Navigating “Tight Corners” of Christian Mission in Colonial Zimbabwe: Charles Mzingeli and the 1945 Land Apportionment Amendment

Brian Stanley notably pointed out that the role of Christian missions during the early twentieth-century end of British empire has been largely overlooked (2003). In part, this oversight can perhaps be attributed to the fact that Christian missions were criticized in the transition to nationalism; in the context of Zimbabwe, many black nationalists parties beginning in the 1960s retaliated specifically against Christian missions for their perceived colonial ties. Nonetheless, there is a consensus among mission historians and World Christianity scholars that Christian missions’ education initiatives played an important role in the birth of such nationalist, independence movements.

This paper aims to examine the black Southern Rhodesian Charles Mzingeli (b.1905-1980) as a Christian mission-educated politician navigating this liminal space between the end of British imperialism and before an emerging black Zimbabwean nationalism, between Christian missions and anti-Christian mission sentiment. While some scholarly attention has been paid to Mzingeli (notably Ranger 1970; West 2002; Scarnecchia 2008), his political efforts have been somewhat passed over because he was mission-educated and was not a member of a nationalist party. At the same time, those scholars trying to recover Mzingeli’s significance to nationalism have overlooked his entanglement in the Christian mission context. To explore these religio-political tensions, I particularly turn to Mzingeli’s collaboration with the Anglican missionary Arthur Shearly Cripps to oppose the 1945 Amendment to the Land Apportionment Act. What emerges from Mzingeli’s negotiations is the assertion of a black Southern Rhodesian “imperial citizenship.” Building on John Lonsdale’s understanding of Africans working in the limiting “tight corners” of action under imperialism (2000), this paper asks: how did Mzingeli navigate the “tight corners” of Southern Rhodesia politics alongside the “tight corners” of the heritage of Christian mission? How does “imperial citizenship” both utilize mission-education and also challenge Christian missionary bodies? 

Although Southern Rhodesia came under “self-governance” in 1923, the British Government maintained the constitutional power of what was colloquially referred to as the “Imperial Veto;” the imperial power to prohibit any law from passing that treated black Southern Rhodesians differently from their white counterparts–excluding those laws regulating the sale of firearms, ammunition, and liquor. Thus when legislation touched on Rhodesian “Native Policy,” invariably there was opposition between British humanitarian-minded imperialists and the white Southern Rhodesians who resented external involvement. The 1945 Land Apportionment Amendment was no exception. In 1945, the white settler government of Southern Rhodesia attempted to pass an amendment to an earlier segregationist Land Apportionment Bill from 1930. The 1945 proposed amendment would tighten land segregation further by disallowing white settlers to rent out land to black Southern Rhodesians. Much scholarship has explored the political tensions between British Imperialism and Rhodesian Nationalism over the “Native Policy.” But I aim to highlight how the Christian mission context shaped these conversations.

As a former student of the Roman Catholic Empadndine mission, Mzingeli established the African Branch of the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party in 1941. As head of the Branch, from 1944 to 1946, Mzingeli collaborated with Cripps to utilize their metropolitan Labour connections. They began a correspondence campaign to pressure the Fabian Colonial Bureau (FCB) of the British Labour Party to enact the Imperial Veto. Utilizing the archives of the FCB and the National Archives of Zimbabwe, this paper will read this transnational correspondence in conversation with their personal writings. How did Mzingeli fruitfully collaborate with the Anglican missionary Cripps on the one hand, while working against the opposition of some Christian mission organizations on the other?

Importantly, Christian missions were also divided on the British imperial and settler-nationalists debate. Cripps’ protest to the 1945 Amendment exemplifies missionary efforts to utilize British imperialism to fight discrimination. Reading Cripps’ printed and manuscript writings from the period can indicate how Cripps believed in, and advocated for, an imperially-bent Christian Socialism. Cripps like other Christian Socialists saw God’s preference for the oppressed against commercial exploitation. Moreover, Cripps advocated that British citizens are owed the British King’s divinely appointed power of protection. Thus black Southern Rhodesian “imperial citizens” should also be extended this imperial protection. Contrastingly, other white Christian missionaries such as Percy Ibbotson, the Organizing Secretary of the Federation of Native Welfare Societies, were wary of imperial involvement in what they considered strictly Rhodesian affairs of “Native Policy.” At the same time that Cripps wrote to encourage FCB involvement, Ibbotson wrote to them protesting their involvement and admonishing Mzingeli. Such missionary opposition makes Mzingeli equally suspicious of Christianity as he is of the white settler State. 

Reading Mzingeli’s SRLP political memorandum and later biographical interviews can evidence how Mzingeli engaged with Cripps’ Christian Socialism while also refuting other Christian missionaries’ settler-nationalist opinions. Moreover, scholars have yet to explore Mzingeli’s own religious beliefs. Analyzing his 1970/1971 interviews with University College of Rhodesia scholars can provide insight into how the Christian mission and churches’ political responses inevitably shaped his faith—leading him to eventually abandon his Catholic upbringing and instead describe himself as a “non-denominational Christian.” Mzingeli’s invocation of the “imperial citizenship” in his correspondence with the FCB therefore illustrates an important case study to explore how black Southern Rhodesians operated in the unusual “tight corners” of imperialism, nationalism, and Christian mission heritage—and how this navigation shaped their own Christian beliefs. 

Cited Sources:

Brian Stanley and Alaine Low (eds). Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003).

Terence Ranger, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia, 1898-1930 (London: Heinemann Educational, 1970)

Michael West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965 (Indiana University Press, 2002)

Timothy Scarnecchia, The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940–1964 (Boydell & Brewer, 2008).

John Lonsdale, “Agency in Tight Corners: Narrative and Initiative in African History,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (June 1, 2000)