Development of Seventh-day Adventist Work
In 1894 Pieter Wessels and A. T. Robinson, president of the Cape Conference, interviewed Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of Cape Colony and chairman of the British South Africa Company, requesting a piece of land on which to open a mission among the Matabeles in Rhodesia. Rhodes instructed Dr. L. S. Jameson, the administrator in Bulawayo, to permit Seventh-day Adventist representatives to select whatever land they needed. Pieter Wessels, A. Druillard, and other SDA workers then marked out a 12,000-acre (4,850-hectare) site some 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Bulawayo.
Fred Sparrow was left to develop the station, and the next year a mission party sent from North America arrived. This group was headed by G. B. Tripp, who was to be superintendent of the new mission, and included Dr. A. S. Carmichael and W. H. Anderson. The Matabele Mission, as it was first called, was renamed a few years later after Solusi, a local chief who had his kraal nearby and who had assisted in the establishment of the early mission.
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From the beginning, work was conducted along evangelistic, educational, and medical lines. The earliest missionaries were expected to contribute substantially to their own support by trading and farming. Malaria took a heavy toll of the early missionaries.parFrom Solusi the work expanded to all parts of Rhodesia.
In 1901 F. B. Armitage founded Lower
Gwelo Station (at first called Somabula), which held its first baptism in 1903. In 1910 M. C. Sturdevant established the Inyazura Station. Hanke was the next station, opened in 1911. From 1911 to 1923 work was opened up at Shangani and Gunde. Among the missionaries who contributed to the consolidation and advancement of the work in Rhodesia were J. N. de Beer, W. C. Walston, A. Butterfield, T. J. Gibson, S. W. Palmer, F. B. Jewell, F. R. Stockil, and H. M. Sparrow.
Organization and Growth. From 1901 to 1916 all the Seventh-day Adventist work in Southern Africa was administered by the South African Union Conference, from headquarters in Cape Town. In 1916 the Rhodesia-Nyasaland Mission (later Zambesi Union Mission) was established, with headquarters in Bulawayo, to care for mission work in Southern Rhodesia and other missions north of the Union of South Africa. U. Bender, from America, was the first superintendent of this administrative unit. Because of war conditions, it was not until early 1917 that he arrived in Bulawayo.
Six months later he was transferred, and W. E. Straw succeeded him. In July 1920 W. H. Branson, the president of the newly formed African Division, came to Bulawayo and completed the organization of the Zambesi Union, with W. E. Straw continuing as union superintendent.
In 1921 P. Hendrie, the first European convert, was baptized. The European work in the Rhodesias and Bechuana (now Botswana) was organized as the Rhodesia-Bechuanaland Conference in 1929. The president of the Southern Rhodesia Mission Field or the Zambesi
Union served as conference president. In 1945 E. J. Stevenson became conference president when Rhodesia-Bechuanaland was separated from the Southern Rhodesia Field (African work). In 1953 the name was changed to the Rhodesia Conference.
In 1964 the field was divided into two, and, as the work continued to grow and the membership multiplied, the Eastern, Central, and Western Zimbabwe fields were organized in 1981.
In 1969 the Zambesi General Field was established to care for the Coloured members. In 1977 the Rhodesia Conference and the Zambesi General Field merged to form the Zambesi Conference. In November 1992 the Eastern Africa Division not only voted to grant conference status to the three fields, but also to realign the territory of the Zambesi Union. The three fields merged with the Zambesi Conference in January of 1993 to form the East, Central, and West Zimbabwe conferences.
Institutions
Anderson School; Bulawayo Adventist School; Hanke Adventist Secondary School; Lower Gweru Adventist Secondary School; Nyazura Adventist Secondary School; Solusi Adventist Secondary School; Solusi University.
