Political tension has so deeply penetrated life in this southern African country that when Tendai Mahachi kneels down to receive communion he is making a partisan statement according to the Global Post:
“I do not come here to indicate that I am hostile to President Robert Mugabe,’’ said the regular of St. Mary’s and All Saints Anglican Cathedral in downtown Harare, “but everything you do in Zimbabwe places you on one side or other of the political divide.’’
Along with about 60 people, Mahachi, a 40-year-old businessman, was attending a noon Sunday service in the car park of the capital’s cathedral. The altar was a fold-up table and the officiating priests fetched their vestments from the trunks of their cars, before producing chalices and wafers from a picnic basket. The oak doors of the 76-year-old stone cathedral remained locked, as they have been, intermittently, for nearly two years — ever since Bishop Nolbert Kunonga was sacked by the Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa.
Acrimony is bitter between Kunonga and his replacement, Bishop Chad Gandiya. Over Christmas, police acting for Kunonga threatened residents in townships near the capital, telling them they would be beaten if they attended churches loyal to Gandiya.
h/t to Jim Simons.