Anglican Diocese of Mthatha

The Anglican Diocese of Mthatha is the new name for a diocese which contains much (but not all) of the old St John’s area.

It came into existence in 2006 and currently has 69 parishes. The current Bishop Sitembele Tobela Mzamane believes another new diocese will be created in the south of his current area around the town of Ngcobo .

History

When the Anglican Diocese of Grahamstown in the south under Bishop John Armstrong, and Anglican Diocese of Natal in the north-east under Bishop John William Colenso were founded, they each included part of an area which in 1872 became the diocese of St John’s.

Bishop Callaway was consecrated in Edinburgh in 1873 as the first bishop of the diocese. In Bishop Callaway's new diocese, apart from the mission station he started at Clydesdale, there were five or six other centres of missionary work. The oldest being St Mark's. The first part of Callaway's work was spent trying to find the best way to organise the diocese. The chief problem was to link Clydesdale with the St Mark's group in the south. He first attempted to establish the See at Clydesdale, which was too far north, and then at St Andrew's, not far from Lusikisiki, which turned out to be inaccessible except by sea. He finally settled on a place on the Mthatha River. A town sprang up around the bishop's mission station and Pro-cathedral.

The first Pro-Cathedral of the diocese was built of wood and iron and was also the first church in Mthatha. It could seat a congregation of 250. It was dedicated at the Diocese of St John’s second synod on 24 June 1876..

By the turn of the Twentieth Century a stone-built cathedral had been erected on the top of a hill leading to the administrative and commercial centre of Mthatha. George Fellowes Prynne was the architect and originally designed an impressive looking cathedral. His plan shows a cruciform church, with a nave 147 feet in length, by 36 feet in width, divided into 7 bays. The chancel is 67 feet long by 30 feet wide. The north and south transepts from chapels accommodating 189 and 146 people respectively. East of the chapels are the vestries and organ chamber, the latter being over the clergy vestry, and speaking into the south chapel and chancel. Only the nave was completed, which is the present cathedral of St John the Evangelist.

List of Bishops

Former, Diocese of St John's

• Henry Callaway 1873-1886
• Bransby Lewis Key 1887 - 1901
• Joseph Watkin Williams 1901 - 1922
• Edward Harold Etheridge 1923 - 1943
• Theodore Sumner Gibson 1943 - 1951
• Henry St John Tomlinson Evans 1951 - 1956
• James Leo Schuster 1956 - 1980
• Godfrey William Ernest Candler Ashby 1980 - 1984
• Jacob Zambuhle Bhekuyise Dlamini 1985 - 2000
• Sitembele Tobela Mzamane 2000 - 2006

Renamed, Diocese of Mthatha

• Sitembele Tobela Mzamane 2006–present