Smyth moved to South Africa after he was barred from re-entering Zimbabwe, where he abused boys at summer camps

The evangelical Christian barrister John Smyth abused as many 130 boys and young men in the UK, Zimbabwe and possibly other African countries but an independent review has said there remains little concrete information on his time in South Africa.

The review into the Anglican church’s handling of Smyth’s abuses said he might have been brought to justice had Justin Welby, who on Tuesday announced he would step down as archbishop of Canterbury , formally reported him to the police when he found out in 2013.

Prime minister says victims of serial abuser John Smyth ‘failed very, very badly’

Keir Starmer has refused to back the archbishop of Canterbury, who has faced growing demands to resign over his handling of an abuse scandal.

Pressure on Justin Welby has been intensifying since the publication last week of a damning report on the church’s cover-up of John Smyth’s abuse in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later in Zimbabwe and South Africa. About 130 boys are believed to have been victims.

Justin Welby didn’t do enough when told about John Smyth’s sadistic offending – and he knows it

For nearly half a century, John Smyth, who was a senior barrister and prominent evangelical Christian, sadistically abused boys and young men with impunity. At Christian summer camps in Dorset in the 1970s and 1980s, and later in Zimbabwe and South Africa, he groomed and preyed on victims whom he would beat savagely and repeatedly, leaving some of them with wounds that took weeks to heal.

Smyth, who died in 2018, never faced justice for crimes committed in England. A case against him in Zimbabwe after the unexplained death of a 16-year-old boy, Guide Nyachuru, at one of his camps, was dismissed. But calls for the Church of England to accept responsibility for gross failures in regard to Smyth and the Iwerne camps, where he filled leadership roles, are finally gaining the hearing that they should have had years ago.

Vast human-made Lake Kariba is at near-record low, causing daily power cuts and devastating two African economies

All is not well with the waters of Lake Kariba, the world’s largest human-made lake. A punishing drought has drained the huge reservoir close to record lows, raising the prospect that the Kariba Dam, which powers the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, may have to shut down for the first time in its 65-year history.

Under the heat of the dry-season sun, the lake looks vast, serene. But, earlier this year, a severe effect of El Niño caused the worst mid-rainy season dry spell in southern Africa in a century.