He was a domestic worker, a cook, she was a trained nurse, working in both urban and rural hospitals. You would say they deserved a peaceful old age in reasonable comfort. But there is no peace, and certainly no comfort. They have no pension; one of the sons is dead, the other three and the only daughter just manage to stay alive and cannot help their parents very much.
Again and again I come across such people who are now in their old age, when they should reap what they have sown and worked for so hard. Instead they have become beggars and have to live on charity. Instead of enjoying peace and happiness they are harassed all the time by the City Council threatening them with eviction from their homes, the only asset they have left, for not being able to pay rates, water (which often enough they dont get anyway) and refuse removal (which is still piling up outside their gate).
The old government still insists on imposing its nauseating presence on people who no longer wish to see them. That government made an attempt to start a social security system (NSSA) to give people at least a small old age pension. But then they smashed their own handiwork by ruining the economy through greed. Whatever employees (and employers) paid into NSSA has just vanished. And all the Old Comrades can give us and feed us with is national sovereignty. Hardly a very palatable diet.
Zimbabwe is not a country in which to get seriously ill. Fred, a young man in his twenties, is riddled with cancer, a modern Lazarus. At long last we got him into hospital where he should have been treated a long time ago. But hospitals were closed. Instead he was hanging around our yard all day.
Gradually we got to know him. Which was not easy. Now we know that there is a very attractive person hidden somewhere under this pitiful picture of sheer suffering. He even has a sense of humour about himself and others. And he has made some friends who go and spend time with him in his hospital ward.
Taking care of the poor has been a characteristic of the Church from her earliest beginnings. Maybe that was part of her early success story: pity and compassion were largely unknown in ancient Mediterranean society where the Church first developed and spread.
But not all Christians today understand this: they think the Church is all about celebrating rousing, very emotional services, singing and dancing, about socializing and finding friends a good social club as a basis for a social network, now that the extended family is no longer working all that well as a social safety net for many.
Many are convinced deep down that church charity should only benefit church members. They think it is unfair that they (who happen to be well-of and dont need charity) should be denied any benefit, while members of other churches, or none at all, should benefit.
The other day I heard a very zealous woman in our parish shout at someone in need, You go to your own church. Dont come here again. She is not a hard-hearted woman, she is engaged in a lot of charitable work herself. And yet she apparently wants to re-write the Parable of the Good Samaritan and tell Jesus that He should not spoil people who are undeserving.
This new (or very old version which Jesus tried to do away with) would go something like this: When the Samaritan saw that the man who had been wounded badly by robbers was Jewish he told him: sorry, I thought you were Samaritan like myself. Now that I see you are Jewish I advise to call for help from your own countrymen, for instance that priest and Levite passing by over there. And having said that, he got onto his donkey and continued on his journey.
If that were our message we might just as well abolish the Church, demolish churches and close down shop. Who needs a message like that? That is what people believe anyway. Our strong message, supported by action, must be that tribe and religion, gender and class no longer matter in the eyes of God. And therefore should not matter in our eyes either.
In Apartheid South Africa white ambulances picked up only white accident victims, and black ambulances only black ones. Do we want to go back to such barbarism?
Post published in: Opinions