Dear Friends,
The tabloid press here in the UK has had a three-day bonanza with the state visit of Jacob Zuma. It wasn’t his politics but his polygamy that gave them column inches of coverage! Zuma’s spokesperson immediately condemned it as ‘racist’ – which it probably was, knowing the politics of the Daily Mail and The Sun – but a much more likely explanation is just plain ignorance of Africa. What was overlooked was one of the crucial issues behind the South African Premier’s visit. The clue lay in the fact that a 240 strong delegation of business leaders accompanied Jacob Zuma to London. It was all about business opportunities between South Africa and the UK.
In putting the case for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe, Zuma argued that sanctions made it harder to implement the GPA because, “There may be some in Zimbabwe who would use the issue of sanctions as a reason not to implement the Agreement in full.” And we all know who that is! It was Mugabe and his Zanu PF who had spelt it out loud and clear at their recent party congress: No more negotiations until sanctions are lifted they resolved. Jacob Zuma claimed that sanctions made his job of mediating the dispute more difficult but perhaps the reality is that South Africa’s concerns are more to do with business interests than the blatant abuse of human rights and the breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe? With the countdown to the World Cup now less than 100 days away it would seem obvious that a settlement of the Zimbabwe problem would be uppermost in Zuma’s mind. Instead, the South African President, supported by the AU and SADC, has chosen to echo Mugabe’s call for the lifting of sanctions. In the same week that the US renewed its sanctions against named Zanu PF individuals and firms, it was never likely that Gordon Brown would agree to Zuma’s call. Human rights, press freedom and issues of governance, have to be resolved first, Brown insisted, before we can consider lifting sanctions.
While all the pomp and ceremony of Zuma’s state visit was going on in London, back in Zimbabwe there was increasing evidence of human rights abuses and repression of people’s rights. Gertrude Hambira, the brave leader of the farm workers’ union, together with the entire leadership are in hiding following CIO and police harassment. Their ‘crime’ was to produce a film showing police violence against their members, ‘Bringing the police into disrespect’ was the charge. What that really means of course is telling the country and the world how the police treat its own citizens. Not white farmers, this time, but black farm workers, the poorest of the poor, driven out of their homes and jobs by greedy Zanu PF recipients of the land grab. While Jacob Zuma calls for the lifting of sanctions in London, Robert Mugabe tells the media in Harare that “We are not the biggest violators of human rights in the world.” Rather like saying, “Well, yes, we’ve killed, tortured and imprisoned a few but not nearly as many as other countries have.” Such childish immaturity from an 86 year old man, who has, incidentally just announced that he will stand for re-election, does not suggest that wisdom is a necessary adjunct of old age. If, or should it be when, he is nominated by the party to stand for another five years, Robert Mugabe will be over 90 years old! Time enough for him to have learned some wisdom and plain common sense?
While the Old Man maintains his vice-like grip on power aided by friends like China and South Africa, the Forgotten Children of Zimbabwe were the subject of Xoliswa Sithole’s harrowing documentary shown on the BBC this week. In a truly shocking portrayal of the suffering of Zimbabwe’s children, the film maker, Sithole, a young woman who was herself brought up in Zimbabwe, repeated time and again, “It wasn’t like this when I was at school here. I have filmed all over Africa” she said, “and I have never seen anything as bad as this.” A tiny girl, no more than seven years old by the look of her, was nursing her dying mother and caring for her little sister. There was no food, no money and no compassion from the school authorities who turned her away from the education that is her right because her mother could not pay the fees, not even one dollar could the poor woman find. In an appalling slum settlement a man and two school-age daughters, were reduced to picking over waste in search of bones to sell. And an orphaned boy somewhere in the rural areas, acknowledged by his teachers to be the brightest in his class, was desperately panning for gold to pay his school fees. By the end of the film, Xoliswa Sithole was herself in tears. “It wasn’t like this when I was growing up.” she said again as the tears streamed down her face.
And the man who has been in power for the last thirty years, overseeing the steady decline of everything that Zimbabwe once was, is Robert Gabriel Mugabe. It is not sanctions that have ruined the lives and futures of these children, it is Mugabe and his conviction that ‘winning the Liberation War’ entitles him and his Zanu PF cronies to lay claim to every asset: the farms, the mines, the diamonds and now the businesses .While Mugabe’s praise-singers laud him to the skies as “a special gift God gave to Zimbabwe and Africa” (Didymus Mutasa); “a great visionary and revolutionary – constant as the northern star” (the Manyika Post), the children of Zimbabwe live in utter penury and are denied their basic human right to education and hope for the future.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson author of Case Closed published in Zimbabwe by Mambo Press, Going Home and Countdown, political detective stories set in Zimbabwe and available from www.lulu.com.
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