Arthur S. Cripps

Arthur Shearly Cripps
Born	10 June 1869 Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Died	1 August 1952 (aged 83)
Other names	Mpandi
Occupation	Missionary priest, activist, and writer.
Known for	Mission work

Arthur Shearly Cripps (10 June 1869 – 1 August 1952) was an English Anglican priest, missionary, activist, short story writer, and poet who spent most of his life in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Cripps was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he read history. He then trained for the Anglican priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College, coming under the influence of Charles Gore. From 1894 he held the parish Ford End in Essex.

A friend of Frank Weston, the leading Anglo Catholic priest who would become Bishop of Zanzibar he became a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, intending to work in Mashonaland, after reading criticism of the methods of Cecil Rhodes. From 1902 he had a parish near Enkeldoorn (now known as Chivhu) in what was then Southern Rhodesia.

He was in conflict with the British South Africa Company over land distribution, taking the side of the African population. He was given the Shona name Mpandi, or 'the man who walks like thunder'. After more than 20 years he returned to England for a time after a quarrel with the British administration; but went back shortly afterwards for the rest of his life, having in 1927 published Africa for Africans, on the land issue.

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