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ANGLICAN-INFORMATION Time for Dean of Anglican Province of Central Africa to stand down? Leading U.K. Church newspaper, the Church Times, in an article, 23rd May, 2008 (www.churchtimes.co.uk), by senior correspondent Pat Ashworth covers the news released last week and distributed by us that, ‘Central Africans declare Kunonga excommunicate’. Quoting the acting Dean of the Central African Province Bishop Albert Chama’s pronouncement of the “sentence of Greater Excommunication” that includes “all those who support (Kunonga)”. The “faithful in the Church of the Province of Central Africa and the Anglican Communion” are urged “to join with us in humble supplication that these our erring brothers and sisters may speedily attain true repentance, for their own souls’ health and the wellbeing of the Body of the Church”. ANGLICAN-INFORMATION observes that “all those who support Kunonga” must by definition include Bishop Elson Jakazi of Manicaland, Zimbabwe and most importantly former Archbishop Bernard Malango now resident in Lilongwe,Malawi. As Archbishop, Malango went to great and devious lengths to get Nolbert Kunonga elected as bishop of Harare, as also reported by Pat Ashworth in today’s Church Times in a substantial interview with former Vicar-General of the diocese of Harare, Canon Tim Neill. Neill’s account of the ‘Court of Confirmation’ (which approved Kunonga) shows that it was conducted in a manner inviolate of the provincial canons and strongly reminiscent of Malango’s presiding over the uncanonical Court of Confirmation in Lake Malawi in 2005. This was the Court that failed to endorse the Rev’d Nicholas Henderson as bishop elect and precipitated much of the present and on-going impasse in Malawi as laity and clergy rose up in defiance of what they rightly saw as episcopal jiggery-pokery, (jiggery-pokery for non- English as a first language readers means ‘subterfuge by devious and underhand behaviour’). Indeed, Malango’s whole episcopate has been tainted by ‘jiggery-pokery’ including coming to Malawi under a cloud of embezzlement charges incurred in Zambia. Later he was lauded and hosted expensively (for them) by schismatic conservative Episcopal factions in the United States for his trumpeting of an enthusiastic anti-gay line. Subsequently he has been quietly dropped as a spokesman as more and more unpalatable revelations have emerged. Acting Dean Albert Chama: The Church Times article continues ‘Bishop Chama’s own appointment as Dean was viewed with caution in many quarters’ (Chama was Malango’s choice after he sacked the then Dean Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana) ‘As Bishop of Northern Zambia, he (Chama) was one of two assessors appointed by the Archbishop of Central Africa who has now retired, the Most Revd Bernard Malango, to the trial of Nolbert Kunonga on 38 charges including incitement to murder. The other assessor was the retired Bishop of Lusaka, the Rt Revd Leonard Mwenda who Malango later tried to impose on the diocese of Lake Malawi. (NB. Readers will remeber that Mwenda was quickly chased out the diocese by the laity) The Church Times article also recalls Malango’s now infamous dismissal of trail charges against Kunonga when he “dismissed the charges and declared that the matter was closed and could not be revived”. The article continues, “Since being made Dean of the Province, Bishop Chama has had to deal with the consequences of that decision, in the continuing stand-off with Kunonga and mounting violence against Anglican churches in Zimabwe” (all 58 churches were subject to police intimidation last Sunday,again according to the Church Times). Time for a change? ANGLICAN-INFORMATION comments that in the circumstances Bishop Albert Chama’s position as Dean of the Province is becoming untenable. His close association with Malango, the loss of confidence in and complete distrust of him, especially in Malawi, his habitual unwillingness to condemn the Mugabe regime and his notoriously autocratic style, means that he is unable to resolve what are becoming hideous problems. He should step down quietly and be replaced by Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana who alone amongst the bishops has successfully negotiated with all parties and who remains one of the few respected episcopal ‘Fathers in God’. Failing something as radical we can only predict endless reports like this one from us and the international press cataloguing the tragic decline of the Anglican Central African Province into ecclesiastical anarchy. ...............END.............
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