Kunonga should resign – says Bishop of Botswana

tement issued exclusively to The Zimbabwean.
It comes soon after a synod of the Central Africa Province on September 8 in Malawi and an interview between Nolbert Kunonga and the state-controlled Herald newspaper on September 15 in which the Bishop of Harare boasted that he had delivered the deathblow to unity within the Province, comprising Anglican Christians from Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Bishop Trevor told The Zimbabwean that after Kunonga’s resignation, the See of Harare should then be declared vacant and a new Bishop elected. “The schematic group should not be under any illusion in thinking that they have title to the properties and various trusts legally vested in the Diocese of Harare”.
In the first really hard hitting Anglican response to Bishop Kunonga boasting about his ability to wreck the Anglican Communion in Central Africa, Bishop Trevor said that “false and hurtful ” statements had been made about him, giving the impression that this long-married Christian and father of three children is “an avowed homosexual.”
Bishop Trevor said he had to clear the air of “toxic misinformation” about the alleged break-up of the Central African Province. “The Province is safely intact,” he said, a reference to the Malawi Synod on September 8 when Kunonga and his supporters attempted to pull the diocese out of the Central Africa Province because of alleged Anglican support for homosexuals.
After the Provincial Synod, Kunonga tried to create the impression that Harare had withdrawn, prompting the Bishop of the Diocese of Central Zimbabwe, Ishmael Mukuwanda, to issue a statement, copied to all provincial Bishops, stating: “Recent print media reports in The Herald (Zimbabwe) seemed to imply that the Diocese of Central Zimbabwe is working together with the Diocese of Harare in their breakaway bid from the Church of the Province of Central Africa. This is completely untrue and irritating.”
The 46-year old Bishop of Botswana, who is seen in Canterbury and Lambeth Palace as a rising star on the Anglican horizon, went on to say that the Malawi Synod reaffirmed “to all and sundry” that it stands by the previous statements and the spirit of the Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution 1.10 as well as the Windsor Process of listening, dialogue and reconciliation. “To this effect the bishop of the Province of Central Africa will be attending the Lambeth Conference 2008 (in Canterbury).”
Bishop Trevor said this action of pulling out of the Province “has no legal basis in the Constitution and Canons of the Church of the Province of Central Africa.”
He added: “Reflecting on what transpired at Province Synod and what most delegates picked up was that the issue of homosexuality was simply a cover for the real underlying issue – a quest for power.”
Senior Anglican sources said Kunonga, with the full support of Robert Mugabe, was ambitious to set up a rival province to Central Africa and allow himself to be “elected” its first Archbishop.
Said Bishop Trevor: “The vicious slander that was being spread to tarnish the reputation of some bishops in the Province was, and is, intended to ensure that when the Electoral College meets to elect the next Archbishop of Central Africa these bishops will stand little chance of success.
Referring to Kunonga’s decision to pull out of Central Africa and his claim in The Herald that the province is “very weak” Bishop Trevor said : “It is ironic that he should make such a remark. When he was on trial for serious allegations against him, he benefited enormously when the Archbishop of Central Africa flagrantly short- circuited the due process of law by dismissing that case.”
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Lemombo in Mozambique, Dinis Sengulane, has told Christians meeting in London to get on with the real job of eradicating disease, ignorance, poverty and corruption in Africa.
Bishop Dinis also expressed confidence that all bishops of the Southern Africa Province would attend next year’s Lambeth Conference. Bishop Kunonga has not been invited to attend.