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West must now yield to Zimbabwe dialogue
By Obert Madondo
WESTERN leaders have only their arrogant, supremacist and manipulative attitude to blame for the spectacular defeat of the draft United Nations Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe.
In pushing for the
sanctions, they played dirty, engaged in open moral blackmailing and
totally ignored reality.
Russia and China’s giant-killing veto was a direct indictment
of this undiplomatic attitude.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said sanctions would have
taken the UN beyond its mandate in trying to punish political disputes
by "artificially elevating them to the level of a threat"
to international peace and security. Churkin believed the sanctions
move was “illegitimate and dangerous”.
Russia is accusing the West of vindictiveness, lying and exaggeration
in the name of the UN here. Moscow is alleging an attempted derailment
of the UN Charter for self-interests that have nothing to do with helping
Zimbabweans out of Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship.
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya accused the West of “nation-tinkering”
and attempted theft of the Zimbabwe political crisis from the domestic
scene, where it belongs.
An examination of the anatomy of this failed sanctions campaign will
justify the indictment of the West by both Russia and China.
The West’s first response to Mugabe’s June 27 re-election
purported to highlight global indignation at the suffering that Mugabe
has imposed on Zimbabweans. The West rejected the result and moved to
de-legitimise Mugabe’s stolen mandate.
Both the US and
European Union (EU) called for the outright recognition of Morgan Tsvangirai,
leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), as the legitimate
President of Zimbabwe.
Surely, Tsvangirai cannot be the “legitimate” president
of Zimbabwe. He was in front in the March 29 election, held under an
undemocratic electoral arrangement he consented to, but failed to score
50-plus percent.
But the West had no clear strategy to turn rhetoric into reality. The
two weeks leading to the G8 Summit in Japan witnessed a powerful diplomatic
offensive as leaders of G8 and EU countries took personal charge of
their countries’ offensive against Mugabe.
In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel guaranteed that Germany and the
EU would seek "all possible sanctions" against Mugabe, and
“think up all possible sanctions and check to see what more we
can do…”
In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II finally stripped Mugabe of the knighthood
she bestowed on him in 1994. The Queen knighted Mugabe well after he
slaughtered 20 000 innocent, defenceless, ethnic Ndebele villagers in
the early 1980s.
In Canada, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper
finally imposed travel, work and study bans on “senior Zimbabwean
officials”. Like all Western countries, Ottawa protested neither
Mugabe’s 1980s genocide nor the Queen’s shameless honour
for a tyrant.
But this time, playing tough with Mugabe promises domestic political
capital. Harper faces a possible federal vote likely to be dominated
by climate change and the gridlocked war in Afghanistan.
Thanks to the disastrous Iraq War, domestic sub-prime mortgage meltdown,
an economy hurtling toward recession, huge budget deficits and a plummeting
dollar, the majority of Americans consider US President George W. Bush’s
presidency to be a failure. Many say history will record him as the
worst US president.
In the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labour Party came
fifth in a June Parliamentary by-election in Henley-on-Thames, near
London. John Kampfner suggests that the party “might not just
lose the next election, but be wiped off the map”.
Sanctions on Zimbabwe would have handed the three leaders a diplomatic
coup.
The West’s campaign could only hold with solid African backing.
In Zimbabwe Tsvangirai tried to sabotage South African President Thabo
Mbeki’s SADC-mandated mediation effort. He reportedly personally
asked Mbeki to arrange a meeting with Mugabe. Mugabe, Mbeki and Arthur
Mutambara, leader of the smaller faction of the MDC, showed up. Tsvangirai
opted out of the meeting at the last minute – just as Britain
was trying to coerce G8 leaders to issue a strong statement on Zimbabwe.
By attending the Mugabe talks, Tsvangirai would have stopped Britain’s
sanctions push right in its tracks.
Elsewhere in Africa, Botswana rejected Mugabe’s re-election and
but curiously agitated for Zimbabwe’s expulsion from the Southern
Africa Development Community (SADC).
Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, called on the African Union (AU)
to suspend Zimbabwe. Odinga belongs at The Hague. 1 500 Kenyans were
slaughtered in the aftermath of last December’s election because
of his criminal political negligence.
As the Western leaders pushed for sanctions, the Western media reprised
the collusive posture it assumed on the eve of the disastrous invasion
of Iraq. The western media hung on to every word Western leaders and
their African puppets said. No one bothered to explain how exactly new
sanctions would topple Mugabe while guaranteeing a meal on the table
for Zimbabweans.
At the end of June, the New York Times carried the sad story of Blessing
Mabhena, an 11-months old Zimbabwean baby boy whose legs had allegedly
been broken by Mugabe’s thugs. The story drew global outrage.
The papers later confessed that the story had been exaggerated. In fact
the boy had been born with club feet.
As the G8 summit began, the Canadian media choked with news of Harper
taking the lead to convince G8 leaders to act against Zimbabwe. The
British media said the same of Brown, and the American media of Bush.
Who exactly was trying to convince who? Why all the convincing if the
case against Mugabe was clear-cut?
As the summit progressed, world public opinion had been won over, but
not quite. Brown went for the kill and used shock tactics to shame the
G8 into line. He showed all a picture of the charred body of Joshua
Bakacheza, an opposition member said murdered by Mugabe's thugs.
African countries needed a special kind of manipulation. Brown urged
Africa to “now see [that] what is happening in Zimbabwe is damaging
the credibility of Africa as a whole.” Canada’s Globe and
Mail newspaper suggested that seven African leaders were cautioned that
Africa’s negative perception in G8 countries could adversely affect
the flow of aid dollars. Ah, dollars!
The West ignored Presidents Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete and Abdoulaye Wade
of Tanzania and Senegal, respectively, who insisted that the AU favoured
a negotiated settlement and a government of national unity. By pushing
ahead with the sanctions agenda, the West clearly showed contempt for
the African sentiment and position.
But the West’s biggest faux pas was its deliberate disregard of
the true positions of both Russia and China. They banked on negotiations
at the UN headquarters in New York. But, as Russia and China showed
with the veto, the UN Security Council is a theatre of international
politics where influential countries exploit global problems, however
small, for self-interest.
China’s economic paw is all over Africa. China is now among Zimbabwe’s
biggest trading partners. Beijing also sells arms to Harare. Beijing
had everything to lose from imposing sanctions on Mugabe.
For Russia, the Zimbabwe sanctions vote provided the opportunity for
simultaneous revenge against the US and UK. During the G8 summit, Russian
President Dmitri Medvedev criticised the U.S. deal to place parts of
a missile-defence shield in the Czech Republic. He promised to respond.
The US thought Medvedev was bluffing?
The UK accuses the
Russian state of complicity in the fatal poisoning of former Russian
spy Alexander Litvinenko. The UK thinks Moscow is amused? A resurgent
Russia is currently repositioning itself as a powerful anti-dote of
the West.
The G8 countries and members of the UN Security Council exploited the
Zimbabwe crisis for selfish self-interest. Moscow and Beijing walked
away with the bounty. Maybe it’s time for the sore losers –
US, UK, Canada and their EU allies – to yield and give a negotiated
settlement the chance.
Obert Madondo is a Zimbabwean national and writes from Toronto,
Canada. He can be contacted on e-mail: ronrich22@yahoo.ca
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