The Work In Zimbabwe
Profile by Dr CUTHBERT CHIDOORI
My First General Conference of the Assemblies of God
The Congress on Mission and Evangelism held in Durban
W F P Burton and some Congo Missionaries
Nicholas
Bekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu
– His Youthful Dreams
– His Preaching
- Bhengu and Education
- Bhengu and Money
- Miraculous Experiences
- Spiritual Happenings
- The Sanctifying Spirit of God
– His Departure
Bhengu’s “Isinthunzi”
- Government and Politics
– Some Faults, Virtues and the Burden
of His Heart
President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana
William
Frederick Mullan
The Fairview Assembly
Fred Mullan and the Gifts of the Spirit
A Miracle and a Vision
The Revival in Norwood
James E Mullan
Paul O Lange
William Branham in Durban
Oral Roberts in South Africa
Billy
Graham in Salisbury and Durban
The American Missionaries from Springfield, Missouri
C. Austin Chawner and the Portuguese Work
August Kast and the Mount Tabor Mission Station
Colin
La Foy and the Coloured Leadership
The Work in Zimbabwe
Mauritius and Reunion Island
Special
Answers to Prayer – 1
Special
Answers to Prayer – 2
A Beautiful Square with Good Vibes
Prayer and the Hippie Revival
The Young Turks
Tensions within the Group
The Split
of 1981 – Part One
The Split
of 1981 – Part Two
The Beginnings of the Faith Movement in South Africa
The Statement of September 1989
The Charismatic Renewal
The Start of the Pentecostal Revival World Wide and The Swedish Pentecostal Assemblies
Epilogue
APPENDIX 1 : How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit
APPENDIX 2 : The National Church by Nicholas Bhengu
APPENDIX 3 : Article from the Argus 5/02/1981
APPENDIX 4 : Pointers to the future of the Assemblies of God in the New South Africa (10/06/94)
In 1958 Jim Mullan transferred me from my home assembly in Durban to Salisbury (now Harare) to look after the Assembly there. At that time, there were a few black assemblies in Rhodesia. The Canadians had one or two missionary families there, but one could hardly talk of an established movement planted there. The General Executive of the South African Assemblies of God had passed a resolution that Nicholas Bhengu should spearhead a Gospel thrust into the territory to establish work there.
In 1958 Jim Mullan transferred me from my home assembly in Durban to Salisbury
(now Harare) to look after the Assembly there. At that time, there
were a few black assemblies in Rhodesia. The Canadians had one or two
missionary families there, but one could hardly talk of an established
movement planted there. The General Executive of the South African
Assemblies of God had passed a resolution that Nicholas Bhengu should
spearhead a Gospel thrust into the territory to establish work there.
With such an objective in mind, James Mullan appealed for money from the
assemblies working with him. I knew that a sum of 500 pounds had been collected.
In 1958, five hundred pounds was quite a substantial amount of money.
I resolved to bring Nicholas Bhengu into Rhodesia as soon as it could be
arranged. I asked him to come to establish a work in Salisbury and he agreed.
However there were practical barriers. Chiefly there was the need to get
permission from the Southern Rhodesian government for an evangelistic team
to come into Rhodesia. There was the obstacle of customs regulations, which
made it hard to bring in a large marquee, lorries, loudspeaker equipment
and so forth. The authorities I approached were not helpful.
One day I walked past a government building near Central Avenue where I
lived. I noticed that it housed the Native Affairs Department and that
the Minister was none other than Sir Edgar Whitehead, the Prime Minister
of Southern Rhodesia. Because of its importance, he also held the portfolio
of Native Affairs. A rather desperate thought struck me. Why not go directly
to him and appeal for his help? About three weeks after asking for an audience,
I was in his office to make my appeal. I told him about the ministry of
Nicholas Bhengu and his desire to come for a season to Southern Rhodesia.
Sir Edgar Whitehead was flanked by the chief man in his department, an
unsympathetic person whom I mentally classified as “a little Hitler”.
I had already had dealings with him and found him adamant and rock-solid
in his negative response to my entreaties.
The prime minister had a mild scholarly manner more suggestive of a Cambridge
don (which I believe he later became) than the director of a country even
then smouldering with revolutionary discontent. He asked me “What
do you want me to do for you?” The civil servant with him replied
for me sarcastically, “He wants you to bend the law for him”!
Sir Edgar did not reply but waited for my response. I told him what I wanted.
A few weeks later I received written permission for Nicholas Bhengu to
enter the country. There was a carte blanche permission to bring in a twenty
man team, and all the equipment needed! Moreover there was an unheard-of
consent for Nicholas Bhengu (a foreigner from South Africa) to purchase
a house in Highfields Native Township. God had opened all doors. Bhengu
and the team pitched a tent seating 1 000 people, and had a six weeks crusade
in November 1959. That was the start of the main part of the black work
of the Assemblies of God in Zimbabwe as it now is called.
~
One of the ironies of evangelistic work is that sometimes one receives
amazing favours from secular sources (as I did from Sir Edgar Whitehead)
but bitter opposition comes from elements within the church. The leading
missionary of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, a group who worked
in South Africa and Zimbabwe under the banner of the Assemblies of God,
was a certain Brother Bush. I asked for his help in setting up meetings
for Nicholas Bhengu. He surprised me with his negative response. His viewpoint
was that he was the missionary in the country. He said, “If Bhengu
comes to preach and then withdraws to South Africa again, I will support
it totally; but I am opposed to his coming to Rhodesia to establish a work
here”. The fact of the General Executive’s decision for Bhengu
to come did not seem to matter to him. I went forward without his help.
This meant a variety of things had to be seen to: A place to pitch the
tent; putting up posters advertising the crusade; obtaining a church site
to erect a place of worship for the expected inflow of converts from the
crusade. I had to do this and much more, alone, even to the point of trudging
around Highfields Township placing posters in shops and wherever I could.
I had the chagrin of seeing ill-disposed persons tear down posters as soon
as my back was turned. Nevertheless in the main many stayed up, and when
the crusade opened, the tent was full.
At that time there was a young American missionary who held Assemblies
of God credentials but who conducted his work independently. It is better
that I do not mention his name because he had a famous and godly father.
For reasons that seemed good to him he decided to drop the Assemblies of
God credentials and link up with the Full Gospel Church. He had been granted
a church site in Highfields in the name of the Assemblies of God.
One day I visited the office of the township manager in Highfields. When
he saw me, he pushed a letter towards me and said, “Read this!” It
was from the young missionary, who said he was withdrawing from the Assemblies
of God because Nicholas Bhengu was a communist. He asked that the church
site he had applied for be given to the Full Gospel Church, which he was
joining.
In a half century of ministry I have found that God seems to work in my
life by bringing to my notice things I should know and act upon in events
brought about in an apparently natural way. This was one such case. I took
the letter straight to the Prime Minister’s office. I gave it to
the previously hostile civil servant I have mentioned. Now he was friendly
and bland. He read the letter and said, “But this is nonsense!” He
picked up his phone and in a few words to his township manager at Highfields,
the matter was settled. A potentially damaging situation was thus defused.
I left the office musing cynically on the mentality in some people who
see no harm in scurrilous power-play when one would expect from them some
display of brotherly love, not to mention integrity.
~
In due course a church was erected on the site in Highfields. The white
assembly in Salisbury responded zealously to the formation of a black congregation
through the ministry of Nicholas Bhengu. They contributed the cost of the
steel church structure and actually did much of the physical work in erecting
it.
The Highfields meetings were a great success. Many decisions for Christ
were made, and numbers of unsettled leaders of small groups of African
Christians were attracted by Brother Bhengu’s ministry and reputation.
Some of these would turn out to be a disappointment.
~
When he returned to South Africa, Brother Bhengu left certain of his henchmen
in Salisbury to shepherd the work. I myself played no direct role but I
assisted in every way that I could without getting involved in the administration
of the African assemblies.
One minister whom Brother Bhengu appointed was a Brother Xaba. Xaba had
been converted in a tent crusade in the Eastern Cape. In his unsaved days
he had got involved in a brawl and stabbed a man to death. Once converted
he confessed his crime to Nicholas Bhengu who persuaded him to confess
to the police. Xaba was charged with murder, found guilty, but given a
suspended sentence.
I spent a lot of time with Xaba who at that time was a young bachelor about
to be married. He had a room on our property. To my surprise, I found he
was totally unused to the African bush. I had assumed that every black
man in Africa was well-informed concerning the wildlife of our country,
but despite having grown up in the Transkei my friend Xaba had never in
his life even seen a baboon.
I became greatly concerned for him. I warned him about malaria and I dosed
him with anti-malarial drugs. I warned him about bilharzia, saying that
if he so much as dipped his finger into one of the Rhodesian rivers he
might get the bilharzia worms lodging in his veins and possibly even in
his brain. Alas, my solicitude left him appalled.
Even before Nicholas Bhengu left Salisbury with his team, Xaba’s
peers learnt of what was a veritable phobia against mosquitoes that Xaba
had developed. One mischievous fellow took to teasing him whenever he came
near by uttering a “ZZZZing” in middle C in imitation of a
gravid blood-hungry female mosquito. Xaba became incensed. Brother Bhengu
had to personally intervene in the furious row that eventually erupted.
We sent Xaba to Livingstone for a few weeks on some mission for the church.
In Livingstone two dear lady missionaries took Xaba under their wing. One
day they gave him a joyride alongside the great Zambezi River, one of the
wonders of Africa. They came upon a herd of hippo in the river who obligingly
opened their great mouths displaying huge tusks and grunting loudly across
the water. Xaba was impressed indeed but not as the ladies expected him
to be. As far as the Rhodesias went, he wanted out. He said of Livingstone, “This
is a dangerous place!”
One night Brother Bhengu and I sat in Livingstone with Xaba in my VW Beetle
discussing his antipathy to the African bush. Xaba pleaded to be sent home,
pleaded with tears. Nicholas Bhengu expostulated, “Agh, Xaba you
weep like a woman.” But Xaba had to be sent home. His nerve was completely
gone. He later left the Assemblies of God ministry to join the Dutch Reformed
Church where he got a larger salary. The last I heard of him he had been
in politics and had actually become vice-president of the Ciskei. The stress
of politics must have weighed heavily on him for the dear brother, who
had become excessively fat, suffered a heart attack and died. He was a
likeable and promising young brother who failed in his ministry through
a weak nerve and material interests.
~
Had Nicholas Bhengu been able to find a capable leader to represent him
in Rhodesia after the Highfields Crusade, the work could have rocketed
from strength to strength after such a flying start. As it was, not only
Xaba but several others whom Bhengu trusted to represent him, proved to
be disappointments. After a while tensions rose between various segments
of the work. Nicholas Bhengu kept in touch with the assemblies by visiting
Rhodesia frequently, having seminars, conferences and meetings with potential
leaders. A number of his ministers were poorly educated men, operating
in the townships and rural areas, - not promising material out of which
to build a national leadership. However, through his preaching certain
well-educated young men were added to the assemblies. Brother Bhengu throughout
his ministry had an eye for young men whom he could shape into leaders.
He took the young men in Salisbury and gave them the task of helping him
to organise the wider work from a central office in Salisbury. With hindsight
one can testify that his strategy proved successful. Today some of those “youngsters” have
grown into successful professional men, totally loyal, sold out to the
work and dynamic spiritual leaders. Twenty or thirty years ago the prominence
he gave to “the organisers” as he called them, provoked considerable
jealousy and opposition not only from the more traditional pastors but
from missionaries and white ministers as well. Tensions and petty disputes
in the black assemblies in Rhodesia (or Zimbabwe as it became) were chronic.
Even Nicholas Bhengu could not eliminate them.
I do not know how the Canadian Assemblies began in Rhodesia. When I got
to Salisbury in 1958, Brother Bush was already there, and the Canadians
had a Bible school registered in the name of the Assemblies of God. In
about 1955 Jim Mullan had started a white assembly in Salisbury, posting
Charles Enerson there as the first minister. About two years later Charles
Enerson moved away to pioneer assemblies on the Copper-Belt in Northern
Rhodesia (now Zambia).
With the help of Don Normond, a young protégé from the Salisbury
Assembly, he founded five new congregations, one in each of the Copperbelt
towns. A few years later Northern Rhodesia was given political independence.
Most whites left the region, many receiving what was termed the “golden
handshake” from the mines. As a consequence, all Charles Enerson’s
Copperbelt assemblies dissolved and he returned to South Africa. Those
were certainly days of turmoil.
~
In Southern Rhodesia political tension grew more and more intense, but
somehow the work of the Assemblies, both black and white advanced in spite
of tensions. Yet all the time the lack of a commanding local figure in
the black work left a gap. There was progress but not much co-operation
from the missionaries. At length Brother Bush the Canadian missionary,
led his section of the work out of the Assemblies of God. Unfortunately
he wanted to split from us yet keep the name, “Assemblies of God”.
Of course this was quite unethical, since by that time there were a number
of white assemblies to consider as well as the majority of black assemblies
in Zimbabwe.
The black assemblies under Brother Bush were sponsored by the Pentecostal
Assemblies of Canada who were working in South Africa and Rhodesia under
the umbrella of the Assemblies of God.
I was shocked at the attitude of the Canadians. It seemed unbrotherly,
arrogant and unethical. In fact it was unexpected in the light of the good
co-operation we had always had in South Africa with such Canadian missionaries
as Austin Chawner, Jack Skinner, Bernard Hunter and others, not to mention
the mature leadership of Brother Upton who for many years was the Missionary
Superintendent in Canada. I protested in a letter to Brother Carmen Lynn,
the Missionary Superintendent at the Toronto headquarters of the Pentecostal
Assemblies of Canada. He had replaced Brother Upton. His reply left me
in no doubt that I was dealing with a man of a different stamp from Upton.
He coolly told me that the Canadian Field Counsel in Rhodesia had made
the decision to keep the name “Assemblies of God” and that
was that. Unacceptable as this was, I saw no way out of the dilemma this
placed us in. But God worked through the ineptitude of a certain Brother
Myers, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada missionary in charge of the
Canadian Bible School located in Umtali. He took it upon himself to approach
the Umtali Town Council to alter the registration of the Bible school from “Assemblies
of God” to “Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada”. This was
quite improper as such a change would have to be authorised by the South
African Assemblies of God General Executive. Myers’ action added
confusion to confusion.
One night I went to bed deeply troubled by the situation. It must be true that
in our subconscious mind there is a kind of computer that keeps on working even
in the unconscious hours of sleep. That night I woke up laughing. The solution
had come to me in my sleep clearly, simply and effective as a check-mate move
in a game of chess. As soon as I could I arranged on behalf of the General Executive
to give the necessary ratification for the proposed change. The town clerk of
Umtali wrote me a nice letter thanking me for my gracious co-operation. And the
Canadians had unwittingly saddled themselves with their own name, The Pentecostal
Assemblies of Canada. Thereafter I received a curt and somewhat surly letter
from Mr. Lynn telling me they were dropping the name “Assemblies of God” in
favour of “The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada”. “I hope you
are satisfied” he said. I heard that Myers the missionary was incensed.
He said that John Bond knew very well what he was doing all the time. Which indeed
was true.
I must confess that the attitude of Brother Bush supported by Brother Lynn from
their head office was quite out of character with that of the Canadian missionaries
I had always known. Perhaps a problem emanated from Brother Bush on the local
field. The official backing he got from Canada might illustrate how impossible
it is to direct a local field like Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) or South Africa from an
office desk 5 000 miles away in Canada.
~
I have never fully been able to understand the disunity that has marred the work
of the Assemblies of God throughout its history. Was it a manifestation of tribalism?
Was it a matter of personal ambition? Was it a root of rebelliousness that kept
springing up? Why were expatriate missionaries so often at loggerheads with the
black leadership and indeed with James Mullan and the work he brought into being
among the whites? Was there some sociological principle at work to make it a
necessity? Could it be caused by “ecclesiastical colonialism”? One
can only feel relieved that those tensions now seem to be passed and gone.
When Nicholas Bhengu passed away in 1985, the friction that had plagued the black
Zimbabwean Assemblies in his lifetime continued with no one of sufficient stature
to control it. The power struggle that ensued spilled over into the white work
in Zimbabwe.
Before Nicholas Bhengu died, the Rhodesian Assemblies had, with the blessing
of the South African executive formed their own conference independent of South
Africa. They had ratified a Rhodesian (later Zimbabwean) constitution that closely
paralleled our South African AOG constitution. It stipulated that there should
be a conference every two years at which an executive had to be elected to function
for the following two years until the next conference.
Only one such conference was ever held in the following 12 years. It took place
in 1987. An executive was elected with a certain Dr Cuthbert Chidoori as chairman.
Cuthbert was one of the young men Bhengu had installed to lead the work as organisers.
Geoffrey Mkhwanazi, the previous chairman, refused to accept the results of the
1987 election. He insisted on recognising the 1985 executive of which he was
chairman and not the 1987 executive. He resisted all efforts to call conferences
as the Assemblies Constitution required. An impasse resulted. The consequent
split in the African assemblies has only recently been healed. A conference and
election took place in 1998 so that now at last the Assemblies of God in Zimbabwe
has one conference and one executive. The newly elected executive has graciously
made Geoffrey Mkhwanazi their chairman. This healing, for which God be thanked,
has been the result of much diplomacy and spiritual input from certain persons
in South Africa and from the co-operation of the young leaders in Zimbabwe. The
present crop of leaders are bye and large the young men who Nicholas Bhengu encouraged
when he was alive by making them organizers of his work. They have matured into
significant leaders of growing stature. The division that spilled over into the
white assemblies in Zimbabwe from the divisions in the black work has not been
so readily healed.
After independence in Zimbabwe, the white ministers and elders became nervous
about any official connection with apartheid South Africa. They also rebelled
at being accountable to a largely black executive. It was more than the white
Rhodesians could stomach to cooperate with certain African leaders who had been “engaged
in the struggle”. The white work which had been built up in Rhodesia over
30 years disintegrated. Today nothing remains of the white assemblies, once thriving
under Jim Mullan’s leadership and that of his successors.
Nevertheless it is gratifying that a substantial number of black assemblies exist
with enlightened, dynamic African men leading. Connections with South Africa
are welcomed. There are about 70 thriving black congregations in Matabeleland,
Mashonaland and Manicaland.