Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
May 14, 2007
The UN vote : Zimbabweans feel abandoned by Africa
As Mugabe's thugs were slicing an MDC activist's chest open with an ax African delegates were voting for Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission on sustainable development.
By electing Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission on sustainable development, the African delegates may have become recent converts to the late Simon Muzenda's dictum : "Even if we give you a baboon to vote for you must vote for it!"
MDC
Three events, two of them well publicized internationally, helped keep the world’s spotlight on Zimbabwe this past week.
Each of the events had its own implications on Zimbabwe and Africa.
By a vote of 26 to 21, with three abstentions, Zimbabwe was elected to chair the United Nations commission on sustainable development. The majority votes came from the African delegates who, it was reported, did not want to be pushed around by the West into who they should vote for or, as in this case, against.
The vote was an apocalyptic reflection of what former vice president Simon Muzenda once told party members : “If we give you a baboon to vote for you must vote for it.” This is same kind of attitude and fallacy that prevailed at the United Nations – never mind the atrocities he committed against Zimbabweans and nature, just vote for Mugabe’s man.
Mugabe’s propaganda man at the United Nations, Boniface Chidyausiku, naively and blithely stated that Zimbabwe, as a member of the UN, was entitled to chair the commission. It did not matter to Chidyausiku that the position was being given to a country that has driven the economy to the ground. Once a breadbasket for the region Zimbabwe has fallen through the cracks and failed dismally as a direct result of Mugabe’s politics of plunder and personal survival and failure to manage the country’s economic and development infrastructure.
In biblical terms voting for Zimbabwe to chair the commission on sustainable development is akin to appointing the Devil to be a local pastor just because someone in the West advised otherwise!
Both humans and animals have become victims of Mugabe’s genocidal campaign just to stay in power. Over 600 members of the opposition movement are in various stages of injuries sustained by thugs sent by Mugabe to savagely assault the opposition members.
What kind of leadership will Zimbabwe demonstrate as chair of the commission on sustainable development when it has engaged in a deliberate of campaign of destruction of both humans and wildlife ? How effective will Zimbabwe be in championing the cause for sustainable development? Who will believe whatever the Zimbabwe chair says about sustainable development when the whole world knows only too well how Zimbabwe has ravaged the environment ?
Only a few days ago it was reported that electricity rationing was wreaking havoc on the environment as residents in urban areas now have to cut firewood to cook food.
The delegates who voted for Zimbabwe to chair the commission on sustainable development chose to sacrifice the rape, plunder and destruction of the Zimbabwean development infrastructure on the altar of the sovereignty clichés and anti West diatribes. Just because the West opposed the appointment of Mugabe’s hatchet men the mainly African countries felt they should rally around Mugabe just for the sake of it. There was no logic to their technical argument that Zimbabwe was entitled to the position.
Ironically, Sudanese president, President Omar al-Bashir, who has been accused of gross human rights abuses, similar if not greater than Mugabe’s was denied, not once but twice, his entitlement to chair the African Union. Sudan could have used the same argument that it is a member of the African Union and, therefore, is entitled to the chairmanship, especially since the AU summit was being held in the Sudanese capital. Why this simple logic was not equally applied to Zimbabwe in the case of the commission for sustainable development is mind boggling.
Equally ironic was the second event when the African Union parliament voted overwhelmingly to send a delegation to investigate charges of assaults on members of the opposition movement by Mugabe’s thugs. By a vote of 149 to 20 with three abstentions, the pan African parliamentarians sent a clear signal that they regarded these allegations seriously enough to warrant an investigation.
The opposition MDC had done its extensive lobbying very well and provided overwhelming and compelling evidence of barbaric assaults. It would have been a crime of omission on the part of the parliamentarians not to investigate.
Attempts by Mugabe’s delegation to allege that MDC was a violent organization were, at best, unconvincing and carried the logic of the mind of a child. Mugabe was trying to defend the indefensible. Brutal assaults have been documented and publicized around the world. Mugabe found himself in a situation similar to the apartheid regime of trying to defend what was an obvious atrocity and genocide.
One clear outcome of the meeting of the AU parliamentarians was how intellectually and diplomatically impotent Mugabe and ZANUPF are. They are incapable of explaining, let alone defend, rationally their daily violations of human rights in Zimbabwe. Faced with incontrovertible evidence of brutal assaults Mugabe’s men were lost for words except to repeat the worn out diatribes that this was a western plot to destabilize a sovereign regime in order to impose their puppets.
It was very fortunate that the vote of the African union parliamentarians was not counted by ZANUPF otherwise the results would have been very different !
Visibly angry cronies of Mugabe, Rugare Gumbo and Sikhanyiso Ndlovu were reported to have said ZANUPF could stop the delegation from coming to Zimbabwe. Yet, at the United Nations another of Mugabe’s henchmen, Chidyausiku, called for all to respect the majority vote on the commission on sustainable development, the very same principle of majority vote that ZANUPF was refusing to accept at the AU parliament’s meeting! The world learned from this experience that Mugabe and ZANUPF’s definition of voting at elections is where safeguards are in place to ensure that ZANUPF wins.
In terms of Africa’s response to the Zimbabwean crisis, how does one explain the discrepancies at the United Nations and at the African Union parliament?
African parliamentarians have tended to be more critical and less diplomatic in their handling of Mugabe. In the last presidential elections the SADC parliamentary committee concluded that elections in Zimbabwe had not been free nor fair. Yet the SADC heads of state concluded otherwise.
African Union heads of state have traditionally tried to avoid addressing the questions of human rights violations in Zimbabwe. Human rights activist, Gabriel Shumba, tried repeatedly to bring this matter before the African Union but was faced with all kinds of technical and procedural stumbling blocks. It was very clear that this was an effort to frustrate any efforts to agitate for African intervention on the situation in Zimbabwe..
The third event which did not receive much publicity was the cruel death at hands of Mugabe’s thugs of an MDC official in Mt Darwin.
According to the online ZimDaily, thugs hired by ZANUPF official, Savior Kasukuwere, used logs and axes to kill Irene Kamoyo, the MDC activist in the area. Not only was this gruesome murder criminal and condemnable but the way Kamoyo died was beyond human comprehension. Her crime in the eyes of ZANUPF was she belonged to the MDC and was campaigning for a return to democracy, the rule of law and free and fair elections. According to witnesses as reported in the ZimDaily, Mugabe’s thugs used the most barbaric method to kill her.
ZimDaily also reported that Kamoyo’s daughter, who accompanied her dying mother to hospital, said it was a horrendous experience to watch her mother who was drenched in blood as she asked for water and cried in pain. One of the thugs had sliced her chest with an ax and as she lay on the ground others hit her with logs and left her for dead. This narrative was reminiscent of a Holy Man who 2000 years ago was nailed on the cross and asked for water as he cried shortly before he died.
Whether the events happened exactly as narrated in the ZimDaily story the pattern of the barbaric assault by Mugabe’s hired thugs fits very well with similar politically motivated assaults elsewhere.
African diplomats at the United Nations may congratulate themselves for electing a Mugabe henchman to chair the commission on sustainable development while remaining silent on the daily brutal oppression of the Zimbabweans by Mugabe.
They may hide behind the diplomatic and bureaucratic smokescreen and pay a blind eye to the real suffering of the masses in Zimbabwe.
And they may sacrifice the brutal oppression of Zimbabweans by the Mugabe regime in pursuit of their anti West ideologies. But history will judge them harshly as leaders who stood by while their neighbor’s house was on fire, burning the occupants into cinder.
It is a height of irresponsibility for the diplomats to vote for Zimbabwe to chair the commission on sustainable development just to spite, or to prove they can stand up against the West. And what did they gain in the long run? What point did they prove by this action?
A few years ago the then president of Tanzania, Ben Mkapa, actually chided the West for what he called preaching human rights to Africa. This ‘kill the messenger’ attitude does not augur well for a dynamic and progressive leadership expected of the continent’s leaders.
When Mkapa and his fellow leaders were challenged to take up the human rights issues with Zimbabwe they failed dismally to live up to their responsibilities. All they proved capable of doing was to parrot Mugabe’s singsong attacking Britain for not living up to its promise of funding land reform in Zimbabwe as well as calling for the lifting of what they called sanctions against Zimbabwe. And they may seem to get away with it because the Zimbabwean masses and victims of Mugabe’s brutality cannot challenge them.
Last year, the chairman of the African Union came to Zimbabwe and absolutely refused to meet with the opposition movement, choosing only to meet Mugabe and his officials.
There are, however, some very faint signs of hope that one or more of the African leadership in that Sunday school choir of Mugabe’s praise singers is beginning to address and speak out loudly against the real problems in Zimbabwe.
Ghana’s president, John Kofuor, did not mince his words when he recently described Mugabe as an embarrassment and tried to put the Zimbabwean issue on the agenda. President Kofuor was reportedly equally forceful when he challenged South African President Thabo Mbeki to wake up from his self-induced day dream of quiet diplomacy and condemn atrocities in Zimbabwe.
Another lone voice in the African political wilderness is Bishop Desmond Tutu who, armed with the Bible and the cross, had led the final push against apartheid, has spoken out more strongly against Mugabe.
The parliamentarians from the African Union, by their overwhelming vote, also represented the glimmer of hope that Africa may have in its midst the few brave statesmen whose consciences dictate that they take up the cause for the embattled Zimbabweans.
Much as the Mkapas of this world and those who elected Zimbabwe to chair the commission on sustainable development may think, human rights advocacy is not a western imposition on Africa but a moral obligation for the continent’s leaders to safeguard human rights, the rule of law, democracy, free and fair elections and justice – all of which were thrown overboard many years ago by the tyrannical regime of Mugabe.
One can almost hear and feel the spirit of the late MDC activist for Mt Darwin, Kamoyo, pleading for justice not just for her but thousands of Zimbabweans who have perished under the iron fist of the brutal Mugabe regime.