A Zimbabwean archbishop has called for President Robert Mugabe to be sent into exile amid fears that Mugabe’s demolition programme may lead to tens of thousands of deaths, reports the South African Mail and Guardian.

|TOP|Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube said Wednesday he fears 200,000 Zimbabweans could die by early next year because of food shortages caused by President Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina, the widely condemned slum demolition programme which has left thousands of Zimbabweans in destitution.

“I think Mugabe should just be banished, like what happened to Charles Taylor,” said Archbishop Ncube. “He should just be banished from Zimbabwe.”

The former president of Liberia, Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria for his part in widespread massacres which have left thousands dead.

“Let the man get banished if you don’t want Zimbabweans to die,” said Ncube, who predicted that thousands will die by February unless there is dramatic change in the situation within Zimbabwe.

Ncube estimated the figure to be as high as 200,000 given the effect of severe food shortage on a population already ravaged by HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty, with Zimbabwe currently experiencing hyperinflation and massive unemployment at around 80 per cent.

The Archbishop said that 700 people a day were already dying AIDS in Zimbabwe and that the rate of deaths would increase with malnutrition.

|QUOTE|Bishop Rubin Phillip, the Anglican Bishop of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and co-chairperson of the Solidarity Peace Trust, a group of church leaders committed to human rights and democracy, highlighted the suffering of many thousands of Zimbabweans who “are living lives of desperation with no glimmer of hope”.

Bishop Phillip said the Solidarity Peace Trust had recorded the plight of hundreds of thousands of people in the country who have been “cruelly and deliberately deprived of houses and livelihood by the government of Zimbabwe”.

According to church clerics, dozens of people, including newborn babies, died as a result of exposure following the burning and destruction of informal settlements by the government.

“You can see what kind of people we are dealing with here, murderers. I will not mince my words,” said Ncube.

Archbishop Ncube, an outspoken critic of Mugabe, made the comments at a news conference called for the screening of a new film on Operation Murambatsvina entitled ‘Hide and Seek’.

In the film, Mugabe defends the government’s demolition programme as a clean-up campaign aimed at moving people out of unpleasant informal settlements and into new and better homes built by the government.

The film, however, features numerous interviews with the victims of the campaign who are still living in the open air or in makeshift stick shacks with plastic sheeting.

According to reports, many of the displaced have simply been abandoned in rural areas where they are strangers, without money or jobs.

“The amount of suffering is beyond imagination,” said Ncube, who accused the Zimbabwean government of instigating a cover-up and lying to the people.

“Mugabe is the kind of character that even if 50 per cent of Zimbabweans died, he would not care. These people are absolutely murderers,” he said.

The Solidarity Peace Trust called on the international community to do more to help the people of Zimbabwe and to force Mugabe’s government to care for its people.

“In Zimbabwe, all the able-bodied people have left. All those who are left in the country are victims,” said the Rev. Nicholas Makuranda, an Anglican priest from Harare.

Ncube said: “We are dealing here with a force of evil that is beyond your imagination.”