_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Zimbabwe_______________
Veterans seen as menace
Bishops question leader’s ability to govern
Zimbabwe’s bishops have called on President Robert Mugabe to take action against lawless and violent groups of military veterans who are terrorizing the country. The bishops suggested that Mugabe and other government leaders have lost the moral right to govern by permitting the violence to take place, for reasons involving their own political agenda.
In a pastoral letter, the bishops said Mugabe and his cronies had denied Zimbabweans their right to take part in the political process. “We are telling them these things they are doing are wrong, and that they hold no morality at all,” said Bishop Patrick Mutume, head of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. “There is no other sanction we can give them except the sanction of hell,” Bishop Mutume told reporters as he released the pastoral letter.
Among the abuses documented by the bishops were the seizure of white-owned farms by ruling-party militants and the escalation of violence by veteran groups connected to Mugabe over the past year. At least 32 people were killed during election campaigns last June; the majority of the victims were supporters of Mugabe’s political opposition.
“There was no need for anyone to die. We should be able to live together, and not victimize, instill fear, mutilate people, and kill them,” Bishop Mutume said.
Asked whether the bishops would excommunicate Mugabe—who is a baptized Catholic—Father Oskar Wermter, a spokesman for the bishops’ conference, answered that a head of state can only be excommunicated by the Pope. “But if a politician clearly does things against basic justice and charity he in effect excommunicates or excludes himself from the Christian community,” Father Wermter said.