SENTINEL WATCH May 3, 2004 Issue

For greater peace in Africa

By Kurt Shillinger

Not so long ago Zimbabwe, which I have visited several times as a journalist, was stable and prosperous. Its courts were independent. Its people, among the most educated in Africa, were hard-working, slow to anger, and slower to violence. Butt in the space of a few years, popular aspirations for change in leadership have sparked deepening repression, and so much has unraveled. Once a breadbasket for the region, Zimbabwe can no longer feed itself. The courts and media are in disarray. People are hungry and afraid.

It's sometimes tempting in situations like this to see death as offering a solution. The sudden passing of a particularly abusive dictator in Nigeria several years ago, after all, helped open the way for democratic and humanitarian reforms in that country. With no other way forward apparent in Zimbabwe, wouldn't the same turn of events provide opportunities for progress there, too? Many frustrated and desperate people cling to that hope.

The tendency to see death as salutary runs deep in Africa. But relying on death for release from evil—be it bad governance, terrorism, or chronic disease—requires an admission that may not be intended. Central to the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, who established this magazine, was her discovery that God is Life. Looking to death for gain, therefore, concedes a condition of godlessness, inviting the absence of an everoperative divine Principle governing the affairs of men, women, and children.