By KEVIN SPURGAITIS
Born in Central Zimbabwe near the capital of Harare, Mazhandu is the former deputy secretary of trade in charge of Zimbabwe’s export promotion — one of the first indigenous Africans to be placed at the top of the country’s civil service. In recent years, however, the 58-year-old has fallen from grace — forced to start from scratch as a political refugee living in Canada. These days, he is labouring to become a United Church minister — a dream almost cosmically intertwined with his desire to help rebuild his beleaguered homeland.
“I really don’t know what happened to my life,” Mazhandu says softly, as if uttering a confession. “Over the past few years, it hasn’t been easy for me inside and outside of Zimbabwe.”
The small, landlocked country is distinguished by Mount Nyangani, the nation’s highest rock face; Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world; and the stone enclosures of Great Zimbabwe, the largest ruins on the African continent. For years, it was a major tobacco producer and a so-called breadbasket for surrounding countries. But Zimbabwe’s riches have been inextricably tied to President Robert Mugabe, the African liberationist who became the country’s first black leader in 1980. His forced seizure of almost all white-owned commercial farms, said to benefit landless black Zimbabweans, has precipitated a decline in production and a collapse of the country’s agriculturally based economy. Anti-Western and suspicious of capitalism, Mugabe now presides over a nation, where poverty and unemployment are widespread, along with various civil, human and political rights abuses. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) recently warned that Zimbabwe is “closer than ever to complete collapse.”
Mazhandu possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with Mugabe’s government. Following Zimbabwe’s eco-political meltdown in 2001, Mazhandu, his wife Margaret and four of his five children joined an estimated 3.5 million Zimbabweans — a quarter of the population — who fled abroad as refugees. According to UN statistics, some three million people have gone to South Africa, while 570,000 people have been displaced in transit camps within the borders of the country —victims of continuing evictions and violent farm seizures, as well as Mugabe’s operation to forcibly clear disease-infected slums. Consequently, the departure of the majority of the country’s professionals, including doctors, nurses, teachers and lawyers, has sent the health, education, public service and transport sectors spiraling into oblivion.
After the Mazhandu’s departure, their own property was seized, their possessions were looted and their life savings, which were non-transferable anyway, were considerably devalued. As Mazhandu puts it, “Mugabe came around and took off all the zeros from my pension.”
Stripped of their ego, the family first resettled in Toronto before moving into a subsidized apartment in Stoney Creek, a sleepy little cluster of subdivisions and strip malls in the eastern part of Hamilton. Mazhandu quickly became enamoured with the area. He favoured the community’s stasis, its proletarian virtues and unassuming appearance. The place was a back eddy, beyond the pull of the main current, and that suited him just fine. Here, Mazhandu’s long-dormant spiritual impulses were kindled anew, especially inside Stoney Creek United, where he and his wife come to pray every given Sunday and volunteer any other time of the week.
But his qualifications and education aren’t recognized in Ontario. One of the few places he could find employment was a meat processing plant belonging to a major food company. In 2005, Mazhandu first joined the line as a general labourer, gutting and cleaning hogs during the late night shift. The evisceration of animals, he admits, was “messy and dangerous.” But he was always careful not to julienne his fingers with any slaughterhouse machinery.
Today, he keeps slightly better hours and earns a better salary as the plant’s head supervisor of sanitation. But there are still the strains of a blue-collar job.
“I have been successful in that I’ve fit into the system, but not in terms of Bill Gates,” Mazhandu says, making a cage of his fingers, which bear a few cuts and scrapes that refuse to heal. “God watches over me and my family. I am no longer a refugee; I am a permanent resident of Canada. And I’m building up a new pension. To be honest, I have no complaints. I am, in fact, grateful.”
Margaret Mazhandu, formerly a teacher and entrepreneur — at one time running the biggest flea market in Harare — is now a part-time caterer and rehabilitation therapist at a private group home. Of her husband, the 52-year-old says, “Chris would never say it loudly and clearly, but it was very difficult for him to come from a good position in society and work for subsistence in a meat factory. But we could no longer afford a lot of things for our three daughters and two sons, who are either in university or finding their way in Canada.”
Then in 2006, Mazhandu and his wife returned to Zimbabwe to attend the funeral of his 85-year-old father, Rev. Enoch Muzondiwa Mazhandu. He was the last from a large, traditional Shona family. Self-educated, he was first an evangelist before becoming an itinerant minister of The Methodist Church of Zimbabwe. From 1956 onwards, he was a part of a generation of “bicycle preachers,” young ministers from the United Theological College of Harare who made huge sacrifices in building up the Methodist Church in southern Africa.
In his eulogy for his father, Mazhandu wrote: “(Enoch Mazhandu) healed the brokenhearted who had lost hope in this life, preached deliverance to those who were captives to this ephemeral world and recovered the spiritual sight of the blind to set them free of superstition. . . . On that score he was part and parcel of what one might call, ‘The Epworth Gang,’ trained to civilize the black man and give him both the physical and spiritual tools to free himself from colonial bondage and sin respectively. They were true liberators of our country, as they were by default, the mouthpiece, voice and conscience of the African.”
When Mazhandu and his siblings saw their father for the last time on Oct. 16, 2005 — before the patriarch left the U.S. for Zimbabwe to spend his remaining days — Mazhanda said he could see a “youthful spirit to do things for others” still burning inside his father. On that occasion, Enoch Mazhandu counselled his non-secular son to finally go to a seminary and do his part for “Jesus and the kingdom of God.”
Last year, Mazhandu enrolled at the University of Toronto’s Emmanuel College to complete a master of divinity, and is now en route to becoming a United Church minister. As an Emmanuel College student, he has a superabundance of energy. He admits he brings an intellectual hunger, eager to engage in opportunities for “gathered community worship and for personal, spiritual formation.” However, due to financial restraints and a work-related injury, he dropped out of school during the fall semester although he plans to resume his studies in January.
“I still feel strongly about becoming a United Church minister,” he says. “I ran away from this calling — this revelation — for quite some time. But the longer I ran, the more pressure I felt on my shoulders.”
He continues: “I don’t know what plans God has for me, but I would like the chance to repay humanity and use the Bible as a weapon back home.”
Ret. Rev. David Bisch, of Stoney Creek United, says: “Chris and Margaret are people of deep conviction, which I very quickly became aware of. It is actually their sense of social justice that is driving them to succeed in Canada.
“Chris’s future role as a United Church minister could provide a veneer of protection when speaking out in his homeland. It would be a terrific investment for the church to help him return to Zimbabwe by way of his skills and strengths and transform the country back to what he knew and loved.”
Mazhandu recalls his 2006 homecoming outside of Harare, where roadsides were littered with “zombie-like persons in positions of total vulnerability.” Fuel and power shortages were — and continue to be — a regular feature due to Zimbabwe’s US$35-million unpaid bill, as well as scarcities of coal and spares for power stations and mining equipment. The country’s bakeries also closed up and supermarkets were warned by the state that there would be no bread for the foreseeable future. Mazhandu describes hunger in some parts of the country as “disastrous and totally criminal on the part of the government.”
Mugabe has accused the U.K. and its allies of sabotaging Zimbabwe’s economy in revenge for the land redistribution programme. His government largely blames a long-running drought and electricity shortages for the wheat shortfall, saying that power cuts have affected irrigation and halved crop yields per acre. Despite its deepening unpopularity, Zimbabwe’s parliament recently debated a bill that will permit President Robert Mugabe to appoint his successor without holding a general election. Parliament is also expected to redraw constituency boundaries in favour of the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Nevertheless, there’s been an all too “quiet diplomacy” on the part of South Africa’s leaders, as well as Zimbabwe’s main opposition parties and churches. Mazhandu admits he wouldn’t push for the president to be overthrown, jailed or executed neither. He merely wants a second liberation. “As a Christian, I want to forgive Mugabe, as he was instrumental in an independent Zimbabwe and once called for the conversion of swords into ploughshares. I hope he lives as long as possible to see what is good governance.”
For Mazhandu, sitting in a pew inside Stoney Creek United arouses a whole orchestra of rich emotions: pride, patriotism, nostalgia for the past, hope for a rejuvenated future. “When I close my eyes, I see myself behind the pulpit of any United Church in Canada,” he says, his words now carrying a bit more conviction “I see myself working in the same capacity back home too. In the future, I envision modern, electrified villages in Zimbabwe — with running water and market gardening on a small, intensive scale and so forth. Only then can the spiritual deficits of people be dealt with. . . . Only then will my country be restored to its former glory.”
Originally published in the United Church Observer, December 2007
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