Annan's blast at Mugabe

Annan's blast at Mugabe

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By Staff Reporter

THE United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan on Tuesday fired a thinly-veiled broadside at Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe for refusing to hand over power.

Annan urged African despots to “pass the baton to the next generation”. His counsel, delivered in Ethiopia at the opening session of the African Union, would have been uncomfortable listening for Mugabe, in power for 24 years.

“There is no greater wisdom and no clearer mark of statesmanship than knowing when to pass the torch to a new generation. And no government should manipulate or amend the constitution to hold on to office beyond prescribed term limits," he said to applause.

Annan’s rebuke was seen as a direct attack on Mugabe who has been in power since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. His comments came just 24 hours after the African Union broke with tradition, releasing a damning report on Zimbabwe’s human rights abuses.

Annan said the new spirit of democratic empowerment in Africa had to find a home in every African country. For this to happen, politics had to be inclusive, and a careful institutional balance needed to be preserved.

This included:
• regular free and fair elections;
• a credible opposition whose role was respected;
• an independent judiciary which upholds the rule of law;
• a free and independent press;
• effective civilian control over the military; and
• a vibrant civil society.

"Let us pledge that the days of indefinite one-man or one-party governments are behind us," he said.

There was no direct response from Zimbabwean officials but speaking directly after Annan, outgoing AU chairman Joaquim Chissano said: "Some of us felt that he was pointing his finger for those of us who are not following the right direction."
Chissano, who is outgoing president of Mozambique, said Africans accepted this welcoming the pointing of fingers at each other as envisaged in the AU's peer review mechanism.

Chissano also took the opportunity to propose Swahili as the African lingua franca for the AU, delivering his speech in that language.
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