In a recent speech, Zimbabwe’s President E.D. Mnangagwa recounted his experiences with the Church and Church leaders in the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence. He spoke of how Rhodesian propaganda had demonized the freedom fighters, painting them as a godless lot associated with all manner of devilry. He said by contrast, white Rhodesia had beatified itself as a God-fearing civilization whose mission was to redeem and Christianize a benighted race inhabiting the “Dark Continent.”

President Mnangagwa also described how the Church and State were inseparable in Rhodesia, with the Anglican Church being the Church of the Settler Rhodesian State. He explained how the Church had viewed the freedom fighters as “ogres” and how the Church had heavily invested in African education, running the majority of schools for Africans in the country, right through to Zimbabwe’s independence.

Despite initial anxieties from the Church, President Mnangagwa explained how the State had sought to heal the wounds of colonialism and develop the country on egalitarian principles through the ideology of Marxist-Leninism. He further explained how their choice of ideology was appropriate for a post-Independent Zimbabwe and drew parallels and similarities between their ideology and the values espoused by Africans under African communalism.