Staff Writer
12 June 2001
Harare — President Robert Mugabe faces excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church following serious concern about his presiding over a government with no respect for human life and the rule of law.
Excommunication is the severest censure the Church can impose, and is reserved for very grave offences.
According to the Catholic encyclopedia, it is a medicinal rather than a vindictive penalty, being intended not to punish the culprit but to correct and bring him back to the path of righteousness.
There is strong feeling among Catholics and non-Catholics alike that Mugabe's conduct as Zimbabwe president seriously compromises the Church, hence the need to excommunicate him.
Mugabe is a Catholic by birth and his marriage to Grace in 1996 was solemnised by the Church in questionable circumstances. Dissenting voices argued that the Church was solemnising an unholy relationship between the two. Mugabe and Grace had two children when Mugabe was still married to his late wife, Sally.
Last week, the International Union of Students (IUS), the umbrella body of all student unions around the world, based in Prague, Czech Republic, wrote to the Chief Cardinal at the Vatican asking the church to excommunicate Mugabe.
The students' plea follows representations by other groups, including Catholic bishops and other human rights activists.
In the letter, signed by the IUS political advisor to the secretary for African affairs, Nicholav Kalav, the union said that Mugabe should be excommunicated on the grounds that he presides over a government responsible for the killing of thousands of innocent Zimbabweans.
Mugabe, the group said, was leading a "repressive government" and the Catholic Church should mete out its worst form of punishment- excommunication.
"Our request is premised on the following: Mr. Mugabe presides over a government that massacred thousands of civilians in Matabeleland in the early 1980s in Zimbabwe.
"We are reasonably informed that as president and commander-in-chief of the defence forces, he instructed the army to commit these atrocities. As a means of reviving his fading political fortunes he has deployed some ex-freedom fighters to harass, harangue, torture, rape, and murder supporters of opposition parties in the country.
"A number of people have disappeared since the June 2000 parliamentary elections and remain unaccounted for," reads part of the letter, a copy of which is in the hands of The Standard. Mugabe stands to join the ranks of Cuban president Fidel Castro, who was excommunicated from the church in 1962 by Pope John XXIII.
Like Castro, Mugabe is a communist and has a deep rooted hatred for Western countries, particularly Britain and the United States.
Human rights activist and former director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, MP Mike Auret, told The Standard that the Vatican would act on the students' request if they presented a strong case.
"If it is a serious request then the Vatican could act on it. This is also a very large group so the request should be strong," said Auret.
Auret, in his own representations calling for Mugabe's censure, described the president as an "ostentatious Catholic" and "murderous dictator" whose government had brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.
Of late, Mugabe has been at loggerheads with the local Catholic Church which has criticised his leadership.
In a pastoral letter entitled 'Tolerance and Hope', the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference recently told government to stop interfering with law enforcement agents and denounced political violence which left dead more than 35 opposition supporters during the run-up to last year's parliamentary elections.
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