IN ADVANCE of Zimbabwe's presidential election, the Vatican has silenced Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, for long the most outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe - whose autocratic rule seems certain to be extended in the controversial poll next weekend. The Vatican summoned Ncube - recipient of Scotland's Robert Burns International Humanitarian Award and widely tipped as a future Nobel Peace Prize winner - following allegations he had an affair with a married parishioner. Sources in Rome close to the Holy See said Ncube has been ordered to stop speaking out about conditions in his devastated country, which has the world's lowest life expectancy and highest inflation rate.
The Vatican requires an explanation from Ncube concerning allegations by Mugabe that the archbishop broke his vow of celibacy.Ncube was felled by the adultery scandal after Zimbabwe's state-controlled daily newspaper, The Herald, last year published compromising photos - apparently taken by cameras planted by security agents in the ceiling of the Bulawayo cleric's bedroom - said to depict him having sex with the married woman. Ncube has since stepped down from his archbishopric.
His lawyers also ordered him to remain silent when the allegations were made. But in a final interview, obtained secretly in Zimbabwe and passed to the Sunday Herald just before he boarded his plane for Rome, Ncube exclusively admitted his adultery to Frontier Africa TV - an independent film production company with which this newspaper has an association. Ncube also apologised and spoke out fiercely against Mugabe ahead of the impending vote.
"It is true, I do admit that I did fail in keeping God's commandment with regard to adultery," he said in the filmed interview. "Having failed in keeping the Seventh Commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery, I would like to apologise to you, I'd like to apologise that so many of you were praying for me, for the fact that so many of you standing with me in fact suffered so much."
The apology by the 60-year-old archbishop, who is shown near to tears with his features swollen, was directed to the people of Zimbabwe, where the majority of Christians are Catholics. Ncube's criticisms of Mugabe's rule, which were quashed by both Mugabe and the Vatican, will sound one final time as Zimbabweans prepare to go to the polls.
But Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF will almost certainly seize on the archbishop's admission in the coming days for their own political reasons.
Ncube said: "I became outspoken because I got extremely hurt and broken by the way the Zimbabwean government has been treating people - treating them like things, killing them, depriving them of food, depriving them of voting rights, destroying their houses, harassing them, imprisoning them, torturing them, killing the economy," said Ncube.
"I'm not going to be silenced. I don't mind so much what people do to me personally, but what I do mind is the damage and evil to the people coming from the government of Zimbabwe.
"I've never desired to be a politician. I only began speaking up when human rights were abused. Mugabe is a megalomaniac. There is this big zest in him for power. He has committed crimes against humanity and it could land him in an unpleasant situation. He could find himself jailed."
The Sunday Herald put seven questions to the Vatican about Ncube, including one concerning decisions about his future role in the Church and another on whether it was right to silence him given the importance of his voice in opposing human rights violations in Zimbabwe. We also asked: "Where is Ncube now?"
Father Ciro Benedettini, the deputy Vatican spokesman, replied: "I can't make any comment on the subject at the moment." He said he had no current information on Ncube and that it would be difficult for him to obtain any as his office was short-staffed because of the Easter celebrations.
Benedettini said Ncube's disappearance from the political scene in Zimbabwe could simply be the application of a Church rule that bans priests and bishops from taking part in politics. "Canon law forbids members of the clergy from participating directly in politics," he said. "I don't have any up-to-date information on the matter though."
It is understood from the sources in Rome that Ncube is unlikely to be permitted to return to Zimbabwe until later this year and that he will probably be required to resettle as an ordinary priest.
It was only in his final filmed interview that Ncube revealed he was going to Rome. He added: "I'm disturbed. I'm very traumatised by this situation. My mouth just dries up. I did fail my vows. The problem is how do you repent, how do you turn round, how do you regain your integrity?
"I need to explain to the pope's people my situation and the situation of the diocese. I need a bit of time to rest and to discern, to think about the future and perhaps get counselling."
Zimbabwe has lost in the immediate term what was one of the most courageous and best-known voices of opposition to Mugabe. In the longer term, the controversy will inevitably raise questions about the gap between how prelates in Rome believe the faithful in Africa should behave, and the reality on the ground.
It is no great secret among those who live in Africa that Roman Catholic priests on that continent often honour the vow of celibacy as much in the breach as in the practice. Some priests have children, while others listen to the quiet advice of their bishops to practice birth control.
Roman Catholic nuns sometimes defy papal doctrine and freely distribute condoms to their flocks to help counter the HIV/Aids pandemic, which is cutting a swathe through Africa.
Many Zimbabweans and other Africans are likely to see as disproportionate the Vatican smothering of a powerful focus of opposition to Mugabe on account of an all too human failing - one that the Zimbabwe regime was bound to spot and exploit.
The story of Ncube's involvement with Frontier Africa TV began almost a year ago when a top media corporation, its personnel banned from entering Zimbabwe under its draconian press laws, asked the film-maker if it could gain access to Ncube to make a documentary on its behalf.
At the time, Ncube was almost as big a player in the Zimbabwe drama as Mugabe. Gentle and quietly spoken, he had gradually emerged as the principal thorn in the flesh of Mugabe's regime. His role was frequently compared to that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an Anglican married priest, in Tutu's struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ncube ranks Tutu among the men he most greatly admires, alongside Mahatma Gandhi and El Salvador's Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in 1980 when right-wing militia shot him dead at his cathedral altar during mass.
Ncube's 2005 receipt of the Burns International Humanitarian Award was widely seen as a prelude to him joining Tutu as a winner of the Nobel prize. While in Scotland to receive his award, Ncube told the Sunday Herald he had been reflecting on what Jesus might say if he was an itinerant preacher in modern Zimbabwe.
"I think Christ would condemn the violence, widespread rape and torture by government agencies and the Mugabe-loyal youth militia," he said. "I don't think Christ would have survived in Zimbabwe. We're all being held to ransom by one despot. Mugabe's government doesn't like people who speak the truth. Plenty of people who criticise the government have died mysteriously. Christ wouldn't have had a chance."
Arrangements proceeded for the clandestine filming of Ncube, a somewhat chaotic man, born of peasant parents, who wears trousers several inches too short for his legs and who has been routinely denounced by Mugabe for his "satanic" betrayal of Zimbabwe with his trenchant condemnations of government misrule.
The picture drawn would probably have been one of a humble man much loved by his congregations, who worked tirelessly among the poor and who rarely had any money in his pocket because his aides could not stop him giving it away to the hosts of Zimbabweans down on their luck.
So it came as a bombshell to Ncube's flock, his worldwide admirers and the film-makers when, last July, The Herald newspaper and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation displayed sensational photographs and video footage of a naked man, said to be Ncube, with a Mrs Rosemary Sibanda in what state commentators described as his "love nest".
The exposé, part of a sustained anti-Ncube operation by Mugabe's much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), was a boost to Mugabe's government and dealt a heavy blow to religious and civil groups who had long fought against torture, extra-judicial killings and other human rights abuses under Zimbabwe's authoritarian regime.
Supporters, believing the allegations to be malicious and untrue, sprang to the defence of the archbishop. Writing in the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, columnist Tawanda Mutasah said the expose "does not put a slice of bread in the mouths of hungry Zimbabweans".
She went on: "Contrary to the intentions of Mugabe, the matter does not confuse Zimbabweans and the world about the veracity and the importance of Ncube's public moral voice on the morass that Zimbabwe has become, and on Mugabe's responsibility for the state we are in."
Sibanda's estranged husband, railway worker Onesimus Sibanda, then began to sue Ncube for "loss of love, comfort and society," seeking some 20 billion Zimbabwe dollars (US$1.3m at the then official exchange rate, but nearer to US$154,000 at the realistic black market rate) in damages. The archbishop's lawyer, Nicholas Mathonsi, advised Ncube to remain silent and told reporters: "My client is not guilty."
THE archbishop's supporters also began pointing out that Mugabe, raised a Catholic in one of the country's leading Catholic mission stations, had fathered two children by a married secretary, Grace Marufu, 40 years his junior, while his first wife, Sally, lay dying from a debilitating illness.
After Sally's death, the late Catholic Archbishop of Harare, Patrick Chakaipa, married Mugabe and Marufu, saying that he saw "no impediment".
Critics said that while it was relevant to point out Mugabe's hypocrisy, it was hardly a defence of the archbishop. Mugabe had little remaining moral high ground to defend. Ncube, however, was one of Africa's most respected churchmen, not least because he dared to challenge Mugabe's tyranny. But his "sin of the flesh", if true, was bound to cost him his own moral high ground, whatever the huge disparity between his own conduct and that of the violent head of state.
Two months after the revelations, Ncube resigned, citing as his reason the avoidance of any perception that it would be "the Holy Catholic Church of God" on trial when Onesimus Sibanda took his case to court. His lack of comment on the allegations against him were interpreted by many as an admission of guilt.
In the event, Ncube was suddenly summoned to Rome last autumn and a rushed and secret filming session was arranged as he prepared to board his flight out of Bulawayo to Italy.
In that final interview, Ncube said he feared this week's election will again be rigged and that Mugabe, his nemesis, will once again be elected president of Zimbabwe. "They are going to rig the election, there is no doubt," he said.
"People are longing for change, but unfortunately there will be intimidation again. If they feel intimidated then perhaps they will sayI'll rather not vote' or they will go and spoil their paper."
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