AN ANGLICAN bishop has seized a previously white-owned farm for himself and his family in one of Zimbabwe??s prime agricultural districts.

In the process, Nolbert Kunonga, the Bishop of Harare and a close associate of President Robert Mugabe, has evicted more than 50 black workers and their families to make way for his own staff.

Senior figures believe Kunonga??s actions will damage the international reputation of Anglicanism.

??The Anglican Church is going to be compromised by this action. It will debilitate our authority,?? said a source close to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. ??Dr Williams is determined Anglicans should provide a solution and not a problem to the crisis in Zimbabwe.??

St Marnock??s farm, which Kunonga has taken over, is just 10 miles from the old stone-clad cathedral of St Mary??s in the centre of Harare, the capital, from where he officiates.

Since his controversial election in April 2001, Kunonga has been one of the most wayward figures in Anglicanism and a worry for Williams.

The archbishop has taken a close interest in Zimbabwe and was briefed on the situation there earlier this year by Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archishop of Bulawayo and a critic of Kunonga. Ncube once accused the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe of aligning itself with the ??forces of evil??.

Visitors to St Marnock??s said yesterday that Kunonga??s son had moved into the seven-bedroom farmhouse overlooking a dam and what were once 2,000 acres of wheat and soya bean fields, now abandoned.

??I??d love to get back there to farm again, but I can??t see it happening soon,?? said Marcus Hale, 25, the legal owner of St Marnock??s, who studied at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. ??There??s nothing happening there now. The machinery is all lying useless in the sheds and they won??t let me take it. No one has done anything about planting a crop for this season.??

Hale was kicked off his farm some months before the 49- year-old bishop took it over. ??I think Kunonga wants the farm because it??s so close to Harare and he thinks he can use it for property development,?? he said.

It is believed Kunonga was given Hale??s farm as a reward for his outspoken support for Mugabe. He has mocked the president??s black opponents as ??puppets of the West??.

Mugabe??s policy of land seizures, which has plunged the country into its worst crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, is largely being blamed for a two-year hunger crisis that threatens the lives of 5.5m Zimbabweans.

Additional reporting: Christopher Morgan

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