Maputo, 15 Nov (AIM) – A meeting of the Standing Commission of the Diocesan Synod of the Anglican Church in Mozambique and Angola, originally scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, was suddenly cancelled without explanation.
The meeting was called with just a single point on its agenda – to discuss a letter from the Anglican bishops calling for the immediate resignation from his bishopric of Bishop Carlos Matsinhe, who is chairperson of Mozambique’s National Elections Commission.
Matsinhe stands accused of what Christians might call “bearing false witness”, because he accepted the preliminary results from the 11 October municipal elections, which claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party won in 64 of the 65 municipalities. These results have been dismissed as fraudulent by opposition parties and by much of Mozambican civil society.
On 22 October, on the eve of the approval of the election results by the CNE, the Anglican Council of Mozambique (CAM) urged Matsinhe to chair the CNE “in observance of the Electoral Law, and the practice of the truth”. The Anglican bishops justified this appeal with the argument that “the Mozambican people, the voters expect from you honesty, integrity, transparency, respect and truth”, because “Jesus Christ urged humanity to know the truth, saying that the truth will set you free.”
But three days later, Matsinhe ignored the appeal of the Anglican bishops and abstained, voting neither for nor against the decision that approved the results of the municipal elections of 11 October, just as they had been announced by the district elections commissions of the 65 municipalities.
The Anglican bishops were clearly furious, and wanted to sack Matsinhe. They cannot remove him from the CNE, but they can strip him of his ecclesiastical titles.
Matsinhe did not show up for the scheduled meeting of the diocesan Standing Commission, which may be why it was cancelled. He has come under sustained attack in Mozambican social media, where he has been called such names as “Bishop of Satan” and “Judas Matsinhe”.
The best known figure in Mozambican Anglicanism, the highly respected Bishop Emeritus of the Libombos Diocese (and Matsinhe’s predecessor), Dinis Sengulane, in a talk on 5 November, sent a message clearly intended for Matsinhe. ‘Silence can be a lie when you hide what is the truth, because to remain silent is to consent. Your lie can affect many, because you are a person of influence”, he warned.
“The lack of truth is called lying, falsehood, or falsification, fraud, deceit and many other terms,” Sengulane said, and “lying comes from the Devil, even if it is dressed in beautiful clothes, opulent clothes and sometimes even sacred clothes, even clothes like mine, seeming to speak about things of God. But in the end, it only leads you to ruin”. A ruin towards which, according to Sengulane, some religious leaders are driving their followers.
“There are religious leaders, several leaders who have lost their place of doing the sacred things of God, and linking people to God. They cause many people to lose their faith, or at least to weaken it, because they do not tell the truth, either because they have embraced the lie, or because of their complicit silence’’, he accused.
Matsinhe is the second religious figure to find himself in trouble because of the election results. A prominent moslem member of the CNE, Daud Ibramogy has been dismissed from his post as leader of the mosque in the Maputo city neighbourhood of Aeroporto, because he voted to approve the results.
According to the bulletin on the municipal elections published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), Daud Ibramogy justified his behaviour on the CNE with the argument that “I only exercised my right as a Mozambican citizen under the democratic rule of law”.
He says that he did so “as a citizen, and not as a sheikh or as an imam”, in compliance with the regulations and laws that govern the CNE. “As an imam, I have always tried not to mix my professional work with my religious work”, he claimed.
(AIM)
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