Background
Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa was born on April 14, 1925 in Umtali, Manicaland, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa was born on April 14, 1925 in Umtali, Manicaland, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Muzorewa was the eldest of a lay preacher's eight children and was educated at the United Methodist School, Old Umtali, near Mutare. He was a school teacher at Mrewa between 1943 and 1947 before becoming a full-time lay preacher at Mtoko between 1947 and 1949. He then studied theology at Old Umtali Biblical College (1949–1952) and was ordained as a Minister at Umtali in August 1953.
With a scholarship in theology at Missouri School of Religion, Columbia, USA, in August 1958 he moved on the following year to the Central Methodist College, Fayette, Missouri, where he graduated with an MA in Philosophy and Religion in 1962. He pursued his studies at Scarritt College, Nashville, Tennessee and graduated in June 1963 with MA in Christian Education.
In July 1963 he became pastor at Old Umtali and a year later was appointed National Director of the Christian Youth Movement. Seconded to the Christian Council in 1966 he became Secretary of the Student Christian Movement. On August 28, 1968, he was consecrated Bishop of Rhodesia in the United Methodist Church at Maseru, Botswana.
After much travelling in Africa to Zambia, Ghana, Liberia and Angola he was banned on September 4, 1970, from going into Rhodesia’s Tribal Trust lands where most of his 55,000 ad-herents live. In April 1971 he was stopped at the Mozambique border on his way to a church conference, declared a prohibited immigrant and forced to return to Salisbury in a cattle train.
His first visit to Britain in February 1972 after rallying immense support for ANC in Rhodesia drew a crowd of 100 people in Trafalgar Square,
London. He told them: ‘‘The only time I feel a person is when I am not in my own country.” After being in hospital with stomach trouble in September 1972 he was about to revisit London when his passport was seized by the Rhodesian authorities. Yet Mr Lance Smith, Interior Minister, invited him for secret talks about a Rhodesian settlement in October 1972.