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's act has disgraced us all'
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