Bishop Kunonga appointing politicians into Anglican Church

By Lance Guma
12 June 2006

Nolbert Kunonga, the Anglican Bishop of Harar,e has reportedly inducted Vice President Joseph Msika as a lay reader in the church. This comes amid growing signs that Robert Mugabe’s regime has clearly co-opted the Bishop into using the church as a hunting ground for supporters. Msika’s new post means he is effectively a sub deacon and can conduct sermons in church should the priest be absent. A priest who refused to be named told Newsreel that no public readings were made of Msika’s induction and this was to deliberately avoid objections from parishioners. The priest told us that Msika could not be described as a regular churchgoer adding that it was actually his wife Mai Msika who came to the services most of the time.

A few years ago the Vice president was made the patron of St Albans Anglican Mission School in Chiweshe - another move critics believe was politically motivated. Newsreel was also told that Harare’s former Mayor, the late Solomon Tawengwa, did more for the Anglican Community than Msika but never received similar recognition. Tawengwa is said to have built a church for the diocese at his farm in Marondera during the time Bishop Jonathan Siyachitema was in charge. Journalist and Anglican parishioner Sandra Nyaira described Kunonga’s induction of the Vice President as a clear attempt to curry favour with the regime. Apparently Kunonga is also ordaining people without any theological training as part of his attempts to fill the church with his sympathisers.

From his base at the St Mary’s Cathedral in Harare the Bishop has not only come out in support of the violent land seizure policy but he barred the priests in the church from criticising the much condemned Operation Murambatsvina. He is accused of running the diocese like a mafia organisation, terrorising critics and transferring to remote parishes any priests who challenge his authority. Christina Lamb writing for the Sunday Times UK says the Harare Bishop ‘was given a farm and a seven bed-roomed house overlooking a lake,’ as a reward for his open support of Zanu PF. The farm is St Marnocks, outside Harare.

The paper says the farm is one of the biggest in the country and had been seized from the Hale family who had bought it in 1990 for £700,000.’ The farm has gone from producing 4000 tonnes of cereal to just less than 70 tonnes and Kunonga is allegedly refusing to return irrigation equipment and portable silos worth over £190,000, which he seized. The paper quotes an exiled priest in the United Kingdom as saying, ‘Kunonga has terrorised Christians and turned the diocese into a religious branch of Zanu-PF.’ The situation is apparently so bad that 10 priests from the Harare Diocese have fled to the United kingdom. The Sunday Times says the Archbishop of Canterbury; Rowan Williams intervened with the Home Office to assist the priests get sanctuary in the UK.

Several politicians in Zimbabwe have turned to religion as the country’s fortunes continue to plunge. Businessman Philip Chiyangwa and Politicians Webster Shamu, Emerson Mnangagwa and Nathan Shumuyarira are some of the high profiles figures to have committed themselves to particular churches.