The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, the Most Rev Pius Ncube, is a slightly shy, softly spoken and humble man — characteristics that may seem to contrast with his leonine courage in the face of President Mugabe’s tyranny.

He also appears tired. As he sinks back into his chair at the London headquarters of Cafod, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, he seems to carry in his demeanour the desperation of his country’s poor. It looks as if his long struggle with Robert Mugabe may be taking its toll.

It has been seven years since Mugabe triggered the decline of his country by ordering “war veterans” to invade white-owned farms after he lost a constitutional referendum. As Mugabe seized control of the judiciary and the press, rigged elections, demolished shanty towns — making 700,000 people destitute — and starved his political opponents, Archbishop Ncube came to prominence as the archetypal turbulent priest, Mugabe’s most implacably defiant domestic opponent, vowing to continue to speak the truth even though his name was rumoured to be on a secret “death list”.

There are worse things than martyrdom to a man of the stature of Archbishop Ncube, however. Among them is the realisation that people are losing interest in his cause. Earlier this week in London he admitted to a private meeting of MPs and peers that the plight of Zimbabwe was now largely a “forgotten issue”.

“We cannot compete for attention in a world fixated by events in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere,” he said. “Yet we need the international community to maintain pressure on Zanu PF [the ruling party] now as much as ever.”

Although his trip to London was to raise money for a charity for Aids victims, the Archbishop made sure that his audience understood that Zimbabwe had become a world leader for all the wrong reasons.

They heard that it has one of the highest Aids rates in the world, with almost a quarter of the 12 million population infected. A combination of malnutrition, poverty and Aids claims 3,500 lives a week, a death rate higher even than the conflict in Darfur and the war in Iraq. This has resulted in Zimbabwe having the lowest life expectancy in the world — 34 for women and 37 for men.

The rate of inflation stands at 2,000 per cent, the highest in the world. Zimbabwe also has the world’s fastest-declining economy, shrinking by 40 per cent in the past six years, and 80 per cent unemployment. The World Food Programme estimates that 6.1 million people are facing starvation in a country that was once so fertile that it used to be known as the “breadbasket of Africa”.

Yet, as Archbishop Ncube pointed out, “Zimbabwe is not a nation at war”. Nor is it possible for these figures “just to be blamed on Aids”.

He implies that Mugabe has been complicit in the deaths of his people through a combination of oppression and neglect. But getting anything done about it is difficult. The Archbishop’s interventions have failed to persuade South Africa to provide a regional solution to the crisis — the best chance for the people of Zimbabwe — but have succeeded in incurring police harassment and smears of the state-run media.

Such trials have been compounded by betrayals from those he sees as friends or seeks to help. In September Archbishop Ncube attended the episcopal ordination of Dieter Sholz, a German-born Jesuit. Mugabe was also there and afterwards courted the congregation with a 35-minute speech. Archbishop Ncube balked when the crowd applauded enthusiastically. “As far as I was concerned, they should not have clapped for him, ever,” he said.

Then, a month later, Archbishop Ncube was furious when a statement issued by the Churches called The Zimbabwe We Want: Toward a National Vision was sabotaged by the Government before it was printed. “Mugabe’s cronies took it and removed a whole load of pages,” he said. “That was supposed to be our document. They totally changed the terminology. That shows that the man [Mugabe] is not ready to change.”

The statement, he explained, must have been leaked to the Government by one of a number of pastors who were beginning to side with Mugabe and who had become “disloyal to God and to the people”.

Archbishop Ncube said it was typical of Mr Mugabe to turn up at Pope John Paul II’s funeral, to stand among world leaders and then to “force himself on Prince Charles” in a “rude” manner during the sign of peace. Two months later the archbishop found himself at the Vatican too, but taking issue with Pope Benedict XVI for welcoming rigged parliamentary election results as “a new beginning in the process of national reconciliation and the moral rebuilding of society”.

“I informed him that things were bad and Mugabe was oppressing the people and shouldn’t be encouraged,” he said, adding that the Pope was deeply sympathetic.

The Archbishop does not know where the problems with Mugabe will end, but he suspects a Pauline conversion is out of the question. The bishops tried that three years ago in a four-hour meeting that brought the President and Archbishop Ncube face to face. “We talked to him about the problems,” the Archbishop recalls. “The inflation, the starvation, the corruption, the youth militia, the violence, and told him that he should talk to the [Movement for Democratic Change] opposition to finish the problems. He was very defensive.”

He continued: “The problem is that Mugabe thinks he is our owner. He is such an arrogant and proud man and he thinks he owns us and can go around bullying us. Mugabe is so much in love with power that he hasn’t even groomed a successor. We are kind of held to ransom.”

For Archbishop Ncube, the only remaining hope is to educate young people about the necessity for them to make governments accountable for their policies. But this seems a distant prospect given the desperation that has gripped the country and the pledge of Zanu-PF to rule until “Jesus comes again”.

But things must change. Mugabe turns 83 in February and there is a strong chance that Archbishop Ncube, who is 60 on December 31, will outlive him. Meanwhile he will need the patience of Job and the inner peace that only God can give.