I am still of the opinion that Africa is a long way off from being able to solve its own problems, preferring instead to blame long departed colonial governments for its leaders’ ineptitude, corruption and destructive policies.
The African continent is littered with flashing points that are of our own making and no amount of blaming colonialists will change my mind that Africans are bloodthirsty, corrupt, and murderers who insanely believe that something called good luck and success can only be achieved through using a fellow African’s blood or internal organs.
I am going to call us barbarians, unless you can explain to me what is happening in Sudan and Somalia, let alone in Zimbabwe, Madagascar, DR Congo, Uganda and even in the Ivory Coast.
Why is Robert Mugabe killing people in Zimbabwe, and who is doing anything about it?
Why is Yoweri Museveni killing Ugandans and why isn’t there someone doing something about it?
Why does Al Bashir continue killing defenseless, war-weary Southern Sudanese citizens and is Africa doing enough to stop the slaughter?
The continent of Africa has a lot of history, in addition to experience in misery, slavery and deaths, why can’t we learn from these unfortunate but rich experiences?
Why do we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
Why do we kill people we are supposed to be caring for?
Have we become so desensitised as not to feel for the defenseless people we see every day, running for their lives, naked, carrying malnutritioned infants under their armpits as they dash from one poor, violent country to another that is worse than the one they have just fled from?
Late last year, a stubborn dictator lost an election in C├┤te d’Ivoire and refused to stand down, causing a nation that was already polarized to start a new conflict with itself again.
Hundreds and hundreds of people died unnecessarily.
However, in a few short months, the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) invited the United Nations and marched into C├┤te d’Ivoire and captured the recalcitrant dictator and that was the end of the matter.
Why can’t our own Southern African Development Community (SADC), a worthless and powerless organisation, learn to be relevant by simply looking over their shoulder and pick a few hints?
I no longer think that SADC could honestly be as stupid as they try to make us believe.
I think they are doing it on purpose, just to see what we do.
A few years ago, one Thabo Mbeki, the lackluster former South African president, stunned the world by declaring that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe.
He made that statement while he was grappling with the instability and government instigated violence in Zimbabwe.
Since Mbeki was booted out of office, things in Zimbabwe have steadily gotten worse on the political front.
Although Zimbabwe has been in turmoil for well over ten years, it only became of concern to SADC about three years ago.
For the past three years Zimbabwe, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar have been on the agenda of the Troika’s Ministerial Committee, “because of political and security concerns posed by their situations”.
But early this past week, the SADC Troika announced that Zimbabwe had been removed from their agenda because, SADC said, “the situation in Zimbabwe had normalized”.
I say, can you believe these guys?
Events in the last month alone should have alarmed SADC.
There were arrests of journalists, Mugabe’s youth militias kidnapping people in broad daylight and cabinet ministers from the Movement for Democratic Change being arrested on frivolous charges almost on a weekly basis.
We have witnessed the deployment of the army in rural areas where they are beating up people “to keep them in line” in anticipation of elections.
Just this past Tuesday, Mugabe’s youths forced Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, to flee his Harare offices after they stormed the Ministry of Finance offices demanding Biti’s resignation.
Clearly, the raid on Biti’s offices, “coming days after the arrest of a top aide to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and “subversive” statements by an army general”, has worsened fears that Zimbabwe is back to the anarchy of 2008 when more than 200 MDC supporters were murdered in cold blood after Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in contested presidential elections”.
The raid on Biti came after the arrest of Tsvangirai’s aide, Jameson Timba, the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s office.
Timba was arrested at the instigation of notorious turncoat, Jonathan Moyo, who said that Timba had said that Mugabe had lied about the outcome of the SADC Sandton Summit.
Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Zimbabwe is among countries with the highest number of journalists forced into exile due to imprisonment and other threats, adding that Zimbabwe’s peers in this category are Ethiopia, Iran, and war-ravaged countries of Somalia and Iraq”.
ZANU-PF instigated violence has been on the increase for more than a year now.
The ZANU-PF youth militias even had the audacity early this week to gate crash a Harare residents meeting of 1,500 people, and beat up both government officials and residents present.
Yet on Tuesday, the SADC organ that looks into political and security problems in the region removed Zimbabwe from its agenda, saying the situation in the country has ‘normalised’.
It is surprising how SADC reached at such a decision with all that is going on and at a time when several MDC activists are being held in prison and their bail applications repeatedly delayed.
But on Friday, another drum boom was heard when Zuma, the facilitator to the SADC-sponsored talks on Zimbabwe, expressed grave concern over the “deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe”.
“The fear in Pretoria is that if things deteriorate any further, there could be massive upheavals throughout the country that could lead to the loss of lives because emotions are running high across the political divide,” a source told Zimbabwe’s Daily News.
The paper said that Pretoria’s nervousness about developments in Zimbabwe follows last week’s treasonous threats by army chiefs and the subsequent arrest of Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s aide.
“President Zuma is staggered by the pace at which the political climate is deteriorating in Zimbabwe,” said the source.
Reports say that so deeply concerned is South Africa about Zimbabwe’s worsening political crisis that Zuma planned to meet Mugabe in Equatorial Guinea, where they are both attending an African Union summit, to discuss the matter.
As Zuma was worrying that the events in Harare were reaching “a tipping point”, SADC was saying the situation had normalized enough for SADC to remove it from its Troika’s agenda.
“The Zimbabwe situation was discussed and the conclusion was that the situation in Zimbabwe had normalised to the extent that it did not warrant to be included on the agenda item of the Ministerial Committee,” Zimbabwe’s Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Joey Bimha, said.
Can you believe these guys?
Zuma is getting into the habit of making a lot of macho statements in public and do absolutely nothing to back up his statements.
Who shall we believe, SADC or Zuma?
