When seven Zimbabweans announced on October 4 that they would sue the Church of England for enabling the brutal abuse they suffered at the hands of John Smith, a leading figure in the evangelical movement, their action was not just about justice for the past. It was an indictment of an organization that never considered the violence it spread under the banner of faith.
Smith was not a lone predator. He was part of the church’s powerful inner circle. A respected British barrister and evangelical leader, he oversaw Christian camps in Britain, Zimbabwe and South Africa where more than 100 boys and young men were abused. He personified authority and social privilege that protected him from scrutiny. When reports of his abuse first surfaced in the UK in the early 1980s, the church chose silence over accountability and allowed his atrocities to be carried over to Africa. In Zimbabwe, his victims were boys from Christian camps, including Nyachuru, a 16-year-old guide whose body was found in the camp’s swimming pool in 1992. More than 30 years later, Nyachuru’s family, along with six other survivors, has filed a lawsuit against the church, seeking accountability for both the abuse and the church’s willful inaction.
That history is now troubling the church once again. What began as a cover-up for one man’s crimes became a symbol of a much older truth. The authority of the Church of England in Africa was by no means solely spiritual. It was built on conquest, collusion, and the sanctification of empire.
On November 7, 2024, the Makin Review, an independent investigative body set up to investigate abuse by Smith, released its long-awaited findings. The report was terrible. The report revealed that church leaders systematically covered up his crimes for decades, treating him like a “settled problem exported to Africa.”
Four days later, Archbishop Justin Welby resigned, accepting both personal and institutional responsibility for what survivors described as a decades-long conspiracy of silence. His resignation became a symbolic moment of accountability, but it brought little solace to those who had endured Smith’s brutality. With Sarah Mulally now appointed archbishop, survivors are calling on the church to use this transition as an opportunity for real responsibility, rather than another expression of regret.
The church’s failings in Smith were not just moral lapses. These were modern reflections of the empire’s habit of exporting problems to its colonies and protecting its domestic privileges. The logic of domination that once justified conquest also made silence possible.
My family grew up in the long shadow of the Church of England.
In the 1950s, my father attended St. Augustine’s High School in Penhalonga, Manicaland. This high school was one of the oldest and most respected Anglican schools in Zimbabwe. His older brother also studied there and later became the famous Anglican priest, teacher and headmaster of St Matthias Tsonzo in the 1970s.
I was baptized in the Anglican Church in Cambudsma and baptized in St Paul’s Church in Marlborough. So while I feel bound to the church, I am also deeply ashamed of that bond.
Like many others, I have never fully confronted its past and present atrocities. Upon gaining independence from Britain in April 1980, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, a devout Catholic, promoted a policy of reconciliation that called for forgiveness without truth and progress without justice. After decades of colonial rule, we were told to move forward, never to look back or ask who we were before the Berlin Conference of 1884.
In the 45 years since then, there has been no serious effort to hold the church accountable for its extensive role in the colonization of Zimbabwe.
In 1890, when Bishop George Knight-Bruce blessed the Pioneer Column, a British South Africa Company (BSAC)-funded militia to occupy Mashonaland and Matabeleland for the Empire, the Church of England positioned itself as a spiritual force of conquest.
Knight-Bruce and his successors viewed empire and missions as inseparable instruments of divine order. They acquired large tracts of land confiscated by BSAC while preaching salvation through submission to the colonial state.
By the turn of the 20th century, the Anglican Church had established missions at St. Augustine’s, St. Faith’s, and St. David’s (Bonda) in Manicaland. These were initially not schools but evangelical outposts, centers of conversion, settlement, and consolidation of colonial power, and later developed into major educational and medical institutions.
They also trained and trained African workers for the colonial economy, teaching obedience and hard work as Christian virtues in the service of the empire. The pulpit became a weapon of assimilation, the classroom an instrument of subtle erasure and indoctrination. In preaching and the Bible alike, conquest was camouflaged as enlightenment.
The colonization of Zimbabwe was essentially a commercial enterprise, and the Church of England profited morally, spiritually, and materially from the bloodshed of the local community. Children were taught to despise their own culture and submit to a higher British power. The missionary’s cross was next to the soldier’s rifle, each ensuring the success of the other. Conversion became another form of conquest.
This is the faith that has shaped generations of African Christians like me, conditioning us to rationalize Western domination as God’s plan.
This was not an anomaly in Zimbabwe.
Anglican missionaries were deeply involved in imperial invasions throughout Africa. In Kenya, for example, the church became part of a system of colonial violence and mass incarceration in the 1950s. The atrocities it enabled abroad were mirrored in Britain, sophisticated in appearance but ruthless in reality.
The same beliefs enabled Smith to abuse children in Zimbabwe under the banner of religion, while presenting the Church of England as a pillar of moral authority.
I attended a youth program in St. Paul on a Friday afternoon in the 1980s and was lucky to escape unscathed. Others were not so lucky. They endured Smith’s violence because British church leaders viewed African lives as disposable.
This official dehumanization was a direct result of the church’s refusal to confront its historical errors and reform its moral culture. Centuries of Anglican hypocrisy, entitlement, denial and racism, perfected on slave plantations and colonies, created Smith, the monster in Zimbabwe.
Today, despite my background, I no longer call myself an Anglican, or even a Christian. I haven’t set foot in an Anglican church for 16 years, and I never plan to.
Indeed, I no longer pray to the British God. My faith in the Church of England and its teachings was long ago and irreparably shattered.
I am no longer an atheist, but instead seek a faith, salvation, and identity rooted in the knowledge that we, the Manika people of Manicaland, had a path of faith long before colonization. What the church called civilization robbed our ancestors of their freedom, voice, and sacred connection to God.
To this day, the Church of England has done nothing to repair the damage it has done to Zimbabwe. Despite occasional expressions of regret, the country remains cautious and defensive about the crimes it has sanctioned in Africa, insisting it “makes no apologies for spreading the Gospel around the world.”
Now that Sarah Mulally has been selected as archbishop candidate, there is little indication that she intends to confront this legacy with the courage and candor that the church demands. Public expressions of repentance remain empty and histrionic.
But the church’s wealth, a fortune built over centuries of tithes, land grabs, slavery and imperial investment, now exceeds £11.1 billion ($14.8 billion). The empire-shaped church, despite its wealth, pious words, and purported moral leadership, still acts as if Africa’s pain deserves sympathy but not restorative justice.
Until we pay compensation for the stolen lands, pay reparations, and redeem what we have destroyed, the Church will continue to be, as always, the chief accomplice and immoral heir of the empire.
The case of Smith and the “Zimbabwe Seven” exposes the spiritual bankruptcy of an institution sustained by delusions of white divinity.
The Church of England owes Zimbabwe more than an apology. If that soul still exists, we have an obligation to liquidate it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
