29 December 2021
Londiwe Dube
Culture and Heritage Reporter
Apostolic Faith Mission(AFM) Praise and Worship member in Borrowdale North, Harare, shocked church members when she mistakenly sent her nude images to a church chat group.
Millicent Manyere intended to send the nude pictures of herself to her boyfriend who is based in Canada, but, after mistakenly sending to the church group, instead of pressing the delete for all button, she deleted for herself leading to the chaos as pictures popped up in WhatsApp Church group that is strictly used for sharing the Word of God.
Association Church Women, (omama bomhlangano, Mai veruwadzano), as they are commonly known, could not help but express their shock and disappointment upon receiving pictures of one of their naked church member.
An elder woman who preferred anonymity, had this to say,
“We were shocked because Milly looks descent and besides the fact that she is from a God fearing family, she’s in a serious relationship and her sending pictures to another boyfriend is a disgusting thing.”
Manyeke, who is engaged, could not bear the backlash coming from fellow church members and she saw it worthwhile to just exit the group and purportedly, she has currently stopped going to church.
Guilty as charged, Millicent confirmed the incident;
“There’s nothing to hide, those are my pictures and I’m asking my fellow members for forgiveness. I messed up”
She is alleged to be going through a tough time as both family and church members no longer see her befitting in their worlds.
Fearing that she might repeat the same mistake, or further judgment, Manyere has deactivated all her social media networks and she has said she needs her own space to recompose.
The President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Emerson Mnangagwa has signed into law the Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill which criminalizes pornography and has 5-10 years imprisonment to the offenders.
Part of the bill reads;
“Pornography includes any representation, through publication, exhibition, cinematography, electronic means or any other means whatsoever, of a person engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activity or any other representation of the sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual purposes”
Provided strict measures were to be taken by the church board, it is without doubt that this woman was going to receive a minimum of 5 years jail sentence under the new law.
Sharing of nude pictures has become a common practice nowadays and more often than not, these pictures end up going viral and land in the hands of the wrong people.
Is it because people have lost value of the human body or it’s the unnecessary ‘these days’ narrative that they so much want to appease.?
It is so embarrassing to have your private body parts exposed to a public chat group, especially a church group where there would be elders as well as pastors, who are well respected in all churches.
Youths are abusing these social media platforms to a point that the government has seen it appropriate to enforce laws guarding such practices.
Just a month ago, a ‘Tinashe Tinashe’ pornographic video, which leaked from a family WhatsApp group, was seen circulating on social media.
Taking a reality stance, nowadays girls have assumed that having big ‘assets’ is all that keeps a man happy in a relationship and hence they have resorted to the habit of taking pictures while naked to send to their boyfriends who later on publicize them on social media.
This they claim that it gives them sexual satisfactions as they practice long distance relationships.
What happens in the dark will come to light this is it for Manyere who has been cheating on her fiancé and now she has to face the gravity of her miscellaneous actions.