Some 50,000 people participated in the Peace and Family Festival and Zimbabwe HyoJeong Cosmic Blessing in Harare, Zimbabwe, which was held as part of an effort to promote harmonious relationships across religious, political and cultural barriers both within Africa’s nations and as a continent.
Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, co-founder with her late husband, Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), gave the keynote address to the rally on Nov. 21, 2018, which was held under the theme of “Peace Starts With Me.” She also oversaw a Blessing ceremony for numerous representative couples as well as all other participants, saying it represented “Heaven’s love for Africa” and so “the wrongs of history can be reversed.”
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who personally welcomed Mrs. Moon and her party to his residence on Nov. 20, provided remarks to the tens of thousands of couples and families who gathered in the National Sports Stadium.
“I am reliably informed that the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is an organization that complements the United Nations in promoting lasting peace. It is in this spirit that I commend you on your goal to create God-centered families as a basis for healthy communities, stable societies and a peaceful world,” President Mnangagwa said in remarks delivered by his longtime colleague and elder statesman, Masvingo Provincial Affairs Minister Josiah Dunira Hungwe.
Organizers, including Rev. Bakary Camara, chairman of FFWPU Africa, and Archbishop Johannes Ndanga, president of the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe and chairman of trustees for FFWPU in Zimbabwe, ensured busloads of students, families and friends could attend the rally, which was held on a particularly hot afternoon. Participants who came to the stadium were treated to a box lunch; they and others who tuned in from their homes and businesses could enjoy the presentations and popular entertainers such as Kudzi Nyakudya, Hope Masike and Kuda Mutsvene.
“Everyone wants happiness and a world of peace. Yet, we live in a world where war, division and violence are commonplace. Everywhere, cultures are clashing; ethnic teams or religious communities are fighting,” FFWPU Zimbabwe said in its invitation to the rally.
“When we see starving people stricken by poverty, women struggling to escape the chains of domestic violence, and the neverending crimes worldwide, the problems of the world seem insurmountable. It becomes difficult not to ask, ’Where do we go from here?’”
Solutions “begin with the quiet revolution inside each of us,” the organizers said. “In a time when our world and nations are engulfed in disunity, Mother Moon is reminding us that we are greater than our differences. She encourages us to come together as brothers and sisters to take a step in unison toward peace. Let’s start peace together, as one family under God.”
• This article is drawn from materials at the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (familyfed.org) and FFWPU Zimbabwe (zpff.org).
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