The country seems to have been enamoured, mesmerised, hypnotised, exasperated, shamed, boggled – you name it – by the recent visit of self-styled prophet, Malawian-born Shepherd Bushiri, whose crusade at the Sam Nujoma Stadium last Friday, in an unprecedented turnout, saw the stadium packed to rafters.
This was perhaps to the envy of both local politicians and clergymen, who seemed to be everything but short of the expected miracles.
But is it any wonder that the prophet attracted such a large crowd as he did, surpassing the usual capacity of the Sam Nujoma Stadium of 10 000? This by any means should be not surprising, especially to our politicians and clergy.
In fact, thanks to the Namibia Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion, to say the least, Namibia has since independence become a haven for all kinds of religious persuasions, pseudo and real.
often most of these religious elements have turned out to be no more than con artists, out to make a quick buck at the expense of the spiritually deprived. The spiritually impoverished souls have been falling victim to these false religious leaders, who have siphoned them of their hard-earned and meagre incomes, not so much in the hope of spiritual redemption, but in the expectation of return on investments.
Such enrichment in most cases and for many of my local brethren and sisters have been nothing more than an illusion. Not to talk of the spiritual redemption. Cases and reports abound of many unsuspecting souls looking for spiritual redemption by some divine powers ending up disappointed, many from unimaginable trickeries from the supposed men and women of divinity.
Despite the realities of such religious trickeries, such bogus religious instances seem to be spiraling out of control. To the extent that the clergies in Namibia have started to voice their concerns against such dubious faithfulness, with the authorities that be joining the bandwagon of the seeming concerned.
One can only recall in this instance a religious group from Zimbambwe, which may have seemed more genuine in its religious inclination than the Bushiris of this world, that was last year denied entry into the country by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration. One would have thought that a precedent would have been set in this regard regarding suspect religious elements only to see Bushiri jetting into the country like a hero. And his intentions could not have been mistaken. Not with the reports of one “faithful” coughing up 100,000 to be seated at the “divine” table with the “prophet”. Ordinary people were even rumoured to have forked out 1000 Namibian Dollars to attend his prophesising crusade at the Sam Nujoma Stadium.
To our Namibian politicians and clergy, the meaning of the religious escapades of the likes of the Bushiris, are deeper than may appear obvious on the surface. This should be a revealing pointer to what extent the country is craving for some spiritual redemption, something the local clergy certainly is capable of delivering and administering when it is jostled out of its seeming slumber just like Bushiri seems to have done to it. Wake up to realise the spiritual void that has been revealed on many occasions and recently by the Bushiri crusade. Despite a church on every corner of our streets, strangely the spiritual void seems to have been deepening with various manifestations. Crime, immorality, disobedience, lack of discipline, disrespect for the rule of law, lack of respect for the elderly, greed, corruption, lack of care for fellow, are rife.
But the underlying fact of all these is the abject poverty in the country. One has not been seeing people flocking to churches, as evidenced recently by the ceremony of Bushiri for spiritual redemption. No, this has been but an easy escape from the miseries of their socio-economic existence, with the underlying fact being the economic factor. This is the clear message to our politicians, which the Bushiri crusade must have sounded loud and clear. People are not so much craving for spiritual redemption but economic emancipation. In this desperation they can become easy prey and victims to various kinds of marauding would-be saviours, religious or otherwise.
This is the message that our leaders, political and religious, and society at large, should heed. The Bushiri crusade should be the writing on the wall of the signs of the times; the times of poverty and economic exploitation and deprivation.