The Brotherhood Trilogy - Part II (July 12 2003)

If truth be told, without fear or favour, the Brother and the Brother’s Keepers at the NEPAD (the so-called New Partnership for African Development) have much explaining to do – to the African people and to the friends of Africa:

• Why is it that the NEPAD evidently operates more like a cronies’ club than a responsible people-oriented good governance institution?
• How does an evidently incorrigible serial human rights abuser like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe get the NEPAD red carpet treatment – instead of the reading of the riot act? In an incredible act of apparent mind-boggling folly, African leaders, at a recent African Union summit in Maputo, reportedly saw fit to allow Robert Mugabe not only to chair a NEPAD session but actually rewarded such notorious serial human rights abuser with the Vice Chairmanship of the African Union (Southern African Bureau). Tragically the infamous history of African leadership folly, which saw African leaders elevate a Robert Mugabe-like character to such a position before (the notorious Idi Amin of Uganda), seems to be repeating itself. And if the African people have to put up with such apparent monumental folly – from what appears to be Idi the idiot succeeded by Robert the brute – perhaps Idi Amin should be recalled from Saudi exile; so that these African leaders may indulge their apparent passion for taking a collective leave of their senses again: maybe, just maybe, the notorious ‘Dr Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada,’ self-proclaimed ‘Conqueror of the British Empire,’ might accept that all is forgiven (in the running of the lunatic asylum that the African Union seems to be); that he might just agree to teach Robert Mugabe a trick or two in the running of such apparent mad-house.
  
• How does the NEPAD good governance criteria sit well with NEPAD’s apparent recognition and acceptance of electoral fraud as a legitimate instrument of obtaining power in a NEPAD state (Zimbabwe)?
  
• Why is it that the NEPAD cronies’ club ‘good governance’ culture evidently sits well with the Robert Mugabe legacy – an appalling socio-economic litany of monumental misdeeds and misadventures that could probably shame even a rogue’s gallery?
  
• Why is it that the altruism “birds of a feather flog together” seem to tragically hold true for the Brother and the Brother’s Keepers (Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and the caravan of NEPAD despots; seemingly ready to go to hell and back, in a Brotherhood of the Damned pact with the Diablo, for the sake of one of Africa’s worst war criminals-cum-president-for-life which Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has become)?
• And how come – to the cronies’ club caravan of NEPAD despots – the African people’s rights do not matter; many, many mass graves and mass rapes later, and many, many mass murders and much mayhem later, in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe’s watch?

IRAQI LESSONS FOR ZIMBABWE

In a recent news media report, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was reported to have said that the President of the United States should not compare Zimbabwe with Iraq – this in reference to the prospect of regime change for illegitimate regimes.

But, of course, if truth be told there are good and true Iraqi lessons for Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; good and true lessons to be learned:

• The Iraqi dictator’s ethnic cleansing war crimes would have been less likely had Iraq been a federal state. The post Saddam Hussein Iraq is contemplating a federal state – instead of the failed winner-takes-all centralized state formula that lent itself to the ethnic cleansing menace.
  
• The Zimbabwe dictator’s ethnic cleansing war crimes would have been less likely had Zimbabwe been a federal state. The pre-colonial Zimbabwe was more like a federal state: Mashonaland in the North, Manicaland in the East, and Matabeleland in the Midlands and in the South – instead of the failing winner-takes-all state formula which lends itself to the ethnic cleansing menace;
  
• As in the post Saddam Hussein Iraq, the people in each pre-colonial Zimbabwean federal state structure, outlined in the foregoing, should be allowed to exercise their fundamental ballot box human and peoples’ rights for self-determination; to determine a state formula which does not lend itself to ethnic cleansing menace associated with their present winner-takes-all centralized state formula – if they so wish and choose.
  
• As in the post Saddam Hussein Iraq, there are likely to be some leaders of neighbouring countries who are likely to have a disquiet about the prospect of a federal state formula choice of the people by the people for the people: there is Turkey which is reportedly worried about such democratic process of a neighbouring state – that ‘too much self-determination’ democratic freedom might become ‘contagious.’ And there is South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki who seems equally concerned that a break-up of Zimbabwe’s winner-takes-all centralized state formula (when the illegitimate Mugabe regime collapses) could result in the rise of ‘too much self-determination’ democratic freedom which might become ‘contagious.’
  
• And from the Balkans (Tito’s Czechoslovakia to Milosevic’s Yugoslavia) to the Middle East (Saddam’s Iraq), history – the best teacher – teaches that a long oppressed people will one day rise up and seize the ‘contagious’ democratic freedom of self-determination. And as in the case of the concerns of Turkey over the Iraqi Kurds, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki would probably not like to see the rise of an Nguni federal state in a post Mugabe Zimbabwe – South Africa has a very significant Nguni population to whom (perhaps in the eyes of the powers-that-be in South Africa) any predominantly Nguni federal state in a neighbouring country (Zimbabwe) could become a ‘contagious’ forbidden democratic self-determination fruit whose ‘seeds’ might, through cross-pollination, enter South Africa…

Federalism is not synonymous with tribalism or racism, as Mugabe and his tribalist henchmen would like us to believe.

Federalism has successfully taken roots in many democratic nations of the world, in the Americas, in Europe, and even closer to home in Nigeria.

Even in non-federal states like Great Britain, political power has been successfully devolved democratically to accommodate, amongst other issues, cultural and regional diversities.

True and honest Zimbabweans cannot support the ZANU PF/Robert Mugabe suppression of cultural and regional diversities associated with federalism; for suppression in such instance is incompatible with democracy, human and peoples’ rights.

By: Thabo Siziba