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The Sengwayos: The long dresses, the music, and the pain
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Growing up, I was always fascinated by a local church they only called “chechi yemadhirezi marefu”. The church of the long dresses!
I’d see them on their way to church, the women, in their ankle-length dresses and velvet berets. Always a quiet dignity about them.
But the one thing that I loved about this lot was their singing; thank heavens for Freedom Sengwayo for taking it out of their closed churches to the public.
The church was the Apostolic Faith Church in Southern Africa. It had been founded by Morgan Sengwayo back in 1955, Bulawayo. Its first church still stands today at Pelandaba.
I have read that when Sengwayo was a teen, his father took him to a white policeman he knew in Gweru, hoping to get him a job in the force.
“The European officer, looking at Morgan, did not perceive the right kind of character in this gentle young man. ‘I am afraid old man,’ he told Morgan’s father, ‘that your son does not have the qualities required of a policeman. He is soft spoken, not the type who could arrest a wrong doer – it seems to me that he would be more fit to become a preacher not a policeman.’” (Rev LC Carver)
That cop must have been some prophet.
Morgan later found work as a desk clerk, but that was never going to last, seeing as he kept annoying workmates and customers with Bible verses. He was disowned by his family, who had been driven to the wall by his passion. He found himself homeless, but never stopped preaching. His following grew, and he finally answered the call and left his job to form his ministry.
I remain fascinated by these guys who formed churches in colonial Zimbabwe. Ezekiel Guti’s book, African Apostle, is a good read not just for Christians, but for anyone interested in learning more about blacks who broke barriers pre-Independence.
Morgan Sengwayo died in 1982.
Back in the day, when I’d listen to old records of Morgan’s most famous child, Zim gospel music pioneer Freedom, I would wonder at the hurt in much of his music. That’s until I came to read about the fallout and bitter fights and splits within the church and the Sengwayo family after their iconic father died.
Much like most founder-led establishments, especially in Africa, Morgan Sengwayo’s death had led to bitter division, in the church, and within his own family.
There was a bitterness to Freedom’s songs that only made sense after I learnt of his feud with siblings and cousins over their late father’s legacy and estate.
Listen to Freedom’s Tell My Father, in which he sings of the abuse he faced after his father was gone. There’s his exasperation with what he sings are “our contradictions” in the song Cheated Man, and I don’t wanna stay here any more, in which he sings about losing the will to live in this world. Then there’s Ngiyakuthanda Mthwana, an ode to his father.
Yet, his songs, Ngelinye Ilanga, Ukufa Kwabangcwele and many others, still carry that underlying message of hope amid all that sadness.
Now that I’ve read up more on his father and the bitterness he left behind, Freedom’s songs mean even more. Today, over three decades after Morgan Sengwayo’s death, his church, incredibly, continues to fight over leadership and assets!
Freedom is responsible for much-loved classics such as Thula Sizwe, an anti-apartheid song, Ngelinye Ilanga, and Better World, a duet with his wife which was a remake of Fallen Angel, an old 1970s duet by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.
Oh, and Morgan had brilliant names for his kids; There was Freedom, and also Halidom, Lovedom, Missiondom, Wisdom, Smiledom and Kingdom.
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