AU: Stand firm against subversion

By Caesar Zvayi

WHILE the temptation would be to applaud the African Union for refusing to be used by the West to condemn President Mugabe’s resounding victory in the presidential run-off, this writer can’t help but feel the AU still has to come of age in defending the African cause in the face of sustained assault from the West.

WHILE the temptation would be to applaud the African Union for refusing to be used by the West to condemn President Mugabe’s resounding victory in the presidential run-off, this writer can’t help but feel the AU still has to come of age in defending the African cause in the face of sustained assault from the West. It appears most of the leaders on the continent do not have the courage of their convictions even when it is clear that they are being sold a dummy by Westerners. Either that or Africa is simply cursed with blind leaders who see no further than the ends of their noses. This writer is for the first scenario because most of the AU’s 52 member states have since identified the problem in Zimbabwe as Western interference and manipulation when they condemned and called for the lifting of the illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe. First off the block was Comesa that, at its Eighth Summit held in Khartoum, Sudan, in March 2003, condemned the sanctions saying: "We, the Heads of State and Government of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, meeting on this 17th day of March 2003 in Khartoum, capital of the Republic of Sudan, having received the report of the Comesa Foreign Ministers on the need to extend solidarity to Zimbabwe . . . call for the immediate removal of the illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe." A month earlier, at their February 23-24 summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Non-Aligned Movement leaders had also condemned the sanctions saying: ‘‘The Heads of State or Government condemned the unilateral imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe by the United States, Britain, the European Union, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia in violation of the United Nations Charter and called for the immediate lifting of sanctions. ‘‘The Heads of State or Government expressed dismay and great concern over the decision by the Bretton Woods institutions to withdraw financial support from Zimbabwe on political considerations and called for the immediate disbursement of financial support from these institutions.’’ It, thus, comes as a surprise that today, five years on, and when the sanctions are really biting Zimbabweans, the AU not only fails to diagnose the problems in Zimbabwe, but also can’t pronounce itself on the sanctions given that as recent as March 31 last year Sadc leaders condemned the sanctions at their extraordinary summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, when they issued an exhaustive resolution that situated the problem with Britain and its allies in the Western hemisphere. Thus, while at face value the AU resolution on Zimbabwe was progressive as it did not condemn the outcome of the run-off apart from urging the Government and opposition to enter into talks with a view to establishing a government of national unity, in reality the AU has once again stumbled where it was supposed to stand firm. The entire resolution, predicated on the need for a political settlement, plays into the hands of the Western propaganda machinery that purports that the problems in Zimbabwe are purely political narrowing them down to ‘‘a crisis of legitimacy, bad governance, lack of democracy and rule of law". This is what the MDC leadership and their handlers have told us ad nauseum, which is why they claim that the problems can only be solved by neutralising the ‘‘tyranny’’ in Zanu-PF with a dosage of ‘‘democracy’’ from the MDC camp; which would be a convenient starting point of easing Zanu-PF from power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any right-thinking African knows that the problems in Zimbabwe are not political; the political aspect is just the symptom and excuse used by Westerners to punish Zimbabwe for daring to challenge the Western stranglehold on developing world resources. A fact amply captured by the Bush administration’s admission that ‘‘Zimbabwe poses an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States’’. Who does not know that US foreign policy is about dominating other people and their resources? The problems in Zimbabwe, not crisis please, can be traced to November 5, 1997 when the British government of Tony Blair reneged on obligations to fund land reforms as entered into by the Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. When the Labour government blatantly violated the international law of succession by refusing to be bound by obligations entered into by the Tory administration, President Mugabe simply said you keep your money and we keep our land as he compulsorily acquired land from white commercial farmers, offering compensation only for improvements made on the land. This stance angered the British government which decided to fund and launch an opposition party to unseat the Government with a view to halting the dispossession of its kith and kin since elections were only a few months away. This culminated in the launch of the MDC on September 11, 1999, which is why the MDC leadership immediately trashed land reforms promising to return all land to white former commercial farmers. A position Tsvangirai reiterated in his article in the Wall Street Journal ahead of the March 29 harmonised poll. The centrality of land to the problems in Zimbabwe is even captured in the US sanctions law, the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, that decrees that the sanctions can only be lifted if land tenure is returned to pre-2000 levels; and again in the Abuja Agreement of September 2001 that acknowledged that "land is at the core of problems in Zimbabwe". So how could the AU pretend the problems are merely political particularly in light of the frenzied directives from London and Washington and the hysterical attempts at agenda setting by the Western weapons of mass deception, the CNNs and BBCs of this world? How come if the problems in Zimbabwe are merely political, the same Westerners who pretend to be reviled by Zimbabwe had no qualms shaking Raila Odinga’s bloodstained hands yet he was fresh from hop, skipping and jumping over dead bodies in Nairobi? How come the same Westerners had no qualms inviting Umaru Musa Y’ardua to the G8 Summit soon after the sham elections in Nigeria where many constituencies that never got ballot papers still brought results regardless to give him a ‘‘resounding’’ victory over Atiku Abubakar? What is more, the same Westerners then pretend these are legitimate African voices that have the moral high ground to criticise President Mugabe’s re-election as we have seen them do on Western media over the past few day. The question is, can a GNU between a revolutionary party like Zanu-PF and an opposition beholden to the same forces the Government is fighting work out particularly when evidence on the ground points to the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai can never be his own man? Readers may remember that a few days back, Tsvangirai was calling for a GNU, and as The Herald reported last week, both factions of the MDC announced that they were ready to sit down with Zanu-PF. But what happened as soon as the European Union said the only government it would recognise was one led by Tsvangirai, the man made a U-turn and began claiming conditions were not ripe for a GNU? These are the questions the AU should have pondered before playing into Western hands. Yes, a GNU could work out in Kenya, but that was because the protagonists were peas in a Western pod, all that was required was to find a groove for each within the same pod. Can the same be said of Zanu-PF and MDC-T as currently constituted? Maybe many of Africa’s leaders are too young to remember how and why Ghana’s founding President Dr Kwame Nkrumah was deposed, but honestly with the benefit of hindsight, Africa must find a collective voice against Western subversion. History shows us that these people will not stop only at Zimbabwe.