Morgan Tsvangarai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader must feel he just can’t win…literally. The latest news out of Zimbabwe is that he is now being accused of treason, a charge that faces severe penalties in any country. But how did it get to this? Through the lack of effort from the pathetically passive Southern African Development Committee, and in particular Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa.
We always say that summits and forums are talkfests, but the lastest summit of Southern African leaders has produced what will probably go down in history as the most pathetic result ever. It basically did no more than to ask the Mugabe government to have opposition members present when retabulating the vote. It also hinted that the governing party may have sponsored violent attacks on opposition supporters. But that was it, in a nutshell. Mugabe didn’t even attend, a contemptuous action which should have led to harsher criticism from all the Southern African nations. But it didn’t.
Zambia’s President, Levy Mwanawasa, who has likened Zimbabwe to a ’sinking ship’ seems to be the only strong minded man amongst them. He called the summit, and wants real action. However, when you get the likes of Thabo Mbeki continuing to push ’soft’ diplomacy, and a ‘wait and see’ approach, then there isn’t much hope of anything happening.
Now Morgan Tsvangarai is being accused of treason. How convenient. Mugabe has seen that his southern African colleagues will do nothing, and his closest neighbour has proven how weak he is. He can now push ahead with an illegal and illegitimate charge to yet again show his contempt for anything decent.
At least the United Nations is stepping up the pressure. As Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has stated:
“The Zimbabwean authorities and the countries of the region have insisted that these matters are for the region to resolve but the international community continues to watch and wait for decisive action,” Mr Ban said.
I think he has summed it up well..decisive action. If southern African leaders were decisive, Mr. Ban would not have to make such a statement. Mbeki is under huge amounts of criticism about his ’softly softly’ approach to Mugabe, but something tells me he either lives with his head in the sand, or he isn’t that bright. This is also the man that does not believe HIV causes AIDS. For all we know, he probably thinks Zimbabweans live in the lap of luxury, and that the inflation rate of 100,000 % is a fairy tale!
It is nice to see the United Nations having some gumption here, when for years it was seen as a nice building with useless people in it. But then again, it was run by an passive African for 10 years, not too dissimilar to Mr. Mbeki, who specialised in ‘quiet diplomacy’ which lead the United Nations into hibernation. Mr. Ban is Korean, and my experience of Koreans is that they are much more ‘attack dog’ on issues, and fight passionately for what they believe in.
Hopefully, Mr. Ban will show some of that ‘attack dog’ tanacity and finally get justice for the people of Zimbabwe.
Enjoy your day.
