Zimbabwe: Mugabe attacks archbishop at funeral

Zimbabwe's President Mugabe hit out at Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo during the state funeral of war veteran Mark Dube on Friday. Archbishop Ncube recently met with church leaders and politicians in the South Africa and the UK to appeal for support for the people of his country, saying that the current regime has subjected Zimbabweans to political repression and great economic hardship. Speaking at the funeral, Mugabe said Britain had been an enemy of Zimbabwe since colonial times and the Archbishop was aligning with Britain to try to topple his government. Dube was a one-time provincial governor who served as a senior military trainer for Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party during Zimbabwe's long liberation war. Mugabe said: "He would never have gone to Britain to invite Blair to please come and invade his motherland, in the same satanic way Archbishop Pius Ncube and his opposition colleagues are doing repeatedly today. He would never speak the language of tribalism, that destructive dialect we again hear from the pulpit." "Let's take care forever that we do not place this country in the hands of those who are ready to sup and dine with the enemy, those who are ready to rush to the enemy and call him a friend, forgetting that yesterday he was the cause of the bloodshed of this country. "That enemy was Britain and Britain and its allies. They can never, ever be our friends indeed.... whatever they do, however they think, they remain colonial enemies."