In Zimbabwe, Secular Education Is Overtaking Historic Mission Schools

Neville Mlambo, 65, a retired missionary, shakes his head. His United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ) church had educated some of the finest Black ministers, CEOs, bishops, and judges in the last 100 years when Western colonialism and the church landed together in Zimbabwe.

“Colonial church-owned schools were prestigious. They groomed the cream of Black army commanders or city mayors,” said Mlambo. “Twenty years ago, we would overflow with 1,000 students squeezing for a place to study at our mission boarding schools. Today, we hardly attract 350 in some schools.”

Historic church-run mission schools in Zimbabwe—affiliated with a range of traditions, including Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Baptist, or Salvation Army—are now on the decline.

“They are losing money, students, and the next generation of congregants as more Black families troop to private secular schools,” he said.

Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s highest literacy rates: 97.1 percent of the population in urban areas are able to read and write. Its educational system has included a mix of free state schools, plus thousands of Christian seminaries, primary schools, high schools, and colleges. The Catholics, Anglicans, and American Methodists have vast tracts of lands in Zimbabwe and dominate ownership of missionary-led schools.

“Christian mission schools took off in the 1920s as the colonial project deepened along with a need to train clerks, teachers, nurses, or judges that served the colonial conquest. That story is unwinding today, fast,” says Edgar Shuwa, a theology lecturer at Rusitu Bible College, which is run by remnants of the American Baptist mission in east Zimbabwe.

There’s an explosion of secular private schools owned by Black entrepreneurs across Zimbabwe today, says the government. Nearly 500 private-owned primary and high schools were operating in the capital, Harare, in 2022, with authorities battling to even distinguish between licensed and unlicensed ones, said Zimbabwe’s education minister in April.

After Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, almost all students attended low-fee public schools run by the government and private schools run by Christian denominations. But in the last 20 years, more parents have turned to secular private schools, citing a decline in teaching quality and facilities in older schools. According to UNESCO, 29 percent of all schools in Zimbabwe are now privately run.

Church mission schools have run their course, according to 45-year-old Marlon Danga, who studied at the famous Catholic Kutama Mission, where Zimbabwe’s first Black prime minister, Robert Mugabe, was schooled by Jesuit fathers. Danga sees their strict doctrine-based curriculum as outdated as culture liberalizes.

“Like many Black parents today, I went against the script when it came to my offspring. I sent my kids to secular private schools that teach no adherence to any religion,” he said.

New money is empowering Black families to cut ties with schools run by colonial churches, says Stella Ngomwa, 49, a finance manager for a brewery. More Africans—in Zimbabwe and across the continent—are working to detangle their institutions and identity from Western colonialism.

“It’s a seismic shift, and we have lost,” pastor Mlambo said. “Less money coming from mother churches in America or Scotland means—for old churches like us Baptists, Methodists, or Anglicans—that we can’t adequately maintain our schools’ infrastructure or dole out more scholarships to poorer Black students. And we are losing appeal.”

With the rise of African-initiated churches, “the new African not only wants to own the church, he/she also wants to own schools, cities, land, identity,” wrote Yasin Kakande, author of Why We Are Coming: Slavery, Colonialism, Imperialism, and Migration.

Church-run mission schools dominated the colonial heyday, but the reality is that Black Zimbabweans lacked options, Ngomwa explains.

Now, the country’s Christian landscape is changing. More believers church-hop between denominations, rather than maintaining a strong identity within one of the older colonial-era denominations.

“I don’t want my daughters to be forced to recite Anglican hymns and attend Scripture Union meetings every evening at an Anglican or Dutch Reformed boarding school,” said Ngomwa.

Secular private schools also broaden the options for students to excel in programs like sports, which open doors for university placement abroad; Ngomwa’s daughter’s athletic involvement got her a place at a UK university.

Meanwhile, the quality of facilities and education in church-run schools is declining fast as old colonial churches get poorer, said pastor Ado Manake, a cleric with the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), a Black-founded, post-colonial Pentecostal Christian denomination that’s home to some of the biggest congregations in Zimbabwe.

“New Black-owned evangelical and Pentecostal churches are forcefully challenging colonial Catholic, Presbyterian, or Anglican churches in Zimbabwe,” said Manake. “We are opening new schools, making some nondenominational, and getting lots of students, because we understand the new Black clientele.”

Over the past 20 years, secular private schools have dismantled the monopoly of old-church-run mission schools. They charge pricey sums like $1,000 per semester in primary or high schools, compared to church schools that were a mixture of modest fee-paying students and those on scholarships .

Rusitu High School, situated in Zimbabwe’s far east province of Manicaland and established by American Baptists, had been a prestigious and popular option throughout the 20th century. Today, it can barely enroll 400, down from around 1,000 high schoolers at its peak. “We must accept times are changing—we used to attract students from all corners of Zimbabwe,” said Amos Gwade, the school’s treasurer.

There are still Christian options available: Some of the newer evangelical and Pentecostal schools continue to incorporate faith and doctrine in the curricula.

“In those schools, we make sure students, be they high school or college, are taught and prescribed key concepts like salvation through grace, not works, and miracles as a key manifestation of faith,” said Manake, of schools run by AFM and similar traditions. “We don’t want to go all-secular in our schools.”