FOUR years ago the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe produced a damning report on the massacres by Robert Mugabe’s army shortly after he came to power in 1980, when his forces are thought to have brutally killed up to 25,000 of the opposition Ndebele people in the Matabeland region of the country.

Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic bishops today said President Robert Mugabe has lost the moral right to govern by permitting violence and lawlessness for political gain.