African Press International (API)

Johannesburg (South Africa) – So Morgan Tsvangirai has been thoroughly screwed over, a victim of SA’s and the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC’s) divide-and-rule politics. Here is a man who won the elections in March last year under tyrannical circumstances, yet the Thabo Mbeki government and its allies refused to accept the outcome.

What they did instead was make life hell for Tsvangirai. They tolerated assassination attempts, the murder of hundreds, unspeakable acts of torture and rape, passport withdrawals, all with the intention of rendering Tsvangirai powerless. In the end, he was forced to surrender or be excluded.

Compelled to accept the less-powerful ministries of health, education, and finance, the Movement for Democratic Change looks on meekly as Mugabe retains control of the murderous army, police force and security establishment, while the seizure of farms, the muzzling of the media and the reluctance to release political prisoners continue apace. Ignored in the deal are Zimbabwe’s citizens, who are appalled at how the African Union (AU) and SADC continue to give credence to the despot.

It has been reported that at a meeting of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference and the Christian Alliance, delegates were not amused by South African President (Kgalema) Motlanthe’s calls for the immediate removal of sanctions  a move which casts doubt on South Africans’ sincerity in wanting to see genuine power-sharing. Who gave them the mandate to call for the removal of sanctions when they are on record that they are not in a position to prescribe anything for Zimbabweans?

DESPITE the grave misgivings of Zimbabwe’s own citizens, the European Union and the US about the deal, last week a former adviser to Mbeki, Tony Heard, waxed lyrical about this new deal’ in these pages , in an article that was more about him and his failed former boss than it was about democracy, justice and accountability. Diametrically opposed to the Washington Post’s editorial of February 5, which stridently condemns the government of national unity as SA’s campaign to preserve Robert Mugabe’s hold over a dying Zimbabwe, Heard’s diatribe was nothing but a shameful endorsement of a process and a tyrant that have been thoroughly discredited by the international community.

The collapse of Zimbabwe’s once-proud school system and the Zimbabwe dollar exemplify how one man can destroy an entire edifice in a flash, not to speak of that queen of avarice, Grace Mugabe, who continues to run riot, grabbing farms for her offspring, knowing her days are numbered.

What Mugabe and his kind demonstrate once again so true to the old script is how often, when liberation movements get into power, they appropriate the right even to determine what the nature of opposition should be. Denouncing the opposition as counter-revolutionary, they thwart their every effort to become an effective alternative to government. Slowly but surely all the institutions of democracy become weakened, starting with parliament, the judiciary, the independent institutions of parliament, the military and, finally, the media. In this maelstrom of democratic decline, the rule of law becomes the first casualty.

In the vampire state, elected officials use public office as the ladder to instant wealth. At 85, Mugabe is still ascending the ladder of greed, primitively accumulating wealth as he so primitively accumulated power, with SADC firmly holding the ladder lest he gets toppled. That SADC can call this a satisfactory conclusion to the Zimbabwe crisis, and call for the lifting of sanctions, proves that racial solidarity in the AU is a conspiracy of African leaders against the people who voted them into power.

They make former colonial powers seem rather benevolent in comparison.

* Kadalie is a human rights activist based in Cape Town.

source.Business Day (South Africa), by Rhoda Kadalie* – February 12, 2009.