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Archbishop in Zimbabwe calls on churches to pray for change
2002-264-6
11/20/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Zimbabwe has appealed to churches in neighboring South Africa to pray for change and to put pressure on President Robert Mugabe to end his onslaught against opponents.
'We appeal to you for prayers to change the situation. We ask you to lobby wherever possible, to apply pressure on Mugabe and his followers to change,' the archbishop said in a November 7 lecture at the Durban Catholic Center in South Africa.
An outspoken critic of Mugabe's administration, Ncube has been openly castigated by the president who once accused him of leading the people in the province of Matabeleland to vote for the opposition in the 2000 parliamentary election.
Like much of southern Africa, Zimbabwe has experienced a sever drought and Ncube accused Mugabe of starving opposition supporters to maintain his hold on power. 'Men, women and children were and are still being deliberately starved,' Ncube said. The government has been accused of politicizing food distribution, favoring card-holding members of the ruling political party.
Many non-governmental organizations in Zimbabwe and abroad have warned that the country is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. The famine has been exacerbated by government-backed invasions of farms, sabotaging food production and undermining what was once a thriving agricultural industry. The country has slowly been sliding towards anarchy since February 2000 when bands of veterans from the 1970s liberation war launched widespread farm invasions, evicting white commercial farmers.
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