Massimba Musa crouched low beside the trunk of a Mapani Tree, a few feet into the bush from the clearing where his village had been. In the fading light at sunset he could pick out the smouldering remains of huts where he and his relatives had lived. Scattered on the ground in front of him he saw the bodies of his family members mixed together with the corpses of their animal stock. 

He guessed what had happened.

The Fifth Brigade, the private army of soon to be President Magabe of Zimbabwe, had entered the village while he was away hunting antelope.  Rumours of such killings had filled the air in Southern Zimbabwe for days and now it had come to his village. Destroying everyone and everything in sight, they passed through village after village, leaving a wake of destruction behind.

Massimba was now a homeless orphan at 14 years of age. He had never ventured more than a few miles from his home, but now he makes his way to the city of Bulawayo some 100 miles away, for visitors to the village had said, “In Bulawayo there are people who take care of orphan children. Hungry and frightened, he joined the many other children who live in the street drains of that city.

Two days later a white woman found him and told him a bed and food awaited those who went with her. Desperation made him agree and to his amazement he was soon in a home where 150 other children were living. Food, clothes and a place to sleep was more than he had expected a few hours before. By the time he was 17 Massimba had learnt that the reason his rescuers cared for him was because they followed a man called Jesus of Nazareth.

Over these 3 years his behaviour had become erratic and violent, fed by his growing anger at the killing of his family. Taken aside by Sister Mary he was given time to face his emotions and over the next few months found peace as this same Jesus took hold of his life and turned his anger into a desire to bring the love of God to those around him.

A year later Massimba went back into the bush and began to share the Good News of Jesus through the new villages that had sprung up around his ancestral home. Confronted with the anger he himself had felt he found Jesus empowering him to bring healing to those who lives were also broken and embittered.

Now, in 2010, thirty years on, his witness to Jesus is well known locally. It has also come to the attention of his country’s leaders. So on the 20^th June 2010 members of Zimbabwe’s War Veterans come for him.

As he is executed before the members of his village he is heard to cry,

“Jesus alone is my Saviour and Lord.”

For him it is the end of a journey but not for the message he proclaimed. Inspired by his faith even in death, many are turning to Jesus still.

We too are followers of the same Lord. We too are called to bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Does our witness cause our neighbours to say, “These are the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God who we also should follow”?

May God also fill us with courage!

Tom Brown