- DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters)
- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is deliberately starving opposition
supporters to strengthen his grip on power, one of the country's Catholic
leaders said on Friday.
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- Pius Ncube, Archbishop of Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo,
told church leaders in the South African port city of Durban that he believed
160 people in his home province of Matabeleland had already starved to
death, and thousands more would die next year.
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- "Men, women and children were, and still are, being
deliberately starved," he said, adding that Mugabe had embarked on
a program of retribution against his opponents after his plans to change
the country's constitution were defeated in 2000.
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- "Mugabe is using the food crisis in Zimbabwe to
force people to vote for his party," Ncube said, adding that only
those with ZANU-PF ruling party cards were able to buy food.
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- The European Union said on Thursday that Mugabe was using
food as a political weapon.
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- Half of Zimbabwe's 14 million people are threatened with
starvation, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. However
the WFP says it has not heard any reports of people starving to death in
Matabeleland.
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- ZANU-PF denies that it has politicized food distribution,
and in turn accuses some aid agencies of sending more food relief to opposition
strongholds.
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- Since Mugabe won reelection to a fifth term in power
in March this year, Zimbabwe has spiraled deeper into its worst economic
and political crisis in 22 years of independence. Mugabe has held the reins
of power for all that time.
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- "He (Mugabe) is clinging to power at the expense
of people's lives," Ncube told Reuters in a telephone interview after
his breakfast speech. "It is causing a lot of upset because there
is no foreseeable end to people's suffering."
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- "All this is being done to destroy the opposition
and cling onto power, the arrests, the arson, torture and selective distribution
of food all serve to keep the population under control."
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- Ncube has spoken out against Mugabe before, most notably
since a 1980s army crackdown in Matabeleland which human rights groups
say left tens of thousands of civilians dead.
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- Mugabe's ZANU-PF says the Archbishop sympathizes with
the opposition MDC and should quit the clergy.
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