Just Like It Is – Zimbabwe my heart bleeds
BY PETER SIMMONS
RECENT REPORTS from Zimbabwe suggest that country, once the bread basket of Africa, is a crisis-plagued, chaotic basket case. It pains me to listen to facile apologists, both one-on-one and on the call-in programmes, who keep their heads buried in the sands of denial, thrashing about desperately for plasters to cover President Mugabe’s numerous sores.
On one of my visits to South Africa, I was introduced to a Zimbabwean émigré, Blessings, who fled his country fearing for his life. At that time Barbados was vice chair of the Commonwealth Action Group (CMAG) which was mandated by Commonwealth Heads of Government to investigate and report on member states violating basic core values.
He wanted to talk. We met in Johannesburg, he poured out his heart and we became friends. We continue to communicate and three weeks ago he called. Mugabe had refused a group of eminent persons – Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, former United States President Jimmy Carter and Gracia Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela – permission to enter Zimbabwe on a fact-finding humanitarian mission.
He was in deep despair. That team of global icons was seeking, in the early stages of the cholera outbreak, to find the genesis and extent of the disease, report their findings to the international community and locate human and medical resources to arrest and treat the often fatal disease threatening to become an epidemic in Zimbabwe and beyond its boundaries.
In his view, Mugabe is criminally uncaring about the health and welfare of Zimbabweans. His latest action demonstrated that he has taken permanent leave of his senses and the puppet regime in Harare was equally culpable, lacking testicular fortitude and putting self-preservation and personal gain above the general good of the population at large.
The only salvation he saw for his homeland was armed intervention by the African Union supported by Commonwealth and United Nations forces. Mugabe and the entire leadership of his ruling party he labeled a “squalid gang of marauding thugs” who should be put on trial at the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide.
In Barbados we see TV images and hear BBC radio capturing the abyss of death, disease, hunger, government-inspired brutality, widespread lawlessness and economic chaos into which Zimbabwe has plunged. But from 7 000 miles away we cannot comprehend fully the despair and desperation of a country crippled by the world’s highest inflation, 80 per cent unemployment and a loaf of bread costing ZIM$2 million( BDS $18).
I hear Barbadian apologists using arguments, some obtuse, some irrelevant, most rooted in emotion about Mugabe the freedom fighter who brought down Ian Smith and his kith and kin and delivered Southern Rhodesia from the shackles of British colonialism. They resile from the fact that he has morphed into a brutal, genocidal tyrant sacrificing his country to insatiable greed and ruthless megalomania. Zimbabwe today is devastated by hunger, thirst and general deprivation unexperienced even in the darkest colonial days.
Lest we forget, his current presidency is founded in fraud. He did not win the election. Morgan Tsvangirai did and should be President. Magnanimously, in a power- sharing deal brokered by South Africa President Mbeki, Tsvangirai agreed to be Prime Minister. Mugabe reneged on numerous agreements fundamental to the power-sharing deal and, in a weird move, denied the Prime Minister a passport, keeping him prisoner in Zimbabwe.
I trust our Barbadian apologists noted that two distinguished African theologians, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Archbishop Tutu and Uganda-born Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York and number two in the Church of England, have joined the chorus of international outrage calling for Mugabe’s removal. Indeed, Archbishop Sentamu feels so strongly he has removed his clerical collar, vowing to wear it again only when Mugabe is gone.
African states have been dilatory and indifferent to world opinion in taking decisive action. Now the anti-Mugabe choir is raising its voice with the President of Botswana, Prime Minister of Kenya and ANC leader and next President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, telling him to go or be removed. None has ruled out the use of force.
Saddled with a demented and demonic leader, Zimbabwe’s prognosis is grim. The economic situation worsens hourly. Government-sanctioned lawlessness is escalating. Sixty thousand people are estimated suffering from cholera and over 750 have died. Doctors are fleeing and health services have collapsed. The flood of refugees into neighbouring states threatens them with cholera, puts overwhelming pressures on their social services and generates levels of hostility bordering on xenophobia.
So Blessings, my friend, my heart bleeds for Zimbabwe. Happy Kwanzaa. My New Year’s wish for you and your loved ones is good health, good luck and with God’s help, early deliverance from Mugabe’s tyranny.
Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former High Commissioner to the UK and South Africa.
MAD MUGABE WON’T CHANGE HIS SPOTS
BY Rich Mkhondo
Used well, democracy guarantees peace, liberty and prosperity. Used arrogantly and wrongly, democracy can be dangerous and backfire to become a handmaiden of the worst kind of dictatorship. This is what we are seeing in neighbouring Zimbabwe today.
Testimonies to the flagrant disregard of the principles of democracy by Robert Gabriel Mugabe, president and persecutor of Zimbabwe, have been catalogued in atlases and history books.
President Mugabe is an example of how a single twerp can cause instability around an entire region and get away with it.
His people are starving and dying, his country has no functioning economy or government. What does he say to his people and fellow leaders on the continent and around the world? Burn with your hatred of Zimbabwe.
For me, insistence on a government of national unity (GNU) in Zimbabwe is making a mockery of any democratic process.
In a region not known for its improving democratic processes or governance, the declarations that Mugabe’s election was legitimate are only symptoms of a larger malady.
The nations that are willing to overlook the obviously flawed electoral process in Zimbabwe have little credibility left on the subject of democracy and legitimate governance.
Everything was there for everyone to see. The illegitimacy of Uncle Bob’s re-election could be traced to long before polling day last March.
Let us recap: Thousands of arrests and about 100 politically motivated assassinations marked the months leading up to the election, as Mugabe sought to consolidate his power and prevent any truly organised opposition from functioning.
New legislation prevented opposition political rallies and private voter education, and independent journalists were intimidated and driven from the country.
Everybody knows that President Mugabe has sacrificed economic wisdom for political expediency in his desperate quest to stay in power through a government of national unity.
Any insistence on a GNU is not only a blow for the country; but it also dashes confidence in elections for the whole SADC region and our continent.
After the forced government of national unity in Kenya, and now possibly in Zimbabwe, elections in Africa may become a farce with losers refusing to relinquish power in exchange for a power-sharing deal or GNU.
Zimbabwe’s power-sharing will not work because the strongman refuses to release or share control of the state’s security forces and other key levers of power.
His intransigence comes as no surprise. After three decades of tyrannical rule that transformed one of Africa’s most promising economies into a disaster zone in which the annual inflation rate runs at millions, at least a third of the population has fled the country and its 95 percent unemployment.
Under the terms of the deal, which is supposed to end the debate about Mugabe’s brazen theft of the recent presidential election and several others before this one, his party is supposed to control 15 ministries, Tsvangirai’s MDC 13 and a splinter opposition party three.
The mistake our former president Thabo Mbeki made was that he did not specify to the Zimbabwean leaders how the powers were to be divided between Mugabe, who retains the role of president, and Tsvangirai, who becomes prime minister.
So why are we surprised that negotiations for the composition of a government of national unity have been bogged down because the strongman insists on retaining authority over both the powerful security and information portfolios in the new cabinet?
Those are the same tools that the autocrat has used to intimidate the general populace, brutalise political opponents and maintain his iron grip on power.
If any power-sharing or credible government of national unity is to be successful, it is essential that Tsvangirai gains control of either the army or the police, preferably the latter. That would help quell the violence that has killed hundreds and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
It would also enable relief workers to start delivering food to the estimated 2-million Zimbabweans who are in danger of starvation – a number that is expected to more than double by the end of the year.
One of the most important challenges facing Mugabe’s successor will be to reverse the disastrous agricultural policies that seized the country’s white-owned corporate farms and handed them over to Mugabe’s cronies.
Those policies transformed Zimbabwe from being Southern Africa’s breadbasket into a land of famine and desperation within the course of a decade.
Mugabe will not yield control of the army. Even if he did, his generals would not submit to Tsvangirai’s authority, despite his pledge that they will not face criminal charges for the murder, rape and torture of Mugabe’s political opponents.
But an agreement to give Tsvangirai control over the police and to order the army to steer clear of domestic politics would be a major breakthrough.
So why are our former president and our leaders within the 14-nation Southern Africa Development Community tolerating Uncle Bob’s antics?
The answer is that they are beholden to the dynamics of international relations, which state that despite President Mugabe’s erosion of state sovereignty, they still have to respect the internal and external sovereignty of their neighbour.
Therefore, military intervention, armed conflict, cross-border raids, propaganda, isolation, severe economic sanctions, coercion and the violent removal of Uncle Bob and his cohorts are the only remaining options.
All members of the Southern African Development Community have armies. Why are we paying for these armies if not to use them in times of need?
The need is now. The SADC must please send a force in to remove him from power and install a caretaker government excluding all the current politicians to prepare for fresh elections.
President Mugabe has contravened every single principle and value that decent people should believe in. Ridding the world of Uncle Bob would be an act of humanity.
For me, it is leaving him in power as the leader of a purported government of national unity or power-sharing arrangement that is inhumane.
Yes, there are consequences to removing him by force. If he is removed by force, people will die. But every region, every country, should be prepared to live with the consequences of an armed invasion, even the unintended ones.
A government of national unity in Zimbabwe will be a damp squib.
Either President Mugabe must be forced to go peacefully, or once and for all, through bloodshed.
- Rich Mkhondo, writer, author and former editor and foreign correspondent, is an independent marketing communications and public relations strategist.
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Voldermort is alive and well in Zimbabwe
By Michelle Malkin
Perhaps, I should say “You-Know-Who” or “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” but the more we vocalize the name, the less power and fear he will use to violate Zimbabweans. Mugabe. Mugabe. Mugabe. Voldemort is of course a fictional character, who personifies evil and strikes terror at the very heart of the world he inhabits. Mugabe, is unfortunately, real and evil and also strikes terror in the hearts of those still surviving his despot regime. I wish getting rid of Mugabe was as easy as closing the cover of a book.
In the last year since coming back from Zimbabwe, I have continued to witness the rape, the abuse, the murders and lengthy tortures from human beings who want a better life. The distribution of aid by local and humanitarian efforts is still prohibited by his regime. The torture camps, which I have written about in an earlier blog continue to operate: www.huffingtonpost.com/michealene-cristini-risley/the-estimated-cost-of-hum_b_103772.html .
The situation in this once prosperous country has gone from worse to hopeless.
J. K. Rowling is the author of the wildly successful and creative “Harry Potter” series of books. Her own story could be a book. The part of her story that is relevant here is taken from her commencement Speech at Harvard University earlier this year. Her speech was incredibly powerful and poignant. In her talk: http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html, she says
“One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.”
It is very clear to me, the lengths at which Robert Mugabe will go to maintain his power. What is unclear to me is how the world continues to stand by and let this man destroy Zimbabwe? South Africa’s tarnished leader, Thabo Mbeki continues to say that negotiations are on track for a power sharing government. News today is that regional leaders put pressure on Tsvangirai to accept a power sharing deal. The question is, power sharing by whom? Mbeki- is the same man who ate denial for breakfast when it came to addressing the crisis going on in Zimbabwe. WE need courageous leaders like Botswana’s President Khama!
I fully expect that one day soon, Morgan Tsvangirai will be dead. It will be an accident, a simulated heart attack or an outright execution. Mugabe’s arrogance fears no repercussions and has no boundaries, so an execution would not be a surprise. Morgan Tsvangirai has stood up to Mugabe, has resisted “his evilness”, but “BOB” will try to maintain power at all costs, including standing over the dead body of Tsvangirai. What’s one more body?
I find myself in awe of J.K. Rowling’s ability to use those early experiences and create great gifts of imagination and storytelling-I wish that as a world we could write away the evil of Mugabe. It would go something like this…
Mbeki is in the midst of the negotiations with Mugabe and Tsvangira in a large hot room somewhere in the middle of Harare. They are surrounded by military leaders who stand tall, watching attentively over there two African leaders. Morgan Tsvangira is sweating.
There is a light knock at the door. The General closest to the door opens it swiftly. All eyes look to the doorway. There is a large, lithe man standing there. He wears a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. The hood covers almost everything but the center of his face. His lean piano thin hands reach to lower the hood. There is a collective gasp in the room; instant recognition as the bald-headed man reveals himself. Mugabe’s eyes alight, in awe he stands and reaches for Voldemort’s hand. Two distorted minds connect hands and in a shower of sparks, Voldemort takes Mugabe’s soul and both disappear.
Mbeki and Tsvangira are left behind with those familiar scars emblazoned on their foreheads.
Cut to a close up of the last pages of the Harry Potter novel, and it turns by itself and the book closes. There is a loud thud as the book closes, then a long silence. There would be initial silence and then a HUGE wave of relief if Mugabe had disappeared with Voldemort into the pages of Harry Potter novel, never to hurt a real human being again.
Okay, Okay…We need more than imagination to rid the world of evil beings like Mugabe, but my fantasy allows me to at least finish a real breakfast.
