HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — One of Zimbabwe’s most outspoken church leaderson Sunday called for a peaceful uprising against President Robert Mugabe’sautocratic rule, days before a parliamentary election that rights groups sayalready is tainted by years of violence and intimidation.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Zimbabwe’s second-largest city,Bulawayo, said he was willing to put on his vestments and lead a march toMugabe’s residence himself, but feared: “If I do it, I do it alone.”
“The people are so scared,” he said in an interview with The AssociatedPress. “You are not going to get that where people are so cowardly.”
Police arrested nearly 200 opposition supporters after a rally Sunday inthe capital, Harare, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change said ina statement.
Mugabe, a former guerrilla leader, has led Zimbabwe since the end ofwhite rule in 1980. Ncube believes Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African NationalUnion-Patriotic Front party will easily win Thursday’s poll, which he said iscertain to be rigged.
“I hope that people get so disillusioned that they really organizeagainst the government and kick him out by a nonviolent, popular, massuprising,” Ncube said in a separate interview with the South African newspaperThe Sunday Independent. “Because as it is, people have been too soft with thisgovernment.”
Ncube confirmed the comments to AP, but was more guarded in an interviewconducted over Zimbabwe’s state-monitored telephone lines. Calls forunauthorized protests are punishable by up to 20 years in jail.
While this year’s election has been less blatantly violent than previousones, Ncube said “a kind of tacit violence” persists.
He accused the government of denying desperately needed food aid toopposition supporters in rural centers like Filabusi, 250 miles south ofHarare, where he said more than 200 hungry families had been turned away.
Ncube also was critical of opposition leaders, who have been at pains toavoid bloodshed since at least 200 people were killed during the government’soften violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution toblack Zimbabweans.
“We do not have a leader to lead us. We need someone who is courageous,”Ncube said. “People must be ready even to risk losing their lives; everyonewants to keep safe.”
The tumultuous land reform program, combined with years of drought and agovernment crackdown on dissent, have plunged the nation of nearly 13 millionpeople into international isolation and economic crisis.
Opposition leaders remain hopeful that change can be brought through theballot box, encouraged by large turnouts at their rallies in recent days.
“What is needed by Zimbabwe is a new vision, a new Zimbabwe that is ableto respond to the crisis that we find ourselves in,” MDC leader MorganTsvangirai told some 20,000 supporters at a rally Sunday in an impoverishedHarare neighborhood.