Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube, who is visiting Britain, on Wednesday accused Robert Mugabe of planning to starve the suffering electorate into submission at elections next year with his ban on food aid from international organizations. “I estimate personally that were it not for the (UN) World Food Programme aid, 500 000 Zimbabweans would have perished from hunger,” Ncube told a news conference in London. “Now Mugabe is saying there is enough foodit means they are planning to starve people into submission.” Ncube, the Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo who has gained international admiration for his courage as an outspoken critic of Mugabe, highlighted the panoply of laws which make free and fair elections impossible: the crushing of freedom of association and speech; omnipresent spying, politicisation of the judiciary, police and army; brutality against and harassment of opponents, the regime™s refusal to publish the voters™ roll, which contains an estimated 1.4 million dead or duplicated voters, and the general climate of fear. The archbishop is also in Britain to promote the Zimbabwe Defence and Aid Fund UK and the Zimbabwe Benefit Foundation, of which he and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu are patrons. Modelled on the apartheid era International Defence and Aid Fund, these two sister organisations aim to pay legal expenses for people arbitrarily arrested, often beaten up, but far less often charged with anything, as part of the regime™s tactic of exhausting and financially bleeding opponents, as well as providing more general practical assistance for these people and their families.

The archbishop™s current trip contrasts with his last visit to Britain in 2003 when publicity was avoided. On this visit, Ncube is speaking to reporters, including giving radio and TV interviews, and generally has a full programme of meetings with church leaders and others concerned about Zimbabwe. This coming the weekend he will visit the vigil held each Saturday outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in the Strand in London in protest against abuses by the regime. Organisers pledge to continue the vigil until internationally monitored free and fair elections are held. The archbishop, who argues for peaceful change, said Zimbabweans were terrified, but also desperate and angry, and he feared rioting which Mugabe would suppress by ordering slaughter by the police and army. “It would be tragic if all of a sudden people went violent,” he said. “Mugabe will call the army he is a cruel man.” Personally, the archbishop™s phone is tapped, and state intelligence agents infiltrate his services.

A report released this week by the Solidarity Peace Trust – Disturbing the Peace – said more than 1,200 people were arrested between February 2003 and January 2004 under the draconian Public Order and Security Act, which makes it virtually impossible for opposition or civil society groups to hold meetings, and various other laws suppressing democratic rights. The arrests analysed were those reported by 27 law firms taking part in the survey, and so did not include the larger number of cases where there was no legal representation. In none of the cases surveyed was there a prosecution and guilty verdict, while 73% “remain hanging over the heads of the victims of this policy of vexatious arrest,” the report said. (96)`”This means repeated court appearances at considerable expense.” The archbishop called South African President Thabo Mbeki, who refuses to criticise Mugabe and effectively props up the regime, a “disappointment.” And he urged that Britain should confront Mugabe™s tactic of setting up Prime Minister Tony Blair as a No. 1 enemy and blaming Britain, or the West generally, for the country™s ills. “Secretly I think he admires the British,” the archbishop added with a smile. “His accent is quite unique among Africans. He had a good Catholic education. He knows full well what is right but he is too embarrassed, too proud to own up that he is causing suffering to his own people.”

Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com