Financial Gazette (Harare)
6 July 2000
Bulawayo — He is the latest scapegoat for ZANU PF's humiliating defeat in Matabeleland in the just-ended parliamentary elections. The dreaded spy police, the Central Intelligence Organisation, has been to his doorstep.
In fact, he has it on good authority that he is at the top of its hit list. When he condemned state terrorism in Matabeleland in 1983, President Robert Mugabe lampooned him and labelled him a hypocrite and "a Jeremiah" prophesising for the late Joshua Nkomo, then Zimbabwe's main opposition leader.
Now Mugabe accuses him of backing the oppo-sition Movement for De- mocratic Change (MDC), the country's youngest party which has rudely shaken ZANU PF by seizing an unprecedented 57 of the 120 contested parliamentary seats. The clergyman is none other than the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Alick Mvundla Ncube.
Mugabe's wrath
The first black arch-bishop to take charge of Matabeleland following the retirement of Bishop Henry Karlen in late 1997 has once again invited the wrath of Mugabe who, although a Catholic, has had an uneasy relationship with the church. This time it is because of the embarrassing defeat of ZANU PF heavyweights at the hands of political novices of the MDC in 21 of the 23 constituencies contested in Matabeleland in the landmark June 24-25 elections. "I am unfazed by the whole thing," says Arch-bishop Ncube to Mu-gabe's tirade against him during which the President labelled the man of cloth a tribalist who he said used his influence in Matabeleland to sway the ballot in favour of the MDC. "I am not going to give up the fight to keep checks and balances on how people are governed in this country. Instead the attacks on me by ZANU PF have given me more impetus to continue standing for the truth and justice," Ncube told the Financial Gazette this week at his sparsely furnished office at St Mary's Cathedral here.
Memorial service
Over the weekend Mugabe threatened not to attend the memorial service of Nkomo in Zimbabwe's second city if the archbishop led or attended the mass. "It is untrue that I am a tribalist as politicians want the people to believe," the archbishop said. "It is un-Christian.
I respect all ethnic groups as equal. There is room for all of them in the church which belongs to God.
I also back and promote the unity of the people of Zimbabwe," he said in response to accusations that he was using his Sunday sermons to preach disunity among the more than 120 000 Catholics in Matabeleland. "It is my belief that religion does have a strong claim in politics but churches should not align themselves to political parties because, in the end, they will find it difficult to question some decisions made by the party in power," he said. Ncube has criticised the government for dilly-dallying in building the long-mooted water pipe-line that is supposed to pump water from the Zambezi river to this semi-arid region.
He has also hit out at delays in compensating victims of the Gu- kurahundi - the ruthless campaign by the army's Fifth Brigade on villagers during disturbances in Matabeleland in the mid-1980s. Thousands of innocent villagers were killed by the soldiers in pursuit of a rag-tag band of just 100 former guerrillas of Nkomo's then ZAPU party, which merged with ZANU PF in 1987. Ncube has also raised the ire of the government by complaining about the dire poverty of the people nationwide which he and most Zimbabweans blame on Mugabe's mismanagement of the economy and on rampant official corruption. At one meeting orga-nised by the National Consultative Assembly, a coalition of civic bodies lobbying for a people-driven Zimbabwean constitution, he criticised the government for not doing enough to alleviate the suffering of the man in the street. "The government has performed badly,' he told the meeting held in January this year. "ZANU PF are not even ashamed of that and have gone further to devise the draft constitution to get back into power despite the government's dismal performance." Ncube told the Fina-ncial Gazette this week that the church must take the side of the weak and the oppressed in any conflict situation.
The 54-year-old arch-bishop was born to a peasant family in Filabusi in 1946 and had a simple upbringing typical of the colonial days in most rural areas at the time. Ironically, he first went to a Presbyterian Church primary school in Mbonqane, west of Bulawayo where his family had moved to in the late 1940s, before enrolling at the Roman Catholic Church's St Patrick's School in the old high-density suburb of Makokoba. At St Patrick's sch-ool, the fresh-faced teenager battled to finish his upper primary schooling from 1954 to 1962. It was here that Ncube met a German nun, Sister Desideria, and was converted to Catholicism.
Between 1963 and 1966, Ncube went to Chikwingizha Secondary School - another famous Roman Catholic mission - for secondary education and then enrolled at Chishawasha Seminary, a few kilometres outside Harare, where he studied philosophy and theology until his ordination as a priest in 1973. In 1974 he earned his Licentiate (attestation of competence) at the Vatican, the Catholic Church's headquarters in Italy.
He has completed post-graduate studies in pastoral theology and has been active in a number of the Catholic Church's commissions. Ncube says it puzzles him that politicians are now venting their anger on him yet at his ordination in January 1998 at a packed Barbourfields Stadium here, the late Nkomo actually asked him to admonish the government when it erred. Nkomo, saluting the archbishop for his rapid rise in church, said: "As leaders of this country, we expect you to advise us whenever we seem to be going astray.
You must be courageous in your discharge of duty as some politicians may not always listen." At the same occasion, Mugabe described Ncube as "our son of the soil who has distinguished himself". Ncube said this week: "Politicians seem to have small memories. The church is encouraged to guide them but check what's happening now." Ncube has served at several parishes in and around Matabeleland, including St. Joseph in Kezi - the rural home of Nkomo whom he still refers as Umdala (the Old Man) - Empandeni and Embakwe missions at the border town of Plumtree and at St Patrick's parish in Makokoba.
In 1985, he was appointed the Vicar-General and in 1990 took over as the administrator at St Mary's Cathedral here, the largest Catholic church in Bulawayo and the headquarters of the diocese. As he prepared to receive several parishioners at Bishop House this week, he said: "I will be watching them as we move towards a new political dispensation in Parliament. Both the ruling party and the main opposition will be under my scrutiny.
I won't favour any political party. The church should be above party politics." Pointing to several elderly people lining up for help outside his office, he added: "It's not politicians alone that need the church's help."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2000 Financial Gazette. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
