Zimbabwe’s First National Day of Prayer Seeks for Unity, Restoration
Zimbabwe’s first National Day of Prayer drew thousands of people to the country’s capital to pray for unity and restoration in a country facing severe economic crisis.
President Robert Mugabe, church leaders, government officials, and Christians gathered in Harare on Sunday. The Zimbabwean president addressed the crowd calling for unity between the Church and State, and prayed for divine intervention to restore a country that has the world’s highest inflation at 1,200 percent, an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and no foreign currency for essential imports.
"We must accept our failures. We should have to acknowledge that as trustees in our part of the world we have not succeeded as we had wished," Mugabe said at Glamis Stadium at Harare’s Exhibition Park according to BBC.
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"Let the Church come in and point out where there are shortcomings, sins of commission or omission. We must combine our strengths in rebuilding our economy deriving wisdom the Lord Almighty so that our country can prosper."
According to The Herald (Harare), the government-owned newspaper, Mugabe said the National Day of Prayer should stand as a unifying symbol between State and the Church in national development. He also said the Church and State must compliment each other as partners.
Despite the thousands that turned out for the event, some have pointed out that the prayer day was a failure because too few people showed up compared to the effort put in to advertise the event. According to Voice of America, free transportation was even provided in some locations. Among those that did not attend were some of Zimbabwe’s most well-known senior churchmen including Zimbabwe’s two Catholic archbishops.
However, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, which organized the National Day of Prayer together with the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) and the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference, say the prayer event was successful.
