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The UN Security Council should now reintroduce its draft resolution to punish Zimbabwe's autocratic leader Robert Mugabe, and 11 of his henchmen, that Russia helped defeat on the grounds that it "infringed on Zimbabwe's sovereignty."
Why? Because Russia has invaded Georgia, a sovereign nation, which now renders the key foundation of its argument against the Zimbabwe resolution, moot.
When the Democratic Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, made his now-famous speech last week in Berlin, on trans-Atlantic relationships, he referenced Africa seven (7) times.
As a way of introducing himself to the “people of the world”, Obama reminded them that his father “…grew up herding goats in Kenya.” (Barack Obama Sr. hailed from Western Kenya, specifically Luo Nyanza, where fishing, not goat herding, is people’s way of life.)
To warn the world against embracing evils of divisions – whether they be racial, religious, tribal or national - Obama drew attention to the miseries the Germans underwent before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And to noisy applause from a crowd of over 200,000, Obama mentioned how similar walls have come down tumbling from Kiev to Cape Town, South Africa. In the latter, he was referring to the end of apartheid in early 1990s.
This week’s arrest warrant request from Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s war-crimes in Darfur, has triggered quite the political and diplomatic kerfuffle. Many, especially human rights organizations, have hailed the move as significant as it will deter impunity.
But the Sudanese government, obviously, has expressed its indignation at the ICC and Mr. Ocampo. Soon after Ocampo announced the charges on Monday, al-Bashir’s supporters exploded in war shrieks and political diatribes against the ICC – and many countries seemed to support it.
In a rally held in Khartoum on Sunday, soon after word leaked that the announcement of the arrest warrant was imminent, al-Bashir’s supporters marched in the streets shouting: “Death to America! Death to Israel!” (Note that the U.S. and Israel aren’t signatories of the ICC and, therefore, don’t recognize it).
Why do African countries keep pushing for aid that rich countries are reluctant and unwilling to give?
G8 Summits are fast becoming synonymous with Africa’s miseries. It’s almost predictable that at the top of the agenda of every G8 Summit is how Africa is dealing with the triumvirate issues of poverty, political instability and disease. In the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, it was Darfur. In this year’s Summit in Japan, it was a threat to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for holding a fraudulent election and suppressing the opposition.
Actually, it has become fashionable, prior to and during these summits – forget what happens when they’re concluded - for G8 leaders to pledge tens of billions of dollars to help Africa fight poverty. These are usually in the form of aid and debt cancellations.
The Current Discussion: The G-8 summit is Bush's last hurrah as a world leader. What's one thing he can do to strengthen his legacy?
Correction Appended
This is a biased question against Bush: it already prejudges Bush’s legacy as horrible. But to be fair to the man, this is not the case. Unless you live on Mars, you can’t claim that there’s nothing good associated with President Bush. Of course, you don’t expect Bush’s detractors --- and those who have political points to score by poking holes into his presidency – to paint him white. They’d rather paint him black.
Bush has been generous and kind to Africa, far more than his predecessors. This is an uncontestable fact.
The African Union (A.U.), as an entity, is a toothless bulldog. And those eagerly expecting it to loudly and harshly condemn Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe – for terrorizing Zimbabweans and holding a one-man phony election – are day-dreaming. They don’t understand this ineffective body’s inner workings and composition.
They’re mistaken to think that the parley at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh will ameliorate the grave political imbroglio engulfing Zimbabwe. Instead, I bet, the A.U. clearly seems gunned to strengthen Mugabe’s stranglehold of Zimbabwe. Why? Because the A.U. can’t purport to stand for values such as democracy and respect for human rights. Were the A.U. a subscriber to these values, it’d be burning midnight oil to banish Mugabe from its midst. To the A.U., there doesn’t seem to be a crisis worth emergency intervention.
The Current Discussion: Zimbabwe's chaos has brought about unprecedented cooperation in the UN, with even China and Russia switching sides to condemn Mugabe's government. So -- what should this united UN DO to force change?
After refereeing a month-long, bloody campaign -- mainly targeting supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), of Morgan Tsvangirai -- the Zimbabwean government today holds a sham election whose sole objective is to extend the inept and despotic leadership of President Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe and his bloodthirsty thugs have already elbowed out Mr. Tsvangirai from the contest through violence and police intimidation. They’ve murdered about 90 opposition supporters, according to media accounts. Thousands of others are nursing injuries in hospitals across Zimbabwe, while millions others are languishing in poverty in neighboring South Africa.
World leaders’ apathy toward Zimbabwe’s crisis is disgusting.
A week before Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff, killings and beatings --- directed at supporters of Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), by President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF thugs --- continue unabated. Which makes everybody, except of course Mugabe and his thugs, wonder if this runoff will be anywhere close to a free and fair election.
The Current Discussion:Is there a growing global agenda -- that is, an agenda of issues being discussed that affects the world rather than individual countries? Or are local concerns still paramount?
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the “war on terror” has become a familiar phrase on virtually everyone’s lips. (By the way, a Google search of this phrase returns 20 million results. The search term “terror” gives you 130 million results).
The “war on terror” has touched, stabilized, and sometimes disrupted many people’s private lives (Read the Patriot Act if you’re an American; the Suppression of Terrorism Act if you’re a Ugandan; or Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act if you’re a Briton ). It has altered many countries’ foreign policies, to say the least, and how they relate with the U.S.
What lessons, if any, will African leaders learn from Senator Barack Obama’s stunning success? Senator Obama has inspired a diverse cross-section of Americans: Whites, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans. Will those in Africa, the source of his heritage, follow suit?
Sen. Obama’s campaign has all along been about hope, a scarce commodity in Africa where selfishness and greed are what define virtually every African leader. African leaders don’t hold town hall meetings to listen to their citizens’ concerns. They’re condescending and arrogant when it comes to dealing with ordinary people.
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