World News
Outspoken Zimbabwean archbishop says government still wants him dead
Published: September 1, 2009
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- The former archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, said agents of his country's government still want to assassinate him over his criticism of human rights violations under President Robert Mugabe. Archbishop Pius Ncube, 62, who now lives in western Zimbabwe's Hwange Diocese, made his claims in a letter to South Africa's national Catholic weekly, The Southern Cross, with the request that Catholics pray for him. The Southern Cross published Archbishop Ncube's letter in its Sept. 2 edition. Before his resignation as head of the Bulawayo Archdiocese in September 2007 after having had an affair with a woman, Archbishop Ncube was internationally known as one of Mugabe's most vocal critics. Mugabe has frequently attacked Archbishop Ncube in speeches and interviews. Even before his resignation, the archbishop said he was being harassed routinely. "Where I now live, every two weeks the state intelligence is there to visit me, which they never did when I was in Bulawayo. I now refuse to talk to them," he told The Southern Cross.
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