Archbishop Pius Ncube meets Prisoner of conscience, Roy Bennett (Zimbabwe)

CFP ^ | February 11, 2005 | Sokwanele

[MikeEdwards]

On Saturday 5th February, far beyond the reach of any reporters or the probing lens of any cameras, an event of major significance took place. In the prison compound at Mutoko, some 140 kilometers north-east of Harare, one of Zimbabwe's leading clerics and outspoken critic of the Mugabe regime, met and talked with a prominent member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), now a prisoner of conscience incarcerated by that regime. Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo met Roy Bennett the imprisoned opposition MDC member of parliament for the Chimanimani constituency.

Roy Bennett is serving out in the Mutoko prison the harsh and grossly disproportionate sentence imposed upon him by parliament. In October 2004 the ruling ZANU (PF) party used their majority in parliament to slam a 12-month term of imprisonment with hard labour upon Bennett. The pretext for this blatantly racist attack upon an opposition legislator who happens to be white and massively popular with his constituents, was an altercation in parliament between Bennett and Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice. In response to provocative jibes from Chinamasa that his ancestors were "thieves and murderers", Bennett pushed Chinamasa to the floor. A minor scuffle that would have merited perhaps a reprimand from the Speaker in any normal democratic institution, (or a small fine if prosecuted in the criminal courts) was used as the occasion for ZANU (PF) to vent its anger upon a former member of the party who had dared to switch his allegiance to the opposition when he saw how corrupt ZANU (PF) had become. The unprecedented severity of the sentence was only the latest act of vengeance inflicted upon Bennett, who with his family and workers, has been the target of a sustained campaign of persecution over the last several years. . . . .