Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum – Peace, Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation

Slide 1

Peace building is not about being passive participants, but rather about active participation by all in managing conflict and building peace.

Slide 2

Rolling out of Conflict prevention, management, resolution, transformation and healing initiatives nationally, regionally and internationally.

Slide 3

Creation of Ecosystems of peace whose members are empowered to handle and resolve conflicts.

Welcome note

Excecutive Director

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you, on behalf of the Board of Directors, Management and Staff to our website. This website serves as the face of our organisation and a place where we meet our stakeholders, partners and friends in visioning an inclusive, just and sustainable positive peace in Zimbabwe and beyond. We are therefore using this platform to disseminate information, exchange ideas, update partners, stakeholders and friends about our work.

Our mission, vision and goals focus on building peaceful communities in Zimbabwe and beyond by capacitating the church, community and its leadership with peace-building skills. We acknowledge that peacebuilding and reconciliation does not happen in a vacuum and certainly cannot be accomplished when it is dictated, thus in negotiating and mediating for reconciliation and peace, ECLF accompanies and journeys with local communities in identifying solutions to minimise or end different forms of conflicts, with the overall aim of contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – The 2030 Agenda, The African Union Agenda 2063 and above all our vision of a peaceful, just and democratic nation which values the dignity and sanctity of human life for all.

I would like to thank you for your support through visiting and revisiting our website. You are also welcome to visit our offices.

Peace and blessings,

Yours in service and partnership,

Rev Dr Sinenhlanhla S. Chisale

Executive Director

Strengthening people’s capacity and knowledge on Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Transformation and Healing (CPMRTH) as well as supporting dialogue, negotiation and mediation processes geared towards building social and community cohesion. Rolling out of Conflict prevention, management, resolution, transformation and healing initiatives nationally, regionally and internationally. Training of competent peace building practitioners that provide facilitation, mediation, negotiation and dialogue services since 2010. Creation of Ecosystems of peace whose members are empowered to handle and resolve conflicts. (Local Peace Committees)

The peacebuilding program of the Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum has far reaching dividends

It has led to the establishment of local peace committees in parts of every province in Zimbabwe. Beyond the borders of Zimbabwe, it has reached Lesotho, Zambia, Eswatini, Botswana, South Africa, South Sudan, Nigeria and Brazil. Support for the program has come from partners in the United States of America, Sweden, Germany, and Canada as well as from the UNDP.

Our History

By 2014, the Forum was assisting seventy-nine communities establish LPCs spread in eighteen districts across the ten provinces of the country.
In December 2015, ECLF hosted the GPPAC Southern Africa Regional Steering Group meeting at Jameson Hotel in Harare, in collaboration with the Southern Africa Network based GPPAC Global Secretariat.
By 2017, ECLF had over one hundred and ninety-seven peace mediators trained across the operational districts. ECLF developed and perfected a mediation methodology premised on Contextual Theological Reflections, which involves using relevant and appropriate theological pieces or concepts to identify and agree on conflict causes, potential common grounds on which to build new peaceable co-existence or relationships, agree on a way forward to build new relationships and undertakings or commitments by the conflicting parties for peaceable co-existence.
In August 2017, ECLF conducted a CPMRTH training for a delegation of Bishops from the Episcopal Church of South Sudan Upper Nile Internal Province to equip them to contribute to peacebuilding in their war-torn country.

The period 2010–2013 saw many peace champions being capacitated across the country, including Chaplains in the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).
In 2013 ECLF through UNDP Consultants trained Chaplains in other public spaces, such as Chaplains in the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Chaplains in ZPCS.
ECLF embarked on a strategic planning process in late 2013 culminating in a strategic plan for the period 2014 – 2017.
By the end of 2013 ECLF was already engaging with national, provincial and district level peace, reconciliation and integration processes.

ECLF was registered as a Trust in 2009 and had no structures or formally employed staff.
In 2009, the Forum focused on training church leaders to be able to handle, teach, preach, and influence peace-building processes in the country.
In 2009 and 2010, ECLF led an important process of identifying Provincial Focal Persons (PFPs) who would help coordinate the Forum’s activities in the ten provinces.
In 2010, the program changed from being a church program only into being a ‘Church and Community Working Together for Peace’.

The group of early discussants was quite diverse in their backgrounds and church membership. The presence of leaders from different churches and hence different ecumenical bodies in Zimbabwe, was ample demonstration that concerns on the need for good governance, reconciliation, peace building and national healing were widespread and national. These Church leaders were also leaders in other spheres of life. They also brought rich legacies of serving communities and the public in different ways, times and places.

The Bishop Emeritus Dr Ambrose Moyo was the first Executive Director of ECLF. He has served as a pastor and later as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe, Lecturer at the University of Botswana and University of Zimbabwe, General Secretary of the Conference of African Theological Institutions (CATI) and as Executive Director of the Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa. As a university lecturer, he researched and published on Church and State relation. He also researched on African Traditional Religions leading to teaching on the same topic at the University of Zimbabwe.

Bishop Ishmael Mukuwanda who was the first ECLF Board chairperson, served as Bishop of the Anglican Central Diocese and was vice-President of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches before ascending to its Presidency. He also served as a member of the Midlands State University Council for eleven years from 2008. In recognition of the economic empowerment work he was doing with his Church and with communities, he was contracted by Trinity Church Wall Street in America to mentor other Bishops on local resource mobilisation for development in countries like Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zambia in Africa and also did the same for South America in Brazil.

Bishop Danisa Ndlovu of the Brethren in Christ Church was the second Board Chairperson of ECLF in 2012, said “my life has been in the Church and the Church has been my world” in an interview in October 2022. He brought with him many years of service experience in the Church and a strong passion for peace building that has deep roots in his personal and family experience as victims of violence during the second chimurenga and gukurahundi periods.

Bishop Mpande Lazarus Khanye of the Presbyterian Church of Africa leading the Zimbabwe Presbytery, served as a President of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, an executive member of the ZHOCD, a Church unification advocate, activist and a consultant in paralegal training. He was to become an ECLF Provincial Focal Person responsible for five provinces, Matabeleland North and South, Bulawayo, Midlands and Masvingo between 2010 and 2015, He is a facilitator and later the Church Liaison Officer. He has been with ECLF from the start and through thick and thin and has lots of experiences in-the-trenches, with and for the Forum.

Rev Sikhalo Cele became the Forum’s National Coordinator in 2009 and Programme and Training Manager from 2010 to 2022, and served as a police officer in the Zimbabwe Republic Police. He was a member of the Justice Team of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA), Chairperson of Christian Care in Matabeleland, Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches Personnel Committee, General Secretary of the Ecumenical Peace Initiative Zimbabwe (EPIZ). When the support was secured, Reverend Chabata became the Coordinator and Reverend Sikhalo Cele assumed responsibility for the training programme of the Forum. Rev Cele was in charge of recruiting suitable persons, both clergy and laity, through the four ecumenical bodies, namely ZCBC, ZCC, EFZ and UDACIZA, for sensitisation and training on conflict prevention, management, resolution and transformation (CPMRT).

Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF)was founded in 2008 as a grouping of concerned Christian leaders from the major ecumenical bodies including the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), Zimbabwe Catholics Bishop’s Conference (ZCBC), Union for Development of Apostolic and Zionist Churches in Zimbabwe and Africa (UDACIZA) and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) on the backdrop of a hurting nation whose conflicts and trauma had festered for years triggered by multiple episodes of violence, discrimination and marginalization from the pre-independence period through to post-independent Zimbabwe.