Death knell to Zim's Re-Liberation Struggle?
The leader of Zimbabwe’s Re-Liberation Struggle has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare in fears for his safety.
The move occured only hours after Morgan Tsvangarai, who'd won the first round of presidential voting a few months ago but saw results rigged to deny him the majority he'd earned, pulled out of the upcoming runoff after dozens of opposition supporters were murdered in a well-organized series of pogroms by thugs loyal to megalomaniac Bob Mugabe.
The tyrant, who some speculate is suffering from dementia, invoked Divine Right to rule the nation he considers his personal fiefdom. He claimed that God chose him to rule Zimbabwe and that 'only God' could remove him.
Mugabe's mother lived over a century.
The implication of the withdraw on Zimbabwe's Re-Liberation Struggle is unclear. Tsvangarai surely hopes the withdrawal will cause the international community to pressure the Mugabe mafia
The UN has already called for a poll delay, the Bush administration has condemned Mugabe-inspired violence against the opposition and the effete South African President Thabo Mbeki has made a 41,024th weak-kneed plea to Mugabe to not be quite so ill-tempered... pretty please with sugar on top.
But Mugabe has thumbed his nose at international pressure for years, even used to his own defiant advantage. So it begs belief that anything will change this time.
Labels: Morgan Tsvangarai, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
posted by Brian @ Monday, June 23, 2008
2 comments
2 Comments:
I don't know what to make of the statements coming out of South Africa. On the one hand, they are pathetically deferential to Mugabe.
On the other hand, this is what a functioning Third World democracy looks like. It reacts to popular demands to resist the West, and it desperately wants to avoid a humanitarian crisis close by. Insofar as it can support the international community's position around the margins of its more immediate interests, maybe it is.
Maybe no one can get Mugabe to step down without using force. But he is clearly beyond the range of arguments based on morality or economic interest. South Africa might as well continue to try quiet diplomacy.
JCN: I’m afraid I don’t buy your second paragraph. Certainly, western democracies aren’t immune from the populist/mob mentality (e.g.: Iraq) nor from defiant expressions of sovereignty in the face of calls for conformity to international norms (US opposition to the International Criminal Court is one example that springs to mind immediately). Furthermore, Mugabe’s actions have been condemned by many African democracies, such as Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, Tanzania’s foreign minister and more recently Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade. Even in South Africa, support for Mbeki’s disgracefulness is not unanimous. Jacob Zuma, president of Mbeki’s ANC, has forcefully condemned Mugabe as have the main South African trades union COSATU. In contrast to vigorous Bush admin denunciations of Mugabe, the not-dissimilar brutality of Meles’ regime in Ethiopia has been met with silence from Washington because Meles is doing Bush’s dirty work in Somalia. So if western demands seem to lack moral credibility in the eyes of even those Africans who oppose savagery of the Mugabe-sort, this is why.
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