THE EARLY YEARS (1985-1994)
3.3. The Anglican Church’s Response to HIV and AIDS
3.3.1. Delayed HIV and AIDS Interventions by the Leadership
Within the Anglican Church in Harare, Rogers of the Roman Catholic Church reportedly discussed HIV and AIDS at a seminar with the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church in February 1988.650 Some members of the Anglican Church in Harare carried out limited HIV and AIDS interventions earlier than fellow Anglicans in Manicaland. For example, in 1988 Chad Gandiya, who was then a priest and currently serves as bishop of the diocese of Harare, joined an AIDS initiative led by Rogers.651 Gandiya and other Anglican clergy from Harare attended meetings organised by Rogers.652 The fact that Anglicans in Harare invited Rogers, and that Gandiya chaired the AIDS Counselling Trust committee from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, serves to indicate that some fellow Anglicans in Harare valued HIV and
648 M. Lapsley, ―Anglican Church and State from UDI in 1965 until the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980,‖ in Hallencreutz and Moyo, Church and State in Zimbabwe, 125. See also S. Bakare,
―Christianity and scientific socialism in Zimbabwe,‖ in Hallencreutz and Moyo, Church and State in Zimbabwe, 477-493.
649 D. Maxwell, ―The church and the democratisation in Africa: The case of Zimbabwe,‖ in P. Gifford (ed), The Christian churches and the democratisation of Africa, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 116.
650 Rogers, Jesuit, social pioneer and AIDS activist.
651 See the section on Edward T. Rogers earlier in this chapter.
652 T. Rogers, same interview.
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AIDS interventions.653 However, the initiatives involving the Anglican Church in Harare and supported by Rogers did not result in institutional diocesan programmes.
The attempt by the Diocese of Harare to draw attention to the pandemic was a positive step. Rogers and Gandiya had known each other for some years and this network possibly accounted for why they were jointly involved in the setting up one of the earliest few AIDS service organisations in Zimbabwe.
Apparently, the leadership of the Anglican Church in Manicaland adopted a lukewarm approach to HIV and AIDS-related issues in the late 1980s as was also echoed by Geoff Foster, founding director of FACT. Foster elaborated that the lack of interest in HIV and AIDS interventions by the Anglican Church‘s leaders in Manicaland indicated that the bishop and clergy did not perceive the epidemic to be a critical life- threatening issue until later years.654 Furthermore, Foster‘s observation that bishops were only interested in HIV and AIDS interventions where their positions could be affirmed could have accounted for Bishop Masuko‘s unwillingness to join hands with FACT. This lack of interest in HIV and AIDS on the part of the Anglican Church‘s clergy was also acknowledged by an internal source to the diocese. For example, the Reverend Obert Murakwani who was stationed in Mutare since 1985, alluded to the fact that there was little attention given to HIV and AIDS at diocesan meetings because clergy and laity shied away from talking about the pandemic.655 While some Anglicans in Harare had responded early to HIV and AIDS, the initiative did not necessarily translate into widespread action across other Anglican dioceses in Zimbabwe. However, at least a handful of medical personnel serving at some of the church‘s healthcare centres became aware of the pandemic and carried out limited HIV awareness activities. For example, at St. Peter‘s Mandeya clinic the nurse-in- charge, Cora Dekker, an expatriate from the Netherlands, successfully organised public HIV and AIDS education and awareness meetings and received support from the community and the State from 1992 to 1994.656
653 Information supplied by C. Gandiya to M. Mbona through email. 7 February 2011.
654 G. Foster, same interview.
655 O. Murakwani, interview conducted by M. Mbona at St. Bartholomew‘s parish, Rusape, 4 May 2011.
656 Information supplied by Cora Dekker to M. Mbona on 7 August 2011. Dekker worked as an expatriate nurse at St. Peters‘ Mandeya clinic between 1991 and 1994 and was in Durban on holiday in 2011.
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Similarly, Bishop Ishmael Mukuwanda of the Anglican Diocese of Central Zimbabwe confirmed the diocese‘s late involvement in responding to the HIV epidemic.
Mukuwanda further noted that it was only in April 2003 that the diocesan HIV and AIDS service organisation called St. Patrick‘s HIV and AIDS Actions Programme was established.657 Thus, at the official level, within the Anglican Diocese of Manicaland and the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe in general, HIV and AIDS received limited attention. The slow pace at which the church‘s leadership in Manicaland responded to HIV and AIDS was a common trend as obtaining from its sister dioceses in Zimbabwe. Within the Church of the Province of Central Africa, provincially coordinated HIV and AIDS interventions were only established after 2001.658 The Anglican Church‘s polity recognised dioceses as autonomous entities and this entailed that diocesan bishops and synods could either chose to prioritise or not prioritise on HIV interventions. This accounted for the level of diversity found within the Anglican Communion‘s engagement with HIV and AIDS.659
The leadership of the Anglican Church in Manicaland had its priorities set on evangelism and building up financial resources for the new diocese. For example, at the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe centenary in 1991 Bishop Masuko highlighted the evangelism as a major thrust in Manicaland as stated: ―The church has a mandate and involvement with the world in its evangelism. It brings healing, reconciliation, and prophetically declares God‘s judgement against corruption in society.‖660 Growing up as a young adult Anglican in the 1990s, the researcher recalls a strong thrust accorded to evangelism by the diocesan leadership. The focus on evangelism activities at the diocesan level could be traced to the Lambeth Conference of 1988 that declared the years between 1990 and 1999 as the ―Decade of Evangelism.‖661 However, this could not justify the slow pace at initiating HIV and AIDS interventions that could have assisted Anglicans and other people as well. Consistent with this observation, Lapsley noted that ―the Anglican Church [in Zimbabwe] had always been concerned with sin
657 Information supplied by I. Mukuwanda, Response to M. Mbona‘s email: Diocese of Central Zimbabwe, February 2011.
658 Anglican United Nations office, Working together: The Anglican Communion response to HIV and AIDS in Africa (Geneva, 2007), 10.
659 Anglican United Nations office, Working together, 9.
660 Weller, Anglican centenary in Zimbabwe, 25-26.
661 Decade of Evangelism, Lambeth Conference, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_of_
Evangelism/> [Accessed 23 March 2011].
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without addressing the social, political and economic factors responsible for sinful behaviour. The church lacked an analytical theological methodology.‖662 The Anglican Church‘s evangelism campaigns focused primarily on conversion and drew little attention to teachings on Christian living. The latter approach stressed the importance of enabling Christians to live out a new life but it was not supported by regular teachings that stressed strictness on sexual discipline.663 There is nothing unusual for a church to focus on evangelism but the study notes that competing interests could have overshadowed the reaction of the diocesan leadership to HIV and AIDS. Apparently, more emphasis was placed on evangelism and capacity building than on the growing epidemic.
Bishop Masuko attended the Lambeth Conference of 1988 where a resolution on AIDS was passed.664 The assembly of bishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion took note of the rapid spread of the catastrophic HIV epidemic and
‗mandated‘ the bishops to respond to the crisis by giving a lead in:
The promotion, of and co-operation with, educational programmes both of church and State concerned with the cause and prevention of the disease, in a loving and non-judgemental attitude to those who suffer. To develop diocesan strategies: to train and support pastoral helpers; to give direct personal support to those living with AIDS [PLHIV]; to identify and try to resolve the social problems leading to and arising from the disease; to reaffirm the traditional biblical teaching that sexual intercourse is an act of total commitment which belongs properly within a permanent married relationship…to encourage global c-operation between churches, governments and nongovernmental agencies in the fight against the disease, to develop ways in which churches can share information and resources, to press where necessary for political action.665
However, HIV and AIDS interventions at the diocesan level in Manicaland were either delayed or existed at a low key. The lack of HIV and AIDS interventions in the Anglican Church in Manicaland appeared common as what obtained from other parts
662 Lapsley, ―Anglican Church and State,‖ 125.
663 Marshall and Taylor, ―Tackling HIV and AIDS with faith-based communities,‖ 368-369.
664 Anglican Consultative Council, The truth shall make you free: The Lambeth Conference 1988, The reports, resolutions and pastoral letters from the bishops, (London: Church Publishing House, 1988), 245.
665 Anglican Consultative Council, The truth shall make you free, 222-223.
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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.