It is remarkable for Britain to be visited by a saint. But that was surely our good fortune last week, when Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, passed through London. This gentle and soft-spoken former goatherd is a man of great holiness. In a country where churchmen have kept quiet, Ncube has consistently spoken out with extraordinary courage and firmness against the near-genocide that Robert Mugabe is visiting upon the Zimbabwean people.
Week after week, from the pulpit of Bulawayo Cathedral, Ncube uses his sermons to make a Christian protest against the torture, intimidation, rape, murders and forced starvation that are part of the daily rigours of Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF regime. When the Australian cricket team came to Bulawayo to play in the cricket World Cup, inevitably it was Ncube who led the protest from within the ground.
The response from Mugabe has been predictable. Ncube has been subject to death threats, abuse and threatening visits from the authorities.
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