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Archbishop calls for strong leader to oust Mugabe
Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Friday May 20, 2005
Guardian
One of Robert Mugabe's fiercest critics, the Catholic Archbishop of
Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has accused Zimbabwe's opposition of failing to give
the strong leadership needed to overthrow the president's regime.
"Zimbabwe needs leadership of great moral stature. We need an opposition
that will lead people to stand up against Mugabe's dictatorship, not an
opposition that waits for people to go out on the streets and then will
follow them," he told the Guardian.
He avoided naming the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), but the target of his criticism was clear.
"It is naive to think that this murderous regime will allow itself to be
voted out of office by democratic elections. It is naive to think that
people will rise up without leadership," said the prelate, who is the
strongest critic of the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe.
Archbishop Ncube said Zimbabweans had failed to rise up against Mr Mugabe
during the recent elections because most people were not prepared for
sacrifice.
Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party claimed victory, but the MDC is challenging the
result in 30 constituencies.
Despite the strong evidence of massive vote rigging the electoral court will
not rule in the opposition's favour, the archbishop said.
He said: "The courts have still not ruled on the challenges lodged by the
MDC after the 2000 elections. Why would it be any different in 2005?"
The Catholic prelate warned that any mass action against the Mugabe
government faced a great risk of violence from government forces.
"It would be worse than Uzbekistan. Everyone knows the Mugabe government has
police, army and youth militia who will inflict violence on the people. It
is dangerous," he said.
The archbishop also said that there was growing hunger in Zimbabwe.
"There is no food in the shops in the cities. The shelves are bare. There is
no petrol. I went to the rural areas last week and people are suffering.
They say they will die without food," he said, adding that millions of
Zimbabweans were at risk of starvation without food relief.
The government admitted the scale of its economic problems yesterday when it
devalued the currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, and banned luxury imports in
an effort to stem the haemorrhage of hard currency. The governor of the
central bank, Gideon Gono, blamed foreign speculators for Zimbabwe's
economic woes.
Economic convulsions have created food shortages, but Archbishop Ncube
accused the Mugabe government of refusing food aid to areas that voted for
the opposition.
"The government is taking revenge. They are going into villages and refusing
to give food to hungry families, old women and families with young children,
because they voted for the opposition. This is sinful," he said.
Mr Mugabe said he would welcome food aid from the UN as long as there were
no political strings attached. This is a reversal from his previous stance
that Zimbabwe had a bumper harvest and would "choke" on international food
aid.
Archbishop Ncube said Mr Mugabe's land seizures and economic mismanagement
had created the food shortages suffered by the country.
The archbishop was travelling to Scotland, where he is nominated for the
Robert Burns humanitarian award, the winner of which will be announced
tonight.
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