Their Wives Died During Childbirth. Churches Are Helping Men Step Into Mom’s Role.
HARARE, Zimbabwe — “This is the Lord’s promise to you, just believe, He will do it for you!”
Those were the words Pastor Mordecai Shamhu told more than a dozen pregnant women crammed in one of the maternity wards at the Sally Mugabe Central Hospital in Harare, one of Zimbabwe’s main hospitals.
And with that, he prayed for the safe deliveries of these women, placing them into the God’s care.
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In the chaos of the lunch hour visits at this public hospital, Shamhu and his assistant, Johannes Zunzanyika, made it a point that by the time the bell rang to end the visiting hour, they would have conducted no fewer than a dozen of these mini-sermons in the hospital’s maternity wards.
Three other teams from other churches simultaneously offered the same five-minute in other wards. That’s still not enough to cover every ward at this vast institution, where staff, medicines, equipment and other critical resources are stretched to the limit.
According to the 74-year-old cleric, who has been carrying out this routine for about three decades, this is the easiest part of their work as pastors.
“The real hard work starts when any of the women do not make it out of the labor wards alive,” Shamhu told Religion Unplugged. “Sadly, on very bad days, dozens don’t make it out of the labor wards alive daily in this country, and this is when we have to step in to comfort sometimes inconsolable husbands, children and other members of the extended family.”
In Zimbabwe, 200 out of every 100,000 women die in childbirth — a rate far higher than in many Western countries, and far exceeding international standards.
While the focus is always on the women and efforts to reduce these maternal deaths, Shamhu and other pastors acknowledged that widowed husbands need support, too. The experience is traumatic, and as they mourn the death of their loved ones, while often adjusting to the new role of being “mother” to the children in the family. It is a heavy grief that most men have to go through in silence in a harsh society where it is taboo for men to openly show emotion in the face of difficulties.
Shamhu said with the fast disintegration of the traditional African extended family system, churches, which traditionally focused on the plight of widows and orphans, are now also adjusting to include widowers in their care. This, he said, is not always an easy task, and if not handled carefully, their lives could be destroyed forever.
“In some cases, it is not just these men’s physical lives that are destroyed, but also their spiritual lives,” he added. “Where inadequate care is given, it is not uncommon for these widowers to leave the church altogether. But also, when it is done properly, some widowers who were never believers are won over.”
Zvondayi Zhuzha, 41, converted to Christianity after losing his wife. He said he used to dismiss churches as social spaces for women and weak men until in February 2014, when an early phone call from the local hospital — where his expectant wife, Irene, was admitted — sent his life crumbling.
“I knew that something was terribly wrong when the voice on the other end of the line asked me to come over, and if possible, bring along someone,” he said.
Accompanied by his wife’s pastor, upon arriving at the hospital, his worst fears were confirmed: his wife had not made it. Two days later, the newborn child also died.
“Had it not been for the physical and spiritual support from my late wife’s church, which firmly stood with me, I don’t think I would have survived the devastating blow from the death of my wife,” Zhuzha said.
He is now a counselor at a church, where he shares his experience with others who could be going through similar traumatic experiences.
Tobias Mpofu, who also lost his wife in childbirth in 2024, said he was comforted more by his pastor and his church colleagues than by his family members.
“I am not sure where I would be today had it not been for their support,” he added.
Africa’s highest maternal mortality
According to the World Health Organization, out of the nearly 300,000 women who died worldwide in childbirth in 2023, 70 percent of them were from sub-Saharan Africa.
While the regional average maternal mortality rate is around 442 per 100,000 live births, there are several countries — including South Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic — with rates still ranging between 700-1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Although Zimbabwe’s rate has, as of last year, improved to just over 200 per 100,000 live births from over 650 a decade ago, the figure is still way above the Sustainable Development Goal target of below 70 by 2030.
The United Nations said while the sub-Saharan African region has made substantial progress in lowering the MMR since 2000, it needs a 12-fold reduction in its current rate to attain these targets.
Currently up to 200,000 mothers and over a million newborns die annually in the African region — most of them from preventable causes. According to UNICEF, a woman in sub-Saharan Africa has a one-in-55 lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes, which is approximately 250 times higher than in Western Europe (one in 14,000).
To Shamhu and other pastors on the ground in Africa, this means every day hundreds of men are added to the list of widowers, silently grieving the death of their wives in childbirth, people who need counseling and comforting.
‘We are not doing enough’
Apostle Taurai Alfred Bhachi, the founder of Christ’s Love International Ministries, said he felt that as religious leaders, they are not doing enough to comfort widowers in their time of need.
“There is an unnoticed struggle by men who are left widowers after losing wives during childbirth,” Bhachi told Religion Unplugged. “No one seems to notice or care about these emotionally traumatized men,” he said. “It is a lonely struggle, which is better felt by themselves. There is no organization or church that has stood with these lone burdened fathers.”
He said in most of these cases, churches have tended to focus on widows and orphans to the exclusion of widowers, who are equally in need of the same psychosocial and spiritual support.
“This should surely be the time for the churches to also shift their attention to see how best they can practically stand with these men, he said. “They need a listening ear, which is rarely given.”
He said African churches should set up widowers’ support groups in order to give practical assistance to this growing body of men in desperate need of help.
“There should be services on church calendars dedicated to widowers,” Bhachi added. “The time has come, the time is now, for the church to stand with this traumatized group.”
Serious ‘gap’ in services
Alois Nyamazana, the executive director at Fathers Against Abuse Trus, an organization that provides counseling and support to men facing challenges, said churches need to do more to render spiritual and psychosocial support to men.
“I don’t think the pastors and other religious leaders are doing well to support men when they go through bereavement, especially of a loved one,” Nyamazana, who is also a counselor and elder in his church, told Religion Unplugged.
He said the African patriarchal system, which discourages men from showing any weakness or even seeking out help, often results in them having bottled up emotions, which sometimes lead them to early deaths.
“Unfortunately, men are left to navigate their emotions like grief alone. … Some of them end up turning to alcohol and drugs as a way of coping with stress, some of them may even engage in very risky sexual behaviors because there is no one who is talking to them,” he said. “So, it is a gap that is there. This is a very serious issue that needs attention.”
Cyril Zenda is a journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe.