November 5, 2009

UN, SADC must make Mugabe comply with agreed imperatives

The fact that the world is more behind Robert Mugabe than the people of Zimbabwe notwithstanding, the international community grudgingly wishes us well as can be evidenced by its frantic efforts to bring back some sanity and normalcy in Zimbabwe.

The problem is that SADC is backing the wrong man; SADC is looking for solutions in the wrong place.

The well-meaning international community is looking for virgins in a maternity ward!

Mugabe, the man they adore to our disgust, refuses to even acknowledge, let alone respect them. He humiliates those who try to assist him.

In November last year, for example, he refused the group of Eminent Persons to visit the country. For whatever their shortcomings, these people were trying to assist us, especially Mugabe himself because he has the most to gain.

Last week, Mugabe again refused a UN Special envoy permission to enter Zimbabwe to assist both us and him, ending up actually deporting the ambassador.

Mugabe, however, welcomed the so-called SADC Troika, a group of non-essential would-be political paramedics, blinded by old political camaraderie and who have absolutely no intention to impose justice and fairness in the region.

Mugabe admitted the SADC emissaries because he knew they were not there to highlight his shortcomings but had come to Zimbabwe to justify and rubber stamp Mugabe’s wishes.

African diplomats created the fiascos in both Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki is as much under scrutiny as is Robert Mugabe because their success is paramount to African diplomacy.

Kibaki and Mugabe must succeed so that Africa can lie about employing African solutions to African problems.

There has been a lot of activity at Harare International Airport as dubious African diplomats fly in and out of the country.

But starting right at the airport, people, including presidents, can tell they are in unfriendly territory; they have arrived in our Gehenna.

Apparently, protocol, a by-product of diplomacy, is only extended to those who are friendly to Mugabe and his murderous regime.

It appears young DRC president Joseph Kabila is taking his duties a little more seriously than Mugabe expected. He must already have hinted something unpalatable to Mugabe because there was no senior official to receive Kabila at Harare Airport.

Yet, like those before him, all Kabila wanted to do was to help resolve the problems bedevilling the unity government, whose success means security to Mugabe.

On his part, Mugabe only received Kabila in Harare on Monday “after he kept him waiting in a Harare hotel for a full day without giving him an audience”.

After handing out medals to Zimbabwe’s winning soccer team, Mugabe refused to drive the short distance from Rufaro Stadium to the airport to receive President Kabila and Kabila is the current Chairman of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community, Mugabe’s staunchest supporters.

SADC is paying for its blindness and its willingness to be used by dictators.

Mugabe, like Adolf Hitler, incites research on how a simple, nondescript individual can just melt onto a nation’s psyche and make a horrific impact on an awe-stricken world.

Decades from today, we will still be wondering how a man, a father, a husband, a teacher of our children in Zimbabwe and beyond, and one time liberator, suddenly used his determination against those among whom he was nurtured, educated and weaned.

Fascination with past dictators still continues. We can’t pass up news about Adolph Hitler, Haiti’s Dr François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Uganda’s Idi Amin Dada, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and even another Haitian, a Catholic priest-turned-politician, called Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who, ironically, now has sanctuary in South Africa, a nation that is propping up Robert Mugabe.

South Africa is very magnanimous with dictators.

Meanwhile, Mugabe himself is host to one of the world’s most heinous, vicious and notorious former presidents, Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia.

Mengistu killed thousands and is now being sheltered by Mugabe, who is also responsible for the deaths of thousands but is being sheltered by South Africa and SADC.

SADC and all these men should be of great concern to bodies such as the United Nations.
I am among millions who have lost faith in the United Nations and organisations that adopt a particular cause and pursue it with vigour only to scamper back into their little but expensive havens when their efforts come to naught.

Political power is an extreme aphrodisiac and such organisations should be playing a role in assisting governments when they fall short.

The UN was founded in 1945 to, among other things, “stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue”.

Fat chance!
There are no punitive measures to take should a member state violate standing UN rules and guidelines.
As a result, on the matter concerning Zimbabwe, the UN has become lethargic in matters that involve “facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace and human rights”. These are its stated goals.

To enforce their mandate, aims and goals, there has to be strict and hard punitive measures to be employed in cases of violations.
It is appalling to see highly respected academics being appointed as UN emissaries and dispatched to trouble spots around the world, only for them to be humiliated by the governments the UN is trying to assist.
Obviously, I am personally interested in how Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe manages to thumb his nose at every country in this world, including organizations to which we belong, and still get away with it without so much as an admonishment.
In June 2005, Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, appointed Tanzanian academic Anna Tibaijuka as UN Special Envoy to study the impact of Mugabe's Murambatsvina campaign.
Mugabe’s government ill-treated Tibaijuka who, nevertheless, soldiered on and carried out her duties under the most extreme of conditions, deliberately imposed around her by Mugabe.
At the same time, even the sleepy African Union dispatched their own envoy to Zimbabwe and he had no chance at all.
He was kept under house arrest in a hotel in central Harare until his visa expired.
Tibaijuka was later to conclude in her report that Operation Murambatsvina was carried out “in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering”.
Since social progress and human rights are some of the aims of the United Nations, what do they do when a member country abuses citizens?
Surprisingly, there was nothing done about the abuse these diplomats were subjected to by Mugabe.
So, in the absence of punitive measures or some sort of sanctions, how does the UN expect to reign in the world’s errant regimes so as to achieve its aims?
An organization as large as the United Nations should have, in place, safeguards and punitive measures to apply on errant members.
Is it okay then for the UN to stand by and watch while a murderous senile old goat murders people, destroys farms and retards food production, stimulating famine, only for the UN to go on an international campaign to raise funds to feed starving people in Zimbabwe?
This impotence pervades most organizations.
Sadly, disasters are a prerequisite to successful fundraising and these organizations know that.

The heart of the matter is that the United Nations, and even SADC, must be given more authority to effect their mandates otherwise they all have no reason to exist. Their powerless existence is unwittingly legitimising and strengthening regimes which otherwise would be considered outcasts.

What do you say?
Send me your comment on tano@swradioafrica.com.
Countless times, we are told about UN, SADC and AU “observer missions” that “observe” elections in some country.

Some churches even assemble their own observer missions, too.
But even if all these witnesses write damning reports about those elections, nothing is done.

It is just noise until elections elsewhere.
SADC member countries have signed endless protocols, including SADC Guidelines on Democratic Elections but how many of SADC member states implement them?
SADC had its observers in Zimbabwe during last year’s elections. They saw horror.
But later it was SADC itself that overturned the people’s electoral voice in Zimbabwe and forced an unworkable agreement on our nation. They kicked away the winner and begged the loser to give a little power to the winner.

Tsvangirai is now Prime Minister and the result of SADC’s skewed and evil agreement is what we see in Zimbabwe today.

SADC armed Mugabe with more than moral support.

My fellow Zimbabweans, we are on our own.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that my compatriots is the way it is today Thursday, November 5, 2009.