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Dissident makes his voice heard
Tony Freemantle, Houston Chronicle
September 26, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=15204

Archbishop Pius Ncube is a powerful critic of a ruler who he says has brought his nation to the brink of collapse.

It is Archbishop Pius Ncube's fervently held belief that the precipitous decline of his native Zimbabwe from one of sub-Sahara Africa's most prosperous countries to a basket case can be traced to one man's stubborn, suicidal desire to stay in power. There was, therefore, little reason for optimism Monday when Ncube learned that the man, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's

82-year-old president, planned to extend his rule another four years before holding elections. But it did not surprise him. Nor did it surprise him that Mugabe's police were reportedly beating trade union protesters Monday. Violence, brutal oppression, economic hardship and Mugabe's refusal to share authority are part of daily life in Zimbabwe, he said. Ncube, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, who is arguably Mugabe's most powerful and vocal critic, was in Houston to deliver a speech at the University of St. Thomas. In a wide-ranging interview Monday, Ncube accused Mugabe's government and his ruling Zanu PF party of destroying Zimbabwe's once thriving economy and driving the nation of 12.2 million to the brink of collapse. "When it comes to African dictators like Mugabe, they will break every law, they will smash up everything, everything can go to pieces as long as they remain supreme," Ncube said.

In 1980, when Mugabe led the country to independence from British colonial rule, there was hope that Zimbabwe would set an example to other emerging African democracies. By the 1990s it appeared those hopes were well founded, Ncube said. But faced with growing opposition, Mugabe embarked on a series of disastrous campaigns - seizing land from white farmers and uprooting about 700,000 poor city dwellers and demolishing their houses - that have all but destroyed the economy. The rate of inflation is about 1,000 percent, 80 percent of the workforce is unemployed, and the urban poverty rate has trebled. "Hunger, illness and desperation stalk our land," Ncube wrote in the text of his speech. Ncube is a slight, unimposing man with wire-rimmed glasses who wears the simple black clothes of a parish priest without a trace of pretense. But he is widely viewed as the Tutu of Zimbabwe, a comparison to South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in combating apartheid. It's a flattering comparison, but not one Ncube sees as cause for celebration. "It's difficult to rejoice in anything of the sort because we are still in an absolute mess," he said. "At least in South Africa, they are over the hump. In Zimbabwe, it is an absolute mess."

In a country where dissent is brutally suppressed, Ncube is as brutally frank. He calls Mugabe evil. He says he is a liar and a cheat, that the word dictator is too good for him, that he is a murderer. The archbishop has received death threats, but so far Mugabe's response to his nemesis has been mostly verbal, calling Ncube an "unholy man" and describing him as satanic. Ncube said he is not sure why he gets away with it. Being a man of the cloth, wearing the white collar of a priest could have something to do with it. "I don't know," he said. "But I'm not speaking because of the collar. I'm speaking because Mugabe is driving the whole nation to ruin and causing so much suffering. Even if I was not a priest, I would still speak up, and perhaps by now they would have got rid of me." Ncube said Mugabe has succeeded so well in stifling opposition to his rule that the only real challenge to it, which emerged in 2000 in the form of the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, is in disarray - split along ethnic lines and without good leadership. Mugabe's tolerance of the MDC, Ncube said, dissolved when it began acquiring more power. The white farmers began participating more avidly, and the party was receiving more and more support from the poor in the cities - reasons, he said, Mugabe eventually cracked down on them.

Paradoxically, the people of Zimbabwe would have been been better off if Mugabe had simply banned any form of opposition. "Economically, he would have been much cleverer if he had banned the MDC," Ncube said. "The people would be better off economically right now. But he wanted to appear as if he was a democrat in the eyes of the world. Banning the MDC would have done less harm economically than what he has foolishly done up to now." For now, Ncube said, the situation for ordinary Zimbabweans is so dire, it is literally a case, for many of them, of life and death. "Things must change in Zimbabwe, because as things are, we face death," he said. "There is no way you are going to manage if a loaf of bread right now costs 400,000 Zimbabwe dollars, in two weeks' time it costs 800,000 in three weeks' time it is 1.6 million. "There is no way we can survive if it continues this way."

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