After being chased from their churches in Harare and its suburbs members of Bishop Chad Gandiya’s Anglican congregation came up with a brilliant idea. They decided they could build other churches while the disputed ones were still being fought over in the courts.
One congregation in Chitungwiza had just completed building a church in Unit M when two weeks ago police with “orders from above” pounced. They ordered the congregants to leave the church and Bishop Nolbert Kunonga possessed it. Now he has given one of his followers the right to the property.
The police have been known to side with Kunonga in the whole Anglican saga but it defies logic that they would help him take possession of a church which is outside the disputed ones.
There is an interesting contradiction in Kunonga’s character. He claims his beef with the mainstream Anglican Church is about its support of homosexuality.
He has ready support in this from President Robert Mugabe.
But let’s take a look at Kunonga as a heterosexual male. According to him it is right to bar people from worshipping their God. He is prepared to have woman and children battered by thugs for the simple reason that they have congregated in a church that they built and have been praying at all their lives. It is right according to him to bar pilgrims from all over the world to pray at one of the most revered Anglican shrines in the world — the Bernard Mizeki memorial.
Homosexuality is a subject that is not talked about openly in Zimbabwe; I don’t understand it myself. But I have not heard of a single homosexual who has barred people from praying to their God.
It turns out that Kunonga is not the only rogue bishop in the world. He has now got support from an Ecuadorian bishop who has turned against the mainstream church. His name is Bishop Walter Roberto Crespo. He was in Zimbabwe recently and voiced his support for Kunonga and also launching a broadside at those in the Anglican Church who support gay rights.
He said: “We, the church in Ecuador, we support Archbishop Kunonga and we reject those in the United States and England who support homosexuality. The church in Zimbabwe has taken a prophetic stance and we are supporting its leadership.”
Crespo was also effusive in his support of Mugabe. He brought the glad tidings that the people of Ecuador had bestored a honorary doctorate in civil law on the president.
He said President Mugabe was awarded the doctorate degree because he is revered in Ecuador.
“He was given the award because of his experience and especially because of his leadership worldwide,” he said. “Far beyond the expectations of Zimbabwe, he is a leader for all the nations. We are grateful to him and we love him so much.”
It has turned out that Crespo is a fake bishop who is best known for dealing in arms. Whether the degree is also fake we are still to establish.
In 2001 Crespo was arrested on allegations of arms smuggling with two former army colonels after police intercepted a shipment of rockets and anti-personnel mines on the Ecuadorian border with Colombia. It was his second arrest in four years.
According to a BBC report Crespo wears ecclesiastical robes and has established a following in Ecuador over several years, even though the Anglican Church says he has nothing to do with their organisation.
In trying to ship the consignment of arms to rebel guerrillas fighting the Colombian government Crespo used the Zimbabwe government’s name to cover up the covert supply of arms. Reports from Ecuador, Colombia and Miami said that the weapons, worth US$240 000, had been transferred in 2000 from Ecuador to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — the main rebel group in Colombia. Documents showed that the armaments, originally belonging to the Ecuadorean Air Force, had been sold — fictitiously — to Zimbabwe Defence Industries, but had in fact been transferred to FARC. Some of the weapons were reportedly to be used in an assassination attempt on the Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and have been used in other more recent attacks in Colombia. FARC, and other guerrilla groups, have been fighting the Colombian government for decades, in a murky war inextricably bound up with the drugs trade.
It is these rebels that Crespo supplies with arms.
The obvious similarity between Kunonga and Crespo is that they both behave like alpha males in a troop of gorillas. In social animals the alpha is the individual in the community with the highest rank. The alpha animals are given preference to be the first to eat and the first to mate; among some species they are the only animals in the pack allowed to mate. Other animals in the community are usually killed or ousted if they violate this rule. For eat and mate read congregate and pray.
Kunonga’s and Crespo’s propensity for violence reinforces this primeval desire to control. Kunonga for some strange reason has the support of our national police while Crespo has a whole guerrilla outfit behind him! Is Kunonga really fighting the Anglicans over homosexuality or is he just fulfilling a primitive urge to dominate?
He is a disgrace to all heterosexual males who love to live peacefully with their neighbours who may have divergent sets of beliefs.

NEVANJI MADANHIRE

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