Days after the African Union shelved an official report condemning Zimbabwe's human-rights conduct, that nation's top Roman Catholic official on Wednesday accused the continent's heads of state of complicity in prolonging repression there.
The official, Archbishop Pius Ncube, is one of the most visible critics of the autocratic government of Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe. At a news conference here on Wednesday, he and other Zimbabwean religious leaders forecast new violence - and a new exodus of refugees from Zimbabwe - unless African leaders pressed Mr. Mugabe to embrace democratic reforms. But the archbishop indicated he believed that such pressure was unlikely. "All they do is back each other up and drink tea," he said.
Mr. Mugabe scored a diplomatic victory last weekend when the 53-nation African Union, meeting in Ethiopia, voted to table a sharply worded critique of Zimbabwe's civil-liberties record prepared by a committee on human rights. The report, which was leaked last week, accused the government of "failure at critical moments to uphold the rule of law" and of tolerating arbitrary arrests and human-rights violations.
At Wednesday's news conference, Archbishop Ncube and other Zimbabwean activists charged that the government was increasingly stifling basic freedoms in a campaign to erase all opposition before national parliamentary elections set for next March. The elections are seen as crucial to the continued dominance of Zimbabwe's governing party - the Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front, known as ZANU-PF - because Mr. Mugabe, the party's 80-year-old patriarch, has indicated he will retire in 2008.
The sole opposition party in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change, has suffered notably from growing restrictions on press freedom - all independent daily newspapers have been closed - and on the right to assemble publicly.
Archbishop Ncube was especially critical of South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, who has urged tolerance of Mr. Mugabe's government as part of a campaign to promote peaceful change in Zimbabwe. Mr. Mbeki had pledged to broker talks between ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, only to be embarrassed when Mr. Mugabe publicly rejected the negotiations.