An edited version of this obituary was published online in The Guardian of 2 June 2025, in its Other Lives section
My friend Zoli Mbali, who has died aged 84, was an Anglican priest in the UK and in his native South Africa who took on the challenge of confronting racism within Christian churches.
Estcourt Zolile Mbali was born in Johannesburg to a Xhosa father and a Sotho mother, Elizabeth Mbali (née Mokhoatle), a teacher. His widowed mother took him to live on the family farm at Beresina, beyond Matatiele in the remote Drakensberg foothills of Transkei. Until the age of 10 he combined herding with learning in isiXhosa and Sesotho. Sent to further his education in Afrikaans, he stayed with a clergyman uncle near Johannesburg, whose curate at the time was Desmond Tutu.
Zoli’s formal education was interrupted as a teenager by the need to support his family. While working in harsh conditions on a railway tunnel he contracted typhoid. After hospitalization, he followed a call to the Anglican priesthood, and was sent to St Bede’s theological college in Umtata, and then graduated at Fort Hare University.
In 1969, on the recommendation of Tutu he obtained a World Council of Churches scholarship to study theology at Queens College, Oxford, under David Jenkins. During his time there he met Charlotte Lebon, a post-graduate British student at St Hugh’s College who was also working with the Simon Community. It was through her that I first got to know Zoli.
Charlotte became active in the anti-apartheid movement, an added reason for their engagement to be kept secret when he returned to South Africa in 1971.
After undertaking parish work in the KwaMashu township near Durban, Zoli was ordained in the Natal diocese before being recruited as the first black chaplain at Grahamstown’s white theological college in the Eastern Cape.
Charlotte moved to Botswana in 1973 visiting him twice in Grahamstown, despite the apartheid ban on their relationship. In December 1974, after being warned that the South African police were after him Zoli crossed the border to Botswana and the Lotte and Zoli were married in Gaborone on 11 January 1975.
Zoli combined a job with Botswana Theological Extension Programme with ministering to rural and refugee communities, and later started a parish in Tlokweng to the east of the capital. When South Africa refused to renew his passport, he was rendered stateless and obtained a UN refugee passport.
By 1981, when cross-border military raids were putting families such as theirs at risk, the decision was made to return to the UK. They now had three daughters, Thandiwe, Ma-Jali and Mandisa.
Appointed vicar of All Saints’ church in Preston-on-Tees in County Durham, Zoli embarked on a PhD at the University of Leeds under David Jenkins. The family relocated to Wolverhampton in 1983 when Zoli took up a study grant to further his international research at the Selly Oak Colleges. This would lead to his excoriating 1987 book ‘The Churches and Racism: A Black South African Perspective.’ [SCM Press, ISBN 0-334-01923-0]
From 1984 he was also in parish ministry, first in suburban Leicester in Knighton and then in the Langtons, four parishes in rural south Leicestershire. Commuting to Leicester from 1988 to 1992 he became a pioneering diocesan community relations officer and was made a canon of Leicester Cathedral in 1990.
It was during this time that my children first encountered Zoli’s marvellous gift for story-telling, and he became godfather to my youngest son.
Zoli had been giving talks about the churches and apartheid, and returned to South Africa with his family in advance of the first post-apartheid elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power in 1984.
Settling in Durban, where Charlotte joined the staff of Natal University, Zoli ministered to parishioners stigmatised by HIV/Aids and was chaplain to Black Anglican students at the University. During one visit to the family in Durban I attended an art exhibition about the former regime with Zoli. Repelled by a display of one of the notorious ‘passbooks’ he withdrew, speaking with quiet passion about this hideous indictment of inhumanity. His visceral reaction was a powerful indication to me of the traumatising impact of racism.
A gentle and courageous man, Zoli retired from the ministry in 2003 and would later survive a serious criminal assault and several bouts of ill-health.
Persuaded by his daughters to retire to the UK and be nearer to the grandchildren, in 2017 Lotte and Zoli settled in Kent, raising chickens and taking an active part in community affairs. Sadly Zoli succumbed to dementia, and spent his last days in St Anselm’s nursing home in Walmer.
He died on 1 April 2025, and is survived by Charlotte, their daughters and five grandchildren.
