Bishop: Zimbabwe like 'worst days of apartheid'

National Catholic Reporter, April 27, 2007

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA -- A South African Catholic bishop who recently visited Zimbabwe said that even children are being detained by Zimbabwean security forces.

Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's forces "are everywhere now, and they know everything."

The situation in Zimbabwe was reminiscent of the "worst days of apartheid," South Africa's former system of enforced racial segregation, he told Catholic News Service April 16.

Dowling and Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, joined Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo at an April 12 ecumenical prayer meeting in St. Mary's Cathedral in Bulawayo. Dowling said security police were among the congregation in the cathedral.

When Mugabe returned home from a late-March Southern African Development Community meeting in Tanzania, Dowling said, "he gave free range to his security forces," who are said to have abducted and beaten more than 600 Zimbabweans in April.

During their April 11-13 visit to Zimbabwe, Dowling and Tlhagale met with church leaders, civil representatives and four antigovernment activists "who were tortured by police and are afraid to return to their homes in Harare," the Zimbabwean capital, Dowling said.

--Catholic News Service