Pathisa Nyathi unravels Mkwanazi’s religious journey in new book

As we drove to the house in Famona, Bulawayo, where the man of God lives, I was wondering who in God’s country Reverend Geoffrey Bizeni Mkwa-nazi was.I am completely averse to fawning upon any notable person. Therefore I prayed that my invitation from Kudzai Chikomo, the award winning graphic designer and entrepreneur, to the brief ceremony as arranged by his collaborator, author, historian and sage, Pathisa Nyathi, would be worth my while.
As it turned out, Mkwanazi’s life serves as a pedestal from which to view both the church and colonial history of this country in microcosm. As the book by Nyathi, Dedicated Service: The story of Mkwanazi of the Assemblies of God Church renders the story, it is at the same time the story of a young man’s journey from the tsotsi-infested, fledgling township of Makokoba to the streets of Egoli to prison and redemption all the way to the summit of the Assemblies of God church in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Typically, young men of his generation would cross the Limpopo in search of greener pastures. Many would reinvent themselves upon reaching the land of their dreams. Some        would pursue academia, and among these were the likes of the late vice president Joshua Nkomo and President Robert Mugabe who went on to lead this country.
Some went on to pursue elusive gold, which led them to prison and in Mkwanazi’s case, to finding God.
Nyathi takes pains to narrate the socio-political forces impacting the native Africans that led them to the towns and how that shaped the destiny of a people. He chronicles the mass evictions of whole communities by the colonial government from ancestral lands. It is perhaps as a result of that rootlessness that native Africans may have had that sense of drift that caused the migrations.
The white men had come together with “his” God.
Furthermore, one gets to understand how the Pentecostal movement landed in South Africa and made inroads into Zimbabwe’s Matebeleland and later Mashonaland. One gets to understand how the racial, tribal and political affiliations of churchgoers inadvertently mirrored the schisms that affected politics and leadership in Zimbabwe of the 1950s and 1960s.
Notably, one gets insight into how Ezekiel Guti, the founder of the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God in Africa Church, had his genesis in the Assemblies of God before departing with his followers after skirmishes with racist clergy and tribal misunderstandings.
This very church is the one that Mkwanazi later went on to lead after the death of Reverend Nicholas Bhengu.
Pastor Goodwill Shana, who was influenced by Mkwanazi’s work, writes in the foreword: “….the book is written in a very captivating and thrilling style, almost like a novel, but rich in its historical description and detail at a personal and national level. Its often candid narration of events, the good, the bad and the ugly, is as refreshing as it is uncomfortable…”
The powerful truth of this book is how it unravels with a clinical incisiveness, religion, its foibles and its redeeming quality. As a literary work, Nyathi uses words in a potent way to evoke his historian and teacher’s instinct. Sometimes as you read the book, you can get lost in the history lesson. But you always have to remember that the protagonist is placed both by destiny and the writer, within the context of Zimbabwe’s social, economic, and political journey and transformation.
In a sterling example of the power of collaborative effort in the field of arts, the book was designed and typeset by Chikomo of Multimedia Box, wholly-funded by Eunice Dlami-ni, a Bulawayo nurse-turned-businesswoman.
Nyathi published the book via his Amagugu Publishers. The book took five years to complete. From where I stand, it was a story worth recounting.