In Gono's rag today there were a number of attacks on Archbishop Pius Ncube, obviously orchestrated by Mgodoyites, which accuse him of being a political figure posing as a man of God.

Today I came across another comment about another religious leader in another country.

The attack states:

quote:

---

"On the surface, he is a religious figure," he said, "but down under the surface, he is a political figure."

---

The subject of this attack was His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet in its struggle for liberation from Chinese hegemony.

The author of this attack was a Quisling, an ethnic Tibetan who clings to the coat-tails of the regime in Beijing which has overseen the oppression and marginalisation of Tibetans in their own country.

There is nothing new under the sun.

To Kill a Priest by Kevin Ruane.

Here's a borrowed review.

"History is meant to be the responsibility of presidents and prime ministers. Usually it is. Just occasionally, however, it is ordinary people who inspire and motivate millions of their fellows and change the destiny of a nation.
This book is about a parish priest in Poland who did just that. Between 1980 and his murder by secret policeman in 1984, Father Jerzy Popieluszko inspired his countrymen to continue resisting the dictatorship that had persecuted those who opposed Communist rule."

I've just started reading the book and can't help drawing contrast with our own Archbishop Pius Ncube.

Happy reading and look forward to your reviews.

Many thanks for that - I will look out for the book Sku.

The dark side of Communism was that it tried to neutralise its opponents by any and all means.

If the likes of Ncube cannot be killed because he is too well known then the Mgodoyites will try to kill his reputation instead.

I don't think they know what they are up against.

Zihlobo!

U*** is able to kill anyone he wishes, his tacticts are inexhaustible. You will notice that anyone that spoke againast his regime, will always be subjected to stuff that will threaten their lives so that they join him, or he just takes them out.

Many people that we know, were taken out for the same purpose. Many by form of accidents and some by rare diseases while others "suicides".

While all this should not stop us from pursuing the quest of freedom, empowerment and proper leadership, we need to know the kind of man we are dealing with, from what he has done. The trick now is for us to know that if Ncube is harmed, we know who has done it and what we should do. In many cases when a person that has raised his head, has been killed, nothing happens people just hear from news and just say its one of those things, while *** is making progress in destroying us further.

Are we going to let *** exterminate the people that speak for us?

Bafowethu.

Isibongo DOKOTELA. Isintu sithi sona: "ISIBINDI SEBUTHO SIKULABO ABALISEKELAYO LELO BUTHO." One can not fight effectively if one has no backing.

Ubaba uNcube uhamba eguswini elimnyama okwamanje. Sizamekela ehamba yedwa na???

Li Zwangendaba.

NgiliJaha lako Ncube, Zwangendaba. UPius ngimbona njengo baba, ngalokhu.

Ngolwazi engilalo ngobubi buka ***doyi, ngibona angani uzakwenza akujwayeleyo u***, silokhe sikhangele kuhlale kunjalo.

I was delighted to read about how Pius Alick Mvundla Ncube was supposed to meet the great genocidalist but instead found himself in the company of the simple rural people who suffered the cruelties the genocidalist visited on Mthwakazi.

I am told reliably that when ***do had to meet Ncube at the funeral of Tshakaipa he could not look the Bulawayan in the eye.

Ncube is becoming known around the world as an exemplar of Mthwakazian stoicism.

May he live long.

May he never walk alone.

Kuyabongeka Nobhutshuzwayo, it's about time we talked about REAL leaders and about time we put our faith in REAL leaders and NOT dubious turncoat characters. Thanks Father Pius for delivering on the ground. We know you will not turn your back against anyone.

--------------------------------------------------

August 28, 2004
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
A Humble African Cleric Fiercely Protects His Flock
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe

MUTTERING softly, a man in a priest's collar, baggy sweater and pants two
inches too short for his legs puttered distractedly about the office of
Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, one recent Saturday,
getting things in order for the archbishop's next meeting.

He swept papers off one corner of a cluttered desk to create writing space.
He searched the dust-covered bookshelves for the archbishop's résumé. He
fixed a stubborn electrical outlet. He answered the telephone when the
receptionist failed to pick it up.

He was so completely the image of a preoccupied assistant that nearly 10
minutes passed before it finally dawned upon a visitor that the man was no
assistant at all, but the archbishop himself. That drew a small smile.
Archbishop Ncube is accustomed to being underestimated.

For years, Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, treated the archbishop as
beneath his notice, even when he called him a liar, a cheat and a despot
willing to starve his own people to stay in power. Mr. Mugabe left it to
aides to pityingly characterize the clergyman as "quite unwell" or "mad."

But that was before this winter, when the archbishop began an all-out
assault on Mr. Mugabe beyond Zimbabwe's borders. In March, he began
soliciting foreign donations to a legal defense fund for Zimbabweans who
allege human rights abuses, collecting about $130,000 so far. In July, he
held a news conference in London to argue that Mr. Mugabe is terrorizing
his citizens and reducing them to paupers while the world looks the otherway.

Now the gloves are off. In May, Mr. Mugabe called the archbishop "an unholy
man," another Desmond Tutu, whom he dismissed as "an angry, evil and
embittered little bishop." Last week, Mr. Mugabe accused Archbishop Ncube
of "satanic" betrayal of Zimbabwe, suggesting he had invited its former
colonial power, Britain, to invade.

That is the nice version. In the state-controlled press, Archbishop Ncube
said, he is vilified as gay, a rapist and H.I.V.-positive.

His admirers also compare him to Desmond Tutu. But they mean it as high
praise. The retired Anglican archbishop, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for
challenging South Africa's apartheid regime, remains to many the model of a
clergyman as a moral leader.

Like Archbishop Tutu, said Ray Motsi, the Baptist pastor in Bulawayo, "Pius
is a beacon of light. He is a very brave person, very single-minded. He has
been able to discern the moment and understand what is the most important
role he can play."

Not all clergymen are so supportive. Many churches in Zimbabwe have been
torn apart under Mr. Mugabe, divided among those who back him, fear him,
openly oppose him or simply do not want to hear about politics in a house
of prayer.

The Roman Catholic Church, the biggest of Zimbabwe's Christian
denominations, is no exception. For years it was split between Archbishop
Ncube of Bulawayo and Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa of Harare, a friend of
Mr. Mugabe. After Archbishop Chakaipa died last year, Pope John Paul II
replaced him with a bishop much closer to Archbishop Ncube.

Church insiders tend to read that as a sign that the hierarchy in Rome
thinks the archbishop of Bulawayo is on the right path. But some Catholic
bishops, priests and nuns in Zimbabwe do not share that view.

"They think I am speaking too much, that I am too aggressive, not
diplomatic," Archbishop Ncube said, perched behind a simple wooden desk
cluttered with files. "I say I can not be diplomatic when there is so much
suffering. I have to talk straight.

"We must defend the people who are suffering. Who else will defend them?
There is no opposition."

PIUS NCUBE was born in 1946 in a cattle-loading town about an hour south of
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city. His parents were peasants who
raised sheep, goats and cattle. Catholic schools, Archbishop Ncube has
said, taught him to put faith first. He entered a Zimbabwean seminary at
age 21. When his country won independence from Britain in 1980 and Mr.
Mugabe came to power, he was studying for his master's degree in theology
in Rome.

But he was back home three years later when the new government went after
rebels from Archbishop Ncube's own ethnic minority, the Ndebele, in
southeastern Zimbabwe, then a stronghold for a rival political party.
Ndebele leaders say thousands of innocent villagers were murdered.

That drew Archbishop Ncube, then a parish priest, firmly into the human
rights arena. He helped Bulawayo's former archbishop take statements from
witnesses who alleged atrocities but never managed to persuade Zimbabwe's
council of bishops to endorse the 1997 account by a Catholic commission.

HE has now gone far beyond compiling reports to sit on a shelf. From his
archbishop's platform, he is perhaps the president's most vocal and
powerful critic - influential enough to make Mr. Mugabe insinuate that only
his priestly robes protect him from the treatment he deserves.

The archbishop accuses Mr. Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, of torturing, beating,
imprisoning and murdering members of the opposition. He insists that the
government has forced the United Nations to scale back a feeding program so
it can use government stocks to reward supporters and punish dissidents.

"They burn homes," he said. "They kill people. They torture people with
electricity. They intimidate people to make them feel afraid." In a meeting
last year, he said, he and other Catholic bishops put the case directly to
Mr. Mugabe, who attended Catholic school and was married in the church.

"We told him to control this. It hasn't stopped," the archbishop said. "We
cannot change this man."

Nor is there any hope, he said, that the 80-year-old president will risk
his party's dominance by allowing fair parliamentary elections next year.
With the opposition now thoroughly checked, he said, mass protests are also
highly unlikely.

THE archbishop's solution is more international pressure from the United
Nations and from African countries - a position endorsed last week at a
regional conference of Catholic bishops. But although the 53-state African
Union last month condemned human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, so far African
leaders have shied away from imposing sanctions, saying that would only
hurt Zimbabwe's poor.

"All they do is back each other up and drink tea," the archbishop told one
interviewer last month.

It was a typically blunt remark, delivered between pauses and sighs.
Eloquence and charisma are not in the archbishop's repertoire. His sermons
"are all over the place," said Nigel Johnson, a Jesuit priest in Bulawayo
and one of his admirers.

"What he has got," Father Johnson said, "is a passion for the people of his
diocese." Thus when the ever-vigilant police pick up a dissident on a
trumped-up charge, Father Johnson and others say, the archbishop makes sure
his family is informed and has enough food.

He quietly offers St. Mary's Cathedral, a 101-year-old landmark, as a
sanctuary for human rights activists hard-pressed to gather anywhere else.

He said he ignored the government intelligence officers who sit in on all
of the church services, and who last year warned him that criticism of the
government was not allowed. When an emissary from the government last year
offered him a farm, he said, he sent her packing.

He answers not to Mr. Mugabe, he said, but to the book on his desk. One
recent Saturday, he flipped it open until he found Luke 4:18. "Free the
oppressed," he said. "This is our calling."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Thanks Archbishop Pius Ncube you the real Leader.You doing excalty what Jesus did.

Here is a man who deserves our support.

Here is a man who will not give the genocidal Mugabe any attention!

He is a man who can not have dinner with the devils!

Here is our great leader who needs to be praised!


Here is a visionary who deserve every Mthwakazi man to get behind him so he never walks alone!

It is a shame, great shame that turncoats seem to be getting more support than him!

siyambonga umfundisi, who forms a handful of the bfave people abakwazi ukutshela u mgarbage iqiniso.

meanwhile liyabona ukuthi izanu yenzani;

Government to introduce military training
Midlands Reporter
THE Government plans to introduce a military component in the National Youth Service (NYS) training programme to enable graduates to defend the national interests, a Cabinet Minister said yesterday.