The Sunday Mail
ON Wednesday, Ezekiel Guti, a humble servant of God, shuffled off this mortal coil and transitioned from an earthling into a celestial being.
Men like Guti neither die nor fade away, but they gloriously graduate from this life into the afterlife.
The man of the cloth is probably one of the most influential human beings to ever walk the earth in the past century.
All the 36 587 days — or more than 100 years — that defined his life on earth can be well accounted for.
President Tinubu
You see, each individual and generation have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than they found it.
And, remember, this was a mere village boy from Chipinge, Manicaland, whose vocation took him from his rural home to Mbare, Highfield and Bindura, where, as fate had ordained, he established his church — the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA) — from under a tree on May 12, 1960.
In the past six decades, it has since spread its tentacles to over 100 countries straddling Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas.
Its army of the faithful continues to grow, while its indelible landmarks — be it Mbuya Dorcas Hospital in Waterfalls, Harare, where musician Soul Jah Love breathed his last; the Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University (ZEGU) in Bindura; and technical and bible colleges in Ghana, Zambia and Mozambique, among others — are there for all to see, and would probably survive until the end of time, as we know it.
But it is the sheer number of lives that Guti touched, and will continue to touch, directly and indirectly, that is truly remarkable, inspirational and extraordinary.
Mysterious ways
Most, if not all, good things come from humble beginnings.
As Bishop Lazarus said before, God usually uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
It might be Gideon, who considered himself the least in the eyes of the world, but managed to vanquish 135 000 battle-hardened Midianite soldiers with a ragtag army of 300 men, most of them shepherds and farmers.
It might be the 80-year-old stammerer, Moses, who was given the onerous task to deliver the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land of Canaan.
Or it might also be the penitent murderer and adulterer David, who was exalted to become Israel’s greatest king.
And Paul, who was considered the greatest persecutor of the church, eventually became its greatest missionary.
Even a reluctant Jonah ultimately became God’s effective messenger in Nineveh.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 succinctly puts this message across: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
Indeed, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
What we need, not
what we want
And in politics, just as in religion, it also seems God chooses the most capable — not only the most charming — to take His people where they need to be, not where they want.
Luke 11: 11-13 says: “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
This year’s elections in Zimbabwe will be no different, as the most capable leader will emerge triumphant.
Bishop Lazi has been telling those who care to listen that the August 23 elections will likely pan out more or less the same as Nigeria’s February 25 elections.
Those who followed the lead-up to the polls in Africa’s most populous country would have been forgiven to think that the relatively fresh-faced and sprightly 61-year-old Peter Obi — who modelled himself as a messianic political figure anointed to save Nigeria’s youth from the relentlessly vicious circle of poverty, unemployment, insecurity and disillusionment — was the odds-on favourite to be the next president.
The statistics seemed to make the likelihood of his presidency plausible.
Of the more than 93 million eligible voters who were going to decide the election, 37 million were between the ages of 18 and 34, while 33 million were between 35 and 49.
So, overall, close to 70 million voters were relatively young.
In the circumstances, it would have been reasonable to suggest they were likely to identify with a younger presidential candidate.
Obi’s overzealous supporters — who included celebrities, social media influencers, tech-savvy groups and an odd clique of pastors — morphed into a political movement known as the Obidients, which was omnipresent on the internet, creating the impression that the elections would not be anything less than a coronation of their preferred candidate.
They effectively weaponised social media platforms to caricature the other older presidential candidates — the 71-year-old ruling party candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu and 76-year-old PDP leader Atiku Abubakar — as senile, doddering old men who were battling ill-health.
It was a deliberate campaign that was designed to degrade the two candidates’ political standing.
Tinubu was the butt of jokes from many contrived social media skits.
He had to quit social media platforms altogether.
“I don’t read social media anymore, they abuse the hell out of me; if I read it, I get high blood pressure, I get angry, I don’t read it,” he once said during the campaign.
The prophets also chipped in with prophesies that foretold an Obi presidency.
For outsiders, the outcome of the elections seemed foregone, except that the reality was quite the opposite.
When the results of the polls eventually came in, it was a train wreck for the younger political candidate.
He only managed 6,1 million votes compared to 8,7 million garnered by the winner, Tinubu.
So far, President Tinubu, a smooth operator who intimately knows the intricacies of Nigerian politics and economics, is seemingly striking the right notes in steering Africa’s biggest economy.
Recipe for disaster
One of the major handicaps for the inexperienced Obi was the fallacious belief that he could win a presidential election without political structures, which are a time-tested mobilisation tool.
He also ran a tribal, non-inclusive campaign that mistakenly thought it could capitalise on votes from the youth and Christian faithful.
Some of his political campaigns were actually held in churches.
But nations are made up of different groups that are united in their diversity.
Though united by the national interest, they can have different beliefs, cultures and values.
Forging a cross-cultural campaign, therefore, becomes fundamental in winning political power.
By their very nature, elections are national; they are not regional, tribal or defined by parochial clannish interests.
So, while Obi’s Igbo clansmen overwhelmingly voted for him in the south-east, he lost heavily in the south-west and predominantly Muslim north.
Last year, Atiku Abubakar — Obi’s PDP running mate in the 2019 elections — warned the young politician of the folly of his political strategy.
“They claim they have 100 million supporters online but you saw what they scored in Osun. In fact, in the north, 90 percent of our people are not on the internet,” he cautioned.
And this seems to be the same fate that will afflict Nelson Chamisa’s structureless CCC, which is modelled as a Christian movement.
Its efforts appear to be concentrated on social media platforms, where keyboard warriors are relentlessly waging a campaign of shock and awe through optics that are calculated to gloss over the innumerable formidable challenges dogging the party.
But the reality on the ground is different.
Before the beginning of political campaigns for the August 2023 elections, the Bishop told you that ZANU PF’s fortresses in six provinces — Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Masvingo, Midlands and Matabeleland South — would likely prove impenetrable for the opposition.
In 2018, the ruling party almost had a clean sweep in these constituencies.
It does not look like the trend will change this year.
What emerged after the sitting of the Nomination Court on June 21 is ominous.
ZANU PF has already won 92 wards uncontested, up from 51 in 2023.
It is unsurprising that most of these wards are in the party’s traditional strongholds.
Twenty-eight are in the Midlands province, followed by Mashonaland Central (24), Mashonaland East (13), Mashonaland West (12), Matabeleland South (6), Masvingo (4), Matabeleland North (4) and Manicaland (1).
This is what effective political structures can deliver.
You do not have to be a seer to predict the likely outcome of the elections.
We are almost certainly going to see the death of MDC-T, and the CCC will be mortally wounded, while the most capable leader will emerge victorious.
It is as clear as daylight.
Bishop out!
