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Editorial:How can Sadc, AU and the United Nations continue to be spectators over Zimbabwe? |
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We watch with horror, and are aghast at the inaction of the international community over Zimbabwe and the events unfolding there towards the so-called run-off election, while people's lives are claimed and maimed.
We are saddened, no, chilled to the bone by the implication of this folding of arms. To what end, we ask, do you remain guilty bystanders?
Is that your definition of democratization?
That when the majority express their voice they must be bludgeoned to death, and if left alive denied an opportunity to be treated in hospitals in which in any case service delivery has almost grounded to a halt due to shortages of medicines and staff?
Were the Frontline States supposed to assume a similar posture as the apartheid regime and rightwing racists in South Africa ran riot over black people in the townships in South Africa and across borders?
Have you forgotten the intepretation of political struggles, that where they threaten human lives, destroy property, no matter the race, good men and women must show goodwill and come to the aid of the repressed, the oppressed, the violated, the hungry, the homelsss and the naked?
What values are now being championed by Sadc countries, African Union and the United Nations, that during this phase of democratization, the world's morals must be defined by the immoral actions of the likes of George Bush in Iraq and Guantanamo, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and other tyrants?
Must the good people of Zimbabwe continue to be at the receiving end of propaganda from these very leaders, the organizations and the countries they represent, that they are spineless and they must rise up against the dictator by themselves?
Have they not aptly shown that through their actions at the ballot box? We hear misguided opinion that Mugabe must not be touched. So he must not be touched but our mothers and fathers must perish over some unknown political debt you presidents owe him?
If it is South Africa, you owe the people of Zimbabwe a lot, not for the bases you received there but for the liberation tax the people of Zimbabwe were made to pay, monies which were given to your leaders. Now how about repaying that debt?
All of you, Sadc and African Union leaders, you stand condemned by your actions. If I remember well, you take your fat bellies, fattened by people's taxes and the international aid you steal, every four or so years to Tokyo to debate your role in the globalization of good governance.
Why good governance? Isn't it what you have been told by your paymasters in the West that for your countries to receive aid, and foreign direct investments you must root out the practices you have always been associated with, those of clinging to power like your friend and comnrade Robert Mugabe is now doing?
Have you no shame that you watch Zimbabweans eke-ing a living in the dustbins of your countries, that your police bully these people out of the little they posses threatening them with deportation, that your police, popularise zenophobic actions against the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe while you dine together with their oppressor?
I want to call you unmentionable names but fear what I write here may be distorted and misquoted by the liberal and right wing media. My son who was born in South Africa, his Japanese mother, who belonged to the Japan Anti-Apartrheid Movement (JAAC) express anger through tears, at the fact that Zimbabweans are so destitute in different countries while at home families have come apart.
I pray that you will all collectively do the right thing, sooner than later and talk reason into your friend to let the people of Zimbabwe be free!
Blackman Ngoro is a PhD candidate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa
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Sunday, 04 May, 2008
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