THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF HIV AND AIDS IN ZIMBABWE
2.7. The Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Methodist Churches
2.7.2. The Anglican Church in Manicaland
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ZCBC‘s HIV and AIDS commission also featured at national and diocesan levels. It aimed at promoting values of life meant to prevent the spread of HIV and also carried out AIDS mitigation interventions targeting OVC at the church‘s schools.411 The primary focus of the present research study is to explore responses to HIV and AIDS by the Roman Catholic Church in Manicaland. However, input by the commission constituted an integral part of the church‘s response to HIV and AIDS in Manicaland, Zimbabwe (1985-2007). The present study is also aware of the input of other role players from the church in including the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar as well as the Vatican.412
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Two dioceses from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) namely Mashonaland and Matabeleland (carved in 1952), and the dioceses of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and also Nyasaland (Malawi) established the Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA) constituted on 8 May 1955.416 In 1996 the church‘s province had twelve dioceses as follows: Botswana, Central Zambia, Northern Zambia, Matabeleland, Lake Malawi, Harare, Southern Malawi, Lusaka, Northern Malawi, Eastern Zambia, Central Zimbabwe, and Manicaland.417 At the end of 2006, the number of dioceses constituting this province had further increased to fifteen with the Diocese of Masvingo in Zimbabwe being the latest. The Anglican Diocese of Manicaland was carved in 1981 and Elijah Masuko became the first bishop.418 The first diocesan synod for the Anglican Church in Manicaland was held in September 1982.419 Sebastian Bakare who succeeded Masuko was consecrated in 1999 and retired in 2006 to be succeeded by Elson M. Jakazi who seceded from the CPCA in 2008.
The Anglican Church in Manicaland is part of the Anglican Council of Zimbabwe and the council recently incorporated responses to HIV and AIDS into its relief work.420 At continental level, Anglican Church provinces in Africa constitute the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) established in 1979. This council of Anglican provinces defined itself as a FBO, established by the Anglican primates of Africa covering twenty-five countries with a goal ―to coordinate and articulate issues affecting the church [Anglican] and communities across the region.‖421 It must be noted that perhaps the description of this council as a FBO had the intentions of attracting foreign funding to carry out HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria interventions. In 2001, the council emerged with a strategic plan entitled: ―Planning Our Response to HIV/AIDS: A step by step guide to HIV/AIDS Planning for the
416 MM, CPCA, Order of service, inauguration of the Church of the Province of Central Africa held at the Cathedral parish of St. Mary and All Saints, Salisbury, 8 May 1955, (Salisbury: The Rhodesian printing and publishing company, 1955), 2.
417 MM, CPCA, Constitution and canons of the Church of the Province of Central Africa, (April 1996), 21, 22.
418 MM, CPCA, Constitutions and canons of the CPCA, 21.
419 MM, Diocese of Manicaland, Acts of the Diocese of Manicaland as enacted by the first synod, September 1982, and promulgated by the tenth session, (May 2002), 1.
420 Information supplied to M. Mbona by D. Magurupira, Mutare, 5 August 2010.
421 CAPA, Integrated HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria strategic plan, 2007-2011 (CAPA, Nairobi, 2007), 10.
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Anglican Communion.‖422 Within the Anglican Church in Africa, input from diocesan bishops, CAPA, the Lambeth Conference and primates from the Anglican Communion could have influenced responses to the pandemic directly or indirectly.423 In the Anglican Church in Manicaland responses to HIV and AIDS could be analysed focusing on the input or lack of thereof by the Episcopal leadership, diocesan synods, healthcare institutions, school and parishes.
It was not always given that HIV interventions proposed by CAPA filtered down to every Anglican diocesan in Zimbabwe and Africa. Within Anglican Church polity, crucial decisions on any church-related matters were usually passed by a synod. A church synod refers to a council or an assembly of church officials or churches and is also known as an ecclesiastical council or an assembly,424 or an important meeting of a church.425 A synod is the highest decision making body of a diocese also called a diocesan synod or provincial synod in the case of a church province. The three organs that constitute a diocesan synod are the: (1) house of bishops, (2) house of clergy, and (3) house of laity. The diocesan bishop presides over a synod within the diocese and therefore yields a lot of power and influence in terms of determining programmes of actions adopted as resolutions.426 Unlike the situation in the Roman Catholic Church, in the Anglican Church in Manicaland, the houses of laity, comprises of representatives from each church division who number between one and four adult male and female communicants. This house or group is numerically larger than the house of clergy that comprises of only all ordained priests and deacons licensed and living in the diocese.427
The emergence of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s coincided with the time when the new Anglican Diocese of Manicaland was carved. Within the first and
422 CAPA, HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria network strategic plan background, <http://hivaids.
anglicancommunion.org/hiv/strategic_plan/background.cfm/> [Accessed 16 May 2009].
423 See for example WCC, ―Report of the meeting of Anglican primates: Statement of Anglican primates on HIV/AIDS,‖ CANS2961, Canterbury, United Kingdom (17 April 2002),
<http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/other-ecumenical-bodies/church-s/> [Accessed 29 September 2009].
424 See <http://www.answers.com/topic/synod#ixzz1DHRAUyhQ/> [Accessed 10 December 2011].
425 D. Summers, Longman dictionary of contemporary English, (Essex: Pearson Educational Limited, 2003),1685.
426 MM, Diocese of Manicaland, ―Chapter 1: The diocesan synod,‖ Acts of the Diocese of Manicaland, eighth session (December 1997), 1.
427 MM, Diocese of Manicaland, ―Chapter 1: The diocesan Synod,‖ Acts of the Diocese of Manicaland, eighth session (December 1997), 1, 2.
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second periods of the present research study, the new diocese and its leadership had other priorities and HIV and AIDS interventions were not an urgent issue. In 1997 the Anglican Church in Manicaland had eight parishes, twelve mission districts, eight chapleries and three divisions under development scattered throughout Manicaland. A parish or mission district comprises of a single congregation or several congregations within the same geographical area. In 1997 the Anglican Church in Manicaland had three healthcare centres all located in remote rural areas. They included St. David‘s Bonda hospital, and St. Augustine‘s and St. Peter‘s Mandeya clinics. Twelve primary and nine secondary schools were registered as diocesan educational institutions.428 In 2004 the figures showed an increase: mission districts were now sixteen, twenty-one primary schools, twelve secondary schools and six healthcare centres.429
The exact membership of Anglicans in Manicaland and in Zimbabwe as a whole cannot be drawn up with much exactitude. Towards 1980 the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe comprised of around 150,000 black Africans and 79,000 Europeans (second to the Roman Catholics).430 Figures for 1991 suggested that the church experienced growth with Manicaland claiming 60% of the national Anglican membership. These statistics were debateable as other dioceses provided varying figures. The Diocese of Matabeleland had 20,000 communicants and the Diocese of Lundi only had 4, 500 communicants.431 While the issue of numbers may not be the primary focus of this study, the Anglican parishes and mission stations have a known presence in communities throughout Manicaland from Nyanga to Chipinge and from Makoni to Honde Valley. Within the Anglican Church in Manicaland, the distribution of membership by gender indicates that 30% were male and 70% were female.432 Apparently, women formed the majority of Anglican Church membership in Manicaland and Zimbabwe and this was also confirmed from the various encounters of the researcher as an insider to the diocese being initially a lay member and later one of the clergy.
428 MM, ―Appendix B and C, List of ecclesiastical divisions,‖ Acts of the Diocese of Manicaland, eighth session (December 1997), 23, 24, 25.
429 MM, ―Appendix B and C, List of ecclesiastical divisions and diocesan institutions,‖ Acts of the Diocese of Manicaland, tenth session (May 2002), 36, 37.
430 Weller and Linden, Mainstream Christianity to 1980, 81.
431 Weller, Anglican centenary in Zimbabwe, 25-30.
432 MM, Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, ―Services of prayer and solidarity with our companion Diocese of Manicaland and with the people of Zimbabwe,‖ Ash Wednesday, 25 February 2009.
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The earliest healthcare centre established by the Anglican Church in the colonial era was set up in Umtali (now Mutare). Early Western missionary-initiated healthcare services in colonial times served white settlers, local people and the missionaries too.
Knight-Bruce arranged with the British South Africa Company to provide a similar nursing service in Manicaland:
When the Anglican mission started there in 1891 it did so entirely as a medical station with three nursing sisters and a doctor. The medical man, Dr Granville, did not survive long but the nurses engaged by the Anglicans cared for the Umtali (now Mutare) area until 1898, when the little hospital was taken over by the nurses of the government.433
More than one hundred years later in 1999, the Anglican Church in Manicaland professed as having been called to be part of God‘s mission of liberating humankind and the whole of creation. Part of its mission statement read: ―The church is, therefore, called in every age and place to participate in the liberating mission of God in Jesus Christ. She is the sign of hope for the poor, the marginalized and thereby enables them to achieve wholeness and freedom.‖434 One of the five objectives drawn up by the diocese has a bearing on HIV and AIDS interventions as noted: ―To run HIV/AIDS home based and orphan care programmes in line with prevailing preventions and interventions of diseases.‖435 The Anglican Church in Manicaland understands itself as one of the main providers of educational and healthcare services to the nation. Orphanages were also identified as a critical area given the fact that HIV and AIDS claimed the lives of 2,000 people every week in Zimbabwe leaving behind a trail of many orphaned children.436