REVOLUTIONARY GEORGIAN VELVET LESSONS
FOR THE AFRICAN UNION AND FOR THEIR HARD MAN OF ZIMBABWE

FreeAfrica (November 23, 2003)

Photo: Georgians taking over their Parliament;
Picture from the BBC

Photo: Ousted Georgian president,
Eduard Shevardnadze (ousted from the People’s House, the Parliament).

Change, wherever and whenever it takes place, often has unintended positive consequences (pennies from heaven) that have an inevitable indirect impact on those who least expect to be affected by it.

There was the historic coming down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which did not only ultimately affect the reunification of Germany, but also gave rise to the emergence of popular democratic dialogue and change in the former Eastern Block where the Iron Curtain had stood ignominiously as a decadent barrier to democratic ideals and realities for nearly half a century. And now, propitiously, we see modern Europe moving positively towards greater peace and security, through European Union and NATO enlargement programs that include some former Eastern Block countries that have been positively touched by the seemingly indirect historic fall of the Berlin Wall.

But before then, closer to home, there was the fall of the dictator, Doctor Caetano, in a distant corner of Europe, in Portugal, which also had unintended positive consequences in far away Africa – for African decolonisation, back in the mid-70s when Angola and Mozambique gained independence from colonial rule. And today, in Georgia, a distant corner of the former Eastern Block Europe, we see the apparent Georgian velvet revolution against an unstable socio-economic/socio-political situation that is not unlike that of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Understandably, the likes of Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe might say that what happens in distant Georgia cannot happen in Africa. But history, the time-honored best teacher, teaches otherwise – as demonstrated in the abovementioned historical lessons.

Clearly today’s apparent velvet revolution in Georgia, wherein the people took the initiative to enforce the removal from the People’s House, the Parliament, of a leader who had demonstrated an apparent lack of respect for true democratic culture and traditions, has lessons for the African Union: the writing is on the wall, in an emphatic clear and unequivocal manner, for the illegitimate regime of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, that sooner rather than later, the people of Zimbabwe will realize that if Mugabe continues to disregard democratic values and traditions, the people might just have to bring the democratic values and traditions to him - right there in the People’s House, the Parliament, that he evidently continues to defile and disgrace arrogantly by his illegitimacy and defiance of the dignity and credibility of the SADC democratic principles and the Commonwealth Harare Declaration for good governance.

To this my generation of African people, and in particular to our much-abused peace loving brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe, these critical lessons of history are very clear and unambiguous, and they are there for a purpose: the future of our peace and security lies in taking heed of what good lessons history has to offer. And the courage and consciences of our world are being challenged by this evidently reckless disregard for democratic human and people’s rights as well as the democratic mandate of the People’s House, the Parliamentary Democracy.

But to the victims and to the villains of these apparent war-crimes-against-the-people atrocities, here is my testament: please remember, please remember… that history is watching and waiting; watching and waiting to judge our long overdue response in defense or in defiance of what goes on in African Parliamentary Democracies.

Understandably, the universal wisdom is that there is nothing more constant than change; therefore, for the villains and the victims of such primitive medieval undemocratic state of affairs that so grievously pass for ‘democracy without the complicated bits’ in Africa, the logical conclusion has to be that such untenable state of affairs has to be touched by the inevitable constant change process.

That is to say: that such medieval primitive socio-political sub-culture that belongs in the dark ages should not be allowed to escape the constant checks and balances of a modern democratic change process, in this day and age.

Irrespective of what may become the end game for the ‘wily old fox’ of Georgia, in the face of the apparent Georgian velvet revolution, for us in Africa, for all good men and women of conscience out there, the noble lessons of history will always be there: to rightly vindicate and validate us, in victory; or to grievously condemn and consign us to the dustbin of history, in defeat. And since those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to be condemned by it, let us not recklessly set ourselves up for condemnation, by collectively taking leave of our senses – in the face of the democratic challenges of our time, in our time or in the time to come…

Inkosi sikelele iAfrica (May God bless Africa).