This article attempts to analyze the documentation, influences and practice of early Christian drama in colonial Rhodesia by examining the documentation and what it reveals about the way church dramas were used in Christian proselytizing by the Catholic Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Anglican Church. One of the examples selected is an adaptation and translation of Father Pedro Calderon de la Barca's El Gran Teatro del Mundo, a medieval morality play from Spain. Others include various dramatizations of the lives and martyrdom of two of Zimbabwe's best-known Christian martyrs of the early colonial period, namely Bernard Mamiyeri Mizeki of the Anglican Church and Modumedi Moleli of the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

As forms of drama that were used in colonial Rhodesia in the conversion and maintenance of African converts, the article will examine affinities between these plays and some aspects of medieval morality plays and liturgies. It is also a scholarly attempt to throw light on an aspect of colonial Rhodesian drama that has not been written about extensively in the past.

Christianity in colonial Rhodesia – a brief historical background

The first European contact with Zimbabwe dates as far back as the sixteenth century with the arrival of Portuguese traders and missionaries on the east coast of Africa (Gann, 1965). At that time the geographical area now known as Zimbabwe (then colonial Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia) was the seat of power for the Empire of the Mwene Mutapa or Munhumutapa. According to Gann, one of the very first Europeans to call at the court of the empire of the Mwene Mutapa was Father Goncalo da Silveira, a Catholic missionary from Portugal.