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Email to FriendCENTRAL AFRICA: Renegade Anglican cleric praises Mugabe as 'prophet of God'
"As the Church we see the president with different eyes," the dismissed Harare Bishop Nolbert Kunonga told ruling party supporters at a campaign rally for deputy information minister Bright Matonga, held in Mhondoro-Ngezi, west of the Zimbabwe capital.
"To us he is a prophet of God who was sent to deliver the people of Zimbabwe from bondage. God raised him to acquire our land and distribute it to Zimbabweans. We call it democracy of the stomach," said Kunonga. "There is no government without the soil."
Kunonga was stripped of his licence as a bishop early this year after he attempted to withdraw his diocese from the Anglican Province of Central Africa over what he said was its failure to condemn the ordination of homosexual bishops.
Despite being relieved of his position, Kunonga has refused to hand over church assets to his successor Bishop Sebastian Bakare who was installed in February as the new bishop. Kunonga has formed his own splinter diocese with a handful of followers.
The majority of the parishioners at the main cathedral in the capital have been holding their Sunday services outside the building where a group aligned to Kunonga is forcefully denying them entry.
Kunonga has made no secret of his support of Mugabe and has endorsed the Zimbabwe government's controversial land redistribution program under which nearly all the country's white farmers and their laborers were driven off their land.
The program was meant to give farmland to peasants who were living on overcrowded portions of land but critics say the main beneficiaries were members of the ruling elite.
The land reforms characterized by violent takeovers also left destitute thousands of farm workers, many of foreign descent, according to unions. Kunonga was the beneficiary of one of the farms.
Kunonga is among members of Mugabe's Zanu-PF ruling party elite who are banned from traveling to the European Union or the United States under limited sanctions, which were imposed on nominated party officials following Zimbabwe's presidential elections in 2002 which the opposition and many independent observers said were rigged.
In his address to ruling Zanu-PF supporters, Kunonga said that sanctions were hurting the entire country, although some Zimbabwean church leaders have advocated stronger sanctions against due to gross human rights atrocities they say that abound in their country.
"As the church we are totally against sanctions for they are destroying our country," said Kunonga. Zimbabwe will hold joint presidential, parliamentary and local council elections on March 29 in which Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, is seeking a sixth term.
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