The school was established by leading private individuals of the Anglican Church in the then Rhodesia through a deed of trust drafted in 1958 and registered on 29 May 1959 at Harare.

The school was founded by a group of prominent individuals of both European and African races and both sexes to be a leading high school for African boys though it had been set up with the view of it becoming a multiracial international school.,[1] The founders had seen the winds of change sweeping across Africa and felt they had to provide high quality education, equivalent to what Europeans were receiving, for the future leaders of an independent Rhodesia.

The whole idea behind the school was to bring up well-rounded African leaders in areas of finance, industry, business, education, medicine, law, military and politics.

[2] At the same time Canon Robert Grinham had been working to see the existence of schools for Africans whose facilities equaled or approximated to those of Ruzawi, Springvale and Peterhouse.

[4] A pledge of forty thousand pounds was then made to Bishop Alderson at the Lambeth Conference in London so that the project could be realized.

[2] It was intended to be a multiracial, elite boys' school, an 'African Eton', and was strongly supported by the Anglican Church and a number of Federation businesses.

[5] With the support of the Governor General of The Federation of Rhodesia funding in the early days was not a challenge Architectural designs and a master plan of the school were done by John Vigour in 1959.

The school was sited amidst brachystegia woodland, a bird-watcher's paradise, and among the baboon and dassie inhabited granite bouldered kopjes that are so typical of Zimbabwe at what is known as the Bovey Tracey Estate.

In the days when 'blacks' (the other racial groups were 'whites' and 'coloureds') were only allowed into one of Salisbury, the capital's large hotels, he took the prefects to the Ambassador's and made them sit down to a full evening meal - so they could learn the etiquette of 'public' eating.

[13] The Board of Governors consisted of notable business person lawyers and civil servants like Herbert W. Chitepo, Robert Tredgold.

On 19 October 1962 Bernard Mizeki College became a founding member of the Association of Trust Schools (ATS) represented by Mr G.C.V.

Upon attaining Independence of the Gold Coast Peter Holmes Canham moved to Southern Rhodesia where he took headmastership of Bernard Mizeki College.

Due to the same architect and artisans who had built Peterhouse being contracted in the construction of Bernard Mizeki College a few of the buildings between the two schools began to look a lot similar.

[18] In the 2014 academic year Bernard Mizeki College was ranked 53rd nationally and 7th in Mashonaland East Province attaining a pass rate of 96.97% with a candidature of 33 boys for Advanced Level studies.

[19] In the same year the college attained an 86.11% pass rate with 71 boys having sat for the ZIMSEC Ordinary Level examinations and was ranked 29th nationally.

In November 2015 the cabinet adopted a civil services report which recommended the withdrawal of funding for teacher salaries employed at private schools[21] due to the current Economic meltdown in Zimbabwe.

The government argued that teachers at private schools alone gobbled about $70 million United States dollars in salaries and allowances.