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Election Watch Issue 12 - 2012
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
December 11, 2012

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Kunonga loses Anglican case

THE Supreme Court ruling that renegade Anglican Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and his followers were no longer part of the Church Province of Central Africa and should hand over control of church properties to a rival faction led by Bishop Chad Gandiya made the headlines in the media towards the end of the month.

The ruling finally brought to an end a five-year battle for control of Anglican Church property in the Harare Diocese after Kunonga left the CPCA in 2007 to form the breakaway Anglican Church of the Province of Zimbabwe, ostensibly over the CPCA's alleged support for homosexuality.

While the state media and most of the private media's reports of the latest ruling and the subsequent eviction of Kunonga and his priests were generally balanced, the Daily News' reportage was largely sensational. The private daily repeatedly prefixed Kunonga with adjectives such as "disgraced", "defrocked", "deposed", "rogue" and "ex-communicated", apart from describing the Supreme Court ruling as a "deadly" and "devastating blow" to the "ZANU PF-aligned" clergyman (20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 & 30/11).

The Daily News' headlines, most of which were front-page leads, were also sensational based on unsubstantiated claims: Kunonga in a mess (21/11), Children raped at Kunonga churches, and Kunonga faction poisons food (23/11).

The Daily News also failed to report that the ACPZ, led by Kunonga, had filed two separate High Court applications, the first seeking to stop the eviction of its clergy and the second seeking to reclaim possession of the Anglican Church properties (The Herald, 28/11). They only made brief reference to the eviction application at the end of their story, Kunonga runs amok (29/11). Although NewsDay (28/11) reported Kunonga's appeal, it mostly identified one aspect: that ACPZ wanted the High Court to "stop their eviction from Anglican properties across the country" on the grounds that their eviction would render at least 150 priests destitute.

Only The Herald (28/11) provided clear details of Kunonga's application. Apart from filing an urgent chamber application "to stay execution of the eviction order", the state-owned daily also reported Kunonga as having sought an order declaring the ACPZ "the legitimate owners of the church properties, including the Anglican Cathedral in Harare" (The Herald, 28/11).

The two court proceedings were instituted on the basis that ACPZ was never part of the proceedings that gave rise to the recent Supreme Court judgment. Kunonga, according to the court papers filed on November 27th, was a separate legal entity from the ACPZ. He argued that the outcome of the Supreme Court case had no bearing on the church and that the Gandiya-led CPCA's Diocese of Harare had no right to control the churches, schools and colleges.

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