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Posted: March 30th, 2007 at 12:30am By: Kevin Considine
"We need to gather courage enough to tell Mugabe and his cronies off. We should be prepared to sacrifice, even to stand in front of blazing guns, to defend our rights and to also defend ourselves from this government."
Those are the words of Archbishop Pius Ncube as reported in The Zimbabwe Times. And God bless him. His is a prophetic voice within a context of suffering.
Not that you'd be likely to know of him, for we Americans are famous for our lack of knowledge about international politics. And we ordinary American Catholics don't always know of many bishops outside our own diocese, let alone abroad.
So if you've never heard of Archbishop Ncube, the Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, don't worry, you're not the only one. But now is a good time to find out who he is. For he might be tipping the scales against tyranny in Zimbabwe. That is, the tyranny created by the regime of one man, President Robert Mugabe.
And the witness of Archbishop Ncube comes not a moment too soon. Because Zimbabwe is in shambles due to Mugabe's rule. Currently Zimbabwe has one of the world's worst inflation rates (around 1,700 percent), and it has the world's shortest life expectancy (37 years for men and 34 for women). It has an unemployment rate of 80 percent, AIDS is an epidemic, and malnutrition and infant mortality are skyrocketing. What's more, nearly 3 million people, around one-quarter of the population, have fled. All of this in the nation that was once considered Africa's breadbasket.
If that weren't enough, according to the archbishop, there are 3,500 people dying each week due to the combined scourges of poverty, AIDS and malnutrition. That's more people dying in one week in Zimbabwe than each month on average in Iraq.
For these reasons the archbishop recently called for the people of Zimbabwe to gather in the streets and protest the rule of President Robert Mugabe. As reported in the BBC, the archbishop stated, "People are angry now and should stand up, fill the streets and demand that this man steps down now."
Amen to that. Mugabe was elected to power in the nation's first free election, the one that ended colonial rule in 1980, and initially helped the nation pull out from the grip of colonialism and develop economic power. But times have changed.
As Ncube tells it, the watermark year for this change was 2000. That's when Mugabe's government began its program of land redistribution in which many of the white-owned commercial farms were seized by the government and given to poor blacks who were not commercial farmers. Supposedly this policy was to combat the remnants of colonial oppression, but it had the effect of sending the nation into a deep economic swoon. Almost overnight, what was once a developing nation moving beyond colonization became impoverished — for no other reason than Mugabe's policies.
So the problem is this: Mugabe is still in power. In the past decade Mugabe has shown himself to be a corrupt tyrant who is holding his own people hostage. His regime terrorizes and often murders political dissidents and has little concern for the suffering masses of his country. Oh, and he also calls himself a Catholic.
Thankfully, Archbishop Ncube has been a thorn in Mugabe's side. When no other church leader would speak out, he continued to do so, often at great risk to his personal safety. This doesn't mean he has a martyr-complex. In fact, he calls himself a "coward" for not standing up more courageously to the regime. But Ncube is far from a coward.
For example, he has called on the United Nations to arrest Mugabe and put him on trial for his crimes against Zimbabwe. He has publicly compared Mugabe to the murderous Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. And he is again calling for regime change in his country. It's no wonder, then, that Mugabe and his cronies have called Archbishop Ncube a "half wit," "satanic" and a "mad, inveterate liar."
One way or another, Mugabe's rule will end. After all, he is 83 years old. In the meantime, however, Archbishop Ncube gives us hope that change will come sooner rather than later. He also is an example of how to witness to the suffering within our midst and how to do so with faith.
From my chair, an ocean and a continent away, I'm humbled by the courage of Archbishop Ncube. And I realize that it's easy for me to admire and pray for him, because I don't have to sacrifice. His safety is constantly at risk. Mine is not. I can claim solidarity with him and the people of Zimbabwe without really risking anything. So I'm coming from a position of armchair activism. Which is a luxury.
But I'll do the little that I can, faithfully. For I believe that no prayer or action, no matter how small, is in vain. So I can write this column. I can pray for justice and mercy to alleviate the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe.
And I can join Archbishop Ncube in saying that Mugabe must go.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine
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"We need to gather courage enough to tell Mugabe and his cronies off. We should be prepared to sacrifice, even to stand in front of blazing guns, to defend our rights and to also defend ourselves from this government."
Those are the words of Archbishop Pius Ncube as reported in The Zimbabwe Times. And God bless him. His is a prophetic voice within a context of suffering.
Not that you'd be likely to know of him, for we Americans are famous for our lack of knowledge about international politics. And we ordinary American Catholics don't always know of many bishops outside our own diocese, let alone abroad.
So if you've never heard of Archbishop Ncube, the Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, don't worry, you're not the only one. But now is a good time to find out who he is. For he might be tipping the scales against tyranny in Zimbabwe. That is, the tyranny created by the regime of one man, President Robert Mugabe.
And the witness of Archbishop Ncube comes not a moment too soon. Because Zimbabwe is in shambles due to Mugabe's rule. Currently Zimbabwe has one of the world's worst inflation rates (around 1,700 percent), and it has the world's shortest life expectancy (37 years for men and 34 for women). It has an unemployment rate of 80 percent, AIDS is an epidemic, and malnutrition and infant mortality are skyrocketing. What's more, nearly 3 million people, around one-quarter of the population, have fled. All of this in the nation that was once considered Africa's breadbasket.
If that weren't enough, according to the archbishop, there are 3,500 people dying each week due to the combined scourges of poverty, AIDS and malnutrition. That's more people dying in one week in Zimbabwe than each month on average in Iraq.
For these reasons the archbishop recently called for the people of Zimbabwe to gather in the streets and protest the rule of President Robert Mugabe. As reported in the BBC, the archbishop stated, "People are angry now and should stand up, fill the streets and demand that this man steps down now."
Amen to that. Mugabe was elected to power in the nation's first free election, the one that ended colonial rule in 1980, and initially helped the nation pull out from the grip of colonialism and develop economic power. But times have changed.
As Ncube tells it, the watermark year for this change was 2000. That's when Mugabe's government began its program of land redistribution in which many of the white-owned commercial farms were seized by the government and given to poor blacks who were not commercial farmers. Supposedly this policy was to combat the remnants of colonial oppression, but it had the effect of sending the nation into a deep economic swoon. Almost overnight, what was once a developing nation moving beyond colonization became impoverished — for no other reason than Mugabe's policies.
So the problem is this: Mugabe is still in power. In the past decade Mugabe has shown himself to be a corrupt tyrant who is holding his own people hostage. His regime terrorizes and often murders political dissidents and has little concern for the suffering masses of his country. Oh, and he also calls himself a Catholic.
Thankfully, Archbishop Ncube has been a thorn in Mugabe's side. When no other church leader would speak out, he continued to do so, often at great risk to his personal safety. This doesn't mean he has a martyr-complex. In fact, he calls himself a "coward" for not standing up more courageously to the regime. But Ncube is far from a coward.
For example, he has called on the United Nations to arrest Mugabe and put him on trial for his crimes against Zimbabwe. He has publicly compared Mugabe to the murderous Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. And he is again calling for regime change in his country. It's no wonder, then, that Mugabe and his cronies have called Archbishop Ncube a "half wit," "satanic" and a "mad, inveterate liar."
One way or another, Mugabe's rule will end. After all, he is 83 years old. In the meantime, however, Archbishop Ncube gives us hope that change will come sooner rather than later. He also is an example of how to witness to the suffering within our midst and how to do so with faith.
From my chair, an ocean and a continent away, I'm humbled by the courage of Archbishop Ncube. And I realize that it's easy for me to admire and pray for him, because I don't have to sacrifice. His safety is constantly at risk. Mine is not. I can claim solidarity with him and the people of Zimbabwe without really risking anything. So I'm coming from a position of armchair activism. Which is a luxury.
But I'll do the little that I can, faithfully. For I believe that no prayer or action, no matter how small, is in vain. So I can write this column. I can pray for justice and mercy to alleviate the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe.
And I can join Archbishop Ncube in saying that Mugabe must go.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine
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