By Zweli Martin Dlamini

Christianity should be a symbol of peace, humanity and socialism hence the church should be leading in donating towards the fight against COVID-19. 

Perhaps, as a country we need to start analyzing if its proper for Pastors to continue collecting money from the poor claiming those offerings belong to God when in fact none of them can produce a ‘proof of payment’ or any electronic bank transfer to substintiate that the money was deposited into God’s bank account in Heaven.

It should be noted that there are various factors that forced the over 70% population into poverty, this include the royal looting, high taxes by the SRA and the syndicates that uses religion to collect millions of Emalangeni through offerings. While the church continues to disregard the fundamental values and principles of Christianity that include giving and caring for the poor including orphans and widows, Pastors never stop to remind us about offerings and when we demand accountability we are threatened with ‘hell’ curses and all sorts of ‘nonsense’. 

Members of the Swaziland Conference of Churches (SCC), Council of Swaziland churches, the League of Churches and the other Swazi Faith Organizations should come together and donate food to the poor, Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for the people including health workers, they can then pray after making those donations.

 It is very disturbing to note that in this country we have vultures who are only concerned about their riches, they want to open churches not because they are concerned about the plight of the people but they want to collect the last cent from unsuspecting citizens claiming to be praying for COVID-19. 

As the situation stands, people need food to eat and proper health facilities and as a Nation, let us come together and fight this virus and the church should stop demonstrating its hypocrisy by providing prayer alone, we need equipment and food for the poor. 

Pastors, together with their families don’t cook ‘prayers’, after collecting offerings they go to Pick and Pay or Shoprite to buy groceries but when people are in need, they just offer ‘prayer’ and let them die of starvation. The Church is called to practice what it written in the book of Matthew 25:31-40 so that God could be pleased.

As a Nation, let us come together, demonstrate humanity by using the monies we have in the various bank accounts to fight this virus while making sure that those in need have something to eat. If Pastors continue to neglect the poor, let us take our offerings directly to the poor, our people should not die while we go to church everyday claiming to be Christians. The fundamental principle of Christianity is ‘Love’ , lets demonstrate love by assisting the underprivileged.

In conclusion, let me emphasize that while we all need prayer, food and equipment should be provided to fight this virus because we cannot expect people to stay at home on a hungry stomach. A Christian man can pray to God for a baby but after that prayer, he knows exactly that he must have sex with the wife to complete the process of producing a baby. This means, prayer must collaborate with action on the ground to achieve the desired goals hence let’s have prayer, food and the COVID-19 protective equipment from the church so we can fight the virus. Umusa weNkhosi yetfu Jesu awube nani nonkhe nisalungisa lomnikelo we COVID-19 tinceku. AMEN.