Leaving aside the fact that I have been doing a terrible job of blogging with anything like my usual frequency during the past 3 weeks, I had been unable to bring myself to post on the resignation of the former Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, because it is such a wrenching story.
I have gotten to know Pius some during the past year, attended a memorial service for victims of torture on the U.N.'s International Day in Solidarity with Torture Victims, over which he presided in Bulawayo, in June, etc.
He is a man of uncommon courage and committment, to the poor, to the victims of state-sponsored violence, torture and reporession. He is to be compared with another great Catholic Archbishop who fought, and gave his life, for social justice in his own country, El Salvador, Oscar Romero (of whom, incidentally, Pius Ncube had a photo in a prominent place on the wall of his office).
The Global Development Briefing (www.DevelopmentEx.com) weekly newsletter this week was entitled "King Takes Bishop" and opened with this well stated summary of the current state of affairs:
"He fought the regime and the regime fought back."
-- Tendai Biti, the secretary general of one faction of Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change, on the resignation of Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, a prominent critic of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, over an adultery scandal. Zimbabwe's state media in July published photographs of what it said was Bishop Ncube in bed with a married woman who worked for his parish. His lawyers called the allegations an orchestrated attempt to discredit him. He said he would work with ordinary people and would not be "silenced by the crude machinations of a wicked regime." In March, Bishop Ncube said he was prepared to stand in front of "blazing guns" at the front of street protests to bring down the government and urged other Zimbabweans to do the same. The news comes as the EU debates whether or not to invite Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to a planned summit with Africa. The EU and Africa want to hold their first summit in seven years this December in Portugal, but must first overcome the problem of whether to invite Mugabe, who is accused of human rights violations. Plans for the summit were on hold because some EU countries have refused to attend if Mugabe is there, while African countries have refused to come if he is barred.
