Canaan Banana

Canaan Sodindo Banana (5 March 1936 – 10 November 2003) was a Zimbabwean Methodist minister, theologian, and politician who served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987. He was Zimbabwe's first head of state, a ceremonial president, after the Lancaster House Agreement that led to the country's independence. In 1987, he stepped down as president and was succeeded by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who became the country's executive president. In 1997, Banana was accused of being a homosexual, and after a highly publicised trial, was convicted of 11 counts of sodomy and "unnatural acts", serving six months in prison.

Banana was born in Essexvale (today Esigodini), a village in Matabeleland, Southern Rhodesia, to an Ndebele mother and a Mosotho father. He was educated at a mission school before studying at Epworth Theological College in Salisbury (now Harare). Ordained in 1962, he worked as a Methodist minister and a school administrator between 1963 and 1966. He was elected Chairman of the Bulawayo Council of Churches in 1969, holding that position until 1971. From 1971 to 1973, he worked for the All Africa Conference of Churches and was also a member of the Advisory Committee of the World Council of Churches. He became involved in anti-colonial politics, embracing black liberation theology and criticising the Rhodesian government under Ian Smith, which had declared the country independent under white-minority rule in 1965. He became vice-president of the African National Congress, but soon was forced to flee Rhodesia. He first went to Japan, before moving to Washington, D.C., United States, where he studied at Wesley Theological Seminary.