Mugabe’s ominous threat

by Editor · May 16, 2007

The chilling threat by President Robert Mugabe to the bishops of Zimbabwe must be taken very seriously.

In an interview with London’s New African magazine, Mr Mugabe effectively declared open season on his country’s Catholic Church when he said that his government would now regard the Zimbabwean bishops as a political entity aligned with the opposition (a perception that does not correspond with reality), and be treated as such.

Only a few weeks ago Mr Mugabe boasted that his approach to political discourse included bashing his opponents. He was not speaking figuratively.

His warning followed the bishop’s forthright Easter pastoral letter God Hears the Cries of the Oppressed, which condemned the economic meltdown, corruption and injustices in Zimbabwe, and called for political reforms to forestall an uprising which could produce much bloodshed. The pastoral letter was not a political attack, but a prophetic appeal to reason and for peace.

The Mugabe government has long made clear its rejection of criticism, even if it is offered for the greater good. Those who do not agree with Mr Mugabe’s ways live in fear of intimidation and violence by state organs and the ruling Zanu-PF, which has gone to such extremes as to deliberately make hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans homeless. Political murder, detention, torture and systematic rape are common.

The government has shown a comprehensiver absence of respect for human rights, even targeting foreign diplomats and journalists. It has abandoned any pretence of this not being a brutally repressive regime. Mr Mugabe’s disrespect extends even to those who seem to publicly tolerate his disregard for human rights, including South Africa’s government.

We must be alarmed when such a presidentone who transgresses against his people and diplomats alike, and who so brazenly shows contempt for the rest of the world issues a threat against the Catholic Church.

The papal nuncio to Zimbabwe will surely have made known the Holy Sees concerns regarding the safety of Church personnel. But even if Mr Mugabes regime takes no direct action against Zimbabwe’s bishops, his threat may well be an incitement to violence against them, in particular against the outspoken Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo.

Unlike Englands King Henry II, whose supposedly rhetorical question, Who will rid me of this troublesome priest, led to the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, one might not be surprised should Mr Mugabe find satisfaction in harm coming to those in the episcopate he regards as his opponents.

Things must not be allowed to come to this. Those who believe still to have some influence on Mr Mugabe, especially South Africas government, must tell him unequivocally that any form of injury to the Catholic Church is intolerable.

They may also remind him that by denying the Catholic Church its democratic right to speak out on what its bishops see as injustices, he is creating further breaches in his facade of democracy. If he seeks to perpetuate the illusion of his presidency being based on a popular and democratic mandateand it is this fallacy that serves as a rationale for Pretorias quiet diplomacy approach then he cannot reasonably deny the Church the right to make its views known.

Mr Mugabe is entitled to engage the bishops in dialogue when he meets them, showing why he believes their criticism of his rule is baseless (preferably in more persuasive terms than dismissing their pastoral letter as political nonsense).

He is not entitled, however, to make ominous threats against Zimbabwes bishops.