Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
“GO into the world, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, clean the lepers. Freely I have given, freely go and give,” says Reverend Sam Sithole.
When he speaks, he stabs the air with his right index finger after every sentence, as if to make sure that the words from Matthew 10 verse 8 are nailed firmly right in front of where he stands.
It is a Friday, the morning after Reverend Sithole of Crown of Glory Ministries has rescued 20 women dumped at a hiking spot by officials from the Department of Social Welfare.
His backyard at his Famona house, has been turned into a makeshift daycare centre, as children that came face to face with hardship only the night before run around, laugh and play. The women that Reverend Sithole found sheltering under a tree as the temperatures plummeted on the Bulawayo-Harare Road, had 12 children with them.
The mothers sit and chat, their belongings stuffed into travelling bags, maize meal and plastic containers. The bags, too small for their unusual load, are bulging, overfed on the tattered clothes the women brought on their journey back home. They give the impression that the women have plenty but in truth they have little. They come from all over Zimbabwe. Some come from Nkayi, some Uzumba, some from Mutare and some from Harare. They went to Botswana to work in people’s homes, to fix people’s hair or to harvest amacimbi.
On Thursday evening, they were stranded, with nowhere to turn to until a good Reverend Sithole heard their silent cry in the deserted streets of a quarantined Bulawayo. They had been released late in the day from quarantine at United College of Education, and certified free from the virus. The concern was however, lack of social distancing at the pastor’s property. “Perhaps I was at the right place at right time. Who knows?” says the reverend. Charity is not new to him. For a decade he served as the board chairman of Entembeni People’s Home, before he relinquished the post, leaving it for a fresh pair of hands. During his time working with older citizens, he says he witnessed horrors far worse than the sight of those desperate women on Thursday evening.
“It’s ubuntu that’s there within me. I love helping people. I was at Sir Humphrey Gibbs for a long time. I was at Entembeni where I was board chairman for almost 10 years. At Entembeni it was even worse. I used to carry dead bodies of old people who wouldn’t even have any identification. I would take them to Mpilo where they would refuse to take the body for hours because they didn’t have identification. The body would stay in my car for hours. Who else was supposed to do that? Even the Word of God says the Lord is waiting for someone to stand in the gap,” he says.
A man at the right place at the time. That is what Reverend Sithole thinks he was. However, according to a woman who was quarantined with the Man of God’s daughter, his actions were the highest form of self-sacrifice. After all, any reasonable person might be uneasy taking into his home 32 people who were just on quarantine. His guests left the city on Friday, with some getting Government assistance.
“I’m not rubbishing social distancing. But it was important that we help people. Those who came were cleared by health workers, and people at home have no symptoms of the virus. So we were safe, I believe. If I had left them there, they would have been exposed to other threats.
The Word of God instructs us to take care of the needy because the Lord will also take care of us in our time of need,” he says.
Given his bravery on that chilly Thursday night, Reverend is sometimes disheartened by the behaviour of his fellow Men of God these days.
He feels like they have become addicted to the limelight, they now hunt glory and fame with a zeal that outshines their gifts on the pulpit.
“The problem we now have and it saddens me nowadays, is that people who are called to do the work of God now seem to want to own the work of God. Yet we are not owners of the work. We are servants and we are under-shepherds. There is a chief shepherd who is Jesus Christ. And we do as per his instructions.
“But today Men of God are charging to heal a man as if they are the ones healing. Remember only God has the power to heal. Even when you’re in hospital it is God healing you, not just the medicine. We have become too big, as if we have God within us, as if we contain him within. Yet every one of us hears God. The only difference is that some of us are called to minister the Word. Therefore, we should be humbler than those we minister to,” he says.
When he rescued the deportees, Sithole believes he was doing the Lord’s work. However, he does not believe that it makes him special in any way. “We are just like hosepipes. You don’t apply glycerine inside a hosepipe so that water runs through faster. You can’t also applaud the hosepipe for cleansing or watering things. We are just vessels. We are becoming too big. I’m not mentioning any names. Maybe I’m one of those that have become too big. We even move around with bodyguards. Who are the bodyguards for? The devil?” he said.
The last born in a family of nine, Sithole, who is originally from Chipinge, says he came from an extremely poor background. He was the only one in his family to go beyond Grade Seven, the only one to go to secondary school, the only one to enrol at college and the only one to become a professional. It was in such a disadvantaged background, in 1979, that the man who served as marketing executive at BOC Gases for 23 years, found himself in touch with his maker. Twenty-four years later he would be ordained as a minister.
“I remember when I was in Grade One, that is when I first received a prophecy. I saw a prophecy in the village. I saw my village being burnt. It was in the morning and I told the guys I was with that we should run away, there was going to be a war. Some refused, one guy came with me. A kilometre away from the village, the whole place was bombed from the air. 19 villagers died that day. I had seen it.
“That’s how my story with the Bible goes but because of my background, because a poor boy often looks for a meal, I looked for a meal for a very long time. It was only in 2011 that I began to seek guidance and I answered my calling,” he said.
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