Bernard Mizeki

He was born Mamiyeri Mitseka Gwambe in Inhambane, Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) and raised in a traditional fashion.

Under the influence of his teachers, from the Society of St John the Evangelist (SSJE, an Anglican religious order for men, popularly called the Cowley Fathers), he became a Christian and was baptized on 9 March 1886.

[2] Through the work of the Cowley Fathers' mission, and particularly the night school run by German missionary Baroness Paula Dorothea von Blomberg, he became a Christian.

Shortly thereafter, Bernard (then about 25 years old) started work at St Columba's Hostel, which was run by the missionaries for African men.

In January 1891, Bernard accompanied the new missionary bishop of Mashonaland, George Wyndham Knight-Bruce, as a lay catechist and medical worker among the Shona people in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

With the Mangwende's permission, Mizeki moved his growing community (several families, as well as young boys he was entrusted to teach), about two miles.

They resettled across the river in a fertile area with a spring, but also near a sacred grove which was believed to be inhabited by spirits of the tribe's ancestral lions.

[4] Mchemwa, a son of the Mangwende and an ally of the witch doctors, was later found responsible for Bernard's murder as well as the destruction of the mission settlement there.

After long years of mission work in Mashonaland, the first Shona convert to be baptised was one of the young men whom Mizeki had taught, John Kapuya.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1946, an even larger celebration was held, attended by Mutwa and their daughter, and included a proclamation issued by Rhodesia's governor.