Archbishop urges peaceful Mugabe revolt

ONE of Zimbabwe’s most outspoken church leaders called for a peaceful uprising against President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic rule, just days before a parliamentary election that rights groups say is already tainted from years of violence and intimidation.

Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, of Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, said he was willing to put on his vestments and lead a march to Mugabe’s residence himself, but feared: “If I do it, I do it alone.”

“The people are so scared,” he said yesterday in an interview with The Associated Press. “You are not going to get that where people are so cowardly.”

Ncube believes Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party will easily win Thursday’s poll, which he said will be overseen by the military and is certain to be rigged.

“I hope that people get so disillusioned that they really organise against the government and kick him out by a non-violent, popular, mass uprising,” Ncube said in a separate interview with the South African newspaper The Sunday Independent.

“Because as it is, people have been too soft with this government. So people should pluck up just a bit of courage and stand up against him and chase him away.”

Ncube confirmed the comments to the AP, but was more guarded in an interview conducted over Zimbabwe’s state-monitored telephone lines. Calls for unauthorised protests are punishable by up to 20 years in jail under the country’s harsh Public Order and Security Act.

While this year’s election has been less blatantly violent than previous ones, Ncube said “a kind of tacit violence” persisted.

He accused the government of denying desperately-needed food aid to opposition supporters in rural centres such as Filabusi, about 250 miles south of Harare, where he said more than 200 hungry families had been turned away.

Ncube was also critical of opposition leaders, who have been at pains to avoid bloodshed since at least 200 people were killed during the government’s often violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

“We do not have a leader to lead us. We need someone who is courageous,” Ncube said. “People must be ready even to risk losing their lives; everyone wants to keep safe.”

The land reform programme, years of drought and a government crackdown on dissent, have plunged the nation of nearly 13 million people into international isolation and economic crisis.