South African bishop banned from visiting Zimbabwe

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe -- A South African Catholic bishop has become the latest target of Zimbabwean authorities who accuse him of criticising President Robert Mugabe’s human rights records. Authorities have reportedly barred Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa, from visiting the country.

Dowling was in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, last week where he held a series of meetings with local clergy. Sources in the city told NCR that Dowling was detained for hours by agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation who quizzed him about his business in the city, which is home to the outspoken Archbishop Pius Ncube. Dowling was a speaker at a prayer meeting organized in the city to pray for Zimbabwe’s torture victims and pro-democracy activists who lawyers and civic groups allege have been abducted by the ruling party’s militias and state security agents.

Ecumenical News International in Geneva reported that Dowling had said that the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had lost its legitimacy. “A government that tortures its own people is not a government but a regime, an illegitimate regime,” Dowling was quoted as saying. “God was not with the apartheid regime [in South Africa], and God is not with this regime in Zimbabwe. It will fall,” Dowling said. Five other pastors travelling with Dowling had their passports confiscated. “They effectively told him not to come back to Zimbabwe,” Rita Normington, Ncube’s secretary said.

However, Dowling was expected back in Bulawayo on Thursday (July 5) this week, and the archbishop’s office, which was to host him, expressed fears that Dowling would be detained again or denied entry into Zimbabwe. Dowling was also one of the main speakers at a similar pray rally Ncube organized in April, and sources here say this was when Dowling attracted the attention of the authorities. Zimbabwean immigration officials have turned down work permits from Catholic priests, and there are fears the government is slowly getting rid of all missionaries working in the country. Authorities have in the past threatened to confiscate Ncube’s passport to stop his travelling abroad. They accuse him of “telling falsehoods” about the country’s continuing crisis and growing repression as the regime cracks down on opposition voices.

Zimbabwe’s bishops’ conference issued a pastoral letter, “God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed,” just before Easter that said Zimbabwe’s crisis is one of governance, leadership, spirituality and morality. To avoid “further bloodshed and avert a mass uprising,” a new constitution is needed to guide democracy “chosen in free and fair elections that will offer a chance for economic recovery under genuinely new policies,” the bishops wrote. The letter is the strongest statement the bishops have issued since the country began an economic meltdown some two years ago. The unemployment rate of 80 percent and an inflation rate of more than 1,700 percent has “made the life of ordinary Zimbabweans unbearable, regardless of their political preferences,” the bishops said. Since the letter’s release Mugabe has accused the Catholic hierarchy of dabbling in politics and has threatened them with unspecified action.
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