| HE HAS no office, and no electricity or water most of the time. Telephone communications are precarious, and he has no email facility in Harare. His cathedral as well as his diocesan base is under occupation by his disgraced predecessor, Nolbert Kunonga. He has no access to money, and his flock suffer daily intimidation and violence.
Yet Dr Sebastian Bakare, interim Bishop of Harare, rejoices that 12,000 Anglicans managed to make it to his enthronement in the city’s sports stadium two weeks ago, many travelling long distances to get there in the face of acute fuel shortages.
Coupled with the support of all the bishops of Central Africa, it was a show of solidarity that has given heart and courage not just to the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe but to fellow Churches of other denominations in their common stand against the tyranny of the ruling political party.
The Archbishop of Canterbury described Dr Bakare last week as “a deeply respected and courageous elder statesman of the Zimbabwean Church”. As Bishop of Manicaland, he was a strong advocate of land reform, and was fiercely outspoken about the intimidation of starving and illiterate people in the rural areas at the 2002 elections. Six years on, he says the people are angrier about the situation in the country than they have ever been.
“They have no food to buy. What is available is beyond reach,” he said, on a visit to the UK last week. “You no longer say, ‘I am going to buy milk,’ but ‘I am going to find milk.’ If you find it, you’re lucky.
“Prices are going up every day. You watch women in the supermarket, picking up a piece of chicken, looking at the price, putting it down. They pick up something else, look at the price, put it down. They go home with nothing, often to sit in the dark.”
He warms to his theme: “And you must not get sick. You cannot get sick. If you go to the doctor, you will get a prescription which you cannot afford because it represents two years’ wages for someone who is working. There are many people dying of curable diseases.”
It is against this background that Dr Bakare is battling to restore the good name of the Anglican Church and to give new heart and voice to its loyal priests and congregations. He is doing it in the face of propaganda regularly churned out by the government-owned press, which is now depicting the struggle as the “infighting” of the worldwide Anglican Church, made up of “feuding groups” and “rival camps”. Without the power of his office, Nolbert Kunonga is said to be regarded of little use to the regime, whose favour he must therefore continue to court.
Reports from Zimbabwe suggest that there are virtually no services in the churches Nolbert Kunonga and his supporters have occupied. What are described as party thugs have moved into the cathedral precincts, and their families now camp in the cloisters, say reports from cathedral-congregation members. Parishioners trying to go in for quiet prayer have been repelled with hoses and sjamboks. Dr Bakare’s one attempt to take a service there resulted in ejection by police.
But Dr Bakare’s tactic in dealing with Nolbert Kunonga and the militia who form his retinue remains “no confrontation”. He will not, he says resolutely, be provoked by lies, “ridiculous claims”, or deliberate misinformation, and he continues to tell “misled politicians” that Nolbert Kunonga has been ruled by a high-court judge in Harare to be no longer part of the Anglican Communion.
WHAT greatly concerns Dr Bakare, as police stand by and fail to intervene when violence happens, is that the law of the land is being slighted. “It is not descending on Kunonga in the way it should. He seems to be above the law. The police forces seem to be on his side.
“If I had done what he had done — pulling priests out of the cathedral and beating them up — I would have been locked up. We are beginning to question, do we have a law in this land? Can I rely on any protection from the police? Are they there for me, or are they there only for people who happen to be party members?”
COMING to the UK has given Dr Bakare the chance to speak freely. He hopes to educate people to the reality of what is happening in Zimbabwe, so that they become advocates: “People can make a noise if they know what it’s about.”
Ask him how the Anglican Communion can support him, and his answer is brisk. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Let’s pray for Sebastian,’” he says, putting on a pious voice and folding his hands in an exaggerated attitude of prayer. “We do need prayer, yes. But we need concrete support. We need things to make life bearable. We want people who are willing to get their hands dirty, to get involved in our situation.
“Everyone says, how can we help? If they want to help, they will always find a way. We cannot tell you to do a, b, c, d. I can tell you that I don’t have money, because it’s still under Kunonga’s control. I don’t have the equipment to run anything as normal — I can’t even issue a pastoral letter by the usual means. I am working in the suburbs where you can have your computer but there’s no electricity to run it, though it may come on at midnight, when you are just going to bed.”
He speaks with impatience but not self-pity, his frustration tempered by humour and an unswerving conviction that the travails of Zimbabwe must come to an end.
ALONG with all his fellow bishops from Central Africa, he will be at the Lambeth Conference: while he has no idea which other African bishops will be there, he has no doubt that they should be, even though they have issued a conservative statement about sexuality.
“I don’t believe in not participating,” he says. “If people are not going to accept what I say, that’s fine. If I keep away, I miss an opportunity for people to know how I look at things. I don’t believe that whatever opinions we have are fixed. Things are changing every day, and what position you held last year may be quite different now.
“I believe the Holy Spirit is moving all the time. What you know is being challenged every day, and refusing to move, only sticking to what you know, is saying, ‘I can’t allow the Holy Spirit to move.’ Every day there’s a transforming experience in our lives.”
Bishop Bakare’s wife, Ruth, says it would be very unfortunate if African bishops were absent. “If they stay away, they completely miss out on bringing the issues of Africa to the conference. We are really saying then that the issues of the West must take precedence over everything else. There is a very strong constituency on the African continent. If we miss out and say these are our issues, then we cannot complain in the future and say we are left out.”
WOMEN, and most particularly the Mothers’ Union, are the backbone of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe, she says. “They form the majority, and they also bear the brunt of what is happening. There’s a great need for some kind of encouragement for them in this new start, some structures to put in place, some rededication to how to address the urgent needs of so many people, particularly in the outlying areas.”
Solidarity is growing, and she has engaged the help of Mary Sumner House while in London. USPG continues to be the prime mover and to work very closely with Dr Bakare; and the dioceses of Southwark and Rochester have been able to renew their contact since the departure of Nolbert Kunonga.
Despite the hardships, the setbacks, and the opposition, Dr Bakare concludes: “It’s a fresh start, the beginning of a new chapter in a very old diocese. It’s about taking risks, following the way of the cross. Let’s go for it and see what happens.”
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