Missions to the Congo and Zambia

10/10/2024

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Prayer and Praise Update

Missions to the Congo and Zambia

Congo River Mission

Please Pray for our co-worker Johan, in Congo, who has reported that after 19 days driving over challenging terrain, having travelled 5 274 km: "Arrived in Kisangani yesterday at sunset! " (Kisangani was formerly named Stanleyville, located on the Congo River in the eastern part of the central Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the country's fifth most populous urban area, with an estimated population of 1,602,144 and the largest of the cities in the tropical jungle of Congo. (Kisangani is located approximately 2,100 kilometres from the mouth of the Congo River, making it the farthest navigable point upstream. Henry Morton Stanley founded Kisangani as Stanley Falls Station in 1883.) You can listen to the latest From the Frontline here:

An estimated 18 million people are spread out in often very isolated villages in the Congo River basin. Their daily existence is desolate and precarious. The Congo River is very deep at places. It is a fast-flowing river up to 16 km wide in the rainy season. The distance from Kisangani to Kinshasa is 1 734 km and there are 14 000 km of riverbanks to reach when the many tributaries are considered. River blindness caused by the black fly is prevalent and often goes untreated... The Congo river basin is a most strategic and neglected mission field.

SUPPORT JOHAN IN CONGO

Mission to Zambia

By God’s grace, I am safely back from the field in Zambia. I was welcomed to Lusaka by a large delegation of enthusiastic church leaders, some of whom I first met in prison in 1987. Our very good friend Bishop Bwanali Phiri had just returned from a mission to Malawi. Bishop Ruben, who completed our Great Commission Course some years ago, had recently returned from a mission to Mozambique. My first meeting was a Pastor’s fraternal in Chongwe, followed by Antioch Christian School assembly. The school principal said that I was the first visitor they had ever received at the rural school! The gratitude and the enthusiasm by the whole school singing and making speeches of appreciation was quite overwhelming. Church services have been well attended. Packed to overflowing, especially Bible gospel church in Africa, in Matero, which our friend the late Bishop Peter Ndlovu had planted. Peter Ndlovu had participated in one of our Biblical Worldview Summits in the Cape and he was one of the Board members of Frontline Fellowship and of the Christian Action Network.

Dirt Roads
This mission involved long days and lots of driving to remote areas on bumpy, pot-holed, dusty dirt roads.

Noise, Heat and Mosquitos
It was hard to get some sleep with the drums and noise at nights. Lots of noise in the evenings in the townships.
After all the freezing cold winter in Cape Town I finally got to experience some global warming! It was very hot during the days and nights, in Central Africa. Mosquitos required sleeping under Mosquito netting.

Power Failures and Water Shortages
Ministry was complicated by 20 hours a day power failure every day (and the plumbing has failed to such an extent that, if you were lucky, there are some buckets of water. No showers were possible, no water came out of the taps most of the day, we needed to manage with cups and buckets of water from boreholes! Water bucket PT was part of the daily routine.)
In the capital city of Lusaka, the traffic congestion was intense. It took hours to negotiate one’s way through the incredible confusion of every kind of vehicle along with pedestrians pushing wheelbarrows piled high or balancing an incredible array of materials on their heads in and amongst the traffic. Sometimes there were traffic police attempting to bring order out of this chaos. The general power failure added to this confusion as traffic lights were normally out and all traffic from all sides attempted to cross intersections at the same time! Huge delivery trucks blocked most intersections as they attempted to edge through constant congestion.

Reformation in Zambia
My first meeting was an enthusiastic Pastors Fraternal in Chongwe, followed by a vibrant School assembly nearby.
A Pastor’s Reformation Seminar followed on Saturday. As I spoke on the Kingdom of God and how we can be more effective in discipling Africa for Christ, there was great enthusiasm for the new initiative of Africa Christian Network.

Visit Africa Christian Network

I discovered that I am something of a celebrity in Zambia, being a Rhodesian who was imprisoned under their previous dictator Kenneth Kaunda in the dark days.

Back to the Bible for Reformation and Revival
A large packed and vibrant Bible Gospel Church in Africa (BGCIA) service on Sunday.
On Monday, I had a productive time of fellowship and ministry planning with the Chaplain General of the Zambian military who asked us to set up a Livingstone Chaplains Training School, which would be not only for the Military, Police & Prison chaplains of Zambia, but for chaplains from all over Africa. Zambia is surrounded by nations that have been wracked by civil wars and oppressive Marxist governments, including Angola to the West, Congo to the North and Mozambique and Zimbabwe to the East. Yet Zambia has generally remained stable and mostly peaceful, something of an Oasis in a very troubled subcontinent.

By God's grace, evangelists and missionaries have been able to use Zambia as a base of operations for outreaches into these troubled neighbouring states. Now that Zambia is committed to being a Christian nation, there is the constitutional obligation to train chaplains for evangelizing and discipling not the armed forces, the police and prisons service, but also other civil service departments such as Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs. A chaplain’s training school in Zambia could have a tremendous strategic impact throughout the continent. I also spoke to the local Minister’s Fraternal.

There was a vibrant time for questions and answers/open discussion time. There was also great appreciation for the Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey books. On Tuesday I had another school assembly to speak at. The children enjoyed learning the Evangelism Explosion marching song and Gospel presentation. Wednesday there was a live interview on Zambian TV:

Thereafter I gave lectures addressed assemblies at a Christian university along with more Radio ministry opportunities.

Frontline Fellowship · Zambia Missions 2024

The Warm Welcome was quite a happy Contrast from my first
Mission to Zambia 37 years ago:
My first exposure to Zambia came on a mission in 1987 when I and three other Frontline missionaries were arrested for refusing to pay a bribe at Kazangulu Ferry. We travelled over pothole-ridden roads which had evidently not been maintained, or repaired, since independence 23 years before. We were imprisoned in filthy cells crawling with hordes of insects and myriads of cockroaches. The swarms of mosquitos soon brought us down with malaria.

Those Who Profess Belief in the Goodness of Man Can Be Guilty of Inhumanity
It was interesting that Kenneth Kaunda believed in “the goodness of man”, because much evil seems to be done by those who believe in the goodness of man. After a sleepless night in filthy cells in Livingstone, we were hooded, shackled, dragged at bayonet point and guided with rifle butts over 580 km to Lusaka. There we were paraded through the streets and thrown into Lusaka Central Prison.

Contrasts with the Colonial Conditions
The British built Lusaka Central Prison for 80 people. There were over 1,200 crammed in there by Kaunda’s government in 1987. When the British imprisoned Kaunda for nine months in Lusaka Central Prison back in 1955, he had a cell of his own, with a bed, sheets, pillow, desk, chair, couch, gramophone and three cooked meals a day brought to him. He also had electricity and plumbing as well as access to a library.

Lusaka Central Prison
When we were incarcerated in Lusaka Central Prison in 1987, there was no electricity, no plumbing, no sanitation and each cell had 55 to 65 prisoners crammed into 15 feet by 25 feet rooms. There was no air flow. The corrugated iron roofs made the heat stifling. The only ventilation came from a 1-foot square hole in the barred door. There were no beds or furniture. Prisoners simply had to lie on their side stacked in line like sardines. People died in the cells and were dragged out in the daytime. The whole prison was a stinking disease factory. Disease and death were a constant reality in prison. We saw corpses being carried out of the cells. We were locked in our cells from sunset to sunrise, but were allowed to walk around the dirty, overcrowded yard during the daylight hours.

Most Were Remand – Still Waiting for Their Day in Court
Most of the prisoners were not convicts, but were remand, awaiting trial. Some claimed to be awaiting trial since 1984 and even before that.

Detained at the President’s Pleasure
We were placed in cell eleven, the presidential detainee’s cell. In our cell were people literally from around the world. There was a tall Muslim from Timbuktu in Mali, a man from Zaire, another from Kenya and one from Zimbabwe. There was a young man from Malawi, accused of spying for South Africa. There was also a highly-educated engineer who used to be a major in the Zambian army. A 62-year-old Indian citizen was also in detention without trial. This father of five, was in jail in spite of being a millionaire, or maybe because of that. Officials were greedy for his mining company and so he sat in the presidential detainee cell. "Condemning the innocent or letting the wicked go, both are hateful to the Lord.” Proverbs 17:15

Detained Without Charge or Trial
A young Black South African, Isaiah Moyo, had been jailed for 18 months. He was a truck-driver, with a wife and two children in Soweto. Isaiah had been framed by some ANC members(exiles) who owed him money. Rather than paying him back, it seemed to have been easier for them to accuse him of being a spy. No evidence was necessary at that time of the one-party dictatorship of Kaunda.

Tortured
Isaiah had been severely tortured at Lilayi Police Training Centre. He had been hung upside down with his head in a bucket of water whilst being sadistically beaten. He had been burnt with red-hot pokers and his body was covered with sores that swelled up with pus and burst. He had also been electrocuted.

Singing in the Cells
We had good fellowship with this fine Christian and spent hours each day on our knees in fervent prayer and in Bible study with him. At nights we would sing Christian hymns together. One night when we sang “Amazing Grace”, we heard choruses of singing coming from several of the other cells. “The Lord knows when our spirits are crushed in prison; He knows when we are denied the rights He gave us; When justice is perverted in court, He knows.” Lamentations 3:34-36

Interrogation
Over the next two weeks incarcerated in this grossly overcrowded Lusaka Central Prison I went through 6 intense interrogations by officials of the Zambian Special Branch, Military Intelligence and the President’s Office.

Prayer and Pressure Mobilized Internationally
Thankfully, prayer and pressure were being mobilized worldwide on our behalf. Over a thousand calls were made to the Zambian embassy in Washington D.C. by concerned Christian supporters of our Mission. Representations were made to the Zambian embassy personally by related missions protesting our detentions. Over five hundred letters were sent to the British Foreign Office in London and the issue was taken to the Vancouver Commonwealth Conference and personally raised with the Zambian president by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The Iron Lady Intervenes
Friends of ours ensured that the British Prime Minister was informed of our plight just before her departure for the Commonwealth Conference in Canada (13-17 October 1987). There, Zambian dictator, Kenneth Kaunda, chairman of the Frontline States, subjected Margaret Thatcher to haranguing over Britain refusing to place economic sanctions on South Africa.

Margaret Thatcher Confronted Kaunda
Margaret Thatcher responded by asking why Zambia did not herself place sanctions on South Africa?
KK responded that, that would place many people out of work.
"Exactly", responded the Margaret Thatcher, "and as South Africa is one of our most important trading partners, many British citizens would be placed out of work if I were to impose sanctions on South Africa. Quite aside from the many South Africans themselves who would be placed out of work."

Exposing Double Standards
Margaret Thatcher then went on to relate how Zambians were dependent on South African maize grown in the Orange Free State, how Zambian Airways was maintained by South African Airways, how Zambian Railways was maintained by South African Railways, how South African veterinarians cared for Zambia’s cattle and how many Zambians were migrant workers in South Africa and a vital part of Zambia’s ailing economy.

The Iron Lady Silences Kaunda and Secures Our Release
KK then declared that because of South Africa’s human rights abuses, Britain should impose sanctions. It was at this point that Margaret Thatcher produced our information. "Who are you to speak about human rights abuses? You are the unelected dictator of a one-party state!" She challenged Kaunda. “Four British missionaries are being held, without trial, as presidential detainees, in your overcrowded Lusaka Central Prison, tortured and abused by your own security forces!” Kaunda was dumbstruck and humiliated. He ordered our immediate release.

Overwhelming Opposition Forced Kaunda from Power
By 1987 Zambia had the second highest debt of any nation in the world relative to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Rising opposition forced KK to allow a multi-party election in September,1991. Despite complete control of the mass media and massive propaganda campaigns, Kaunda’s UNIP delivered a crushing defeat. Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) won in a landslide with 75% of the vote.

The Movement for Multi- Party Democracy
The new president, Frederick Chiluba, had also been imprisoned in Lusaka Central Prison. His Vice President and later Minister of Education, General Godfrey Miyanda, became a friend of ours as a result of his incarceration in Lusaka Central Prison as a presidential detainee. It was General Miyanda who encouraged me to write the book Biblical Principles for Africa.

From Communism to Christianity
Since 1991 I have been frequently invited to minister in churches and conferences, on radio and television throughout Zambia. The transformation from Kaunda’s socialist dictatorship to the free market, multi-party democracy, freedom of the press and freedom of religion of the MMD government was dramatic. President Chiluba committed Zambia to becoming a Christian country and entered an amendment to the constitution to that effect. Abortion was banned. Pornography is prohibited. The Bible returned to the school classrooms. Chaplains replaced political officers in the armed forces. National days of prayer and repentance and thanksgiving were observed. Zambia has a National Day of Prayer every October. This October marks 60 years of Independence of Zambia.