Updated Friday evening
USPG reports 16 arrested as persecution of Anglicans in Zimbabwe continues.
Sixteen church-goers have been arrested and priests have been turned out of their homes in Zimbabwe’s Diocese of Harare – where the Anglican Church is facing persecution at the hands of an ex-communicated bishop.
The Rt Revd Chad Gandiya, Bishop of Harare, said the arrests were illegal and that those detained – including a elderly woman – were traumatised.
The diocese is now trying to arrange bail and has asked for prayers for those in prison and their families.
Bishop Chad, a USPG Regional Manager until 2010, said: ‘I am really concerned about this. We shall be running around to try and bail the whole group out today, if the police will listen.’
The Anglican Church in Harare is under attack from an ex-communicated bishop, Dr Norbert Kunonga, a supporter of President Mugabe, who left the Anglican Province of Central Africa (CPCA) in 2007 to try and set up a rival church.
Kunonga, with the support of police and henchmen, has seized CPCA church property and used violence to break up church services…
And there is a lot more detail in that article, including a full statement by Bishop Chad Gandiya (scroll down).
Earllier, there was a lengthy report in the New York Times by Celia W Dugger Mugabe Ally Escalates Push to Control Anglican Church:
…But it is leaders of the Anglican Church, one of the country’s major denominations, who have lately faced the most sustained pressure. Nolbert Kunonga, an excommunicated Anglican bishop and staunch Mugabe ally, has escalated a drive to control thousands of Anglican churches, schools and properties across Zimbabwe and southern Africa.
“The throne is here,” declared Mr. Kunonga, who has held onto his bishopric here in the sprawling diocese of Harare through courts widely seen as partisan to Mr. Mugabe. He has also been backed by a police force answerable to the president, whom Mr. Kunonga describes as “an angel.”
Chad Gandiya, who was selected by the Anglican hierarchy in central Africa to replace Mr. Kunonga as bishop of Harare, said he was baffled by the support for Mr. Kunonga from state security services since the church that Bishop Gandiya leads is apolitical: “It’s not Kunonga we find at the church gates, it’s the police. It’s not Kunonga who drives us out, who throws tear gas at us, it’s the police. When we ask them why, they say they’re following orders.”
Friday evening update
USPG now reports 16 Anglicans released on bail in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The Rt Revd Chad Gandiya, Bishop of Harare, has told USPG that 16 Anglicans arrested on Wednesday have now been released on bail…
“See how they love one another.”
Is it not time that the Anglican Communion Office issued an official statement – to The Church and to the world – to the effect that ‘Bishop’ Kunonga is no longer a credible Bishop of The Anglican Church of Zimbabwe.
This statement of the fact, accompanied by the litany of his indiscretions, should be one of the ways in which Anglicans can show their disapproval of the activities of both Kunonga and his despotic Presidential Minder, Robert Mugabe.
It’s too bad this tragedy does not have a gay angle–then the Anglican bishops of Africa (and a certain resident of Lambeth Palace) might take an interest in it.
(Let’s not forget that Kunonga’s patron and protector is one of the authors of the Windsor Report.)
Don’t forget our kith and kin either..the farmers deprived of their farms.. the fifth generation Rhodesians scorned at as being settlers. The business people in the towns now the subject of “nationalisation” and the many old age pensioners.
The rule of law subverted and all the worst fears of Ian Smith realised.