I hope that you read my Thursday, July 10th entry, which is an article about a report that reveals the strategies and events that resulted in the campaign, election and his inauguration going down in the manner that we have all watched in horror.
It also reveals that as in many other African and so called Second and Third World nations, the military is still holding the reins of power. This report clearly shows that at this point Mugabe, is a puppet for a regime, which true enough he created, but that is currently being orchestrated by ignorance and greed, in the form of Commander Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, Zimbabwe's military chief. It also reveals that Mugabe was ready to turn over the government, but blocked by Chiwenga who is unwilling to relinquish the privileges, wealth and power they have illegally amassed, and withheld from the people of the nation. The image of being a democracy is not of any significance to them. 
These are old paradigms of rule, and they must go. Again, please read the second article in that day's blog, and continue to inform yourself of all the dynamics at work in this situation.
The recent defeat of the U.N. Security Council effort at sanctions against the regime is also disgusting. Who was blocking here? Russia, and the people of Africa's newest enemy China. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/11/world/main4255091.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_4255091.
I wrote about China earlier this year, just in terms of it's violent crackdown on Tibetan monks and demonstrators. But China's negative presence on the Continent doesn't end there. This week it's also been revealed, that China has transgressed the U N arms embargo against Sudan, by providing military arms, training and fighter jets!!! (You'd better not spend your hard earned money to fly over there this August!) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080713/wl_afp/chinasudandarfurmilitarytradeunembargobritain_080713185344
I can see that I'm getting off on a tangent here.....
So let me bring it back to what I originally wanted to share with you. And that is that I want you to look deeply into the image of serious contemplation on Mugabe's face. Gone are the chest thumping bravado, the pride and determination to fight, for he realizes that he's caught in a web, with people even more treacherous than himself. A recent interviewer reported that he has the health and stamina of a 60 year old, but that may be of no avail, if he's thrown his lot with those that would simply snuff his life, to maintain their positions. At this moment, his political opposition is the least of his worries.
Sunday, June, 29, 2008, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe at his inauguration ceremony at State house in Harare, Zimbabwe.
(AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi,)
By MICHELLE FAUL
Robert Mugabe's brazen power grab in Zimbabwe's election saga has left cracks in one of African leaders' unspoken rules: Never turn on one of your own.
The fact that even several nations are refusing to recognize Zimbabwe's ruler of 28 years marks an unprecedented change in Africa that offers a glimmer of hope for a brighter, more democratic future.
A younger generation of African leaders appears willing to break from the clubbiness that has characterized the governing elites on this continent where authoritarian rule has long been the norm.
Among the most outspoken has been Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president who is the continent's only female leader.
On a visit to South Africa this week, she was the first African leader to support proposed U.N. sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders, saying they send a "strong message" that the world will not tolerate violence to retain power.
"It's important, because it's the first time that we are seeing on the African continent that leadership has transitioned from the old perceptions," said Chris Maroleng, a South African political analyst.
"We're seeing more leaders beginning to embrace their own democratic notion," he added.
They include Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, a lawyer who is his country's third leader since independence in 1964; former army commander Seretse Ian Khama of Botswana, Africa's most enduring democracy; and Nigeria's Umar Yar'Adua, only the third civilian leader since 1966, though he still is fighting a court battle over his fraud-riddled election.
Mugabe's June 27 runoff "was neither free nor fair and therefore the legitimacy of his presidency is in question. He cannot wish that away," Kenya's Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told The Associated Press.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who won the most votes in March elections, withdrew from the runoff against Mugabe after weeks of military-orchestrated violence left dozens of his supporters dead, thousands severely beaten and thousands more homeless as they were chased from villages, fled attacks or had their houses burned down.
Two days after the vote, Mugabe was declared the winner and flew to an African Union summit in Egypt where he was seen hugging many leaders, gaining the veneer of legitimacy that he sought.
"President Mugabe was accepted by his peers ... so he is legitimate," Congo's Foreign Ministry spokesman Claude Kamanga Mutond said.
But a few voices of dissent have cropped up across Africa.
"The violence that preceded the election was so intense that the results did not reflect the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe," Sierra Leone's Foreign Minister Zainab Bangura told the AP.
Rwanda also condemned the election, as did Senegal.
While some presidents were reported to have had harsh private words for Mugabe, the vast majority chose the traditional path of not putting public pressure on a fellow leader, ignoring U.N. and Western calls for tough action.
Many feared being seen as doing the bidding of the West. And Mugabe, despite his destruction of his country, still is seen by many Africans as a hero who defeated the white-minority rulers of then-Rhodesia and then drove whites off land considered stolen from blacks. Mugabe's seizure of commercial white-owned farms broke the backbone of the country's economy.
The African leaders also retained South African President Thabo Mbeki as mediator for Zimbabwe, ignoring the Zimbabwe opposition's rejection of him and widespread condemnation that his 8-year-long "softly, softly" approach to Mugabe has hastened Zimbabwe's collapse.
Liberia's Sirleaf said the African Union could only maintain its credibility if it pronounced the June 27 runoff unacceptable.
The prevailing African silence over Mugabe marks a landmark failure for the union, set up in 2002 to replace the discredited Organization of African Unity, which had become little more than a dictators' club. The new union was to be the flagship for an African renaissance based on democracy and Africans solving African problems.
At its inaugural summit in 2002, leaders committed themselves to holding fair elections at regular intervals, to allow opposition parties to campaign freely and to set up independent electoral commissions to monitor polls.
Mugabe failed on every point.
While the old organization pledged noninterference in member states, the new union includes a Peace and Security Council, structured on the U.N. Security Council, that has the right to intervene when human rights are grossly violated or crimes against humanity perpetrated.
The only African intervention has been to send troops to back Comoros government soldiers in ousting a coup leader from the remote Indian Ocean island of Anjouan in March - an easy target.
---
Associated Press writers contributing to this report include Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Kenya, Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Sierra Leone, Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Liberia, Sello Motsetsa in Botswana, and Eddy Isango in Congo.
No comments:
Post a Comment