Nolbert Kunonga (born 31 December 1950 in

Wedza District Wedza (or Hwedza) is a district in the province of Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. It is located about south of Marondera, and south of Harare. The area was sparsely inhabited by the Mbire people of the Soko Clan as early inhabitants who mined iron ...

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as South ...

) is the former Zimbabwean Anglican Bishop of Harare and Mashonaland.

Controversy

Kunonga was criticised within and outside the

Anglican Communion The Anglican Communion is a Christian Full communion, communion consisting of the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The archbishop of Canterbury in England acts as a focus of unity, ...

for his ardent support of

Robert Mugabe Robert Gabriel Mugabe (; ; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of th ...

, the President of

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. This was at a time when other religious leaders in the country, notably the Roman Catholic archbishop,

Pius Ncube Pius Alick Mvundla Ncube (born 31 December 1946) served as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, until he resigned on 11 September 2007. Widely known for his human rights advocacy, Ncube was an outspoken critic of former Presid ...

, were condemning Mugabe's government for its human rights excesses across Zimbabwe. Kunonga has been in and out of

ecclesiastical court In organized Christianity, an ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain non-adversarial courts conducted by church-approved officials having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. Histo ...

s since 2005. In 2008, he was officially excommunicated, stripping him of all recognition as a cleric within the global

. A judge ordered in January 2008 that the breakaway Anglican province led by Kunonga must share the use of church buildings with the Anglican

Church of the Province of Central Africa The Church of the Province of Central Africa is part of the Anglican Communion, and includes 15 dioceses in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Primate of the Church is the Archbishop of Central Africa. Albert Chama is the current archbi ...

loyal to Bishop Sebastian Bakare. In August 2011, the country's Chief Justice ruled that all Anglican property in the Harare diocese was under Kunonga's custody. On 19 November 2012, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice, Luke Malaba, ruled that Kunonga and his followers were no longer part of the Church of the Province of Central Africa and that Kunonga will have to surrender everything that belongs to the church that is in his hands. He was also ordered to pay the costs of the civil appeal. On 17 March 2017, Kunonga was ordered to pay $427,000 for shares Kunonga sold, when the Zimbabwean Supreme Court upheld a ruling that the shares belonged to Church of the Province of Central Africa.

References

1950 births Living people 20th-century Anglican bishops in Africa 21st-century Anglican bishops in Africa Anglican bishops of Harare and Mashonaland Zimbabwean Anglicans {{Zimbabwe-bio-stub