25th November 2021
To the ministers of the U.P.C.S.A.
Dear Colleagues and friends,
This is simply a short note to remind those who remembered the Rev Don Enslin, of Masivingo that it is now 21 years since Don passed away in a car accident outside Masivingo.
The Rev Donavan Bryan Enslin, known to his friends as Don, or Tweety, because of his bird watching hobby, died on the 2nd December 2000.
Don had grown up in Berea and Greyville congregations in Durban, attended Durban High School, and graduated from the university of Durban before going down to Rhodes University to do his B.D. and was resident in Livingstone House. Don did his P.A.T. at the Vereeniging congregation in 1975 and 1976 before taking a call to what was then Fort Victoria congregation in 1977. Fort Victoria became Masivingo after 1980 and Don stayed on there as he wanted to contribute to the success of the new Zimbabwe.
At the time of his death Don was Moderator of the Presbytery of Zimbabwe. The Presbytery had issued a statement that had been critical of President Mugabe’s government and Don had had to read out the statement.
It was on his way back from Harare to Masivingo that Don mysteriously died in a car accident outside Masivingo with a Malawian heavy truck. Private investigations raised disturbing questions about the possibility that this was one of those mysterious road accidents by which President Mugabe got rid of some of his opponents and critics. The private investigations were closed down by the security police, and so we never got to the bottom of the truth of the accident. This may well have made the Rev Don Enslin one of the martyrs of our church.
Part of the irony of the situation was that Don was strictly non-racist and had stayed on in Zimbabwe after 1980 so as to try and make a positive contribution to the new Zimbabwe. He ran a multi-racial church and started soccer teams.
Another irony is that during swat week, 1971, (about October, before the end of year exams) Don’s room in Livingstone House was raided by the South African security police. At that time Don was president/chairman of the U.C.M.(University Christian Movement) at Rhodes, which was critical of the apartheid government, although Don was not taken into detention.
That Don had been critical of both governments was typical of his sense of righteousness and his opposition to wrong.
I am sorry that I do not know where Don’s wife and two daughters are now. I understand that after continuing to live in Masivingo for some time after Don’s death they emigrated from Zimbabwe.
And so we lost one of our good, upright and faithful ministers, when he was only halfway through his ministerial life.
For those of us who knew Don personally we continue to sadly miss him.
Yours faithfully
William Pool