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| Africa Subsaharan | |
| Zimbabwe bishops end "criminal silence" on Mugabe | |
| 2007-04-11 | |
| As the Pax Christi peace movement calls for prayer and action for Zimbabwe, a local political analyst says that a pastoral letter by the country's bishops calling for the removal of the Mugabe regime may help end the crisis. John Makumbe, a Zimbabwean political commentator and Mugabe critic, told Reuters that local Christian leaders could play a large role in finding a solution to the crisis.
Other political analysts also believe that the Church's sharp criticism of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe could have a greater influence in persuading him to discuss political reform than a mass of attacks from elsewhere, Reuters says. Zimbabwe's Catholic bishops accused Mugabe and his officials of running a bad and corrupt government and abusing the political rights of Zimbabweans in a pastoral letter posted in churches throughout the southern African nation during Easter. Neither Mugabe, a practising Catholic, nor his officials have publicly responded to the warning from Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishops' Conference that radical reforms were needed to avert a mass uprising in the economically-strapped country. "The pastoral letter presents a new challenge to Mugabe and will probably help persuade him that he needs to be talking about electoral and constitutional reforms, too, as pressure is mounting on him," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. "The Catholic bishops bring a new moral authority to the Zimbabwe crisis, which Mugabe cannot simply dismiss offhand by suggesting that they are supping with his Western enemies," he added. Mugabe, who counts a number of Catholic priests among his friends, has traditionally taken a hands-off approach to political critics within the Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in Zimbabwe. | |
| Posted by:Fred |