Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa Founder Ezekiel Guti Dies at 100

Ezekiel Guti, one of the founders of Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (Zaoga), has died at the age of 100. He also established a media empire, a university, a hospital and numerous schools, and wrote 127 publications, including books, pamphlets and tracts. He was widely known as “Baba Guti.”

According to an analysis by a social anthropologist who researches Pentecostal movements in Zimbabwe, Guti leaves more than 70 years of evangelism and a local church that has the third-largest membership in Zimbabwe, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Johanne Marange Apostolic Church. The church’s transnational arm, Forward in Faith Ministries, is reported to operate in more than 168 countries and to have over three million members.

Guti was one of the first Zimbabweans to establish and lead a Pentecostal church in colonial Zimbabwe, modelled on Western Pentecostal movements. At the time, most Africans belonged to “Zionist” independent churches that worshipped outdoors and wore white garments. Guti was part of a nine-member “prayer band” of intercessors that left the Apostolic Faith Mission in 1959. The source says the band’s activities were seen as a threat to the position of white missionaries and church leaders in Salisbury (now Harare). The group continued its evangelism until Zaoga was established in 1960. Guti had worked as a carpenter and entrepreneur in roofing, and he was a lay preacher with no formal qualifications in theology or religious studies. The band met in marketplaces, hostels, under trees, in schools and at his house in Highfield. Zaoga was reportedly begun under a gum tree in Bindura.

The source describes Guti’s ministry as focused on the needs of migrant labourers and urban workers who did menial jobs. His message emphasised self-reliance and hard work over miracles and prophecies, and he used practical gestures in worship. Congregants who arrived in old or torn clothing were given new clothes during services, a practice of caring for those in need (Isaiah 58:7). Guti used bicycles and motorbikes in his early preaching and later used television and the internet to build the transnational church. The source notes that he promoted what it calls “reverse mission,” taking the African gospel to what he described as a “backsliding” Western world.

Under Guti’s leadership, Zaoga built a biomedical hospital serving members and the wider community, a university in Bindura, Bible schools and secondary schools, and a media operation with television and radio channels. The source says these projects were partly funded through “matarenda,” or talents, a system in which members pursue side businesses such as vending, knitting or selling food to raise money for a chosen cause within a set year. The author reports speaking with a female head of household and Zaoga member who said she had used matarenda earnings to send her daughter to boarding school and to buy a residential stand, furniture and appliances.

The source states that Guti discouraged followers from taking bank loans, which he said enslaved borrowers, and preached against alcohol and cigarettes to help members save money. He also took a long-standing public stance against sexual immorality. According to the analysis, his school of Pentecostalism did not place heavy emphasis on miraculous healing or the accumulation of wealth.

The source also links Zaoga’s origins to the politics of the period. Guti lived in the same residential area where the Zimbabwe African National Union was formed in 1963 to campaign for independence, and the author suggests this may help explain the church’s emphasis on black self-reliance. After independence, the church worked with the post-colonial government on several projects and missions. When the government introduced a programme to remove state subsidies and expand the informal economy, the source reports, Zaoga members were already running side businesses to earn extra income.

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