Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku has summoned lawyers representing the feuding Anglican Church factions to a meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
Chidyausiku on Tuesday ordered lawyers representing the Bishop Chad Gandiya-led Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA) and those aligned to ex-communicated Anglican Bishop Nolbert Kunonga to report to his chambers at 12:00 on Wednesday.
Although the agenda of the meeting was not clear, informed sources indicated that Chidyausiku wanted to engage the lawyers over the church feud which escalated following a ruling which he delivered last month in favour of Kunonga and giving him custody and entitlement to some Anglican church property.
I guess this is a result of the forthcoming visit of the A of C which has made Zimbabwe aware that world attention is focussed on this miscarriage of justice. But I am not optimistic. Possibly the Chief Justice will seek to persuade the lawyers to accept a ‘compromise’ with some of the property going to the renegade Kunonga. Yet none of it should. And consider this: even if he were entitled to property, the judgement (if one can dignify such rubbish with a name like that) given by the Chief Justice would apply only to the Anglican diocese of Harare, which covers the north central part of the country. But Kunonga has been ranging far and wide on the grounds of this ‘judgement’, seizing property as far as Masvingo in the south east which is in a completely different diocese. So not only is he usurping property in what used to be his own diocese, he is seizing property that was always in the dioceses of other bishops. The detail given in this story – that the latest property seized is an orphanage – is truly sick-making. Anyway, the Zimbabwean government of thieves is highly skilled in public relations manoeuvres which announce improvements etc only to renege as soon as attention has shifted elsewhere.
I have just discovered that the workers who have been evicted from the orphanage are in fact Anglican nuns. They belong to the Community of the Blessed Lady Mary. Will this man stop at nothing? Has he no decency?