Mugabe and the churches

".....at least in his younger days, Mugabe’s “mentor had been the Catholic Church.” Yet in his twenty-seven years of dictatorial rule, Mugabe has shorn himself of anything his religious upbringing might have instilled. His genocide in the 1980s against members of the minority Ndebele tribe; his politically induced starvation of opponents; and the arrest, torture, and sometimes outright murder of those who speak out against his rule have all demonstrated a wanton disregard for what the Church—particularly the Church in Zimbabwe—has taught its flock....

To many African leaders, Mugabe is seen as a hero of the struggle against European dominance of the continent. But, in the end, the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe remains remarkably similar to its predecessor, the Rhodesia of Ian Smith. The white authoritarian tyranny of Smith relied on distinct forms of prejudice, and so does the black kleptocratic tyranny of Mugabe—both abjectly refusing to recognize the inviolable rights of man.

Against Smith’s Rhodesia, the Catholic bishops took a stand, declaring that law based on race prejudice was “utterly to be condemned . . . ...

And now, against Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, the Catholic Church has taken another stand, led by Mugabe’s most outspoken foe, Pius Ncube, the archbishop of Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Bulawayo.

While Mugabe maims and starves, Ncube stands as the heroic voice of his countrymen. He has repeatedly called Mugabe evil and compared him to Pol Pot. His phones are tapped, he is monitored by state security around the clock, and government agents have twice raided the home of his elderly mother. ....

The problem of Zimbabwe—the ideology of liberation-hero worship, demanded by the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)—is common in Africa. It is the woeful norm across the continent, where organizations that fought for independence from colonial rule view themselves as now having the right to rule in perpetuity....

the rest of the essay is found at link