Zimbabwe residents lack inspiring opposition leader, says archbishop

Published: 2006-06-12

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Without a strong leader, residents of Zimbabwe will not risk taking to the streets to protest chronic food shortages and spiraling poverty, said Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo. "It is hopeless: There is no one to inspire confidence," Archbishop Ncube said in a telephone interview from Bulawayo. He said Morgan Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, "is big talk but has no vision." President Robert Mugabe, who has led the southern African country since its independence from Britain in 1980, "is the only leader people know," Archbishop Ncube said in early June. Most Zimbabweans "have been intimidated into silence" by the government, and "many have left to make a living in other countries," he said. Zimbabwe, which has an unemployment rate of more than 70 percent, is chronically short of food as well as foreign currency to import essential commodities, including drugs and fuel. The country's inflation rate is the highest in the world at more than 1,000 percent and, according to the World Bank, it has the fastest-shrinking economy outside a war zone.

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