Opinion: Of Uebert Angel and Zimbabwe’s hate media

Handsome, rich and influential are labels attached to Uebert Angel by admirers and the hate media alike however those titles come with a lot of heavy envy by some quarters. Recent reports of Uebert being chronically ill are as damaging as they are false. The man is some prophet.

To some he has reached the epitome of spiritual potency that he gets the same attacks that the larger than life TB Joshua attracts. What has not been said about T. B Joshua, what about Pastor Chris Oyankhilome and even the young and bouncing Prophet Shepherd Bushiri?

The messages some local media houses have been spreading are that bad: lacking hope, stuffed with blurred visions. For reasons not even Uebert Angel knows. And it is difficult to tell the motives behind these acts, but it’s not that tough to take sides for the readership.

There have been articles running on online news sites about how Angel is now a dying man. About how an inglorious past has come to haunt him years after gaining a large number of followers. There have been claims by women too, that as part of flock, they have at some point been asked to do nasty things with the prophet.

Much as such stories attract a huge readership, they have acted as a very shield for Angel himself. The attacks seem to work for Angel who seems to be increasing in influence regardless of the attacks. The attacks instead of destroying Angel have meant death to people’s trust in such media houses. The news of Angel’s suffering has even stopped making people’s hearts tick. A lie is sweet when you tell it once and people don’t know you are some bloody liar but when repeated it destroys the trust in the media people might have.

From some articles, the lack of objectivity in how the preacher is treated will leave you wondering how some liars can’t manage to run the industry with caution that they might lose everything once caught. It is all about threats of what is about to be revealed. This doesn’t sound strange. It’s happened before in our everyday kid conversations.

What sort of stories come without names of characters in it? The acts alleged against Angel are all serious and criminal in nature. They are stories that do not end in gossip. Surprisingly, all one reads are tales people joke about preachers, this time targeted at one man. It is the labelling in the articles that is revealing too. That Angel ‘claims to preach holiness’ is not in any way a journalistic statement. There’s a face behind it, raging with hatred. And hatred has multiple causes, prominent one being envy and Angel’s pomp and grandeur can create a lot of hatred and envy.

The spate of anti-Uebert articles, written with little or no attention at all to the diction with regards to its stimulating negative images, has become proof of what hatred can do. It’s made those behind the media houses publishing the stories appear devoid of reason. It’s surprising that these sensitive stories lacking detail pass for publishing.

And, even if it were true that the prophet has some terminal illness, to say that the public has the right to information on a preacher’s health is immature. The reason, that so people should learn a few things, isn’t anywhere near valid too. It is an insult to the privacy of the masses suffering from the deadly AIDS. It is mockery. Not to the prophet, but to everyone affected by the pandemic.

Professionalism in the way these lies are articulated would have helped the readership to at least lend such tabloids some ear. But now, it’s like they are developing tragicomic characters in some work of fiction.

But Uebert Angel has been quite. Probably evading prospects of people mistaking him for a fool. May be he allowed them to write because truth sets free. From whichever direction the daggers come, he might know there’s war being waged against him by some camp. Sources close to Angel say he is a man of strategy and nothing he does including his silence is devoid of strategy. So maybe the Good thing is he knows who his enemies are. But there shouldn’t be anything he ought to do about it, good will always prevail over evil. Angel has witnessed what being hated feels like.

And despite all these, the prolific prophet keeps swimming in glory, rising from strength to strength that his reach has now swollen up to American and European corners where many men of God have suffer these rumour mongers’ agendas. Maybe, maybe should now come with perhaps, or should we perhaps say probably and stick to the fact that every publicity is good publicity, whether good or bad?

Prophet Uebert Angel and men of God in general have all been fought from right to left. It started with Jesus. Actually, it started with John, as he prepared the way for Jesus. His end; a head in the plate for some stupid promises made by a king to his only daughter for shaking her waist out.

And it continued, running through the bushes of Galleria. The stories of Peter, Apostle Paul and the long lived John. They all met this devil, fought him and won.

Prophetic Ministry has suffered. Prophets have danced to the thorny tune of persecution. Uebert Angel’s shoe is troubled with this sand of persecution. It is a dark hour, but as they say, time heals and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Kelvin Sulungwe is the founder of malawizoom, he can be contacted on kelsulugwe@gmail.com