Zimbabwean archbishop predicts president will buy March 31 election

Published: 2005-03-28

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Zimbabweans will be "dancing in the streets" when President Robert Mugabe is gone, a Zimbabwean archbishop said. Describing Zimbabwe's president for 25 years as "the one big devil," Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo said that "everybody is fed up with Mugabe, even the armed forces -- but they keep paying the top brass good money so as to silence them in their opposition." The archbishop, who has in the past received death threats and been harassed for his opposition to human rights abuses, made his comments in a wide-ranging interview in Cape Town in mid-March with the South African Catholic weekly, The Southern Cross. As Zimbabwe prepared for parliamentary elections March 31, Archbishop Ncube said the poll would not be free and fair. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change "will be cheated right, left and center," he predicted.

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .