The ManicaPost
Bishop of Manicaland Erick Ruwona
One cannot talk of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe and ignore the role of the Community of the Resurrection. The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe was born soon after the arrival of Bishop George Knight Bruce at Umtali Township on the 1st of June 1891 and establishment of the first mission station across Tsambe river heralded the formation of the Diocese of Mashonaland.
The Mirfield Fathers as they are popularly known are famous not only for evangelism and planting churches in Manicaland but more for their contribution to the holistic academic education which provided professional skills and practical skills. Father Keble Prosser stands as one of the giant luminaries of academic excellence who broke ranks with the Church leadership such as Bishop Paul Borrough and supported the liberation struggle.
This article seeks to first of all give a brief over view of the history of Community of the Resurrection fathers and their work and secondly the work of Fr Keble Prosser who became the Principal of St Augustine’s Mission Penhalonga.
The origins of the religious community?
The Community of the Resurrection (CR) is an Anglican religious community for men in England. Since its foundation, the community has been active in pastoral teaching and mission in different parts of the Anglican Communion. The Community of the Resurrection (CR) is a child of the Oxford Movement, the Catholic Revival in the Church of England in the 19th century.
After several years of preparation 25 July 1892, St James Day, six priests founded a religious community in Pusey House, Oxford, where Charles Gore resided as the first principal of the house. In 1898 the community moved to Mirfield, and this became the centre of the community’s activities. The College of the Resurrection opened in 1902 and has trained ordinands for the priesthood until today. Because part of the teaching was done at University of Leeds, a hostel was built and run in Leeds in the period 1904–1976.
Missionary work
CR’s ministry in Africa, which became a strong mark of the community in the 20th century, began early. In 1902 one of the aspirants of the early days in Oxford, William Carter, by now the Bishop of Pretoria, invited the brethren to help rebuild his diocese after the devastation of the Boer War. In response three brethren went to Johannesburg and founded a house to work with African miners and do theological training for local Africans.
The community undertook the responsibility of St. John’s College in the same city four years later. When the brethren handed the college back to the diocese in 1934 it had become a flourishing education centre. In that year the community was asked to run the parish of Christ the King in the black suburb Sophiatown.
In 1911 a new priory and theological training college (St Peter’s Theological College) was opened in the suburb of Rosettenville, which grew steadily with schools for black children and teenagers added in 1922. This college had a great influence on the Church of Southern Africa in the second half of the 20th century.
The Community is invited to Zimbabwe
As in South Africa, the Bishop of Diocese of Southern Rhodesia, The Right Reverend Frederick Hicks Beaven, invited the community of the resurrection to run St Augustine’s mission in Penhalonga from 1914. They took over from the Lichfield Brothers who had run the mission station until then. They were replaced after they had struggled to keep up high standards and as the Church wanted missionaries with better capacity and proven record to run the institution.
According to Church and Settler in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Study in the History of the Anglican Diocese, the Community of the Resurrection (Mirfield) took charge of St Augustine in 1915 and had a profound impact upon the Diocese. Their arrival lead to raised standards of education and ministerial training.
According to Mr Gervas Chidawanyika, the former Headmaster of St David’s Bonda who worked with the CR fathers for 17 years, Fr Bertram Barnes was the first Priest in Charge of the Mission and was succeeded by Fr Robert Baker nicknamed ‘’Musana Wengena’’, the Engineer and historian who designed and built the current gigantic Church standing at St Augustine.
Tsambe as St Augustine’s ís commonly called, was likened to a crocodile and its head and Priest in Charge was the backborne of that crocodle. It is under his leadership that the first secondary school for Africans in Rhodesia was established. I suspect that is when the adage kana usikazi kuenda kwaTsambe hauzi kufunda because Tsambe was the only school offering secondary education for Africans.
Therefore, if you did not go to St Augustine’s then it meant you went nowhere for secondary education. I know that this saying has been interpreted differently over the years. Fr Winter who was also at St Augustine’s alongside Fr Baker was known as ‘’Chimukoko’’, because of his vast knowledge. He was the abode of knowledge.
It is during Father Baker’s leadership that the first secondary school for Native Africans was established at St Augustines Mission. I think it is after this feat that the saying ‘’kana usikazi kuenda kwaTsambe hauzi kudzidza’ meaning if you did not go to St Augustines you are no learned. This means that initially it was to state a fact that if you are African and did not go to St Augustines for secondary education it means you went nowhere and you are not educated. It later years this has been used to celebrate the academic excellence associated with the school.
Fr Baker left in 1940 and was replaced as Headmaster by Brother Michael who was known as ‘’dendera’’ because of his love for music, came briefly to as school head. Br Michael left after a short stint and joined Kutama college. It was Fr Benjamin Baynham who took over in 1951, who was responsible for building the school as we know it today.
During this period there were CR fathers Fr Reginald Smith and Fr Maurice Bradshaw responsible for pastoral work and missionary work. Fr Smith Bradshaw visited churches in the South including St Werburgs Chigodora and Marange while Fr Bradshaw visited churches in the North upto Honde valley. Fr Smith was succeeded by Fr Derek Williams and then Fr Noel Williams who became responsible for churches in the South of St Augustine while Fr Jacob Wardle replaced Fr Bradshaw and visited churches in the North.Fr James Woodrow during this period build up the teacher training college. Fr Bernham who had been Principal of St Augustine since 1951 left in 1968 and went to the University of Rhodesia to bid farewell to his former students now studying there. He was replaced by Fr Pearce who arrived at the same time with Fr Keble Prosser.
It is from Fr Pearce that Fr Prosser took over and was assisted by Mr Mitchel a former headmaster of a school in South Africa run by the CR fathers. Mr. Norman Mitchell who became the head of the secondary school arrived together with Mr Donald Darling and Mr Davies who came from a college in Rossetenville. Due to their vast experience and together with Fr Prosser the standards at St Augustine’s mission shot to dizzy heights.
Under the CR fathers St Augustine became the first mission of the Diocese to rival other well mannered, ‘show-piece’ missions long-possessed by denomination which had concentrated most of their missionary efforts on a single, central stations rather than attempting the wide-and very thin-spread of the Anglicans.
It appears the spread of mission stations had compromised on quality of service delivery. This became the centre of the CR brethren’s activities in Zimbabwe until it was handed over to local authorities in 1983 shortly after the civil war had ended. Two reasons have been given for the CR fathers departure. The first one was that CR had a shortage of manpower and realized that they had no capacity to continue and decided to go back to England.
Former Bishop of Matabeleland Robert Mercer argues that the CR withdrew because they wanted African leadership to take over leadership of the Church in the same way political leadership had moved into the hands of African majority. After the community of the resurrection decided to leave Zimbabwe 1983 and allow local leadership to take over, Fr Keble Prosser felt otherwise.
He refused to leave and he could not bear to leave, because Tsambe had become his life and returning England to do nothing was not possible for him and continued as Principal.
