Harare, Zimbabwe
Bosnewslife.com
Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader decided Sunday, 22nd June, to pull out of next week’s presidential run-off after reports of intimidation and a ban on foreign aid groups which also impact thousands of Christians in the country.
In a statement, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai decided there was no fair chance to stand against incumbent President Robert Mugabe as at least 70 opposition supporters have been killed in the run-up to the 27th June poll.
Tsvangirai has been arrested five times in the past month and his lieutenant, Tendai Biti, is in police custody facing a treason charge that could carry a death sentence.
The political tensions come as a Christian aid group told BosNewsLife that foreign organisations have been banned from the country, making it difficult to reach Christian families and others struggling with shortages of basic goods and the world’s highest inflation rate of 165,000 percent.
With one loaf of bread costing at least 600 million Zimbabwean dollars, many people, including thousands of Christian families, are in need of food and medicines, said Barnabas Fund. Yet, the group stressed that unlike official agencies, it has been able to continue its feeding program “through the courageous and discreet work of individual Christians and churches”. One US dollar hovers around 1.5 billion Zimbabwean dollars, according to traders earlier this month, but that figure changes by the day upwards.
Barnabas Fund said it has provided just over 60 tonnes of food since February distributed to over 2,000 “of the neediest Christian families in Zimbabwe.” However the group admitted that much more is needed in the troubled nation, which has become increasingly isolated under the rule of Mugabe. Church leaders have expressed concern about the situation in the country.
This week the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference said, “The reign of violence that has been unleashed on the country, especially in the rural areas and former commercial farming areas, is unacceptable.” It noted that government-backed troops are active in “defenceless rural populations,” and urged to disband the militias.
“People are being force-marched to political re-orientation meetings…They are told that they voted ‘wrongly’ in the presidential poll on March 29, and that on June 27 they will be given the last opportunity to ‘correct their mistake’, else the full-scale shooting war of the 1970s will resume,” the bishops said.
From Geneva, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Reverend Samuel Kobia, has urged his counterpart at the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, to express his concern about atrocities in the Southern African nation. “Where the Mugabe government fails in its responsibility to protect the Zimbabwean people, the international co mmunity must assume that burden; in this endeavour, the United Nations should assume a leading role.”
Mugabe has defended his policies, saying the opposition are puppets of “colonial powers” including Britain and the United States. He has accused the opposition of being behind the violence and says he will never accept a Zimbabwe run by the MDC opposition party.
