitate economic activity by churches to benefit local communities, Magunje legislator Dr Godfrey Gandawa has said. He made the remarks on the sidelines of a ceremony to commission bishops of the True Apostolic Faith Mission Church of the Whole World in Hurungwe on August 6.
Bishops Andrea Muzamba and June Matanga were commissioned by the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe, with the church officially receiving its registration certificate.
Following a request by the church to be granted land to build a boarding school and a home for orphans and widows, Dr Gandawa said there was need to accommodate indigenous churches that assist Government programmes.
“We always have a mentality to respect other people from other nations. We should have a paradigm shift to start to respect our own people who want to bring solutions to our problems.
“… a church will always be able to get resources and we should be able avail to them the requirements they want so they are able to carry out their programmes. And in most cases churches do have their own funding and the Government is constrained in terms of infrastructural development. But if we can avail land to them and they use their own resources to construct, it will be good for the country and community in Hurungwe,” Dr Gandawa, who is also Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Deputy Minister.
Indigenous churches often complain that they are marginalised when it comes to accessing land, saying well-funded missionary churches usually outbid them.
“What the church has requested isn’t something big that we cannot do. We should be able to assist churches to get land for instance to build orphanages.
“And we know we have quite a lot of people that are disadvantaged, especially in Hurungwe. We don’t have such kind of a facility. So I will put in maximum effort to make sure that we get to avail land for them. Also, they mentioned the issue of a boarding school. This is the only district without a boarding school.
“It will be very good for us to be remembered in our generation to be people who have spearheaded the building of a boarding school,” Dr Gandawa said. He urged churches to work with Government to maintain peace in the country.
The late Isaiah Makumbirofa was ordained as the first bishop of the True Apostolic Mission Church of the Whole World in 1990. Before he died in 2007 he ordained Bishops Muzamba and Mutanga to take-over the leadership of the church.
