“We Are All Latter-day Saints”

The first Latter-day Saints in Southern Rhodesia (which became Zimbabwe in 1980) were European settlers. Missionaries of the South African Mission worked in Rhodesia briefly in 1930 and returned in earnest in 1950. Hugh Hodgkiss was baptized in February 1950 and became the leader of the Salisbury Branch in 1959.

During the 1960s, Latter-day Saints often traveled long distances to gather in homes and rented halls. In Bulawayo, Relief Society members sold cakes and handicrafts monthly for years to earn the money required to pay for their meetinghouse. Meanwhile, the youth in Salisbury held community game nights to gather funds for meetinghouse construction there.

first meetinghouse in Zimbabwe

The Bulawayo meetinghouse, July 1963.

To build the church community, Iris Nield and her husband, Reg, held two family home evenings at their home in Salisbury. Mondays were for their family of five daughters. On Thursdays they opened their home to the missionaries and their investigators, playing games for hours.

From 1965 to 1980, a bitter civil war raged between the white-led minority government and guerrilla groups fighting for Black majority rule. Civilians were caught in the turmoil, such as educators Ernest and Priscilla Sibanda, who lost their home and cattle in April 1976. Ernest and Priscilla fled the conflict zone and walked 241 kilometers (150 miles) to Bulawayo.

In Bulawayo in late 1979, Ernest met two young missionaries. After reading the Book of Mormon, he, Priscilla, and their three children were baptized. “I felt very free,” Ernest recalled. “I felt released from every evil. I found there was love in me for my family. I found there was love within me for the Church.” As the first Black members in the country, the Sibandas persisted faithfully despite some discrimination. Once some white members challenged Ernest before a lesson he was about to teach, saying, “A black man, teaching us?” Ernest replied, “Brethren, if we are all Latter-day Saints, and I am assigned by the Lord to teach, then I have to teach you.”

In May 1980, Zimbabwe’s first all-Black branch was formed in Highfield, a suburb of Salisbury (later Harare). Longtime members Iris and Reg Nield accepted calls to serve as Relief Society president and branch president. The Nields were ostracized by some members of their white branch. Undaunted, Reg and Iris and their daughters spent Saturdays holding MIA, Primary, and Relief Society activities. Peter Chaya, a teenage branch member, spent Saturday afternoons playing football, practicing hymns, and teaching an English literature class. His father, Tanganyika Lazarus Chaya, served as second counselor in the branch presidency.

The branch met at Highfield Secondary School. Peter arrived early in the morning to clean up beer bottles and cigars before the service. “We’d come in, sweep up the place, make it look like a chapel, and sit down, exhausted,” he recalled. During the meetings, Peter and other young men interpreted between Shona and English.

In 1981, Peter received a mission call to serve in Zimbabwe and departed on his mission the following day. In 1983, a week before completing his mission, he accepted a calling as president of the branch in Highfield.