In light of last week’s death of Robert Mugabe (the controversial former President of Zimbabwe), Joram Tarusarira has written a thought-provoking post on the ‘Religion Factor’ blog: ‘Loved and Hated in Equal Measure? The Religio-Political Legacy of Robert Mugabe.’
Tarusarira is Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and has written widely on religion and politics in Zimbabwe.
In the post, Tarusarira applies the concept of ‘secularism’ to explain how Mugabe was able, for many years, to co-opt religious leaders and religious power to his own political advantage. It is something of a novelty to apply secularism to a highly-religious African country like Zimbabwe. But Tarusarira’s argument does help further our understanding of Mugabe’s actions. Consider the following excerpt from the full article:
One scholar of religion summarized Mugabe’s secularism by referring to what Mugabe himself once said: ‘You church people you have no business with what we do with people here on earth, because your interest is in heaven….The church is spiritual, politicians are earthly and practical. Please, church people, do what you know best while we do what we know best; let not these categories mix.’[4]
The preceding quotation is a clear demonstration of the myth and paradox of secularism, because it contradicts itself.[5] On the one hand, the liberal state claims to maintain a separation between church and state by relegating religion to the private sphere. On the other, modern governmentality involves the state’s intervention and regulation of many aspects of socio-religious life, dissolving the distinction between public and private and thereby contravening its first claim. This is a dynamic that continues to rear its head across the world. On the one hand Mugabe emphasizes the separation of the church and state. On the other, he interferes in regulating the operations of the religious, thus dissolving the distinction. It is also the threats he makes that made religious leaders stampede to sacralize him. It is not because they believed in him as a sacred entity, but the conditions were set for them regarding how to behave if they wanted to survive.
Tarusarira also has recently published a book, co-edited with Ezra Chitando, Religion and Human Security in Africa (Routledge, 2019). It includes their own co-authored chapter on ‘Examining Pastor Evan Mawarire’s #ThisFlag Movement in Zimbabwe: Implications for Understanding Religion and Human Security’.
Other chapters focus on Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia.
(Image from the Religion Factor blog)