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Jun

26

Pulitzers made by pain & Mugabe; seven things you can do for Zimbabwe


What it says underneath the picture of the three-year old child:

“Suffering Great and Small: An 11-month-old boy with broken legs found shelter in a church in Harare, Zimbabwe. His mother said youths with the governing party shattered his legs while trying to make her disclose the whereabouts of her husband, an opposition supporter.”

Here’s an interesting article about the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee. The U.S.’s stance is to have the run-off election called off but McGee does not expect that to happen.

Here is the YouTube of the pre-election violence filmed by the US Embassy and broadcast on CNN:

What can you do? This column in The Guardian enumerates seven things:

1. “We – through our elected governments – can work for a second UN resolution, stronger than the last.”

2. “We can encourage our governments – as many as possible, especially those outside the traditional west – not to recognise as Zimbabwe’s legitimate leader the president who emerges from this Friday’s terror sham election (assuming it goes ahead, despite yesterday’s appeal for postponement from the leaders of Tanzania, Angola and Swaziland).”

3. “We can shame the mining giant Anglo-American into not pushing ahead, under Mugabe, with its £200m investment in a platinum mine at Unki.”

4. “We can spread the word that the Queen – the royal “we” – has at long last stripped Mugabe of his honorary knighthood.”

5. “We can sign the petition to Thabo Mbeki and other leaders of Southern Africa on avaaz.org, to be published in newspapers across the region. (The number of signatories has risen from 90,000 to over 111,000 while I’ve been writing this article.).”

6. “Then anyone in London can join a planned small demonstration at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party in Hyde Park this Friday, respectfully asking the old hero to urge Mugabe to leave the stage. Mandela’s discretion and loyalty to his successor Thabo Mbeki have, in this regard, outlived their useful term. Few contrasts are more painful than that between these two veteran anti-colonial leaders and long-term political prisoners, Mandela and Mugabe, the one ennobled and the other embittered by long struggle and imprisonment. Few voices would carry more weight in the world than that of Mandela calling for Mugabe to go.”

7. “Last but not least, we should listen to what the legitimate representatives of the majority in Zimbabwe say about stepping up sanctions. An obvious objection is: “But broader sanctions would hurt the people, who are already suffering enough.” Sometimes, though, the people themselves are prepared to take the pain for long-term gain. Or at least, that’s what their legitimate representatives tell us – and how else can we know? That was the message from the ANC under the apartheid regime in South Africa and from Solidarity in Poland. In both those cases, the historical record suggests that sanctions did contribute to the eventual good result. In other places, sanctions made things worse. To say simply that sanctions don’t work is a useless, lazy generalisation.”

On their own, none of these steps will have the desired effect. Some, taken individually, are open to easy ridicule. (“Fall, Sir Robert …” I could write the squib myself.) And taken altogether, they won’t get rid of the monster: that depends on the Zimbabweans and their southern African neighbours. But these suggestions do nail the fatalist idea that there’s nothing we can do. And I’ll bet you this: sooner or later, even in Zimbabwe, the ballpoint will defeat the gun.

What else do you think we should/could be doing?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:41 am June 26th, 2008 in Civil Rights, Crime, Culture, Debates, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Government, leadership, Media, Military, Politics, Scandal, Social Issues, Voting 

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