By Peta Thornycroft
Harare - Like his hero President Robert Mugabe, the rebel Anglican Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, is clinging desperately to power despite his church's effort to get rid of him.
Kunonga was sacked by his superiors of the Central African Anglican church last month but refused to leave. He is now living in the old stone Anglican Cathedral in central Harare to make sure the church authorities do not occupy it. Parishioners of the legitimate church have to worship in the gardens.
Kunonga's official replacement, Bishop Sebastian Bakare, says that, by living in the church, Kunonga has defiled it and it will have to be reconsecrated when - or perhaps that should be if - Kunonga is ever evicted.
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| 'We shall pray for a new beginning' |
Kunonga, 58, a fanatical supporter of Mugabe, has closed the cathedral to the majority of Anglican worshippers who don't support him. He has threatened to kill opponents and was put on trial by the church for breaking its canons. The ruling Zanu-PF rewarded him for his loyalty with one of Zimbabwe's prime white-owned farms at Nyabira, about 30km north of Harare.
Last year, Kunonga withdrew from the Anglican province of Central Africa to set up his own province in Zimbabwe, ostensibly in a row about homosexuality.
But his critics claim he was really just preserving his own position. The mother church fired him last month. He has been steadily abandoned by all the parishes in Zimbabwe and now serves a community of only a few dozen worshippers who fill a few pews in the cathedral on Sunday mornings.
"We will not use the cathedral for services again until we have reconsecrated or sanctified it from the act of sacrilege done by Kunonga in that place," said Bishop Bakare, who was brought out of retirement from eastern Zimbabwe to take over the cathedral parish temporarily.
Kunonga keeps the cathedral locked 24 hours a day except during two early Sunday services conducted by priests he recently ordained.
| 'Kunonga's act has disgraced us all' |
He has fought to remain in his post since he took office seven years ago through an election that most parishioners believe was rigged.
His overtly pro-Mugabe sermons and allegedly violent conduct eventually led to an ecclesiastical trial in Harare two years ago where he was charged with conspiracy to murder 10 parishioners and a priest who fled to London.
The trial was mysteriously abandoned before evidence was led.
Kunonga first made headlines when he stripped the cathedral of artefacts and memorials which made even oblique references to white Anglicans in Zimbabwe.
He also removed all brass plaques off benches in the cloisters which marked the sacrifice of Rhodesian soldiers who died in the two world wars.
Kunonga is so determined to hold on to the cathedral that he has rented out the official Anglican bishop's residence in Chisipite, a top suburb north of Harare, and has moved into the cathedral.
Last Sunday, the smell of cooking drifted through the cloisters and laundry piled into baskets was stacked in the nearby passage.
Bakare said: "We shall pray for a new beginning and look around at what was defaced, and at the cloisters, and get information about whether there is a corner where those things [plaques and memorials] were buried. We want to restore the cathedral to its former dignity and its former glory."
Kunonga is also holding on to all the cathedral's assets, a 10-storey office block, Pax House, mostly rented out to parastatals, and a large hall alongside the church which is rented out several times a week for cash, for weddings and parties.
All of Zimbabwe's Anglican wardens and priests gathered at St Michael's Church in the high-density Mbare suburb of Harare two weeks ago to welcome the last parish, from Lake Kariba, to leave Kunonga and join Bishop Bakare's fold.
In terms of a recent High Court order, all the cathedral's bank accounts were frozen and Kunonga was told he must share the church for Sunday services with Bishop Bakare. But Kunonga has defied the court order and so Bishop Bakare's congregation worships on the lawn alongside the church.
Two parishioners from the cathedral are on bail from the Harare Magistrate's Court, charged with public violence, after a clash between congregants loyal to Kunonga and Bishop Bakare.
"Kunonga's act has disgraced us all. It has been a scandal committed not by outsiders, but by people in the church, by people who we once thought were part of the Catholic tradition," Bishop Bakare said.
A parishioner renting an Anglican house in Harare said: "I pay my rent into a bank account which is frozen for withdrawals. I could never give Kunonga cash.
"I am born and bred in that cathedral," he said. "Will we ever be free of Kunonga to worship in our own church?"
Last week Kunonga was quoted in the state-controlled daily The Herald supporting Mugabe's bid for five more years in power.
"As the church, we see the president with different eyes. To us, he is a prophet of God who was sent to deliver the people of Zimbabwe from bondage.
"God raised him to acquire our land and distribute it to Zimbabweans, we call it democracy of the stomach. There is no government without soil. As the church, we are totally against sanctions for they are destroying our country," he said.
The telephones in Kunonga's office at the cathedral went unanswered last week. - Foreign Service
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