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UN World Tourism Summit in a contested political environment
Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum
August
08, 2013
On 26 August 2013, more
than 500 diplomats from over 150 countries are visiting Victoria
Falls, a UN World Heritage Site, in Zimbabwe for a UN backed conference.
According to a Report by Jerome Starkey in Victoria Falls, and Jan
Raath in Harare, the British government will not be sending any
representatives to this conference.
The conference comes
in the midst of a very difficult and highly contested political
environment. However, given the importance of this conference to
Zimbabwe’s tourism industry, the question that arises is whether
Britain has adopted the correct course of action in the circumstances?
The broader question is whether the summit makes sense in the current
environment? By not attending, is Britain underestimating the importance
of tourism within the public diplomacy field?
Tourism diplomacy
can work either way. Firstly, tourism shapes perceptions of others
and in this regard it is very clear that Zimbabwe’s Tourism
Minister, Walter Mzembi will use this summit for perception management
and to impact public diplomacy and nation branding in efforts to
attract foreign visitors. In a recent Report, he was quoted as saying;
“There was a sense in the United Nations that we needed help
to come back into the family of nations from a place of isolation.”
However, on other hand, what signal is the Summit sending to the
world in light of the current political environment? Specifically,
is this event not going to be a diplomatic coup for President Mugabe,
who
won a seventh term in office last week, amid reports of fraud?
These are all very difficult
questions to answer but in our humble view, these questions can
be addressed firstly by looking at precedent from elsewhere as well
as the Zimbabwean Government’s attitude towards the international
community and finally by looking a the current situation.
The first lesson can
be drawn from the current bilateral diplomatic standoff between
Washington and Kremlin. In a rare diplomatic rebuke, U.S. President
Barack Obama on Wednesday cancelled his Moscow summit with Russian
President Vladimir Putin over the Snowden fall out. President Obama
said it wouldn’t make sense to go ahead with the Summit under
the current difficult environment. Some congressional lawmakers
are calling for Obama to not only scrub the Moscow summit but also
demand that Russia forfeit its right to host the G-20 summit. Others
have spoken of boycotting next year's Winter Olympics in the Russian
city of Sochi. However, President Obama is of the view that the
lower-level meetings with Russia underscore that the U.S. cannot
completely sever ties with the Kremlin, ‘Given the U.S. role
in an increasingly interdependent global economy’.
The second rung of the
enquiry would involve probing Zimbabwe’s attitude towards
the international community. On 17 July 2013, after the launch of
the Sadc Electoral Observer Mission (Seom) to Zimbabwe in Harare,
Zimbabwe’s foreign Minister, said, “We have not invited
any nation which imposed sanctions on us, so the EU will not be
part of the observers. “They should totally remove all sanctions
if they are genuine about re-engagement.”
On 2 August 2013, Patrick
Chinamasa, the Justice Minister, in suggesting that the election
result was a historic vindication of Mugabe and defeat of the West,
and proof that Zanu-PF was right about everything from human rights
to seizures of white-owned farms, said “As far as Zanu-PF
is concerned, we have never refused to talk to them. It was Tony
Blair and Gordon Brown who refused to talk to our president over
a decolonisation issue to do with the land question.”
Chinamasa had visited
the UK on 26 March and told the Africa minister, Mark Simmonds,
that, “When you are ready, if you are able to deal with your
British public opinion which you poisoned through demonization of
our president for no basis through lying that we were in violation
of human rights, if you are able to think that politically you are
now ready to engage us, you will find our doors open. Basically,
you know where to find us.” Speaking on sanctions he said,
“These are not from the UN, they are just from a club of white
people who just don’t like the fact that we are repossessing
our land … The sanctions are illegal and they should be lifted
yesterday, not tomorrow.”
In April, Zimbabwe temporarily
refused entry in to Zimbabwe for the UN Needs Assessment Team and
in so doing the Foreign Minister stated that, "The only time
that the United Nations go into the territory of a member state
is after a Security Council resolution under Chapter Seven of the
United Nations Charter, those are the only circumstances... In this
particular instance, we have failed to reach mutually agreed terms
of reference. We have rejected what they want to impose upon us.
And we had insisted that they should come on our terms, not on their
terms. We are a member state."
In addition Zimbabwe
is very notorious for silently turning down UN visit requests and
even deported a UN special rapporteur, Manfred Nowak in 2009.
The third rung of the
inquiry should take into account the current human rights situation
in the country. On 6 August, Zanu-PF ran full-page advertisements
in newspapers saying its crushing election win was an endorsement
of “black economic empowerment” plans that target foreign-owned
companies including banks and mines. “The people of Zimbabwe
have given President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF a clear mandate to
transform the economy through indigenization and economic empowerment,”
the party said. “Over the next five years, Zimbabwe is going
to witness a unique wealth transfer model that will see ordinary
people take charge of the economy.” Zanu-PF says it has set
its eyes on 1,100 foreign-owned firms.
In response to this story,
some Zimbabweans have labelled this as retrogressive conduct and
in particular one comment said, ‘Black empowerment is in education
and training. I don't know how black people can say taking over
companies that have their own operations is a good thing??? It didn't
work with farms and it sure as hell won't work with full fledge
businesses. I don't know ANY country that is free of foreign-owned
companies and is a great success’.
To prove the sheer hypocrisy
of the black empowerment drive, SW Radio carries a Report dated
7 August that at least 20 families in Goromonzi district in Mashonaland
West have been evicted from their homes and are now homeless. The
stranded farm workers have put up plastic shacks on the side of
the road.
These are all very clear signs that Zimbabwe is descending into
a Communist state. There is ample evidence that the primary beneficiaries
of the empowerment drive are in one or the other linked to the Zanu-PF
party. In this context, there is every indication that Zanu-PF is
creating a "communist state" - a system where public ownership
of all or most means of production by the Communist party-run state
is deemed necessary to further the interests of the working class.
If one were to draw lessons from Sacha Baron Cohen’s Film
‘Dictator’, it would be easy to see where the country
is heading. In that film at a signing ceremony, Aladeen the Dictator
tears up Tamir's document in front of the UN delegation, and holds
an impassioned speech praising the virtues of dictatorship, drawing
unintended parallels to current issues within the United States.
This is what is likely to happen at Victoria Falls.
The strategies that are
being used towards the creation of an autocratic one party state
are varied, the main one being Law 42 of the so called Laws of Power
premised on the idea that ‘Strike the shephered (Tsvangirai)
and the sheep will scatter’. Zanu-PF has enlisted the help
of high-ranking individuals, even some from the democratic movement
to demonise Tsvangirai, telling him to move on and for Zimbabweans
to accept the new reality and simply move on. Even Zimbabwean opinion
makers on TV including the BBC offer the so-called 'balanced opinions’
which are nothing but a drive to neutralise the truth. One of the
hallmarks of totalitarian regimes is their insistence on controlling
people’s thoughts as well as their behaviour. George Orwell
captured the point brilliantly by his creation of the sinister “Thought
Police” in his novel 1984. The idea “if you are not
with us, you are against us” pervades the thinking of dictators.
From their perspective, there is no real difference between neutrality
and opposition. This concept called 'othering' in sociology is premised
on the process of perceiving or portraying someone or something
as fundamentally different or alien.
Further, the summit is likely to be used to continue the unprecedented
deception we have all witnessed. The deception that began at the
inception of the inclusive government has no precedent in political
history but in John Grisham’s novels. The MDC was led on the
primrose path until they woke up on 31 July only to realise that
they had been pushed downhill from the Primrose Hill. They were
lulled into a false sense of security through illusions and deception.
In our analysis dated 25 April 2013, on Hon. Tendai Biti’s
speech at Chatham House titled Hallmarks of potential political
consensus on key issues we mention how Tendai Biti had all the good
intentions, going around the world to convince the international
community to embrace Zimbabwe again. While he was working for national
good, Zanu-PF on other hand were actually using him.
In light of the above,
should the world attend the summit? This is a matter of judgement
call for each nation. In our view, may be the nations should attend
but the attendance should have further terms of reference; such
as:
- There should be a
discussion of human rights
- There should be freedom
of expression for guests to query the current political process
- Should Zanu-PF solely
form a government before the summit, delegates should ask Cain
(Zanu-PF), where is his brother Abel is? (The ‘MDC’).
- Civil society organisations
should be allowed the right to peaceful protest and/or to hold
parallel events on the side-lines of the Summit.
The Summit provides the
international community a rare window of opportunity to venture
into Zimbabwe, a nation that is increasingly being isolated from
the world by the Chinese walls. This will give the international
community a rare chance to speak to ordinary folk on the ground
for them to air their concerns. This will be reminder that although
the country has been politically isolated for a decade, Zimbabweans
are still bound together with the family of nations in the same
blanket of human destiny.
Visit the Zimbabwe
Human Rights NGO Forum fact
sheet
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