News from the New Party

Time to end Mugabe's tyranny

Time is running out for Zimbabwe:

Zimbabwe's slide into economic meltdown has accelerated in recent weeks, with spiralling inflation increasing food shortages. With nothing to buy in the shops and prices for a loaf of bread out of reach for most families, the tide of Zimbabweans fleeing south has prompted South African farmers to set up ad hoc vigilante border patrols to round up refugees and truck them back.

The vacillating response of the rest of the world, in particular the rest of Africa, has done little to raise expectations that this unfortunate country is staring a major humanitarian catastrophe in the face.

In the light of this, the Prime Minister has announced that he will boycott this December's joint summit between the European Union and the African Union if President Robert Mugabe attends.  Portugal, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, is insisting on inviting Mugabe, notwithstanding the fact that he is officially banned from travelling to the European Union, for the simple reason that unless Mugabe receives an invitation other African leaders will stay away.

Two leading Church figures have recently spoken out against the prevailing policy of encouraging neighbouring African states to bring pressure to bear on the Mugabe regime.   John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York (a Ugandan by birth), explicitly linked Robert Mugabe's dictatorship both to the government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia and South Africa's apartheid regime:

"The time for 'African solutions' alone is now over. Despite his best efforts, president Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has failed to help the people of Zimbabwe.

"At best he has been ineffective in his efforts to advise, cajole and persuade Robert Mugabe that it is time for him to reverse his unjust and brutal regime.

"At worst, Mbeki is complicit in his failing to lead the charge against a neighbour who is systematically raping the country he leads."

Dr Sentamu called for all people who marched with him to end apartheid in South Africa, and who demonstrated against the actions of the Ian Smith Government in Rhodesia, to now direct their efforts to rid Zimbabwe of Mugabe.

Meanwhile the former Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, has expressed similar sentiments:

The Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize winner said the "quiet diplomacy" pursued by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) had "not worked at all".

He called on Britain and the West to pressure SADC, including South Africa, which is chairing talks between President Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, to set firm deadlines for action, with consequences if they are not met.

"All of us Africans must hang their heads in shame for having allowed such a desperate situation to continue almost without anybody doing anything to try and stop it," he said.

In the circumstances Gordon Brown is to be applauded for his stand. The EU Presidency, on the other hand, is clearly wrong.  If the EU is not prepared to stand by its own decision to impose a travel ban, and the AU would rather act in solidarity with Africa's leading tyrant than stand up to him, then the summit is not worth having.  If the African Union is unaware of the damage done to its own reputation by complicity in the oppression of the people of Zimbabwe, then it is not for the European Union to overlook the fact.   As Archbishop John Sentamu has intimated, it is time to set aside "colonialist guilt" and deal with Mugabe's vicious regime once and for all.