CNS STORY: Church leaders criticize regional support for Zimbabwean president

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CNS Story:

ZIMBABWE-MUGABE Aug-22-2007 (480 words) xxxi

Church leaders criticize regional support for Zimbabwean president

By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Southern African leaders' support for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is "sickening," said a South African bishop, while a priest in Zimbabwe said the region's governments are more interested in clinging to power than working for the common good.

Mugabe, who has been in power since the country's independence from Britain in 1980, was given a standing ovation at an Aug. 16-17 Southern African Development Community meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, where regional leaders failed to pressure him into enacting political and economic reforms.

Applauding "a man who has destroyed a country" shows "utter lack of concern for the plight of Zimbabweans," Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg told Catholic News Service Aug. 20 in a telephone interview. He noted that the southern African leaders' refusal to sanction Mugabe shows a "dereliction of duty to their African sisters and brothers."

Bishop Dowling was in Johannesburg after meeting with fellow members of the Solidarity Peace Trust, an ecumenical group of church organizations from Zimbabwe and South Africa.

"You can't buy any basic foods in Zimbabwe now. The shelves (in stores) are empty," he said.

"Yet Mugabe pretends there is no food crisis," he added.

The U.N. World Food Program said in early August that 3.3 million people face severe food shortages in Zimbabwe, where a government ban on price increases has forced manufacturers to close or cut back their operations.

"It is a tragedy of enormous proportions," Bishop Dowling said.

Zimbabwe is crippled by the highest rate of inflation in the world, unemployment of more than 80 percent, and shortages of foreign currency and fuel. With elections scheduled for March, political violence has intensified.

"Our neighbors are still reluctant to take effective action against the collapse of Zimbabwe, even though Zimbabweans invading them are a threat to their stability," said Jesuit Father Oscar Wermter in the Zimbabwean Jesuits' newsletter.

An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans are displaced, most of them in South Africa, according to Reuters, the British news agency.

While "governments are more interested in their own sectional interest," the church will insist on the "common good becoming Africa's first priority," Father Wermter said.

Mugabe is "spreading the propaganda lie that there are sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe on which he can blame the total failure of his economic policies," he said, noting that the 83-year-old president blames Zimbabwe's bishops for "not mentioning the effects of sanctions" in their Easter pastoral letter that said the country is in deep crisis.

"There are no trade sanctions against Zimbabwe, only travel restrictions against the ruling elite which bar them from entering Western countries," he said.

Zimbabwe's "economic disaster" is the result of the government's "consistent overspending, exceeding the budget and living beyond its means," Father Wermter said.

END

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