adminLawrence Chitumba Review Writer
On October 25 1928 at Holy Cross Mission in Chirumanzu District, Midlands Province, a woman called Saramina gave birth to a baby boy. She did not have much hope for her son’s survival beyond infancy so she called him Mamvura. “Mamvura means “child of water”. My mother had the notion that I was not going to survive beyond infancy. At that time most infants lost their lives to influenza. So if I died I was going to be buried in the muddy, wet marshy river banks,” the man who was that boy recalls.
Sure enough the little infant soon fell seriously ill with the dreaded influenza. The deeply devout Roman Catholic Saramina took her son to the parish priest for baptism so that when he died his soul would not be condemned to purgatory. Christened Paul, the little boy seemed to miraculously rally at the moment of baptism.
Eighty seven years later the frail little boy is still going strong. Weekly, thousands gather looking to him for deliverance from disease and other misfortunes. He leads over 1,5 million followers across Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
His name is Ernest Paul Mamvura Mwazha, the leader of the African Apostolic Church – Vapstora VeAfrica. His journey through the spiritual and temporal realms is captured in his biography; “The divine commission of Paul Mwazha of Africa – Part I and II”.
Mwazha started the Roman Catholic Catechism classes at the age of 11 but a year later when he started school it was at a Methodist school and he naturally turned to that church.
At the age of 12, Mwazha says he discovered the power of prayer.
He asked his mother to buy him a school jersey and she said no. He went to some rocks behind his family’s homestead and began to pray:
“Oh God, you who are my father. I have no father on this earth because you took him away. Please talk to my mother so that she feels sorry for me and she can give me the money I asked her to send to Harare for the jersey.”
His mother immediately called out to him to run an errand then get the money for the jersey on his return.
Mwazha went on to become a teacher within the Methodist Church in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
In 1953 a group of African evangelists from the church led a spiritual revival in the areas surrounding Sadza Growth Point.
The increasingly popular night prayer interdenominational sessions led by Paul Mwazha, during which healing and deliverance took place, were to become the bedrock of two churches in Zimbabwe. They also produced Bishop Loveless Matarirano Manhango, who started out as a founding reverend in the newly minted African Apostolic Church and would go on to found the Bethesda Apostolic Church.
During the all-night prayer sessions the evangelists extorted those who had turned to Christ to give up the accoutrements of their prior beliefs.
“We summoned all worshippers to bring their lucky charms, symbolic pieces of cloth that stood as garments of spirit mediums, animal horns adorned with beads and greased with raw fat; small axes, spears handed down from generation to generation and walking sticks held as symbols of Lordships binding families together. The connection of the dead to the living had to be dissipated by fire,” wrote Paul Mwazha in his biography.
A leader of the church, Reverend Wilson Rutsate, told The Herald Review that in spite of many myths that non-believers attribute to the church, there is no mysticism or any cult-like prohibitions on congregants.
“The African Apostolic Church advises its followers to get treatment at clinics and immunise their children and get contraceptive treatments from clinics and hospitals.
Reverend Rutsate said Paul Mwazha being an educationalist himself would not ask his followers to endanger their lives.
“His son, Masimba, is a medical doctor which shows that the church is not against scientific doctrines,” said Reverend Rutsate.
Congregates wear spotless white gowns to church with women expected to have their heads covered and their robes falling down to the ankles. On other days church members wear pastel coloured clothing with no colour embellishments. Both sexes are expected to wear long-sleeved tops. Women’s skirts must be loose and cover legs to mid-calf. Men fasten the top button on their shirts.
According to Paul Mwazha’s biography, his calling to the church was not a one day event but a series of revelations and visions that guided him right up to the formation of his church in 1959 and beyond.
In 1934, while in Standard Two Mwazha says the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him twice as a person in his sleep, he was almost real to life. He was flanked by two angelic figures and they were all clad in white long cloaks singing hymn 124 in the Methodist hymn book, 1940 edition.
In the second dream he was sitting on a rock, when he turned east he saw a group of African men dressed in long white gowns under the shade of a lush green tree singing praises to the Lord and a voice said to him, “Behold the Apostles of Jesus”. Turning slightly to the south he saw the lord sitting inside the rock reading a book with his face raised and facing the north and he exclaimed, “Ah Lord!”. When he woke up he was enveloped by the Holy Spirit.
In 1940 while in his final year training as a teacher at Howard Institute, he had another vision which is perhaps the guiding light to his ministry. He saw from a clear sky an inscription “recreation of Africa”. And a voice from God said to him, “Write to the students at universities so they can come and help you with the work of recreating Africa.”
Up to this day his motto is “The recreation of Africa by the word of God”. Paul Mwazha says he has eschewed personal aggrandisement in the preference of spreading the word of God.
He says in 1942 an angel appeared to him in broad day light while teaching at Gweshe in Chiweshe. He had just dismissed the school kids when the angel of the Lord came to him saying, “Child, do you want personal wealth?”. To that questions he says he replied, “No, I would rather have the church instead of wealth so that I may build the church of Christ”.
Mwazha maintains a modest personal life up to this day. For almost 56 years he has not trimmed his beard, a vow he took when he founded the church.
Reverend Rutsate says at 87 Mwazha’s health and clarity of mind is legendary. Whenever Mwazha is expected to address a church gathering thousands of people turn up.
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