Archbishop of York cuts up his dog collar in astonishing live TV protest at Mugabe

Dr John Sentamu said he would refuse to wear the Anglican symbol of office until Mugabe was no longer in power.

The Ugandan-born churchman will not replace his dog collar "even for the Queen", aides said.

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His demonstration follows Mugabe's controversial presence at the EU summit with African leaders in Lisbon.

Gordon Brown boycotted the meeting rather than come face to face with the Zimbabwe president while German chancellor Angela Merkel has accused him of trampling on human rights.

Dr Sentamu is a long-standing critic of Mugabe.

Earlier this year he described him as "the worst kind of racist dictator" and called for him to be isolated with economic and sporting sanctions.

Yesterday the archbishop criticised African leaders who rallied round Mugabe and defended him as a freedom fighter who liberated his country from white rule.

Speaking on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show, Dr Sentamu took off his dog collar, saying: "As an Anglican this is what I wear to identify myself, that I'm a clergyman."

He then took out a pair of scissors before snipping away at the dog collar, adding: "Do you know what Mugabe has done? He has taken people's identity and literally, if you don't mind, cut it to pieces. So, as far as I am concerned, from now on I am not going to wear a dog collar until Mugabe is gone."

The decision not to wear a dog collar means the archbishop will appear in public in a plain Church of England bishop's purple shirt.

He will not wear the collar with ceremonial robes during services, even on state occasions.

The detachable dog collar is thought have been invented in the 1800s while the collarino - material which partially covers the white collar and is common with Roman Catholic clergy - is thought to date back to the 17th century.

According to research, the collar became popular with Anglican clergy during the Oxford Movement in the 19th century.

The archbishop said African leaders who supported Mugabe were displaying "pernicious, selfdestructing racism".

"A white man does it, the whole world cries," he added. "A black person does it, there is a certain sense of, oh, this is colonialism. I am sorry, I don't buy this.

"Africa and all the world have got to liberate Africa from this mental slavery and this colonial mentality."

The archbishop said Mugabe had turned his country "from a bread basket into a basket case", with many shops empty of basic foods and only one in five citizens in a job.

He added: "He has actually taken a country really into sheer chaos. He has been so brutal that, in the long run, the world has got to say, if the South African people and leaders won't do it, something has got to happen."

Dr Sentamu called on Christians to "pray, march and protest" over Zimbabwe as they did over apartheid in South Africa.

He said: "As Christmas comes around, spare a pound for a child starving in Darfur and in Zimbabwe.

"Let this money be collected so when the time comes, people can actually have their houses and their homes rebuilt."