[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Another Zanu victim: Itai Manyeruki

[Patrick Bond]

Let's face Mugabe's guns, top cleric urges Zimbabweans

March 23, 2007 Edition 1

HARARE: An outspoken Zimbabwean Catholic archbishop urged his countrymen 
to fill the streets to protest against an upsurge in state-orchestrated 
violence and vowed he was willing to lead a campaign of peaceful 
resistance to force President Robert Mugabe to step down.

Zimbabweans needed to abandon cowardice, Archbishop Pius Ncube told a 
gathering of clerics, pro-democracy activists and diplomats, most from 
Western countries, in Harare yesterday.

"I am ready to stand in front. We must be ready to stand, even in front 
of blazing guns," he said.

"The biggest problem is Zimbabweans are cowards, myself included. We 
must get off our comfortable seats and suffer with the people," he said.

Ncube, an ardent critic of Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African 
National Union-Patriotic Front party, said that despite two deaths in 
political violence since police crushed a prayer meeting in Harare on 
March 11, the nation's economic collapse at the hands of its rulers 
killed many more impoverished citizens.

Opposition activist Gift Tandare was killed when police fired tear gas, 
live ammunition and a water cannon to stop a March 11 prayer meeting 
they said was a banned political protest.

Yesterday, the Christian Alliance of Zimbabwe, head of a grouping of 
church, civic and opposition groups that had organised the prayer 
meeting, reported a second death, saying 30-year-old Itai Manyeruki had 
died in hospital from injuries suffered on March 11.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic 
Change, and 46 activists were taken to hospital after the arrest, 
beatings and alleged torture by police breaking up the prayer meeting.

The violence prompted a world outcry.

Ncube said that Zimbabwe had entered its eighth year of political and 
economic turmoil since Mugabe ordered an often violent land 
redistribution programme to seize white-owned commercial farms and hand 
them over to landless black people in 2000.

The programme disrupted the agriculture-based economy leading to acute 
shortages of food, hard currency, petrol, medicines and other essential 
imports.

"I fear this is Zimbabwe's demise," Ncube said.

"We have to stand up against this oppression. The time for radicalism is 
now.

"If we gather a crowd of 20 000, the government will not use its guns to 
kill mothers, sisters and brothers." He said Zimbabweans should be 
inspired by faith and by peaceful mass protests that toppled oppressors 
elsewhere in the world.

Concern about events in Zimbabwe has been growing in neighbouring countries.

A coalition of Malawian church leaders and human rights activists held a 
candlelit vigil and prayers yesterday "to beseech God to intercede in 
the deteriorating human rights and political situation" in Zimbabwe. A 
similar coalition in Botswana also staged a demonstration to urge both 
the government and the Southern African Development Community to take a 
tougher line against the brutal clampdown against opposition supporters.

Zimbabwe has come in for international condemnation, but Southern 
African leaders, except for Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, have been 
muted in their criticism of Mugabe.

Meanwhile, a senior foreign office official in London said Britain was 
prepared to help Zimbabwe recover from its economic and political chaos 
only if Mugabe's successor committed to reform.

The recent street clashes have brought new attention to the possibility 
that Mugabe could be toppled.

Many analysts say his immediate successors are likely to come from 
within his own party, rather than the reform-minded opposition. But they 
noted that that would present the international community with the 
difficult question of whether to work with men and women tainted by 
association with Mugabe. - Sapa-AP