MUGABE'S IMAGE HARD TO REDEEM

Daily Nation
Nairobi Kenya
By Chege Mbitiru
April 12 2009

A British newspaper came up with a gem-of-all-gems-story last week. Relatives of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, or the man himself, has grabbed the Biblical Ark of the Covenant.

Prof Tudor Parfitt made the claim, the Daily Express newspaper reported Wednesday. Prof Parfitt lectures on Jewish Studies at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies. He has authored several books on the subject. He isn’t whacky.

Almost a year ago, Prof Parfitt published a book about his nearly 20-year search for the Ark. He concluded there were probably two. One ended up in a storeroom at Harare’s Museum of Human Sciences.

The two-ark-story aside, conventionally the Ark dates from around 1200 BC. The Bible describes the Ark and contents.

Among the latter are two rectangular tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed.

Holiest of holiest
The Israelites considered the Ark most sacred. They kept it in the holiest of holiest in The Tabernacle. The high priest saw it once a year. Justifiably, some cynics think the Ark never existed.

The commandments are a major pillar of Judeo-Christian faith. However, the conventional story says in their wanderings, the Israelites took the Ark to possibly Yemen or Ethiopia. Anyway, they lost it.

In his wanderings, too, Prof Parfitt met Zimbabwe’s Bemba tribe. Similarities of their traditions and Israelites’ whetted his intellectual appetite. The Bembas also talked of a ngoma. It served the same purposes as the Ark, similarly treated, and lost.

Bembas said their ancestors rescued the ngoma from Jerusalem. Moreover, the newspaper said, DNA tests of the Bemba priests showed the “same frequency of the unique genetic markers as in Jewish priests’’.

Critics of Prof Parfitt’s story point out hotchpotch details. One stands out: Why would anyone make a drum-like wooden container to store rectangular objects?

Prof Parfitt told the newspaper his suspicions began when museum officials didn’t make the “Ark” available to reputable scholars. Then reliable sources told him of The Mugabes’ alleged heist.

The whole of Prof Parfitt’s Ark-ngoma story may turn out to be a mere intellectual exercise. Some critics have branded him a British version of “Indiana Jones,” a fictional adventurer, soldier and professor of archaeology.

However, that anyone should link Mr Mugabe, even remotely, to an alleged then of the “Ark” shows the extent to which a virus has tarnished the president and his clique. To enrich the English language, call the virus “grabiosis”—seizing anything of value, real and imagined.

Prof Parfitt’s allegations came 54 days from the date Mr Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change, lamely began implementing their Global Political Agreement.

The rule of law
Both reached the agreement late last year to end a crisis following disputed elections. The issues the new partnership is to address include restoration of the rule of law and land ownership.

On Thursday, Mr Mugabe reiterated that his land reform—grabbing land from white farmers—was irreversible. That’s theft, law or no law. Media reports say mobs have laid siege of 100 farmers who have refused to vacate their farms. That’s lawlessness!
“Millions of Zimbabwean economic refugees remain disfranchised and will most likely not be able to participate in the constitution making process,” said Mr Fambai Ngirande, a spokesman for a coalition of civic groups. “Nonetheless our constituency remains defiant in upholding the call for a people driven constitution reform process.’’