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Sout
h Africa should impose sanctions on crisis-ridden Zimbabwe to
force President Robert Mugabe into peace talks with the opposition,
a senior Zimbabwean cleric said yesterday.
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.
"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.
Zimbabwean church leaders, including Ncube, last year slated
Harare's "irresponsible, inhuman, violent (and) partisan" methods
of land redistribution, and accused it of fueling 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". – Sapa-AFP.
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