Back to Index

A menace and a thug
Comment, The Ottawa Citizen
September 30, 2006

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=2fe920fe-0b44-49bf-9e24-237fd475f9a1

Zimbabwe has the highest inflation rate in the world, a life expectancy of about 37, and one in every five people is infected with HIV. The country's president, Robert Mugabe, says it's all George W. Bush's fault.

Sadly, for his people, Mr. Mugabe is able to hide behind a global wave of anti-Americanism and get away with his brutal thuggery.

"Mugabe can hardly speak without mentioning Bush and Blair," said Archbishop Pius Ncube at a talk he gave during a recent visit to Ottawa. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo is one of the clearest voices raised against the regime in Zimbabwe.

Mr. Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 26 years, and he has now postponed the next presidential election. Not that it matters much; the election will be a fraud anyway.

It can be counterproductive for leaders in North America or Europe to criticize Mr. Mugabe because the dictator treats it as proof of his conspiracy theory. Even his opponents are divided on whether outside help amounts to interference. Mr. Mugabe is the only leader the country has known since the end of white rule, and anti-colonial feeling is still strong.

But Canada should not be silent about Zimbabwe. It should encourage African leaders to speak out, to express publicly their horror at the shame Robert Mugabe has brought on their continent. Archbishop Ncube said he's sick of the attitude that "If someone is a fellow African, we must say 'yes, yes' to all the nonsense that he's doing."

Mr. Mugabe's "nonsense" is deadly. In May 2005, he evicted hundreds of thousands of city-dwellers and razed their homes and businesses. Opposition to Mr. Mugabe has tended to come from the cities, so he's equated the rural lifestyle with being a "true Zimbabwean."

What Mr. Mugabe called "Operation Clean up Trash," Zimbabweans called the "Tsunami." But unlike the South Asian tsunami, this one was not followed by an international reconstruction effort. Daunted and obstructed by Mr. Mugabe, the world waits while his victims huddle together in whatever shelter they can find.

"It's kind of a bottomless pit in terms of the need for occupiable housing in Zimbabwe at this time," said Shari Eppel, the archbishop's human-rights adviser.

Canada can help the non-governmental organizations working with these evicted families, and it can try to persuade Mr. Mugabe to allow new housing in the cities. It can also lend financial and political support to the women's groups, trade unionists and church leaders who continue to march in protest of the Mugabe regime.

Archbishop Ncube is one of those, but he says sometimes he finds himself alone at planned protests. The regime has been very successful at cowing opponents; witness the beating of union leaders arrested at a protest in mid-September.

"We're just a much weaker, hammered democratic movement than we were several years ago," said Ms. Eppel.

Mr. Mugabe's death won't solve anything if he passes the regime to a successor. "Mugabe knows what I think of him," said Archbishop Ncube, shaking his finger. "I refuse to be broken by that government. It has no right to break me."

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP