ThunderDragon Blog

It is called “historic” by some, but really the opposite is true. Instead of being the “first tentative step towards searching for a solution to a country that is in crisis”, it is a blow to democracy.

Tsvangirai has made a massive mistake by agreeing to talk with Mugabe about a power-sharing agreement. There can be no real steps forward whilst Mugabe remains in power as unelected President.

The only way any steps forward can be amde for Zimbabwe is for Mugabe to no longer be in charge. He is a tyrant and a murderer, and must be removed so that Zimbabwe can move towards a brighter and more democratic future.

By agreeing to talk with Mugabe, and intending to sign a final deal in two weeks time, Tsvangirai is betraying his supporters - and everyone else in Zimbabwe. And Mbeki, by brokering such a deal, is implicit in ensuring that Mugabe remains as a tyrant.

A storm has risen up over MPs having investments in Zimbabwe. Or, rather, as the facts actually are, in companies which have a presence in Zimbabwe.

The Independent On Sunday proclaims that:

Three of David Cameron’s frontbenchers are among six Conservatives – and one Liberal Democrat – with investments together worth more than £1m in firms trading in Zimbabwe. The revelations will embarrass the Tory leader, who has sought to take the moral high ground over the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Except the firms involved are major international firms, such as Shell, Barclays, BP, and Tesco. These investments are not investments in Zimbabwe, but investments in a major company - something which is hardly inappropriate, so long as it is properly reported.

By referring to these investments as “blood money”, the Independent is in effect trying to criminalise anyone who has investments with or uses the services of any of those companies, as there is little real difference between these two things in reality - as plenty of choice exists in both.

If I banked with Barclays, shopped at Tesco and filled up my car at a Shell garage, the Independent is in effect claiming that I am also “propping up Robert Mugabe’s regime”.

What is most ironic with the Indy’s faux outrage at this story is this fact dredged up by Guido:

Hypocritically, the Indy’s parent company, Independent News & Media PLC, owns 100% of CCI, which according to the corporation’s own website “is the largest and fastest-growing outdoor advertising company in South Africa, with significant operations in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.”

So the Independent is “propping up Robert Mugabe’s regime”. And to a far greater extent than any individual shareholder.

Then there is the hypocrisy a member of the government, John Mann MP (PPS to Tessa Jowell) saying:

Politicians profiting from the blood of the Zimbabwean people need to consider their position. What this shows is that greed for money supersedes moral responsibility.

Then why don’t you go and talk to the Chacellor of the Exchequer, John, and ask him why Northern Rock - the bank he nationalised - is active in Zimbabwe? Or is it only politicians from parties that aren’t Labour who need to “consider their position” when they profit [or not, as the case may be] from “the blood of the Zimbabwean people”?

The current situation in Zimbabwe is reprehensible, and whether or not a few MPs hold shares in a multi-national that just happens to have a presence in Zimbabwe means nothing. The situation in Zimbabwe is one that needs to be rectified - but can’t until the African leaders want to.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

The attitude of politicians today to democracy can so well be summed up by the cartoon below, by Peter Brookes in the Times.

All for democracy - except where it might adversely affect them and what they want. Screw the people! Democracy is for the politicians!

There are two main areas in which democracy is taking a battering at the moment - Zimbabwe and the European Union. Neither of which are exactly strangers to this.

The difference between the two is as much as anything all in the appearance: Mugabe deploys violence and force in order to ensure that he stays in power; the European Union bureaucracy deploys “diplomacy”. Both ignore what we the people - the ones from whom they are supposed to draw their power through the support of - want.

Zimbabwe

The people of Zimbabwe want the MDC to control the parliament and Morgan Tsvangirai as President. Yet Mugabe declares that he will “go to war” before he would let Tsvangirai take over as President.

So he simply doesn’t care what the result of the presidential run-off would have been, had their actually been an opposition candidate. He doesn’t care about democracy, just about having power. Even the UN have declared that any Zimbabwean poll cannot be free and fair.

In the end, there is nothing that we can do about Zimbabwean democracy. Only the other African leaders can stop Mugabe and free the people of Zimbabwe from tyranny. Just calling for the poll to be delayed is not good enough by a very very long shot. The very principles of democracy need to be re-established.

European Union

Then we come to the European Union. This body suffers a democratic deficit nigh on as large as Zimbabwes, with the elected element having so very little power indeed. They are going to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, despite it having been rejected by the Irish people.

The only people who got to vote on the Lisbon Treaty voted against it. Whilst every other country decided to press ahead and not bother asking their electorate what they thought but ratify it by parliament instead, Ireland asked the people. And they said no. Yet the EU don’t and won’t accept “no” for an answer, and appear to expect the referendum to be held again, like they did with Nice. If they do, they will destroy any claim that they ever had to being democratic.

In the UK, ratification was successfully stalled through legal action by Stuart Wheller who said that we the people had a “legitimate expectation” to be able to vote on Lisbon. But that has been lost - but hope still rests on an appeal, however slim that chance may be.

The EU is no a democratic institution. As the famous statment goes, it would not meet it’s own democratic criteria to join itself. And that goes quite some way to demonstrate the doublethink that surrounds and permeates it.

Conclusion

Democracy today is not democracy as it should be. It doesn’t meet the ideological requirements of democracy or even the practical requirements in Zimbabwe and the EU. The cry of “democracy!” spills from the mouths of all politicians, yet few ever actually do anythign about the issues in their own backyards. It is always someone else who is lacking in it; never themselves.

I am the first to admit that democracy is unlikely to be perfect in every, or indeed any, case. But these two examples are some of the worst in the world today - dictatorship under the banner of democracy.

“We The People” is a column written for the Wardman Wire. This blog post can also be seen here.

Zimbabwe under Mugabe is thoroughly undemocratic. It has become the worst kind of dictatorship, the kind that doesn’t even bother to hide the disgusting things that it is doing, and just ignores, beats up, or kills anyone who disagrees with it.

Mugabe has destroyed the economy, taking Zimbabwe from the bread-basket of Africa to the basket case of Africa. His claim to power rests not on the ballot box, but through militias on the streets. He fights his opposition not in debates over the facts and over visions for Zimbabwe’s future, but with mass and extreme violence committed against people who have nothing wrong bar supporting the wrong political party.

When it has come to the state that the opposition candidate has to pull out, you know it’s bad.

But, put simply, there isn’t much that we can do.

We can tell Mugabe that he’s been bad, impose more sanctions, and strip him of his knighthood. We can can all even refuse to recognise the results of the presidential run-off election.

Yet it will have bugger all effect.

Due to historical colonialism, anything that we do - not just Britain but the entire West - will be condemned by Mugabe and other African leaders as an attempt to reclaim an empire. Hence, there is only only group of people that have the power and position to stop Mugabe.

I wish that this group was the Zimbabwean people, but they do not have the power as Mugabe terrorises them and restricts their choices at the ballot box to one.

No, the only group of people who can stop Mugabe and save Zimbabwe are the other African leaders. They must make the stand. They must tell Mugabe that enough is enough, that he may have been a great freedom fighter thirty or forty years ago, but now is no more than a despotic tyrant who is murdering his own people. They must grow a pair of balls and tell him to stand down and, if necessary, ask for Western help to achieve it.

It is up to Africa to save Zimbabwe. If they don’t, we can’t. If they won’t, Zimbabweans die.

Democracy really does seem to be taking a huge battering at the moment.

In Zimbabwe, Mugabe is proclaiming that Morgan Tsvangirai will never lead the country - and that he will take the country in to civil war to prevent it. The Opposition leader, who gained more votes than Mugabe in the April presidential elections, has been detained numerous times whilst on the campaign trail.

There can be no free and fair elections in Zimbabwe at the moment. Mugabe must be removed from his position. If he wins the presidential election, he would have done so by intimidation. He makes it impossible for a free and fair election to be held.

Secondly, in one place that we just expect democracy to be ignored - the EU. Who are going to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, despite it having been rejected by the Irish people.

What are they going to do? Make the Irish people vote again like over Nice? They’re not ruling it out.

So I say this to the EU: No means no. Accept it. You have no choice. Or at least you would, if you actually believed in demcracy and the rule of the people. The people have told you to eff-off. Do so.

Kofi Annan calls for Africa to take the lead in condemning Mugabe and dealing with the problem of Zimbabwe. He said:

Yes. Zimbabwe is an international issue. But there is no way that the rest of the world - and especially Britain - can get involved beyond the occasional statement of regret at the current situation until Africa asks for help.

It is up to Africa to ask for help over Zimbabwe. It is up to Africa to make the first move against Mugabe’s dictatorship. Until the African leaders and people have the desire, the international community can do nothing - as otherwise they will face the inevitable accusation of a new colonialism. Zimbabwe may not be a problem that Africa alone can fix, but no-one else can do anything to help until Africa asks for it.

That Kofi Annan is saying things like this, and that the UN is to have talks with African leaders over dealing with Zimbabwe, is a very welcome development. Hopefully it will all result in an end to the Mugabe dictatorship over the people of Zimbabwe.

I agree with Robert Mugabe*: Gordon Brown is “a little tiny dot on this world”. But Robert Mugabe is an even tinier little dot on this world. And a reviled one at that.

But, really, how long does it take to count votes? It’s been two weeks since the election was held, surely that is long enough to count and re-count the ballot paper several times!

So why does he now want to hold a recount? Just announce the results and accept that you have lost. Otherwise Zimbabwe will experience the same upheaval and issues that affected Kenya not so long ago, after the Kenyan president refused to accept that he had lost the election.

If Mugabe does not accept that he has lost the election immediately after this recount, there will be hell to pay. If he claims that he has won after the recount, there will be even worse hell to pay. It does not take that long to count votes, and the more Mugabe delays the worse it looks.

But I doubt he’ll listen, since I’m an even smaller tiny dot than Mugabe himself.

* Only on the fact that Brown is a “a little tiny dot on this world,” though . Just to clarify this.

Zimbabwe appears to be on the brink of finally getting rid of Mugabe and establishing proper democracy. At the very least, Mugabe’s party has lost control of the parliament, but still has 94 of the 210 seats, with the main Opposition party only two ahead on 96. So it is hardly a crushing defeat for him - but a defeat nevertheless.

We can all hope that this result means that the end is nigh for the tyrant Mugabe. We can all hope that Zimbabwe can at last go down a democratic - and hopefully less economically destructive - route in to the future.

Mugabe should accept the defeat and step down. If he forces a Presidential run-off vote, he will almost certainly be humiliated. And if he doesn’t, he will just end up with the same result as in Kenya - certainly not a good thing for anyone. But if he steps down now, he can ensure a better future for Zimbabwe and a less damning legacy of his own regime*.

This is an opportunity for Zimbabwe to move in a new, democratic, and brighter future. Let’s hope that opportunity is grabbed with both hands.

* Less damning, but damning nevertheless.

Gordon is absolutely right to have boycotted the EU/Africa summit over the attendance of Robert Mugabe and his human rights violations. I said the same when this was first announced as possibility, and I haven’t seen anything that could change my mind about it since.

If anything, in fact, I think that Brown is even more right than I thought before to boycott this, since it is being proclaimed as a “summit of equals“. This just boosts Mugabe, something which the civilised world should not be doing.

It is certainly ironic that the EU, with all it’s rules and proclaimed interest in human rights to back a man who is killing his own country. In fact, wasn’t Mugabe supposedly banned from entering the EU due to his human rights violations? Isn’t it nice how consistent they are.

Gordon Brown is absolutely right to boycott this summit over Mugabe. Just a pity he’s so wrong about everything else…

UPDATE: It seems it isn’t such a principled stand after all, since “pseudo minister” Baroness Amos has been sent to represent Britain. If Brown was really serious over this, he wouldn’t have sent anyone.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, writes in the Guardian about how “saving Zimbabwe is not colonialism, [but] Britain’s duty”:

Yes, Zimbabwe needs international intervention - but it is up to Africa to invite us in. Until they accept that Mugabe is “the worst kind of racist dictator” and has “enacted an awful Orwellian vision”, there is nothing that can be done. As it is, Brown’s refusal to even potentially have a “Straw moment” with Mugabe has led to African nations refusing to go to a summit, so how much worse a reaction would be received if he - or any other non-African nation - suggests direct intervention?

In this article, Sentamu has a weird argument with regards to colonialism, using it as a basis of both intervening and not intervening in Zimbabwe. He says that “saving Zimbabwe is not colonialism, [but] Britain’s duty”, that “the time has come for Mr Brown… to slay the ghosts of Britain’s colonialist past by thoroughly revising foreign policy towards Zimbabwe and to lead the way in co-ordinating an international response” and also that “Britain needs to escape from its colonial guilt when it comes to Zimbabwe.” All of these cannot be true. I don’t think that Britain’s colonialist history is anything to be ashamed of or to feel guilty for. To start with, it happened in a different time and culture, and we were by no means the worst perpetrators of the bad aspects. If anything, we should feel more guilty for ending colonialism in much of Africa when we did than for doing it in the first place.

When it comes down to it, I think that we do need into intervene in Zimbabwe, but in the current political climate, we can’t until Africa - or at least much of Africa - asks for us to do so. Whilst they stand beside Mugabe and his dying Zimbabwe, there is nothing that the rest of the world can do. Zimbabwe may not be a problem that Africa alone can fix, but no-one else can do anything to help until Africa asks for it.

Source: The Guardian