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Zimbabwe PM Tsvangirai’s MDC Urges S. Africa’s Zuma to Act on Crackdown

Blessing Zulu & Sandra Nyaira, VOA

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s formation of the co-governing Movement for Democratic Change is asking South African President Jacob Zuma to intervene to halt what it calls an escalating crackdown on opponents of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party which is destabilizing the unity government.

Mr. Zuma, mediator in Zimbabwe for the Southern African Development Community, sent a team of facilitators back to Harare on Tuesday to in a bid to patch up the frayed unity government. Zuma foreign policy advisor Lindiwe Zulu said the team is following up on a road-map to elections and lingering issues related to the 2008 Global Political Agreement for power sharing which is the basis of the two-year-old unity government.

She confirmed facilitators will meet the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee late Tuesday and meet Wednesday with negotiators for the three governing parties.

Sources said the top item on the agenda – at least for the MDC – was the recent surge in political violence, continuing invasions of white-owned property, and alleged hate speech carred in state-controlled media including radio, television and newspapers.

The facilitators undertook to consult with JOMIC – established to measure compliance with the Global Political Agreement – more frequently to better follow the situation on the bround. JOMIC sources said the facilitators expressed concern about reported violence.

Tsvangirai MDC sources said they will present the facilitators with documentation on incidents of violence they say were perpetrated by ZANU-PF militants, the police and the army, and wuold urge Mr. Zuma to personally involve himself without further delay.

MDC ministers confronted their ZANU-PF counterparts about the alleged crackdown in a heated cabinet meeting on Tuesday, sources said.

Political analyst Trevor Maisiri told VOA Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu that Southern African leaders must change tactics in Harare to get power sharing back on track, and that Zimbabwe needs a full-time mediator “monitoring events every day.”

Meanwhile, former MDC lawmaker Munyaradzi Gwisai and about 50 members of his International Socialist Organization remained behind bars on Tuesday after lawyers failed to secure their release. They are accused of plotting an Egypt-style uprising.

Their lawyer, Marufu Mandevere, told VOA reporter Sandra Nyaira that police were given permission to hold the accused while the attorney general reviewed the case.

Events in the Mideast and North Africa have stirred much discussion in Zimbabwe, but many say an Egyptian-style revolt is unlikely to take place in Harare.

Among them is publisher Ibbo Mandaza who expressed skepticism this week on the VOA Zimbabwe Service’s LiveTalk program, noting that the level of fear among Zimbabweans is considerable and the the country’;s security services are much more closely bound to President Mugabe than in Arab countries where support eroded as protests rose.

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SELF PERPETRATION IN POWER BY AFRICAN LEADERS: LESSONS FROM EGYPT

By Abiodun Fatai

Why are African leaders fond of perpetrating themselves in power?  This has been the case with the late Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Mohammad Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, former Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria, Omar Bongo of Gabon and Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, among others. It is simplistic to answer that they are so endeared to the benefits of power and are always unwilling to vacate power when there is need for them to do so. African leaders have been in the habit of designing series of Maradonic and Machiavellian strategies for self perpetuation in power. Yet, it is true that they often forget that power is the only a matrix which has in itself potential for destruction. It is only in Africa that I have seen leaders dying in power or been disgraced from power, after they have refused to heed to simple voice of reason. They just love power. The experience in Europe and other developed societies really shown the willingness of leaders to vacate power when the ovation is loudest. Even at a slightest public disapproval, they show that power is not their personal property. This is not so in Africa; African leaders cherish power and see it as a private property.

The recent events and revolution in Egypt that eventually led to the forcing out of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, after turbulent 18 days agitation and protest shows the sheer desperation of African leaders to sit-tight in power without heeding to the voice their people. A similar revolt had earlier taken place in Tunisia where President Zine El Abidine Ben Alli was ousted from power. This sheer desperation is only shrouded in the barefaced arrogance and insensitivity which some African leaders have continued to display against their people. Mubarak’s insistence further make the country ungovernable for 18 days with economic, political and social institutions completely suspended. The simple truism is that the period of the protest has no doubt fostered untold hardship on the Egyptians, which they are not likely to regain in due course.

In a similar manner, the former dictators such as General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Mohammed Ghaddafi of Libya, Late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and Paul Biya of Cameroon, among others, showed lack of concern and desperation to continue to rule through autocratic disposition with little regard for thier people. The conviction and commitment of the Egyptians over the 18 days of protest depict their resolve to be free from autocratic rule and crass disregard for the plight of humanity. Professor Ben Nwabueze was more poignant when he claimed that “which is driven by the people and their faith in human freedoms? There is no universally prescribed method of revolution, but where the quality of human life is trampled upon and the people’s rights are routinely abused, the people as a collective have a duty to stand up and declaim: “Never again!”

The Egyptians resolve was therefore not unfounded because it was as the result of many years of suppression, brutality, and denial of right and alienation. In spite of what Dr Reuben Abati called the myth,  for example, that religion is a binding factor that makes the Middle Eastern population easier to control and dominate, Egyptians have defied this odd by choosing to fight for their freedom from the manacles and shackles of oppression. The aftermath of the revolution has dubbed it a historic change and has been welcomed from across the world. The EU, US, Germany and UK have all reacted positively  claiming the resolve of the Egyptians have been justified and that it is an historic change capable of catapulting the country  from authoritarian regime to civilian and democratic order.

What lessons are there to be learnt from the revolt in Egypt? What happened in Egypt is a clear lesson to the West, especially United States. It also sounds a clear but unequivocal warning to sit-tight African leaders that their days are numbered. As for the West, it is a lesson that they have to grind their teeth because the Egyptian revolution has caught them in the dilemma of their own logic. When you implicitly support autocratic government for the clear reason of protecting your interest at the behest of the people sovereign in their country, then what you gain is the Egyptian revolution. The west must urgently rethink and learn the lesson. As for the sit-tight African leaders, although it is not clear whether other Africans like the Egyptians have the orientation and the consciousness displayed by the Egyptians in the Egyptian revolution, the truth however is that it is unpredictable when a revolution would be ripe like this. Nevertheless, if the Northern African people most of whom have been dominated and controlled with religion can stage such protest to oust their President, then what happened in Egypt is capable of happening elsewhere. There is certainly a limit to how long the people can be oppressed. The scenario in Egypt and Tunisia therefore serves a serious warning for sit-tight leaders and perpetrators in power.

Abiodun Fatai is a Lecturer in Political Science at the Lagos State University, and a PhD Candidate at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria

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MUBARAK’S RESIGNATION: A LESSON FOR SIT-TIGHT AFRICAN LEADERS

African dictators
African dictators
Godfrey Eloho

History has been made today after a protracted peaceful protest by the Egyptians that saw their  despotic self-styled maximum ruler  of 30 years, handed power over to the military, an institution he has used over these  years to protect his stay. That feat was a fall-out of the scenario that played itself out in Tunisia weeks back. It is a further confirmation of the fact the people decide who rules them.

For too long African leaders are typified for their stay-put attitude in power. Once they come to power, they turn themselves into civilian presidents through manipulated elections and continue to renew their tenures of office with landslide victory election after election.  Mubarak is not a child of circumstance; what happened to him today that witnessed his fall from glory to grass is a seed his had sown long before today. His firm grip on the North African Red Sea nation since the 1981 when Aswar Sadat was assassinated has brought more and more hardship on the people of Egypt than socio-political and economic benefits.

He turned the government to personal fiefdom where he nursed the plan of presenting his son as a presidential aspirant in the next general elections. It was not known till today if he would have run again for the highest office he had monopolized in the last three decades. Unlike the proverbial cat, he never has nine lives that could take him to next tenure he had envisioned. The people decided today that he must bow to the popular will, a process that began young people embarked on self-immolation in the face of hardship, abject poverty in the midst of plenty, high unemployment and high inflation rates in the country. The popular Tahir Square was the main stage for the over two weeks protest.

To Africa leaders, the fall of Ali-Ben Bongo of Tunisia weeks ago, and that of the former Egyptian strongman Mubarak should serve as a warning sign that it is not business as usual. In specific terms the other so-called ‘strongmen’ like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, M. Gaddafi of Libya and recently Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast should know that the coast is not clear for their sit-tight attitude.  My. Gbagbo has held on to power for about a decade and refused to relinquish power to the rightful winner of the presidential election despite international pressure. They should note it down in their dairy today that the era of complacency on the part of the ordinary people is over. The African people can now assert their right and at any time, they will decide who govern them.

Godfrey Eloho is Public Affairs Analyst based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria[ad#Adsense-200by200sq]

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When the Mugabes Become a Sexual Joke in Zimbabwe

Alice Chimora

Frustrated Zimbabweans seem to have discovered a new hobby as they ridicule their aging president, Robert Mugabe and his young wife, Grace.

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Two men from the border town of Plumtree, a gateway to Botswana, had the audacity of drawing caricatures of Zimbabwe’s extravagant first lady, Grace Mugabe cuddling his long suspected lover’s private parts, Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono.

The pair – Blessed Gay Phiri, a former police officer, and Mxolisi Tshabalala were arrested for possessing subversive material which court records reveal they had received in the form of bank notes from an unknown suspect.

Several bank notes depicted the aging Mugabe standing with his young wife, Grace, and Gono, Mugabe’s personal banker, while Grace was depicted in the cartoon holding Gono’s private parts with a wide smile.

Surprisingly, Phiri, who was nabbed on 18 January while showing off the notes to a group of friends was not formally charged with undermining the authority or insulting president or his immediate family when he appeared in court last Friday (February 4).

The two men are currently out on a $50 bail each and scheduled to appear on March 2.

A controversial history

A number of Zimbabweans have been arrested over the past few years for insulting Mugabe whom they blame for ruining what was once one of Africa’s success stories with common insults ranging from idiot, goblin, moron to crazy old man.

Nonetheless it is an offence under Zimbabwe’s tough security laws to undermine or insult Mugabe, the only ruler Zimbabweans have ever known since the country’s independence from Britain 30 years ago.

Grace Mugabe who is Robert Mugabe’s second official wife and who is 41 years his junior, has since 2005 been romantically linked with controversial Reserve Bank chief, Gono and is also believed to have had a string of lovers in the past, some of who have died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Two of the most known names include, Peter Pamire, a budding young businessman died in a bizarre car accident some years back, and James Makamba, one of Zimbabwe’s richest businessmen and a top-ranking Zanu-PF official who is believed to have been forced into exile when the cover was blown over his affair with Grace.

But Mugabe’s current union with Grace was founded on an adulterous relationship which shocked many Zimbabweans at the time.

Grace, who used to be a junior secretary in the typing pool in Mugabe’s office, was married to an air force officer when she began having an affair with the president.

Robert Mugabe had two children with Grace while Mugabe’s first wife, Sally, a Ghanaian national, was alive.

After Sally Mugabe’s death in 1996, Robert Mugabe officially married Grace.[ad#Adsense-200by200sq]

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Egypt/Zimbabwe: Zimbabweans Cannot Outsource Their Revolution (opinion)

Jacob Dlamini

 Johannesburg (South Africa) – The year is only 34 days old and already it has seen the absolute demise of one dictatorship (Tunisia), the near collapse of another (Egypt), the rattling of a third (Jordan), the likely ruin of a fourth (Yemen) and the possible failure of a fifth (Algeria). That, by any measure, is a good start to what may be the most fundamental political change in the Middle East since 1948, when the state of Israel was founded.

The drama of the past 34 days was enhanced by the fact that two of the dictatorships either to fall (Tunisia) or flirt with downfall (Egypt) were, until recently, considered, especially by the US government, the most stable and least likely to fall.

In fact, US strategy in the Middle East has rested largely on an expensive peace between Egypt and Israel bankrolled by the US. It is largely because of this peace, brokered by former US president Jimmy Carter back when he occupied the White House, that Egypt is one of the top three recipients of military and other aid from the US, after Israel. The peace rested on a firm understanding between the Americans, Israelis and Egyptians, whose state is the largest and most politically significant in the Middle East, that the other Arab-led dictatorships in the Middle East posed little existential threat to Israel so long as Egypt honoured its side of the Camp David agreement.

But Egypt now looks likely to fall, meaning Egypt as we know it could change dramatically as Egyptians, fed up with corruption, neglected by a statistically impressive but empirically hopeless economy, and fed up with a leader, Hosni Mubarak, who seemed to think he was fated by history to rule, take to the streets to demand his ousting.

But it is not only Mubarak’s Egypt that is likely to go into the proverbial dustbin of history. The US policy of making nice with Mubarak while ignoring his brutality against his political opponents and, occasionally, using Mubarak’s apparatus of repression for the “rendition” and torture of enemy combatants, will also have to change.

The last thing the US wants is to, again, find itself backing the wrong side in the wave of protests sweeping the Middle East. The US made that mistake by backing a coup against a democratically elected government in Iran in the 1950s, supporting Saddam Hussein and even plying him with arms in the 1980s while he fought against the hated ayatollahs of Iran, and abandoning, in Afghanistan, the mujahedeen, who had helped the US give the hapless Soviets a taste of Vietnam. That is why the US has been treading gingerly on this. That is why US President Barack Obama has been frantically trying to sound allied to both prodemocracy protesters and Mubarak at the same time. Obama wants to be able to claim some credit should Egypt be delivered finally from dictatorship.

But what is the lesson of the recent events for southern Africa? In particular, what lessons does the wave of protests sweeping the Middle East have for Zimbabweans?

The most important lesson to come out of Egypt and Tunisia, it seems to me, is that revolutions cannot be outsourced. There has been something rather obscene about the ways in which some human rights activists, Zimbabwean and non-Zimbabwean, have presented the problems in Zimbabwe as if they are entirely SA’s or, to be exact, Thabo Mbeki ’s. One got the impression sometimes that these activists wanted Mbeki and South Africans in general to march on Harare. Some even suggested SA invade Zimbabwe.

What these hysterical calls did was absolve the prodemocracy movement in Zimbabwe of the responsibility to take the lead in the fight against Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship. Why is it, for example, that none of us who want to see Mugabe out of office and on trial for all sorts of crimes have bothered to ask why the Movement for Democratic Change, whose roots are supposedly in Zimbabwe’s labour movement, has yet to organise a successful strike, stayaway or other form of popular protest?

None of this is to ignore the brave men and women, journalists, lawyers, farmers and ordinary citizens who have protested against Mugabe’s rule and paid with everything from their lives to their limbs and property. The actions of these people must be recognised and honoured. But they cannot and should not be the exception.

Zimbabweans cannot outsource their revolution. They cannot leave the fight for their freedom to others. Sure, they need support, solidarity and the knowledge that the rest of the world is on their side. But they cannot expect the fight to be led by outsiders. That, for me, is what the Egyptians and the Tunisians have taught us.

Mubarak has one of the most formidable repressive machineries in the world but that has proved worthless in the face of popular protest. Voting with their feet, as the millions of Zimbabweans have done by moving to SA, Zambia, Botswana, Canada, Australia, the US and the UK, must have been a difficult thing to do. But it is by no means courageous. Courage is staring down a dictator, telling him to go and standing your ground. That is what the North Africans have done. Let us hope Zimbabweans learn from them.

*Jacob Dlamini is a South African writer.

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Egypt Calls for Freedom, Day 6: Update Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9.00 am

Jan 30, 2011, 9.00 am
Today is Day 6, and as expected, protesters have taken over the center of the Egyptian capital Cairo in demonstrations against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

The police have largely disappeared from the streets but there is a heavy military presence in the city, even though soldiers are not intervening in the situation.

The Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera which was covering the event has been halted. The Egyptian government had earlier ordered the Arabic TV channel, which has been showing blanket coverage of the protests, to shut down its operations in the country.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

What are we witnessing?


Jan 29, 2011, 11.30 am

The Egyptian President for nearly 30 years, Mr. Hosni Mubarak, 83, has started appointing a new cabinet for his new government after Egyptian government resigned this morning. So far, appointments made do not show any hope for a change. My. Mubarak is picking and choosing from his comfort zone. He is not in a hurry to reach to read out to the other side. The 83 year-old 3-decades president himself has not shown any indication he will step down.

He has been president for almost 30 years. For most of the protesters, Mubarak is the only leader they have known their entire life.

Any system which promotes the dictatorship of the few privileged instead of the initiative of the millions can never produce a happier and fulfilled people. Mr. Mubarak, as well as others like Mugabe, should know that their systems in essence imprison their people.

There will be freedom.


Jan 29, 2011, 10.15 am

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides once said “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”

This is exactly what is happening in North Africa right now. I’m watching CNN as I write this and I can hear protesters chant ‘Change, Freedom, Mubarak Go” and other anti-government slogans. My heart is in Egypt. I would be on the street if I lived in Egypt.

Happiness in life is an inner desire of the soul. As Thucydides said you cannot acquire this essential ingredient in life in the absence of freedom, and freedom won’t come before courage.

From the Sahara to the West Coast, and to the Southern belt, the African people need to demand for freedom. Let the ordinary people pioneer this movement. I’m glad that this time it is people like me, and not the military, who are calling for change.

There will be freedom on Our Land, in Uganda and in Zimbabwe

Jan 29, 2011, 7.30 am

The Egyptian protests continue today. In fact I would be disappointed if it wasn’t so. For the past three decades, Egypt has been about one person, Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak, 83, just as Zimbabwe has all been about the 87 year old Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Mubarak’s cabinet resigned this morning but this does not make any difference; Mubarak stays on. Mubarak is the face of Egypt and he should just respect the will of the people. If Mubarak stays on, it will continue to make the situation worse. There is hope on the streets of Cairo that perhaps this could bring about the freedom people have dreamed of for decades.

The book of Proverbs says that ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick’. It’s for this reason that I believe Mubarak must respect the cry in the hearts of the Egyptian youth.

This revolution was overdue. The combustible material was in stock, it just needed someone to trigger the spark.

There will be freedom at last. In Tunisia, in Egypt and in Zimbabwe


Jan 28, 2011, 9.30 pm

The Egyptian protest continued today. The police were shut up and were replaced by the army to help bring order into the streets of Cairo. President Mubarak eventually came out to address the country.

If my ears were not deceiving me, as I watched the revolution, what the protesters were calling for was for Mubarak to step down. The 30 year old dictatorial regime leader rather promised he was going to dissolve the government on Saturday and form a new government. And who will be the president of the new government? President Mubarak. Nothing could be more annoying, more frustrating, and more depressing.

I wish the Egyptian protesters the best I can think of.

We shall be free, one day. May be very soon


Jan 28, 2011 10.30 am

Islamic States in North Africa are on fire. It started with the uprising in Tunisia which was successful in toppling the Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Is this the beginning of the new African revolution? It’s exciting time in the North. Perhaps this is the only way we can get rid of tyrants in Africa. I personally prefer the youth fighting for their country than a military regime taking over governance through a coup d’état. Unfortunately there will be casualties: about 78 are reported killed in Tunisia already. But in human history, freedom has never been won without blood. I wish it wasn’t so.

There is a deep seated desire in the human spirit for freedom and sense of dignity, which most African states have not yet experiences. Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe have been held hostage by dictators for decades. “Enough is enough. We have had enough”, this is what the North African protesters are telling their governments.

These countries have one thing in common: They face a lot of challenges, such as high unemployment. Young people who have gone to college in recent years expect a lifestyle that the current political regime is incapable of providing and doesn’t seem to care enough about.

We must hail and pay tribute to the Tunisian youth their successful uprising which sowed the seed for the new African revolution. They showed a way for other African countries to take similar action and tell their long-reigned tyrants that enough is enough.

All eyes are on Egypt now. And as Egypt goes, so……………….

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THE OBAMA IN YOU

As the preliminaries for the 2012 US presidential election approaches and with several presidential elections taking place in Africa next year, it is a worthwhile engagement to examine the first African leader of the United States in relation to the great potentials of Africans in general. For it is still the case that Barack Obama emerging as the President of the United States of America in 2009, remains, to a large extent, a ‘mystery in disguise’ to millions of people – particularly black people in general regardless of our nationality, location, religion, interests or status in life.

Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America

An article in the Economist described the Obama phenomenon as ”GLOBAMAISATION’‘. According to the author, Tunde Oseni, ‘‘Globamaisation is both an idea and a process. As an idea, it refers to a set of principles that in a developed and deepened democracy, like the United States, the lines between politics, culture, color, creed and history are happily collapsing. As a process, ‘‘Globamaisation’ is the beginning of a new dawn whereby techno-democratic forces will drive silent revolutions across the globe.’’

An inference from the concept on Obama above clearly indicates that the world is gradually moving towards a position where individuals with potent capacity and will power can actualize their dreams and aspirations in life regardless of race, skin color, language and other relevant factors. Obama, in his book, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE, fervently addresses issues of his life. Despite all the challenges and difficulties he encountered while growing up; Obama believed that the fruit of the years of struggle laid in making his dreams come true. That is the reason why Obama, in a ‘deepened democratic’ system as the U.S, won the prestigious position of Presidency.

That this is a spectacular achievement derived largely from sheer determination need not be mentioned. What needs to be considered is whether the platform that was provided for him can be replicated elsewhere, particularly Africa. The first thing to say is that Obama’s intellectual potential indicates that Africans are as equally gifted as any other race and that humans in general, regardless of race or creed, have incredible reasoning ability. The significant difference between continents, countries and cities, however, contribute in enhancing this attribute. This question of nurture over nature applies deeply in Africa as many factors such as corruption and all elements of avarice negatively impact on people – particularly young children and adults. The depletion of resources through greed and the consequent mountainous struggle to attain a better life, particularly in comparison to what similar struggle can deliver in Western countries; have resulted in many not believing in the African continent or themselves.

My view is that Obama has successfully set the pace for Africans to aspire to positions which decades and centuries ago were never believed to be achieved by Blacks. However, if African governments can eradicate corruption, attempt to invest consistently in world class education systems, infrastructures and healthcare provision, they will reduce the present gap between ‘‘nurture and nature’’ in the development of human capabilities and provide the platform for unborn Africans to compete successfully on the global stage. That is when the Obama in all Africans can be seen in all spheres of life all over the world.
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Cote d’Ivoire: The real tragedy is that we’ve seen this so many times before

Jenerali Ulimwengu

Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe and his power-sharing rival
Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe and his power-sharing rival

The tragedy that has become Cote d’Ivoire is unfortunately one of those déjà vu situations that continue to haunt the African continent. We have been here before, in Zimbabwe, in Kenya, in Zanzibar, and in many other places where stoic societies suffer without exploding.

Cheating at polls is nothing new; almost all our countries engage in electoral fraud, some more subtly, others more crudely.

The more egregious samples have come from Harare and Nairobi, and now Abidjan, where cheating has become more transparent and in-your-face.

It’s this brazen nature of electoral rape that especially worries one.

It’s as if we have grown a species of humans who, in spite of all the talk about ending impunity and the threat of international sanctions, still believe that they can do what they pretty much wish.

The vote thieves have employed different styles. There are those that have simply removed ballots in favour of one candidate and turned them in favour of another, quite simply.

There are those whose manner is more wholesale, who strategically remove whole populations from the electoral process, annul results from entire polling stations, impound hundreds of ballot boxes and run into the night, et cetera.

Then there are those who tally the ballots, gaze upon the results, hate what they see and take out a fresh piece of paper, scribble more convenient numbers and proceed to announce their “results” and their “winner.”

In the Zimbabwean case, the style was simply not to announce the results.

For a continent that is not renowned for creativity, in this area we are great inventors.

There is certainly nothing African about this type of cheating — remember the pregnant “chads” in Florida? — but the Africans have embraced it with gusto.

It may soon be written into our constitutions, that whoever happens to be in power can steal votes the same way he has been raiding the national Treasury.

We even have a tested script ready for what happens, blow for blow: An election is held; the incumbent loses; he is declared the winner; the people riot; the international community cries foul; babysitters are trotted out to go and clean up after the naughty brats of the moment; the babies are brought together and talked into forming a government of “national unity.”

Thus the thief and the rightful proprietor shake hands and become partners, now free to quarrel at close quarters.
Half a century after putative Independence we are still toddlers, dependent on a clutch of babysitters who now seem to be on some AU, EU or UN roster: Kofi Annan, Thabo Mbeki, Joachim Chissano, Graca Machel.

In Haiti — another miserably African country — naughty children would be quieted at night by being told that tonton (uncle) Macoute would come from the hills and snatch them.

Macoute, a mythical ogre, found shape in Papa Doc’s terrifying secret police.

In our time and place, that Uncle Macoute has taken the form of Louis Moreno Ocampo, of ICC fame.

But this our Macoute is not just yet interested in vote stealers, who may, come to think of it, be at the very heart of all the demons that Ocampo seeks to exorcise.

It may be high time that the committee of baby sitters and Macoute Ocampo got together and compared notes with a view to tackling their problem at source.

In the case of Kenya, for instance, it may be futile to prosecute those who whipped up sectarian violence without at the same time dealing with the authors of the botched elections that were, honestly, the casus belli of the fracas.

In the meantime, at least we can congratulate the African Union and the West African economic bloc on their declared position on the Cote d’Ivoire fiasco.

Time was when the continental body and its regional partners would helplessly look on such events as the internal concern of squabbling toddlers, an attitude that helped feed the culture of impunity.

* Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.

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