|
'SA should pull plug on Zim'
05/03/2004 13:56 - (SA)
Johannesburg - South Africa should impose sanctions on crisis-ridden Zimbabwe to force President Robert Mugabe into peace talks with the opposition, a senior Zimbabwean cleric said Friday.
In a radio interview, Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, said just as the world helped establish a new democratic government in South Africa through sanctions, Pretoria could do the same with its northern neighbour.
"South Africa was helped by the sanctions imposed by the international community. We (Zimbabwe) should also be helped by South Africa," Ncube, one of the most outspoken critics of Mugabe's government, told SABC public radio.
Ncube suggested South Africa's giant power utility Eskom should warn that electricity to Zimbabwe would be cut off if there was no progress on long delayed talks between Mugabe and the opposition.
Cut off the power
"Zimbabwe is owing billions in electricity (bills). They just would need to be told: 'Hey you people, settle your affairs or else we cut off'. Then Mugabe would be forced to dialogue with the opposition because Mugabe is refusing to talk to them," Ncube added.
Mugabe slammed the door on proposed negotiations with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) last month, dealing a new blow to the "quiet diplomacy" tack taken by South Africa to try to resolve Zimbabwe's long-running political crisis.
The Zimbabwean leader, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has accused the former colonial power of bankrolling the MDC in a bid to oust him from power and return imperialist interests to the former British colony.
Inhuman and partisan
Zimbabwean church leaders, including Ncube, last year slated Harare's "irresponsible, inhuman, violent (and) partisan" methods of land redistribution, and accused it of fuelling a culture of violence.
But Ncube warned that "violence" against the government would only worsen the situation in Zimbabwe, where inflation has soared above 620% and aid agencies say chronic food shortages were widely due to Mugabe's agrarian reforms, including redistributing white-owned farms to new black farmers.
"There would be a danger in this (violence) that if you look at places like Liberia," Ncube said.
"The key is this that we are trying to look for peaceful means of change."
- AFP
|
