Printed in the London Times last fortnight, the words of Pius Ncube, archbishop of Bulawayo: "I think it is justified for Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe," meaning the vampiric despot Robert Mugabe. "We should do it ourselves but there's too much fear. I'm ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready."
Four years ago Ncube's fellows used a neologistic verb, "to Saddam" — as in, "Mister Bush, please Saddam us" — while begging to be pulled from the nightmare of the former Southern Rhodesia. As a dictator, Robert Mugabe is in his own class of paltriness, insisting that the skeletal Zimbabwe is still his kingdom. In retaliation for, or perhaps in spite of, the Catholic leader's clarion, Mugabe reportedly muttered about the clergy and chastity, then singled out Ncube himself.
What with Zimbabwe's rotted judiciary, a civil suit from a man accusing Ncube of cuckolding him should have been only a slight impediment. But a week later, the archbishop wouldn't accept the quotation in the Times.
"Any intervention should build," said Ncube on July 10th, inanely, "on support of the region and the negotiations they are engaged in." Wait for the African Union to force Mugabe into a fair election, he resolved — on the order of proposing, Wait for Mugabe's distant cousins to tell the old crook to ease up some.
We do not know, at this hour, if the archbishop was refuting or recanting. Nor are the adultery charges, however convenient for Mugabe, necessarily contrived. And while a fallen man can still do good he does in willful sin, whether serving God or the world, less than he might. Mugabe will terrorize and starve people in the meantime. If the Times story was true, here is some friendly counsel to Pius Ncube: responsible civilian and military commanders will not, with the intention of deposing a brutish kleptocracy, commit soldiers who have each been issued a semi-automatic good intention.