Adolf Hitler did something to this world and the citizens of this earth will never ever forget the man.
Saddam Hussein was no Adolf Hitler; that is why Saddam was hanged just after an American doctor gave him a token examination of his dentures.
Idi Amin Dada of Uganda was no Hitler either; that is why he was allowed to die in quiet exile in the hot sands of Saudi Arabia.
It is reported that Adolf Hitler was responsible for the deaths of more than six million people.
Today, there is a law in some European countries that sends you to prison for up to three years if you dare to deny that the Holocaust ever took place.
The laws in these countries literally compel their citizens, whether they have evidence or not, to admit and concur that the Holocaust took place.
Even the word Holocaust itself is officially written with a capital ‘H’.
Amin is said to have killed between 300 000 and 500 000 people while Saddam is accused of gassing innocent Kurds in Iraq.
Meanwhile, to the best of my knowledge, there again is no law anywhere in the world that will get you incarcerated if you deny that slavery; estimates of which range from 12 million to 18 million slaves taken to the Americas alone, ever took place.
Is it then a question of numbers as in how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust versus the Africans who were killed during the slave trade?
Back to our issue.
I believe that throughout their lives, Amin, Saddam and Hitler, as members of their village society, may have been at one time personally wronged by some people or fellow villagers, maybe even had their goat or donkey stolen.
Would it not be silly were any one of these three men to demand an apology from peasants for a stolen goat or donkey when they had slaughtered millions of innocent people?
When you commit a crime bigger than one committed against you, you neutralize the wrongs done to you.
It is sad, is it not, that apologies are influenced by circumstances and can easily be overtaken by events!
Thus I read, with some amusement, a statement from a prominent Botswana lawyer who happens to be the leader of an obscure political party demanding that Botswana’s President Ian Khama apologise to Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.
I am made to understand that the lawyer in question, Mr Themba Joina, said that the diplomatic fallout between Botswana and Zimbabwe should be blamed on Khama, who, “after assuming power acted in an undiplomatic manner that soured relations between him and Mugabe”.
I am also made aware that Mr Joina is a renowned human rights lawyer, which really goes against the grain.
Joina is reported to have said that “without reading the constitution of Zimbabwe in relation to the outcome of a General Election in that country, Khama went ahead and chose not to recognize Mugabe as the rightful President of Zimbabwe”.
I promise not to choke before I finish my statement.
Would Mr Joina please tell me what the constitution of Zimbabwe says about a president who loses an election and refuses to accept the results but, instead, uses the army and police to subdue the people while forcing himself on a nation that had given him a red card; holding a nation to ransom until outsiders intervened in an effort to save people’s lives?
Joina is a lawyer and he should answer this and I will pursue him to the end of the universe to set the record straight.
Even in Zimbabwe, we also have silly and obscure political parties and organizations whose membership consists of the husband, wife, children and the father’s sisters and the only way they can get attention is through making irresponsible statements.
The subject here is not President Khama; he has his faults like any head of state, but why should Khama apologise to Mugabe?
The prescription from the famed lawyer disregards logic and bulldozes its way into irrelevance and sets a scenario where a serial and chronic sinner is asked to hear the confession of his parish priest.
Joina, “a renowned human rights lawyer”, has apparently not heard about the thousands of people killed at the hands of Mugabe.
What is wrong with so-called human rights lawyers? Botswana is currently debating the antics of another so-called human rights lawyer who suddenly became a tribal chief and then suddenly started lashing his subjects in a manner that the Attorney General of Botswana stated to be illegal.
Mr Joina must, himself, be forgiven.
Some of us came into Botswana in a cloud of dust because our own government wanted to do us harm for speaking our minds.
Mr Joina takes his freedom for granted; he should not. Instead, he should protect it even beyond the borders of Botswana.
I find it funny that almost two years after Caesar Zvayi was booted out of UB and deported, Joina laments his deportation.
I will not debate the merits of the deportation but ask if Joina knows or cares who Caesar Zvayi is and how and why he ended up in Botswana immediately after his ZANU-PF masters lost elections to the Movement for Democratic Change.
Although the issue of the Wildlife officers was later resolved amicably, without any apology from Botswana, I felt very humbled that a government could stand so firmly in protection of its three citizens, something that Mugabe does not do.
Mr Joina is sadly still overburdened by worthless and outdated socialist imperatives that no longer make any sense to anyone except to mislead him into a retrogressive camaraderie with other former communists like Mugabe and Dos Santos who have not only ruined their nations but have decimated large portions of their populations.
Mugabe has called the genocide he perpetrated in Zimbabwe “a moment of madness” but has never apologized for the vicious killings of people in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.
For the last ten years, Zimbabweans have been under siege, held to ransom by their own president who goes around the world calling diplomats idiots.
Mugabe has taken away property rights and human rights.
Old men, women and children are deliberately starved as punishment because they are suspected of belonging to another political party other than Mugabe’s party. There is no rule of law, people continue to disappear and the economy has been ravaged.
I find it regrettable that those people who should be leading by example, like Mr Joina, are the same ones who encourage ruthless presidents to continue with their crusades of wreaking havoc on their people.
African leaders are failing to solve their own problems and when outsiders intervene to save people from their own governments, we have the same Africans in the forefront, siding with murderous dictators.
Joina has become desensitized to human rights and cares more for the murderer than the victim; that is typical of human rights lawyers.
No, Mr Joina, you are wrong and you espouse a painfully pathetic view. You should, of necessity, also think of the victim. As a socialist, you should be with the people.
Khama owes Mugabe no apology.
Unlike Joina, Khama is only trying to help the Zimbabwean masses not an individual.
It is Mugabe who owes everyone an apology.
Joina must apologise to Khama.
