South African bishop says Zimbabwean forces detain children

Published: 2007-04-17

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- A South African Catholic bishop who recently visited Zimbabwe said that even children are being detained by Zimbabwean security forces. Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's forces "are everywhere now, and they know everything." The situation in Zimbabwe was reminiscent of the "worst days of apartheid," South Africa's former system of enforced racial segregation, he told Catholic News Service April 16. Bishop Dowling and Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, joined Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo at an April 12 ecumenical prayer meeting in St. Mary's Cathedral in Bulawayo. Among the approximately 1,000 people in the cathedral were security police, Bishop Dowling said. When Mugabe, 83, returned home from a late-March Southern African Development Community meeting in Tanzania, Bishop Dowling said, "he gave free range to his security forces," who are said to have abducted and beaten more than 600 Zimbabweans in April.

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