Mashonaland
Martyr (Part 1)
by Mike Oettle
SINCE the very
earliest years of the Church, Africa has figured in its history. A Jew from
what is now Libya – Simon of Cyrene – carried Jesus’ cross on the way to the
crucifixion. The conversion of an Ethiopian official appears early in the
story of Acts. Holy men and women from all parts of North Africa feature prominently in the early Church. But in Bantu-speaking Africa – that great region
stretching from the Eastern Cape to Kenya on the one hand and Cameroon on the
other – the Church was late in coming.
It was not until 1891 that a permanent mission was established in Mashonaland, the
eastern part of what is now Zimbabwe.
So when we look at 19th-century African witnesses for Christ, we find that they were often unschooled tribespeople about whom little is known except that they were new believers who were killed for refusing to honour the ancient religion – Manche Masemola and Maqhamusela Khanyile are two examples.
But Bernard Mizeki (died 18 June 1896) is different. Not only was he an exceptional man, an educated black Christian and a person of extraordinary faith, courage and humility, but his story has been collected and written down in a book[1] which not only reflects his life and times but shows, through careful sifting and weighing of the evidence, that this man was in every respect a true Christian martyr. No evidence of miracles has been produced, but since the Anglican Communion neither canonises saints as the Roman Catholic Church does, nor requires miracles as proof of sainthood, this is not a requirement. In any case, since Bernard lived in an era when people were not encouraged to believe that miracles could be wrought by (or through) living Christian believers, it is unlikely that any could be attributed to him in life.
Bernard was not originally his name. Born about 1861 in the Inhambane[2] district of Mozambique, he was Mamiyeri, son of a Gwambe tribesman named Mitseka, and would have been called Mamiyeri Mitseka Gwambe. As a boy he chose to go into exile with a party of older cousins and took ship with them to Cape Town, where he worked in Rondebosch[3] and gave his name as Barns. (His own name he would have kept secret, out of superstitious fear.) In his early 20s he began
attending a night school run for the Cowley Fathers[4] in Woodstock[5] by a German lady, the Baroness Paula Dorothea von Blomberg. The Fräulein (as she was known) noticed him as a bright youngster, willing to learn and responsive to the Christian message. When in due course he was among the first to be baptised at St Philip’s Mission, Sir Lowry Road (7 March 1886), she stood as his godmother. At baptism he took the name Bernard; his surname appears suddenly as Mizeki,[6] and these names he kept.
Shortly after his baptism Bernard gave up his job in Rondebosch and became the voluntary, unpaid (at his request) “houseboy” at St Columba’s Hostel, a residential home for African men off Sir Lowry Road. Here he showed a capacity for evangelism, and after a few months he was sent to Zonnebloem College,[7] District Six, to be trained as a catechist. Not at first a promising student (except in the Fräulein’s eyes), he initially retained an African mistrust towards answering questions, but later became the college’s star pupil.
Then in
January 1891, the Right Rev George William Knight-Bruce, formerly Anglican
Bishop of Bloemfontein and now appointed to the brand new Diocese of
Mashonaland, landed in Cape Town seeking volunteers for pioneer missionary
work. Bernard was one of two newly trained catechists from Zonnebloem who
responded.
I take up the story in the second article.
