Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Zimbabwean cleric Pastor Ian Ndlovu recently issued a message calling on Christians to pray for President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
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According to the cleric, the president is about to make a very important decision that will affect the whole country and change the political trajectory of the nation for generations to come.
He insists that the president needs the wisdom of God in the coming days because the decision before him requires a very sober mind.
Yet, this is far from an isolated case of religious sycophancy; it is part of a deeply disturbing and growing phenomenon across the nation’s spiritual landscape.
Only a few days ago, Family of God’s Andrew Wutaunashe and Zion Christian Church’s Nehemiah Mutendi made the exact same startling calls for the nation to pray for our leaders.
While these repetitive calls to prayer may sound deeply spiritual to the undiscerning ear, they reflect a troubling theological trend.
It is time to speak truth to power and to the altar.
Clerics who continue to ask Zimbabweans to pray for the president are complicit in the suffering of the citizens.
Why do we need to continue praying for the wisdom or even protection of leaders who have made our lives miserable, plunged us into unbearable poverty, and caused indescribable suffering?
For how long must we continue to pray for our leaders in 46 years of unfulfilled promises and a leadership that only thinks of itself?
We are forced to endure an elite class that enriches itself through the systematic pillaging of our national resources while desperately holding on to power through brazen repression and the cynical manipulation of the Constitution.
No, we can no longer afford to keep praying for unrepentant leaders who have no interest at all in reforming or listening to God.
If anything, the rulers now see us as fools who keep their heads down and their eyes closed in prayer, while they steal all the wealth the same God gave us.
In fact, these clerics who continue asking us to pray for our leaders are no different from those colonial-era missionaries who played an active part in our subjugation.
They are abusing the Word of God to not only justify our oppression but also keep us docile in the face of glaring injustice.
By turning the pulpit into a shield for state failure, these modern clerics have become entirely complacent in our suffering.
What is even more disturbing is that some of these supposed spiritual leaders have unashamedly received lavish “gifts” and luxury vehicles from politically compromised individuals involved in massive public corruption.
When the altar accepts the spoils of corruption, it loses the moral authority to rebuke the thief.
What we need to do as a prayerful people is to radically shift our focus and pray for God to free us from these repressive, power-hungry, and corrupt leaders.
We cannot keep crying about why God is allowing our suffering to continue—even questioning His presence—when all we do is pray for the preservation of these repressive leaders without ever asking God to liberate us from them.
The scriptures provide a starkly different blueprint for how believers should respond to systemic tyranny.
The Bible demonstrates that our God hears the specific cries for liberation, rather than demands for the comfort of tyrants.
When the Israelites groaned under the brutal bondage and state-sanctioned cruelty of Pharaoh, they did not pray for Pharaoh’s wisdom or political sobriety.
Their cry for freedom went up to God, and He responded by sending plagues to shatter Egypt’s economic and military power, culminating in a miraculous deliverance.
Similarly, during the Era of the Judges, whenever Israel fell under the dominion of oppressive foreign rulers and reached a breaking point, they cried out for relief.
God consistently answered by raising up liberators like Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, and Gideon to completely break the oppressor’s hold.
Even when Solomon’s son, King Rehoboam, arrogantly promised to worsen the economic hardships and forced labor of his people, God did not demand endless patience from the aggrieved citizens.
He orchestrated the fracturing of the kingdom to strip ten tribes away from Rehoboam’s tyrannical control.
Furthermore, the scriptures reveal that God directly punishes corrupt, repressive leaders who abuse absolute power.
When King Ahab and Queen Jezebel subverted the judiciary and used corrupt local elders to execute Naboth just to seize his ancestral vineyard, God did not ask the nation to pray for Ahab’s decision-making.
He sent the prophet Elijah to pronounce a definitive death sentence on the dynasty, which was later executed with devastating precision.
Absolute autocrats like Nebuchadnezzar were driven into madness to live like wild animals for exploiting captured nations.
His successor Belshazzar was weighed in the balances of divine justice and slain the very night his palace wall was marked with judgment.
In the New Testament, when King Herod Agrippa I engaged in high-profile political persecution and accepted blasphemous, sycophantic praise from the crowds without acknowledging a higher moral authority, an angel of the Lord struck him down instantly.
We must stop using prayer as an excuse for spiritual and civic cowardice.
God is ready to act, but He responds to the genuine desire for justice, not the enabling of oppression.
True intercession requires us to stand on the side of the oppressed, demanding that the yoke of bondage be broken.
It is time to stop praying for the comfort of the Pharaohs of our day and start praying for the divine deliverance of the citizens.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08