Zimbabwe bishops called to meeting: CEN 4.09.09 p 8.

Ministers from Zimbabwe’s new coalition government have called in the battling bishops of Harare for talks, and have promised an end to police attacks on Anglicans seeking to worship in their churches.

Speaking in Parliament on April 2, newly appointed Home Affairs Co-Minister Giles Mutsekwa, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) stated that he and his ZANU-PF counterpart, Home Affairs Co-Minister Kembo Mohadi, “had a chance to summon” former Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and Bishop Sebastian Bakare to government house for discussions.

The April 1 meeting with the government ministers marks a further decline in Dr. Kunonga’s hold over the diocese’s properties. The breakaway bishop, who was excommunicated in 2007 after he attempted to pull Harare out of the Church of the Province of Central Africa and create an Anglican Church of Zimbabwe, has been able to control the parish properties and assets only through the active interventions of the Mugabe regime.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has refused to enforce court orders granting Dr. Bakare’s supporters—almost all the diocese’s lay members—use of their churches pending a final adjudication, and through beatings and arrests have kept Dr. Kunonga in control. The statement in Parliament last week, however, marks a further decline in Dr. Kunonga’s fortunes as the coalition government seeks to reinstate the rule of law in Zimbabwe.

“The ministry, indeed Government, is worried there is this disagreement. It has involved the police that we are in charge of and the image of the police has been tarnished,” Mr. Mutsekwa said, according to an account published in the government backed Harare Herald.

The dispute has been referred to the Attorney-General’s Office for review, he said, but noted the police had been instructed to refrain from using force against parishioners.

The government’s statement that police will no longer use violence against Dr. Bakare’s supporters follows last month’s statement by ZRP Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, that he had never ordered his men to disobey the court orders granting both parties use of the buildings, or instructed his men to attack Anglicans.

A long time supporters of President Mugabe, Dr. Kunonga has been banned from travel to the EU or the US due to his complicity in the crimes of the regime. Sources in Harare tell The Church of England Newspaper, Dr. Kunonga’s political connections with Didymus Mutasa, who for the last five years served as the Mugabe regime’s Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, and the number two man in ZANU-PF, have kept him in power.

However, when Zimbabwe’s new coalition government was formed in February, Mutasa lost the National Security portfolio and its control of the secret police, when he was named Minister of State for Presidential Affairs. The return of democracy and the rule of law will ultimately see off Dr. Kunonga, predict sources in Zimbabwe, but the Mugabe regime and ZANU-PF still are clinging to power and it remains to be seen if the coalition government will survive.