Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe is lashing back at his country’s Catholic bishops, who courageously condemned his dictatorial rule as corrupt and repressive in a special pastoral letter before Easter.
The bishops wrote that agents of Mugabe’s regime routinely “assault and beat peaceful, unarmed demonstrators and torture detainees.” Mugabe’s ruling elite is guilty of words and acts that are “hateful, disrespectful, racist, corrupt, lawless, unjust, greedy, dishonest and violent in order to cling to the privileges of power and wealth,” the bishops complained “Being elected to a position of leadership should not be misconstrued as a license to do as one pleases at the expense of the will and trust of the electorate.”
Predictably, none of this sat very well with Mugabe, who is not typically comfortable with criticism of his 27-year-old dictatorship. But Mugabe cannot ignore the bishops. The World Christian Encyclopedia reports that 60 percent of Zimbabweans are affiliated with a church. And the Roman Catholic Church is Zimbabwe’s largest communion, with over 1 million members, or about 10 percent of the nation’s population.
According to Reuters, last week Mugabe warned members of his ruling party in televised remarks that the Catholic bishops have approached an “area we warn them not to tread.” He called their statement a “disgraceful piece of work” and a “disastrous error.” More ominously, the dictator declared, “Once they turn political, we regard them as no longer being spiritual and our relations with them [will] be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities, and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves."
Mugabe, who is an occasionally church-going Roman Catholic, further complained: “If I had gone to church and the priest had read that so-called pastoral letter, I would have stood up and said nonsense...the bishops have decided to turn political." Evidently, Mugabe either missed church on Easter Sunday, when the letter was typically read, or the priest of Mugabe’s parish declined to read it.
The Catholic bishops were blunt when addressing the political oppressions and economic failures of Mugabe’s nearly three decades of misrule. “Despite the rhetoric of a glorious socialist revolution…none of the unjust and oppressive security laws of the Rhodesian State have been repealed; in fact, they have been reinforced by even more repressive legislation.” The bishops added: “It almost appears as though someone sat down with the Declaration of Human Rights and deliberately scrubbed out each in turn.”
Recalling recent Zimbabwean history, the bishops noted that the “power and wealth of the tiny white Rhodesian elite was appropriated by an equally exclusive black elite, some of whom have governed the country for the past 27 years through political patronage.” Today, black Zimbabweans have to “fight for the same basic rights they fought for during the liberation struggle.”
With almost poetic rhetoric, the bishops contrasted Mugabe’s ruling elites with the rest of suffering Zimbabwe, as a:
conflict between those who possess power and wealth in abundance, and those who do not; between those who are determined to maintain their privileges of power and wealth at any cost, even at the cost of bloodshed, and those who demand their democratic rights and a share in the fruits of independence; between those who continue to benefit from the present system of inequality and injustice, because it favors them and enables them to maintain an exceptionally high standard of living, and those who go to bed hungry at night and wake up in the morning to another day without work and without income; between those who only know the language of violence and intimidation, and those who feel they have nothing more to lose because their Constitutional rights have been abrogated and their votes rigged. Many people in Zimbabwe are angry, and their anger is now erupting into open revolt in one township after another.
Naturally, Mugabe dismissed all of this critique from the bishops as “political nonsense.” He defended Zimbabwe’s ostensibly “solid” education and health systems. And he blamed Zimbabwe’s food shortages and high prices on droughts incurred by the “Good Lord.” He also warned the bishops that they were not necessarily closer to God, and could just as easily go to hell as any ordinary person, depending on personal “character.” Presumably, Mugabe believes that his own character is superior to that of the bishops.
The bishops will not likely be intimidated by Mugabe’s threats. With moral clarity often lacking from left-leaning Western prelates when they speak politically, the Zimbabwe bishops affirmed their support for “morally legitimate political authority,” while rejecting “power through violence, oppression and intimidation.” They called on Mugabe’s regime to “repent.” And they appealed to Zimbabweans to be peaceful while “expressing their justified grievances and demonstrating for their human rights.” Also unlike frequent Religious Left pronouncements in the West, the Zimbabwean bishops concluded their letter with a “Prayer for Our Country.”
The Religious Left in the West helped bring Mugabe to power, and have often remained silent about his oppressions. Many prelates within Zimbabwe have likewise remained silent, whether through ideological sympathy or fear. But the courage of Zimbabwe’s Catholic bishops, led by the archbishop of Harare and the eight others who signed the pastoral letter, is likely to embolden other Zimbabwean Christians to speak publicly against their aging dictator.