Africa guilty of “conspiracy of silence”: PM

The Zimbabwean premier, who was in Washington DC last week to receive a human right award sponsored by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), said African leaders should acknowledge and respect the fundamentals of good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights and the imperative to invest in developing our human capital.

As African leaders we must end the conspiracy of silence that has often allowed repression to continue unchecked, Tsvangirai said in his acceptance speech at the award ceremony.

Human rights groups and major Western governments accuse the majority of African leaders of closing ranks with Mugabe and defending him to the hilt whenever he faces charges of oppressing his own people.

Self-destructive

African leaders have been criticised for always shielding each other from criticism even when guilty of bad governance and human rights abuses, with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan once calling the practice a pernicious, self-destructive form of racism that unites citizens to rise up and expel tyrannical rulers who are white but to excuse tyrannical rulers who are black.”

In Zimbabwes case, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union have successfully shielded President Robert Mugabe from international censure even as the Zimbabwean strongman openly condoned the harassment and ill-treatment of opponents.

SADC and the AU have refused to pressure Mugabe to honour a September 2008 power-sharing agreement he signed with Tsvangirai who heads the main Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) wing and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway MDC faction.

The SADC-appointed mediator in the Zimbabwean political crisis, South African President Jacob Zuma was last month criticised by US-based Human Rights Watch for misplacing his mediation focus by allowing himself to be sucked into Zanu (PF)s anti-sanctions crusade.

Zuma has lately taken keen personal interest in seeking the removal of Western visa restrictions and a freeze on assets and bank accounts held by Mugabe and other senior members of his Zanu (PF) party.

He failed to convince former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in March to ease the targeted sanctions but his eagerness to parrot Mugabes anti-sanctions song has dented the South African leaders credibility as an honest and impartial political broker.

Zumas critics say the South African leader should instead be focusing on critical issues that include cessation of human rights abuses, institutional reform targeting constitutional and electoral processes

as well as security sector reform.

GPA implementation

They also criticise Zuma for his apparent failure to push for implementation of the global political agreement (GPA) issues already agreed such as the appointment of provincial governors. More than one year after Mugabe and Zanu (PF) agreed with the MDC formations on a formula to appoint provincial governors in which six Zanu (PF) provincial governors would be dismissed to make way for MDC governors.

But the South African leader insists it is important that the sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle are removed to aid

implementation of the 2008 global political agreement (GPA) that led to the formation of the unity government in February last year.

Zuma says the continued existence of the targeted measures is dividing the unity government and hurting efforts to solve the political problems in Zimbabwe. The EU and other Western nations imposed sanctions against Mugabe in 2002 as punishment for failure to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

But the veteran Zimbabwean leader says the sanctions are meant to remove him from power as punishment for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks. Like his predecessor, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, Zuma seems to be powerless when it comes to getting Mugabe to implement issues agreed by negotiators of the three parties that are signatories to the GPA.

Despite assurances last month by Zuma that the Zimbabwean parties had agreed on a package of measures to resolve their dispute, Tsvangirais MDC-T has declared a deadlock and is demanding the convening of an emergency summit of the 15-nation SADC bloc to force Mugabe to implement the reforms.