Editorial Comment: It is not too late to rescue St Augustine’s

have led to the present crisis. When the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican religious order of priests, decided to withdraw its remaining staff in the early 1980s since it now believed St Augustine’s could stand on its own, the school reverted to direct control by the Anglican Diocese of Mutare. In retrospect this was a mistake.
The CR fathers had built and run the school over more than half a century. They had turned a small struggling mission station with a little primary school into one of the great educational institutions in Zimbabwe, fighting settler governments for the right to educate African boys to the highest level and mobilising donors to create suitable premises to do this.
It was not an ordinary mission school, and should not have been treated as such.
A better option in the early 1980s would have been to convert St Augustine’s into a trust type school, similar to the newer Bernard Mzeki. It could easily have kept its mission status, allowing it to use civil servants as teachers, thus helping to trim costs, but having an independent legal identity and being run by a board of governors. It could easily have retained its Anglican orientation.
If we understand the theory of missionary effort, and the reasons why the CR fathers decided to withdraw their staff, then at some stage what outsiders have developed has to be taken over and improved, and we stress the word improved, by local people.
Now the school appears to have become embroiled in the disputes between the independent Anglican Province of Zimbabwe and the Church of the Province of Central Africa, that part of the church in full communion with the worldwide Anglican Church.
We think much of the church dispute is simply a smokescreen over administration and fees.
The fees charged until this term were very low, around half of what similar schools such as St Ignatius were charging. Even the revised fees, approved at a meeting, were too low to maintain St Augustine’s as a top rural boarding school.
The diocese had allowed a parent’s body to have some control of funds, but US$6 000 went missing so that body was dissolved and, erroneously in our view, not replaced. The present administration is honest but appears detached from many parents.
This parental split and frustration appears to be made worse over confessional disputes.
All parents need to realise, for a start, that the church neither puts money into the school, except for some administrative oversight, nor takes anything out of the school.
Parents have to fund the school fully, but must accept that all the fee money remains with the school. The diocese is simply the legal responsible authority.
So how can St Augustine’s be rescued and be restored to its former glory?
We think it is not too late to convert it to an independent mission school, under its own board of governors.
Talent for that board, which will be unpaid like all such boards, will be easy to find. Old Augustinians can be found as CEOs of large public companies, as permanent secretaries in the civil service, as partners in major law and accountancy firms, and as leaders in many spheres of life.
In fact there are retired CEOs and professionals who got their start in life at St Augustine’s. So finding board members, and even finding an action team of retired men who know and love the school, is easy.
The diocese is unlikely to object, and in any case provisional measures can be put in place allowing the bishop to nominate some governors although as they retire they will be replaced by appointments by the rest of the board, as will all governors.
Such independence will achieve two purposes: it will mean that St Augustine’s will be treated as something special, not just an ordinary mission school, and it will ensure that there is a top-flight administration of people who are used to running huge organisations or providing high-levels of professional advice. Such men do not dip their hands into a till.
There are other solutions, such as a half-way house of advisory governors.
But whatever solution is chosen we think that it must involve the dedication and expertise of old boys of standing and it must reassure staff and parents that the school will be restored to its former standards and glory.