South Africa’s caretaker President Kgalema Motlanthe is a “caricature”, to borrow from an eminent clergy in his country; Bishop Desmond Tutu, of the Pan Africanism mantra of its colonial liberation movements that have hurt Africa’s economic progress after attainment of Independence from colonial rule. One only needs read his views in an article on one Zimbabwean owned website titled "The EU-Africa summit must go ahead with Mugabe," to come to this conclusion.
Motlanthe made this position clear in his response to a 20 September 2007, article in the British newspaper, 'The Independent', where UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote: "It is also right that I make clear my position on the forthcoming EU-Africa Summit. I want this summit -under the leadership of [Portugal's] Prime Minister Socrates - to be a real success.
"It is a serious opportunity to forge a stronger partnership between the EU and Africa in order to fight poverty, tackle climate change, and agree new initiatives on education, health and peacekeeping...
"I believe that President Mugabe's presence would undermine the Summit, diverting attention from the important issues that need to be resolved. In those circumstances, my attendance would not be appropriate."
Pity South Africa has in the leadership of the ruling ANC, bigoted leaders like Motlanthe. They will drive the last African country to unshackle its people from Western colonial bondage, along the self destruct Freeway, the Zimbabwean leader in whose defense the article was written, has driven Zimbabwe.
Patriotic South Africans must wake up to the reality that in Motlanthe they have a snake in their leadership. If allowed his way Motlanthe will drive the country to a similar fate like the ruins Mugabe has driven Zimbabwe to.
Against evidence available to him in a plethora of reports that there are increased voices of concern from EU member States over Mugabe’s projected visit to the Portugal summit, only Motlanthe has the dubious distinction of lying through the skin of his teeth that it is only the UK that is against the Mugabe invite to grace the EU-Africa summit.
“Except for the UK, the member states of the African Union and the European Union are, as far as I could establish, of one mind that all member states of both Unions should attend the Summit,” he ranted.
Either Motlanthe’s establishment instruments were fatally flawed, incompetent or both, to lead him to a conclusion at variance with what others established in this regard. I am positive Motlanthe is being economic with the truth about his findings with a deliberate intention to swing public sentiment towards supporting Mugabe’s attendance. That is the outcome Motlanthe wishes for and seeks to be supported through his article.
A shared concern?
In my view Motlanthe is a shameless political liar in the mould of Professor Jonathan Moyo; former disgraced Information and Publicity Minister in Mugabe’s illegitimate government of 2000-2005. How else can we be expected to reconcile the lies he peddles against findings of others on this topic?
“Africa has rightly insisted that all countries have a right freely to constitute their delegations. Except for the UK, the EU has accepted this. The UK is demanding that the EU should instruct Zimbabwe to exclude President Mugabe from its delegation, arguing among other things, that he is under an EU travel ban.” Motlanthe shamelessly lies.
The British government has tacitly stated that it will not attend a summit that accommodates Mugabe because of his detested human rights record and the breach his visit will occasion on the EU travel ban imposed against Mugabe and his senior government cronies.
To me that is not the same as the UK prescribing how Zimbabwe should constitute its delegation but rather constitutes a reminder to EU members that Mugabe’s intended invite to Portugal, is a violation of the travel sanctions on him and his cronies that Portugal and any EU member who are signatories of the EU travel sanction protocol, risk violating.
Equally true, the proposal by the British, for the EU and UN to send an emissary to Harare to persuade the junta there to send another representative not affected by the travel ban, is in line with the spirit and letter of upholding the sanctions rather than a directive for Zimbabwe to constitute its delegation as the UK wishes. Rather it is a demand that the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwean officials travel to the EU countries be upheld at all instances.
Britain’s argument that if the EU intents to relax the travel sanctions in this instance, they should do so formally through a consensus of the group in like manner to how they arrived at the sanctions imposition decision on Mugabe’s travel to the EU is rational and sound.
By individually inviting Mugabe, Portugal will be usurping EU powers and authority which Britain as a member is uncomfortable with. Britain has not expressed nor acted in any manner that can be construed to be against any African country intending to attend the EU-Africa summit, constituting its delegation exclusively with people whose names do not appear on a list the EU has banished from setting foot in EU countries other than for defined excerptions, of which the EU-Africa summit in Portugal is not one such excerption.
That should close the subject but not for Motlanthe who wants to be seen through Sadc, to be more concerned about the people of Zimbabwe than the former invaders of Zimbabwe. The crocodile tears shed by Sadc over the plight of Zimbabweans under Mugabe’s repression is there for all to see.
They are charging refugees running to their countries seeking for shelter against Mugabe’s repression, exorbitant visa fees when it is them that endorsed his tenure of office by endorsing clearly stolen elections in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
They have now accepted that the Zimbabwe electoral field needs to be levelled 8 years after it became evident this was the cause of the political malaise in Zimbabwe and only because the EU has imposed sanctions on their colleague which they want to circumvent by agitating for his travel to EU countries to attend a summit where his presence is under current prohibition.
Why should Mugabe and his brutal associates in government’s denial of attendance cause Motlanthe concerns which the refusal of rights and vandalisation of innocent Zimbabweans does not cause. Perhaps Motlanthe can point when he condemned the Gukurahundi massacres, Murambatsvina, Stolen Zimbabwean elections, Land invasions and repossession without compensation, Price wars in Zimbabwe and bashing of political opponents to the extent he defends Mugabe’s luxury of attending the EU-Africa summit to show us his declared concern for the plight of besieged Zimbabweans.
Motlanthe’s concern in Zimbabwe is not about Zimbabweans at large. It is about the continued enjoyment of luxurious lifestyles by Mugabe and his junta regime that they deny citizens of their country militantly. He realises that world attention will soon shift towards South Africa when he presses the self destruct buttons Mugabe pressed under duress from disgruntled constituencies in his party and to fend off imminent loss of political power to the opposition as will happen to the ANC government in the near future. Then he knows, he will need similar protection to the one he envisages for Mugabe. What a selfish politician he is?
“During the recent visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to our country, President Mbeki reported publicly that the negotiations were proceeding well and would soon be concluded successfully. Everybody, including the British, knows that already, as a result of an agreement arrived at during the dialogue facilitated under the direction of our President, the Zimbabwe ruling party, Zanu PF, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) groups jointly sponsored a constitutional amendment in the Zimbabwe parliament,” gloated Motlanthe.
Absolute crap. Why has it taken 9 months to reach agreement on Constitution Amendment No 18 and why is there no further announcement of progress in restoration of voting rights to displaced Zimbabwean refugees in the Diaspora? Why is it taking ages to stop the violence directed towards the opposition by Mugabe and his state apparatus? Why are the retail shelves in Zimbabwe empty? Why is taking ages to open the broadcasting and media spaces to the opposition in Zimbabwe? Why do Zimbabweans still need Police permission to congregate even for funerals? Why is Mudede still registering and compiling the voters’ rolls if the agreement is substantive?
Clearly CA No 18 was announced to put pressure on the Opposition and the EU rather than to further ordinary Zimbabwean interests and rights. Britain is refusing to have that wool pulled over its eyes by a junta regime and its hatchet man like Motlanthe are trying to do, because it has numerous precedents on the devious nature of the Mugabe junta.
The only action Zimbabweans are seeing from Sadc and AU is blind support for Mugabe by African leaders against their reasonable expectations for Sadc leaders to counsel one in their league and halt the economic decline in the country he presides over to ameliorate the suffering endured by his subjects. As long as that has not happened, ordinary Zimbabweans will continue to view people like Motlanthe with great suspicion given his history of endorsing irregular election results in Zimbabwe.
Regime change
“It is regime change and nothing else. The demand is made in clear language -Southern Africa must carry out this task. The question that needs to be asked is whether this demand reflects the views of the British government,” concluded Motlanthe after quoting extensively from the British periodical, 'The Economist', of 5 July 2007 headed "The virtues of isolationism.
This was to be followed by the usual Zanu PF mantra we have so often heard about British imperialism and its sour grapes over lost colonies in Africa.
Mr. Motlanthe must be told in no uncertain terms that regime change is the noble political objective of any political formation. His ANC has already overstayed its welcome in South Africa. I, Hatirebwi Nathaniel Masikati of Zimbabwe, call upon all enlightened democratic forces in South Africa, Sadc and AU, to build opposition capacities in South Africa to fight an emerging junta regime from the power delinquent ANC, before the country is taken to the dungeons of doom by an ANC whose secretariat is headed by a dictator-in-the-making like Motlanthe.
South Africans must never allow this beast a sniff at the country’s presidency and he and his party must be jerked back into reality about what they were elected to do in South Africa.
Why should Motlanthe oppose regime change when his very existence in government is a product of internationally supported regime change that took place in his hitherto Apartheid ruled country which, he now wants to turn into another African junta state?
Stop him before he learns too much from Mugabe who he is drawing closer to daily. If you don't do so soon he will become near impossible to eject from power once he entrenches himself using Mugabe’s techniques. He idolizes the octogenarian despot’s repression and supports his attendance to a summit in a country where his presence has been long declared undesired. Those are dangerous tell-tell signs for South Africans.
Mr Motlanthe has invited me to make this call upon you my brothers and sisters under his subjugation in response to his uninvited campaign for my continued subjugation by Mugabe claiming he has satisfied all your needs and he now wants to work to prop up from failed Mugabe.
I hope the ANC Secretary General takes kindly my call for South Africans to ditch his party at the earliest possible opportunity. He should, in as much as Zimbabweans take him kindly for supporting Mugabe ahead of the suffering people of Zimbabwe.
A promise betrayed
“Charged to preside over the 1979 Lancaster House negotiations to decide the future of the Zimbabwe, the British government still tried everything it could to protect the interests of the same white minority in Zimbabwe whose actions it had denounced in 1965 as illegal, rebellious and treasonable ……blah blah blah,” bleated Motlanthe until as suspected he ended up quoting Claire Short’s letter out of context
The only promise that has been betrayed in Zimbabwe is one by Zanu PF and Mugabe during the liberation struggle that he will allow us to be ruled by consent through a one man one vote electoral process that he has now ditched in favour of a registered one ma several votes system if you belong to Zanu PF.
That way he promised, we will collectively be in charge of our country’s destiny politically socially and economically. He told us that we will have a Zimbabwe of flowing milk and honey and the majority of us believed him. We installed him as our Prime Minister to champion this shared vision for our country which he has now abandoned.
Mugabe not Claire Short or Britain shattered our dreams when he declared himself Executive President on the pretext that would give him adequate powers to deliver the milk and honey to us.
You are coming on the stage rather belatedly. All Mugabe has delivered to us as a President is torture, murder, rape, corruption, hunger, thirst, poor education standards, curtailed electricity supplies, empty supermarkets, redundancy, corruption and selective application of laws.
We are under siege from him and you have the temerity to waste time writing about Claire Short and Mugabe’s attendance to a Portugal Summit where he will regurgitate the mantra you have written and come back to subject us to more vicious forms of abuse and hope we are with you?
Have a life Mr. Motlanthe. Ma Zimbabweans on whose mandate you should show support for Mugabe’s attendance converge that attendance will give him legitimacy and credibility to vitiate their rights. They like me view you as a worse enemy than Ian Douglas Smith.
All Zimbabweans want from your country is support to return our country to democratic governance if you and your country are in a privileged position to do so. We will deal with Claire Short and those of her ilk including her handlers and subordinates collectively under the leadership of a President who presides over us by consent and not by force as is the case with the Mugabe that you support.
If you doubt us ask Rhodie leader Ian Smith as well as John Voster De Klerk and the other Boers that were in charge of your country before we helped in your regime change agenda for your country that has installed you in your powerful seat that you are now abusing to spite us in our hour of need.
This position stands at the heart the majority Zimbabweans and not the Mugabe /Blair/Brown/UK/ EU/USA that you, your government, Sadc and AU, are using Mugabe and innocent Zimbabweans as guinea pigs, to enable you to model your policies and avoid pitfalls Mugabe and his Zanu PF, have fallen into. You and your government are deliberately failing or refusing to pull him out of the political quagmire he is in despite you having all the equipment to do so at your disposal.
To right a wrong - miserable advice
“Many things have gone wrong in Zimbabwe over the years. Our movement, the ANC, has engaged both Zanu PF and the MDC on these matters continuously, honestly and frankly, over many years,” stated Motlanthe before moving on to his illiterate attack on the British 'Observer' published extracts from a paper written by Robert Cooper and published by the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) entitled "The post-modern state".
In Particular Motlanthe was offended by the perceived British imperialism in the excerpts from that article that he reproduced and read as follows;
"The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the one employed most often in the past, is colonisation. But this is unacceptable to postmodern states. Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse and no colonial powers are willing to take on the job, though the opportunities -perhaps even the need - for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century. Those left out of the global economy risk falling into a vicious circle. Weak government means disorder and that means falling investment.
"All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and demand for imperialism has dried up. And yet a world in which the efficient and well-governed export stability and liberty seems eminently desirable.
"What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values: an imperialism which aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle."
What offended Motlanthe from the averments above is that the British government, which draws advice from a person of Cooper’s imperial inclination, has been very vocal about its underlying reasons for opposing Mugabe’s human rights abuses in Zimbabwe as being premised on its sympathy for oppressed Zimbabweans.
Apparently Cooper exposes their intentions are driven by imperial expansionism more so than humanitarian empathies as the British government professes.
Zanu PF has already oversold that line to Zimbabweans and was believed by many at first. Now because Zanu PF has been soiled by its past lies it has recruited Motlanthe to do its bidding. Attempts from seasoned Zanu PF spin doctors to do so are falling on deaf ears. Pity Motlanthe's feeble attempt will meet with the same fate in impoverished Zimbabwe.
Motlanthe severely underestimates the literacy levels in Zimbabwe for him to sink so low as to peddle such blatant falsehoods and use quotations out of context to revive a discredited and irrelevant Zanu PF political line of argument.
Firstly, it is common cause among many Zimbabweans opposed to Mugabe’s junta, that the ANC and its RSA government played Zanu PF hatchet man in causing the MDC split to weaken the opposition ahead of 2008 Presidential election in Zimbabwe. They had elaborate plans to motivate Sadc to put pressure on Mugabe and his junta to stage these elections in a credible environment after the opposition was weakened by the split.
Secondly, it is common cause to all Zimbabweans that the split did not weaken the opposition to the extent powers in South Africa envisaged. As a result the South Africans having been mandated by Sadc to preside over crisis resolution in Zimbabwe were forced to elevate a clearly unrepresentative and illegitimated faction or splinter group of the MDC to attend Sadc talks at par with the registered and recognised party.
This was after advice to stifle the MDC through denial of merited State political financing, which was channelled to the splinter group, failed to break the backbone of the core grouping.
The CA No 18 trap terribly misfired as it has now ensnared the facilitators and Zanu PF whereas it was intended to snare Tsvangirai. He and his core MDC group were expected to reject the piecemeal amendment of the constitution but surprised many even in his own party by accepting the changes.
Now that Tsvangirai is on the offensive demanding reducing to writing and action, the promises Mbeki and his negotiators used to coax Tsvangirai into signing CA No 18 thereby setting him on a collision path with his staunch Civic grouping supporters, which collision he has tactfully averted, it is time for Motlanthe to disclose that ANC is closer to the MDC than the British.
If that is the case where does that leave the oversold Zanu PF accusations about the MDC being a puppet of the British regime change agenda in Zimbabwe? Motlanthe sets of towing this line but paradoxically destroys it in the same article. It is not easy to lie in perpetuity without letting the lie out through contradictions.
The undeniable fact is that whatever ANC has done in Zimbabwe to date, it has been for the furtherance of Zanu PF hegemony and destruction of MDC whose successes in Zimbabwe are motivating a Cosatu led opposition that will cause ANC the political headaches Kaunda and Mugabe have faced from MMD and MDC respectively.
Kaunda lost his 27 year political power grip in Zambia to the MMD under Chiluba at the first attempt. Mugabe had to rig the 2000 election outcome after MDC had pulled a similar feat.
Because of lawlessness rigging may not be a survival option available to the ANC when challenged by a Cosatu led opposition and such prospect is not farfetched. For the ANC therefore, the best defence is to be offensive and if Motlanthe can see off the MDC challenge on a faltering Zanu PF and Mugabe that will delay a Cosatu led political formation in South Africa.
That is the motive behind Motlanthe horning his expertise and perfecting the imperial mantra now in neighbouring Zimbabwe than wait to practice it when it is in the RSA political domain.
As can be seen if Motlanthe was arguing with South African opposition over Cooper’s comments, the opposition would have had a field day dismissing Motlanthe.
Cooper argues that the political correctness of using the word imperialism has been discredited by the injustices that occurred during the British colonisation of Africa.
He however deliberately and with intention to gain attention, uses the phrase to describe the current ongoing global initiative against Human Rights abuses. He metaphorically advances that human rights abusers must be colonized by the global human rights compliant nations, to speedily resolve the human rights abuse crises gripping the world’s black spots like Zimbabwe in like manner imperialism and colonisation was used to assert British influence in the past.
There you have it Mr Motlanthe. That is why the response outlined includes;
An AU-EU partnership
To jointly agree means to fight human abuses in every nook and cradle of the global village where they are being trampled like in Zimbabwe, DRC, Sudan, Cuba to name but a few examples. The meeting cannot be expected to degenerate to the level of discussing a Kangai/Short letter out of context as Motlanthe seems to suggest.
If that is what President Mugabe expects, he should rightly be excluded, and the meeting should go ahead as planned. "It must attend seriously to the important issues of poverty alleviation, abolition of human rights abuses, economic advancement and political tolerance that are of fundamental concern to Africa and the EU, rather than allow itself to be imprisoned and paralysed by dangerous and destructive," Pan Africanist dictatorial dogma to further corruption and fascism.
That is why “in a 2007 document, the EU commits itself to a strategy that "proposes forging a strategic security and development partnership between the EU and Africa. The strategy focuses on key requirements for sustainable development such as peace and security, good and effective governance, trade, interconnectivity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. New initiatives have been launched, most notably a governance initiative and a Euro-African Partnership for Infrastructure, which was launched in July 2006,” Motlanthe finally got it right
"Under the Governance Initiative, the EU will, for instance, provide support for reforms triggered by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a unique tool for peer review and peer learning in good democratic governance by and for Africans. And in the context of the Partnership for Infrastructure, the EU will support programmes that facilitate interconnectivity at continental level to promote regional trade, integration, stability and development," advanced Cooper in his so called imperialistic advice to Britain.
One wonders what kind of imperialism this will be if it will support “APRM triggered reforms” and “programmes that facilitate interconnectivity at continental level to promote regional trade, integration, stability and development," to echo seemingly confused Motlanthe as well as the EU and Cooper
“These are some of the matters that should be discussed during the December EU-Africa Summit. Others must include comprehensive EU support for NEPAD, the strengthening of the AU, sustained resource transfers to Africa to help us to meet the Millennium Development Goals and sustained development to defeat poverty and underdevelopment, and genuine respect for the independence and sovereign voice of the peoples of Africa,” Motlanthe seems to have seen the light.
But how will the obvious British and Mugabe heckling at the Portugal summit advance those noble and serious matters Mr. Motlanthe? If Mugabe’s attendance will further the advancement of those issues more so than the British attendance will or vice versa, then the African leaders must choose who to put their weight behind in the impasse that has arisen.
By taking sides the leaders should know that they are duty bound to protect and further the interests of their various countries and people that the EU, and certainly not Mugabe, can help sponsor morally, materially and financially.
Good leaders must learn never to compromise benefit that could accrue to millions of people to save the waning political fortunes of a geriatric leader who has outlived his usefulness to his country and people.
It would be very good if AU member states can go to Lisbon in December to explore continental alliances with the EU to levels they enjoy with the Asian continent without being distracted by the Mugabe/Britain colonial vestiges that will contribute nothing to the Developmental needs of Africa.
Maybe its time Africa lobbies for the exclusion of both Brown and Mugabe at this summit to save it. The two countries can be represented at the same level by people who are not controversial and barred in the host country to avert the need for special resolutions to be passed to save the summit. That of course can only be necessary if the EU-Africa summit is that important for the people of Africa and not for the political aggrandizement of certain leaders.
No comments:
Post a Comment