Open letter to President Robert Gabriel Mugabe (from Mr Geoff Nyarota!)

By Geoffrey Nyarota

October 1, 2007

IT IS said by the wise that whenever a man - or a woman - points a finger in accusation, three fingers point back at himself or herself, presumably in similar accusation.

Nowhere could this saying have been more applicable than at the United Nations last week when President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe stood up to address the General Assembly. True to form, he put this golden opportunity to bombastic use as he lambasted President George Bush of the United States and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for their alleged hypocrisy, while opportunely reminding them of his credentials, including his commitment, his contribution and his sacrifice during Zimbabwe’s protracted struggle from almost a century of colonial and settler domination.

I am surprised that he missed this opportunity to inquire of the British Prime Minister why he attended the same meeting with him in New York if he could not even contemplate the prospect of being a delegate at the same meeting with his Zimbabwean counterpart in Lisbon in December.

What follows is a modified version of President Mugabe’s grandiloquent sermon at the UN. Where he addressed Srgian Kerim, President of the 62nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 26, 2007, I am now addressing him as the President of my beloved country, Zimbabwe:

Your Excellency,
Allow me to congratulate you on your insightful, invigorating and revolutionary delivery before the august UN General Assembly last week. We are always confident that through your inspirational stewardship, the concerns and aspirations of the citizens of Zimbabwe, as indeed those of the rest of the Third World, will not only be appropriately highlighted before this world forum, but that they will also be dealt with in a balanced manner and to the satisfaction of all concerned.
Mr. President,
We extend our hearty welcome to you on your safe return back home, where we continued to wallow in the abject poverty and misery that have become our way of life. While we scrounged for food you took up the challenging task requiring your rare quality of dynamism to confront the global challenges of the 21st Century, while placing both George Bush and this newcomer Gordon Brown in their proper place right in front of the assembled leaders of the world. You did us proud as you singled out Tony Blair in absentia for severe and overdue tongue-lashing.
But, Mr President now that you are back on home ground, let me seize on this opportunity to remind you that balancing national interests and steering Zimbabwe in a direction that gives hope to the multitudes of the poor, the sick, the hungry and the marginalized is, indeed, a mammoth task. We would like to assure you that we as a nation continue to expect of you and your government an open, transparent and all-inclusive multilateral approach in dealing with national challenges.
Mr. President,
We do not dispute that climate change is one of the most pressing global issues of our time; that its negative impact is greatest in developing countries, particularly those on the African continent. We believe that if the international community is to seriously address the challenges of climate change, then we need to get our priorities right. In Zimbabwe, the effects of climate change have become more evident in the past decade as we have witnessed increased and recurrent droughts as well as occasional floods, leading to enormous humanitarian challenges. But don’t forget, Sir, that the greater part of the enormous humanitarian challenges facing us as a nation today are a direct result of ill-advised decisions deliberately taken by your government over the same period going back to 1997.
Mr. President,
We are for a Zimbabwe that recognises the equality of citizens and political parties, whether big or small. We are averse to an environment in which the economically and militarily powerful among us behave like bullies, trampling on the rights of weak and defenceless opponents as sadly happened at Machipisa on March 11, 2007. In the light of such inauspicious developments, your government must surely examine the essence of its authority and the extent of its power when legitimately challenged by other stake-holders on the political landscape.
Such challenges to the authority of your government underpin our repeated call for the revitalisation of that landscape. Your government should be more active in all areas, including those of peace and the security of all citizens. The encroachment of some organs such as the omnipresent Central Intelligence Organisation and the Green Bombers upon the work of the opposition and civil society is of great concern to us. Meanwhile, any process of revitalizing or strengthening of our Constitution should necessarily avoid eroding the principle of the accountability of all principal and subsidiary organs of government.
Mr. President,
Once again we reiterate the position held by an overwhelming majority that the government of Zimbabwe, as presently constituted, is not democratic. In its present configuration, the government has shown that it is not in a position to protect the weaker parties who find themselves at loggerheads with a marauding and all powerful ruling party. Most importantly, justice demands that any constitutional reform redresses the fact that Zimbabwe is conspicuous in the international community for its denial of basic freedoms to the majority of its citizens.
Mr. President,
We further call upon your government to refrain from interfering in matters that are clearly the legitimate domain of political formations other than your own, matters, therefore, that are clearly not a threat to national peace and security. The development of our nation should continue to be guided by sound policies and principles, and not be subject to the whims of a few powerful, selfish, corrupt and incompetent politicians.
Mr President,
Zimbabwe won its independence on April 18, 1980, after a prolonged war against British colonial imperialism which denied us our human rights and democracy. On that historical day we defeated the colonial system which suppressed and oppressed us while enjoying the support of many countries of the West.
Sadly, it is patently clear that where you and your government are concerned, vested economic interests and racial and ethnocentric considerations continue to take precedence over adherence to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Indeed, the West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources, in the process making us mere chattels in our own lands, mere minders of its transnational interests. It is more painful when our so-called people’s government reduces us once more to mere chattels in our own land and mere minders of the personal interests of our avaricious political leaders. In Zimbabwe the most visible form of this control has been over land which was seized from the white farmers and distributed essentially among your cohorts, while the rest of us watched from the sidelines.
This shameful and divisive control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged by us, the majority, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and your party. Indeed, the sense of human rights of Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown may preclude our right to the resources of their kith and kin in our country. But are we not about to witness the control of those same resources pass onto your own kith and kin, while economic empowerment remains a pipe-dream for the rest of us.
You have been termed a dictator not because you have rejected the supremacist view of Mr Bush and Mr Blair and now Mr Brown, while frustrating the neo-colonialists. No. You have been called a dictator because of your oppression of your own people through denying them their basic human rights. Wanton incarceration of innocent citizens, the assault on prominent politicians while in police custody, the bombing of printing presses – those are the hallmarks of dictatorship. Our genuine grievances over these important issues are not in any way inspired by Western politicians.
Mr President,
You lost eleven precious years of your life while jailed by Ian Smith, a white man whose freedom and well-being you graciously assured from the first day of Zimbabwe’s Independence. Yes, you lost a further fifteen years while fighting white injustice in our country. But once you ascended to power, did you assure the freedom and well-being of Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole or Abel Muzorewa from the first day of Zimbabwe’s Independence? How many years did they and a multitude of other Zimbabweans lose and continue to lose while fighting black injustice in the land of their rukuvhute?
You say Ian Smith was responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of our people. This was over a period of 15 years. How many thousands perished or were maimed in Matabeleland at the hands of Five Brigade in just five years? Yes, you meet Smith’s victims everyday. But how many of your own victims are petrified by you today? Yes, Smith walks free. He farms free. Do I walk free in Zimbabwe? Do I farm free?
You are probably right that Smith would have faced a different fate in the United States and in Europe if the 50 000 he killed were white people. But then you have not suffered any fate for the heinous crimes committed by your own regime against multitudes of your own black people.
You are right. President Bush of the United States stands for “this civilization” which occupies, incarcerates and kills in the distant lands of Iraq and Afghanistan. But your own government killed in Tsholotsho and Lupane. It killed at Murambinda. It killed in Harare, in Bulawayo and on the commercial farms. Your government kills its own people.
Yes, President Bush imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. But you imprison and torture innocent Zimbabweans in the spine-chilling chambers at Goromonzi, in the dungeons of the long condemned Matapi Police Station at Harare Central and, since 3/11, at Machipisa Police Station.
Take Goromonzi, for example; the rule of law does not apply there. Only the unjust law of the CIO applies. Should the leaders of the world in assembly at the UN accept being lectured to by you on the provisions of the universal declaration of human rights? Definitely not!
Mr President,
We are perturbed that under your leadership, the basic rights of the people of Zimbabwe have summarily been rolled back. Your government is primarily responsible for constantly rewriting (18 times at the last count) core tenets of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. You seem to hold us collectively and eternally guilty after we rejected constitutional reforms proposed by your government in 2000. Since then you seem to believe you stand above all structures of governance, whether local or national.
In Harare you apparently do not need the Constitution or Parliament. Abroad you do not seem to respect the very UN, before which you were posturing last week. Neither do you respect international laws or opinion. The UN did not sanction Gukurahundi or Murambatsvina. You rode roughshod over local and international opinion. Yet you dare to lecture others on tyranny. Indeed, you should mend your ways before you clamber up the UN pulpit to deliver “pieties of democracy”.
Mr President,
Zanu-PF and your government have mounted a relentless campaign to destabilise and vilify innocent and law-abiding Zimbabweans. They have sponsored surrogate forces to challenge lawful opposition in our country. They don’t want a change of government, placing themselves in the role of the protectors of the people of Zimbabwe, forgetting that democracy places the right to define and change regimes in the collective will of the people.
Let these sinister forces, the CIO and the Green Bombers and others be told here and now that Zimbabwe will not allow a governance status quo authored and maintained by them. We do not need America and Britain to tell us that we are starving. Mr Bush and Mr Brown have little role to play in our current national demise. They are outsiders and should therefore not be mischievously blamed for all our woes. The colonial sun set a long time ago; in 1980 in the case of Zimbabwe. The progressive people of Zimbabwe should not relentlessly be reminded about colonialism for no good reason. No!
You are fond of quoting from the chapters of history. Mr President, the milkman made door-to-door deliveries in Mbare back in the 1960s - and collected payment only on Friday! Now the milk has disappeared altogether under your visionary and revolutionary leadership!
We do not deserve to be subjected to contempt by our own government. We are Zimbabweans and we know the cause of our problems. We knew the cause of our problems well before Bush and Brown were born politically.
In that vein, I wish to express my compatriots’ disapproval of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa who, on behalf of SADC, successfully engineered the ‘futile dialogue between your ruling party and the opposition MDC parties, which yielded the agreement that has now resulted in new constitutional provisions being finally adopted. This we do in light of the utterances of the commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, Lieutenant-General Phillip Sibanda, who told impressionable young army recruits in Rusape last week that the army would never tolerate the ascendancy of a party other than your own Zanu-PF to power in Zimbabwe.
Even if you don’t reprimand him, as you should do publicly, we will turn out in full force to cast our vote in the multiple democratic elections to be held in March 2008. Once more we will use our vote wisely. But then, once more, your Mr Tobaiwa Mudede will obviously not allow our vote to translate into victory over tyranny.
Mr. President,
In conclusion, let me stress once more that the strength of the people of Zimbabwe lies in the impartiality of your government as it implements its mandate to promote peace and prosperity as well as national security, economic and social development, while respecting human rights and law and order, as outlined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans stand ready to play their part in all efforts and programmes aimed at achieving these noble goals.
Now that you are back with us it’s not entirely out of place to remind you that we were without food when you departed for New York. We were still without food as you mesmerized them with your thunderous eloquence at the UN and, as you return to Harare, the young ones still cry for food.

To give credit where it’s due, we did have electricity from 3.00 am to 5.00 am on the day of your arrival. Sadly, the water taps have remained dry for the past two weeks.

Indeed, down with Bush. Down with Blair and, now, down with Brown.

I thank you.

(Geoffrey Nyarota is the Managing Editor of the Zimbabwe Times and the author of Against the Grain, Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman, published by Zebra Press of South Africa.)