THE EARLY YEARS (1985-1994)
3.3. The Anglican Church’s Response to HIV and AIDS
3.3.2. AIDS-Related Stigma and the Chalice
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of the Anglican Communion in Africa. In 1993 James Thrall and James Rosenthal of the Anglican Communion News Service observed:
As late as the 1988 Lambeth Conference, bishops from Africa were denying that there was a disease called AIDS. It could well be that the fact Anglicans do meet together internationally and share and consult with each other, that has brought about change in the way some African prelates look at the trauma of AIDS.666
After the Lambeth Conference of 1988 some Anglican bishops from Africa went back to their dioceses committed to stamping out the tide of HIV and AIDS. For example, the Archbishop of Uganda mobilised clergy and laity to confront the pandemic.667 This did not happen in Manicaland. Bishop Masuko‘s pastoral letter for Christmas and New Year (1994) appeared to be silent on any reference to HIV and AIDS.668 Within Anglican clergy, perceptions regarding HIV and AIDS were altered by first- hand experiences of AIDS-related illness and subsequent death of family members or close friends. When it happened elsewhere, the tendency was ―to look at the HIV epidemic as something far away.‖669 The church‘s followers were infected and affected by HIV and AIDS more than the church‘s efforts at HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation. It has to be noted that the Anglican Church structures in Manicaland appeared to have taken a passive approach to the epidemic.
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John Ebnor of Canterbury and York respectively issued a statement on behalf of the House of Bishops of the Church of England, part of which read:
Public concern about AIDS has aroused fears among some people that the sharing of the common cup might be a possible means of infection.
The advice given to us by the highest medical authorities is that such fears are groundless. The virus which causes AIDS may occasionally be present in saliva, but recent research has shown that saliva inhibits the activity of the virus and that it has not been transmitted by being swallowed. …People who are infected by the virus or who have AIDS will be usually susceptible to other infections and may wish, and should be allowed, to receive communion by intinction or in one kind.670
The fact that the House of Bishops of the Church of England issued this statement testifies to the concerns emanating from members of the church. The same concerns could have filtered through to Zimbabwe and were first evident in Manicaland.
However, this was not the first time when fears of infection from the chalice were raised from within the Anglican Communion. According to David Gould of the Episcopal Church in the US: ―The influenza epidemic in 1917 raised similar concerns and the controversy has surfaced periodically since the sixteenth century.‖671
Until the late 1980s and early 1990s communicants from the Anglican in Manicaland used to drink wine from the same chalice. The practice changed due to a contagion of fear that ―contact with blood or saliva of HIV positive persons could lead to contracting the AIDS.‖672 In Manicaland, the first Anglican parish to discontinue drinking from the same chalice was the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Mutare.673 For Anglicans in Manicaland, the cathedral parish is regarded as the mother church that is also seen as setting out best practices on most ecclesiastical matters. Thus, other parishes emulated the changes in drinking wine from the chalice from the cathedral parish. In the late 1980s, the new reality that emerged whereby
670 For this see R. Cantuar and J. Ebor, ―Administration of Holy Communion during a flu pandemic with annexes A, Hygiene and the chalice (1987), and B, Pandemic flu and the common cup in communion services,‖ June 2009, http://www.canterburydiocese.org/ swineflu/pandemicflucommunion .23%206%2009.pdf/> [Accessed 7 November 2011].
671 D. H. Gould, ―Eucharistic practice and the risk of Infection,‖ <http://www.st-timoth-st- paul.com/images/pdf-forms_articles/ep-risk-of-infection.pdf/> [Accessed on 7 November 2011].
672 K. Nyazika, same interview. See also M. Mafulela, interview conducted by M. Mbona, Anglican Diocesan office, Mutare, 13 August 2010.
673 O. Murakwani, same interview.
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communicants received the elements of communion by intinction was a paradox to visitors at the Cathedral of St John the Baptist.674 It became apparent to communicants that ―the chalice was no longer the cup of salvation, but one of deadly poison leading to death through HIV infection from fellow members of the body of Christ.‖675 Church followers at the cathedral parish comprised of whites, Indians, coloureds and blacks. It was a known fact that generally, many of the early publicly known cases of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe were found among blacks. The cathedral parish did not provide safe space to talk about HIV and AIDS and thus indirectly showed denial and stigma of the epidemic. For example, Murakwani mentioned that the parish‘s white clergy and parishioners could have been generally aware of HIV and AIDS but had no freedom to speak about it openly. The dean of the cathedral of St. John the Baptist, maintained silence following an AIDS-related death of a young single black woman communicant at the cathedral parish in 1988.676 This incident became a first hand encounter of an AIDS-related death case for Murakwani. Within the Anglican Church in Manicaland, the church‘s members were afraid of contracting HIV and this gradually but steadily set a new tone especially at the Eucharist.677
For the Anglicans, the sacrament of the Eucharist was perceived to be quite central in deepening the relationship between God and the communicants as well as fostering oneness and fellowship amongst Christians.678 The fact that the subject of AIDS and the chalice received formal attention at some diocesan clergy meetings and those of the diocesan standing committee from 1989 onwards was an indication of the seriousness given to this matter.679 While the discussions shaped decisions regarding the chalice, no diocesan synod resolutions were passed on the issue. According to Murakwani, the diocesan bishop ―encouraged clergy and lay leaders to seek the
674 O. Murakwani, same interview. Communion by intinction is a practise of administering the Holy Communion by dipping bread in wine, <http://www.canterburydiocese.org/swineflu/pandemic flucommunion.23%206%2009.pdf/> [Accessed 7 November 2011].
675 M. Mafulela, same interview.
676 O. Murakwani, same interview.
677 M. Mafulela, same interview.
678 See Church of the Province of the Southern Africa, Liturgy: 1975 (Braamfontein: Church of the Province of Southern Africa, 1975), 16-24. The Anglican Church in Manicaland used the same liturgy in its services.
679 M. Mafulela, same interview. See also K. Nyazika, same interview.
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‗feelings‘ of Anglican communicants at the parish level.‖680 Apparently, the possibility of contracting HIV from drinking from the same chalice was partly informed by the deliberations that were going on in the Church of England on the same matter in 1987.681 However, the Lambeth Conference of 1988 attended by Bishop Masuko did not address the issue of HIV and the chalice but encouraged Anglican bishops to play a positive role in HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation.682 Within Africa, the issue of drinking from the chalice ranked quite high at a conference on ―HIV and AIDS and the church,‖ held in Kenya in 1989. Murakwani who attended the conference as a delegate of Anglican Church in Manicaland stated that the majority of speakers argued that the chances of contracting HIV by drinking from the same chalice were high.683 Similarly, since 1985, the communicants in the Anglican Church of Uganda discontinued the practice of drinking from the same chalice due to fear of contracting HIV.684 The links between the Anglican Diocese of Manicaland and the Anglican Church of Kenya might suggest that the Anglicans in Manicaland adopted the change in the ritual of the chalice from East Africa.
The changes introduced to the ritual of the chalice as a consequence of HIV and AIDS among Anglican Christians in Manicaland were also a legacy of the epidemic‘s trail of devastation in the lives of the faithful. For example, in the early 1990s at St. Faith‘s mission near Rusape, relations among Anglican communicants did not remain the same. On the one hand, the elderly members of the church, now in their late-seventies, blamed the young generation for being ‗unfaithful‘ and guilty of spreading HIV.685 On the other hand, Nyazika, a senior and elderly priest from the Anglican Church in Manicaland stated that intinction was necessary in the interest of public health and hygiene. The message underneath this pretext was that ―any suspected HIV positive communicants were never to be trusted.‖686 Blaming others as being responsible for contributing to the changes in the ritual of the chalice showed that denial and stigmatisation were inherent.
680 O. Murakwani, same interview.
681 O. Murakwani, same interview.
682 See Resolution 29, ―Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS),‖ Resolution of the Lambeth Conference, 1988, downloaded from the Lambeth Conference website on 28 September 2009.
683 O. Murakwani, same interview.
684 M. Mbona was indebted to R. Nyegenye of the Anglican Church of Uganda for sharing with me this information, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 15 July 2011.
685 Information supplied by T. Muchedzi to M. Mbona at St. Faith‘s mission, Rusape, 13 June 2010.
686 K. Nyazika, same interview.
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3.3.3. AIDS-Related Denial and Witch Hunting
Within the Anglican Church in Manicaland, the denial of AIDS led to the perception that HIV was caused by witchcraft and occult forces. However, the practice of blaming witchcraft and occult forces for illness and or death among the Manyika people was not unique to the HIV and AIDS era.687 Though mention has already been given to this subject in relation to the followers of the Roman Catholic Church above, within the Anglican Church, this assumed a different level. Witchcraft is a phenomenon that most black Zimbabweans, including members of the Anglican Church believe in. Generally, witchcraft is a phenomenon that parishioners and families do not speak about openly, especially with the clergy. Similarly, the disclosure of one‘s HIV and AIDS status was shrouded in secrecy. The fact that at the leadership level there were no open spaces to deal with HIV and AIDS from a biomedical perspective provided fertile ground for perceiving AIDS as product of witchcraft and occult forces. Rarely did Anglican Christians openly admit to the fact that AIDS was responsible for the death of a loved one.688 Under such circumstances some members of the Anglican Church blamed witchcraft and occult forces for causing HIV and AIDS.
The case of witch hunting by one of the church‘s senior priest, Livingstone Nerwande, who served at St. Mary‘s Magdalene Nyanga, had effects on the church‘s reactions to HIV and AIDS in the 1990s. Surges in HIV and AIDS-related illness and subsequent deaths coincided with Nerwande‘s claims to destroy the power of witchcraft, a malevolent force believed to be the cause of sickness. Some Anglican Church members teamed up with Nerwande to form ―Chita cheMuchinjiko‖ translated as the ―Community of the Holy Cross‖ in 1992. The identification of witches and the destruction of occult forces were common features at healing gatherings. This had the effect of misleading people, including members of the Anglican Church to think that AIDS was the product of witchcraft and occult forces.
687 N. Mushawa, same interview. See also C. Matenga, interview conducted by M. Mbona, St.
Matthew‘s parish, Vengere, Rusape, 23 August 2010.
688 O. Murakwani, same interview.
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Similarly, in Soweto, South Africa, Adam Ashforth‘s analysis of AIDS as isidliso indicates that traditional healers and prophets claimed that they could cure AIDS.
Thus the intervention by traditional healers was important due to the public perception that AIDS was a ―man-made‖ illness invented by witches.689 As Ashforth explains, witchcraft is associated with people‘s ability to manipulate evil forces to harm others:
―Witchcraft in the South African context typically means the manipulation by malicious individuals of powers inherent in persons, spiritual entities, and substances to cause harm to others.‖690 Elsewhere, in Uganda, Behrend‘s findings concluded that AIDS-related deaths were responsible for the dramatic reactivation of belief in occult forces. As Behrend has observed: ―Thus, the revelation of and fight against occult forces led their being reinstated and growing even more powerful.‖691 In the case of Uganda, and similar to Manicaland, increased deaths mainly due to AIDS made some people to believe that witches were responsible for the death of today.
In Uganda the Roman Catholic Church-related Uganda Martyrs guild established in the 1980s, instituted the practice of witch hunting around 1995.692 The fact that the Holy Cross guild in Manicaland existed since the early 1990s led to the conclusion that perhaps Nerwande might have influenced a later development in Uganda. The Uganda Martyrs guild called for open confession and destruction of satanic forces and the Holy Cross guild did the same.693 In the case of Nerwande, the clients paid exorbitant fees before services were rendered. This accounted for the dissolution of the guild and the banning of all its activities by Bishop Masuko later in 1996.694 Apparently, Bishop Masuko believed that HIV and AIDS was strictly a consequence of moral failure.695 Masuko‘s support for Nerwande‘s divine healing ministry for almost a decade misled Anglicans in Manicaland to associate AIDS with sin and the work of witchcraft. Nerwande‘s claims to destroy witchcraft at a time the HIV
689 A. Ashforth, ―AIDS, witchcraft, and the problem of power in post-apartheid South Africa,‖
Unpublished paper number 10, (May 2001), 1.
690 Ashforth, ―AIDS, witchcraft, and the problem of power,‖ 5.
691 Behrend, ―The rise of occult powers,‖ 44.
692 Behrend, ―The rise of occult powers,‖ 40.
693 Behrend, ―The rise of occult powers,‖ 40. See also O. Murakwani, same interview.
694 HNM, Rt Revd Elijah Musekiwa Masuko, Bishop of Manicaland to the members and supporters of the Community of the Holy Cross Re Dissolution of the Community of the Holy Cross, 27 November 1996. Letter was sent to all parishes and institution of the diocese and to all bishops of the Church of the Province of Central Africa. See also HNM, Church of the Province of Central Africa, Standing Committee‘s report to synod, Diocese of Manicaland Synod 1997, Agenda and reports, 5-6 December 1997, 15.
695 See HNM, Bishop‘s charge to the eighth synod, ―Unity in the body of Christ,‖ 5 December 1997.
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epidemic was ravaging the nation drew close parallels with prophetic responses to the influenza epidemic in Southern Rhodesia. Ranger observed that claims to heal disease were quite central to the new prophetic movements whereby ―in their prophetic teaching healing came directly to the purified faithful through the descent of the Holy Spirit.‖696 The fact that Bishop Masuko officially licensed Nerwande to function as a priest and appointed him vicar-general of the diocese meant that the episcopacy was in full support of Nerwande‘s spiritual healing exploits.