Zimbabwe's Archbishop Accused of Adultery

Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic archbishop, Pius Ncube, a strident critic of Robert Mugabe's rule, was accused yesterday of a two-year adulterous affair with a secretary at his church in a lawsuit that his lawyers described as politically motivated.

But Archbishop Ncube declined to explicitly deny the affair when he spoke to the Guardian yesterday.

In legal papers served on the archbishop in Bulawayo, Onesisums Sibanda is demanding 20bn Zimbabwe dollars (£80,000) in damages from the cleric for the alleged adultery with his wife, Rosemary. The state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said Ms Sibanda, who worked at St Mary's Cathedral, admitted the affair in an interview.

ZBC followed court officials into the archbishop's office in a move that his lawyers said was evidence of an orchestrated attempt to destroy his credibility because of his virulent criticism of the government, including calling Mr Mugabe a murderer and a monster.

But the archbishop, speaking to the Guardian yesterday, declined to deny the affair, even though he was asked three times if there was any merit to the accusation. He said he would wait for the matter to come to court and that the accusations were politically motivated.

"You see these people are always following me and trying to find something to try and fix me," he said. "There were a dozen news men accompanying this man [Mr Sibanda] to the court and then they splashed this before even giving me the summons."

Adultery is illegal, although rarely prosecuted, in Zimbabwe.

The accusation comes a week after Archbishop Ncube returned from South Africa, where he launched a report that accused the Zimbabwean state of torture and illegal killings. "Mugabe is a man who is a megalomaniac. He loves power, he lives for power. Even his own party is appealing to him to step down," he said in Johannesburg.

The archbishop has been forced to qualify some of his stronger statements, including a call to Christians in Zimbabwe to pray for Mr Mugabe to die.

For several years he was at odds with most of his own bishops in his strident criticism of the government, but in recent months the archbishop galvanized them into issuing a letter read in churches that likened popular opposition to Mr Mugabe's "racist, corrupt and lawless" government to the country's liberation war against white rule.

Zimbabwe's president has described him as a "half-wit".