The much awaited meeting between Anglican Church Batswana priests and their Bishop, Trevor Mwamba, is reported to have failed to take place as was widely expected last Saturday.
A source who attended the meeting said the meeting failed because the Bishop had decided to bring along with him a person whose presence at the meeting Batswana priests were against saying the visitor was not one of them.
”When making the request to meet the Bishop, we had made it very clear that we want to meet him alone so we were surprised to see that he had brought another person. Though he is a member of our Church, the person in question is not a priest and we, therefore, demanded that he should leave the meeting and he refused saying that he was asked by the Bishop to accompany him,” said the source.
As a result of that, he said, they were in the office for more than an hour doing absolutely nothing and that, at the end, the Bishop went away leaving them in the office.
“We have greatly been disappointed by his behaviour and did not expect him to do that as our Bishop in the Church,” said the source.
Earlier in the same week, he said that Bishop Mwamba had wanted to discuss their grievances in the presence of foreign priests and that they refused to hold such a meeting as they felt the problem did not involve them and Mwamba then said they should meet on Saturday.
Asked what they had wanted to see the Bishop about, he said that they had wanted to discuss with him their grievances as Batswana priests and how they feel these problems can be addressed.
Their grievances, he explained, are, amongst other things, that they have long been promised that their working conditions would be improved and that had not happened; they also wanted to bring up the lack of proper consultations between the Bishop and the priests in general as they, at times, read in the press about issues which they should have been informed about before they are made public.
As an example, they cited the Bishop’s statement on the construction of international schools in the country, saying they got to hear about it on television when Mwamba was briefing President Mogae about them.
