The season of pilgrimages is upon Africa; a few days ago the world observed as Uganda successfully hosted the Uganda Martyrs Day celebrations at the Anglican Shrine in respect to the 23 Anglican converts who were executed in 1885 by the then king of Buganda, Kabaka Mwanga.
In a typical upscale manner, the Anglican Church of Zimbabwe will mark the 121st anniversary of African Christian missionary and martyr Bernard Mizeki in a grand style as pilgrims from the St. Bernard Mizeki Men’s Guild (BMMG) in the Johannesburg Diocese will travel to Marondera where the martyr was last seen before he was savagely slain for his unflagging faith and belief.
This year’s BMMG Patronal Festival will start from the 15th to the 17th June. All members of the Guild in all dioceses and members of the Anglican Church in all the provinces of Southern Africa are invited to be part of this celebration.
Born Mamiyeri Mitseka Gwambe in Inhambane, Mozambique, Bernard Mizeki was raised in a traditional fashion. As a lad, he did some work in a store run by a Portuguese enterprise and mastered how to speak Portuguese. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, he moved with a cousin to the Cape Colony where he took a new name, “Barns”, and various jobs as a labourer and house attendant.
Mizeki was later christened through the work of the Cowley Fathers’ Mission, and principally the night school run by German missionary Baroness Paula Dorothea von Blomberg. He and five others were some of the first converts, baptised in St Philip’s Mission, Sir Lowry Road, on 7 March 1886.
Shortly thereafter, Bernard, 25, started work at St Columba’s Hostel, which was run by the missionaries for African men. Within a few months, he was sent to Zonnebloem College to train as a catechist. In January 1891, he accompanied the new missionary bishop of Mashonaland, George Wyndham Knight-Bruce, as a lay catechist and medical worker in Zimbabwe, then called Southern Rhodesia.
He was assigned to work in the Marandellas (renamed Marondera) and settled in the kraal of Mungati Mangwende. Mizeki erected his home there and secured a reputation as a teacher. He took children who wanted to learn into his home to teach them the gospel, and travelled around the countryside, and to the bishop’s residence in Umtali to aid with translations.
In March 1896, Mizeki married Mutwa (later “Lily”), an orphaned granddaughter of the Mangwende and a Christian convert. African Anglican priest Rev. Hezekiah Mtobi, recently arrived from South Africa officiated the ceremony. Mizeki was then admitted into the Mangwende’s kinship network, which some resented. Also, he crusaded against drunkenness and tribal practices including the killing of twin babies and the severe treatment of individuals charged of sorcery.
With the Mangwende’s approval, Mizeki moved his expanding community (several families, as well as young boys he was entrusted to teach), about two miles. They resettled across the river in a fertile area with a spring, but also near a sacred grove which was believed to be inhabited by spirits of the tribe’s ancestral lions. Rather than making offerings to such spirits, Mizeki made the sign of the cross in the air, and carved crosses on some trees, and later felled some trees while preparing a field to plant wheat.
The Ndebele folks had taken up arms against the British South Africa Company, and in March 1896 the Matabeleland Rebellion spread into Mashonaland. Southern Africa had been experiencing drought and locust plagues, which led to famine. Resentment against the British and their taxes and obligatory inoculations simmered, inflamed by orders to kill and burn infected cattle.
Although missionary workers were being ordered to safety, Mizeki refused to leave, rationalising that his absent bishop’s orders to stay could not be overruled and that he had recently extended hospitality to an incapacitated elderly man.
On the night of 18 June 1896, Mizeki was dragged from his home and stabbed. Mutwa found him still alive and went for help. She and others reported seeing a great white light all over that place, and a loud noise “like many wings of great birds”. Bernard’s body had disappeared by their return. Mchemwa, a son of the Mangwende and an ally of the witch doctors, was later found responsible for Bernard’s murder and the destruction of the mission settlement there.
Bernard Mizeki’s work among the Shona bore fruit, beyond the posthumous daughter Mutwa bore. After long years of mission work in Mashonaland, the first Shona convert to be baptised was one of the young men whom Mizeki had taught: John Kapuya. John was baptised only a month after Mizeki’s death, on 18 July 1896. In 1899, a white Anglican priest returned to the area and re-established the mission, as well as a school. Today, Bernard Mizeki College stands close to where he lived, and the Mangwende’s kraal, above the village, is crowned with a large cross to commemorate Mizeki.
In the 1930s, a chapel was built on the site of Mizeki’s martyrdom and sanctified in a great ceremony in June 1938. On the fiftieth jubilee of his death in 1946, an even larger celebration was held, attended by Mutwa and their daughter, and included a proclamation issued by Rhodesia’s governor.
Mizeki is honoured with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 18 June. His martyrdom is a commemoration in the Common Worship of the Church of England. The Anglican Church of Southern Africa commemorates Mizeki in its Calendar of remembrances and other significant days on the 18th day of June each year. The Anglican Church of Canada has a Memorial for Mizeki on this date.
In 1973, a church serving mostly Xhosa migrant workers was devoted to Bernard Mizeki in Paarl, South Africa. At the same time, the Bernard Mizeki Guild was established for Anglican laymen who sought a more intense, African-style worship life including all-night prayer vigils, healing, and sharing of dreams.
Composed largely of Xhosa-speaking migrant workers, Bernard Mizeki Guilds spread across South Africa. Guild members wear purple waistcoats, a special badge. Anglican migrant workers could identify with Bernard Mizeki as a fellow migrant who sacrificed himself for Christ.
Resource: Wikipedia