Conger

Dr. Nolbert Kunonga has barricaded himself inside the Cathedral of St. Mary and All Saints in Harare, defying a court order to open the city’s cathedral to Bishop Sebastian Bakare.

On Feb 10, Dr. Kunonga and approximately 40 members of the ZANU-PF youth militia remained in the Cathedral after Sunday morning services and refused entrance to supporters of Dr. Bakare. Last month the Harare high court ordered Dr. Kunonga to share the Cathedral with Dr. Bakare, giving the former bishop the use of the cathedral for morning services and the new bishop the afternoon.

In October Dr. Kunonga purported to pull the diocese out of the Province of Central Africa to form his own Anglican Church of Zimbabwe. The Province deposed Dr. Kunonga and appointed the retired Bishop of Manicaland, Dr. Sebastian Bakare as acting bishop of the diocese.

A spokesman for Dr. Bakare, the Rev. Christopher Tapera told the Zimbabwe Independent that when the afternoon congregation arrived at the Cathedral they found that “Kunonga locked up the church.”

Bakare loyalists then held a service in the Cathedral car park, but members of the youth milita disrupted the service and “the thugs ended up assaulting some of the followers,” Fr. Tapera said.

The ZANU-PF youth militias are a Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s shock troops, the US State Department said in a 2002 report. The militias operate “freely throughout the country, engaging in a violent campaign of intimidation directed against opposition supporters or those perceived to be such,” the US government said, and in the 2002 elections established “no-go areas” for opposition supporters who they “routinely subjected to beatings and other forms of intimidation.”

Last Sunday the diocese sent Harare’s Deputy Sheriff to the Cathedral to enforce the court order requiring Dr. Kunonga to share the building pending the outcome of litigation. Accompanied by supporters of Dr. Bakare the sheriff used bolt cutters to break open the padlock chaining the cathedral door closed.

Members of the youth militia and two priests loyal to Dr. Kunonga refused to allow the sheriff entry to the cathedral, a source in Harare told The Church of England Newspaper.

While the two sides argued the point, the police on duty at the cathedral called in the riot squad. Wielding truncheons the police dispersed the crowd and arrested the sheriff and a reporter from the government controlled newspaper the Harare Herald, taking them and leaders of both factions to the Central Police Station for questioning. Dr. Kunonga remained inside the Cathedral.

While Dr. Kunonga was squatting in Harare, Dr. Bakare was at General Synod in London. In his presidential address the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams praised Dr. Bakare and the loyalist clergy of the diocese, giving them his full support.